Like other self-funders, she made the argument that her wealth guarantees she wouldn’t be beholden to special interests if elected. In the Maguire Gardens, however, they’re not buying that line from the former Goldman Sachs director. “It’s all money, power, and greed,” says legal secretary Annaline, a self-described “child of the sixties.” “I would have liked to vote for a strong woman but I can’t bring myself to do it.” Several interviewees unfavourably contrast Whitman’s use of her fortune with the philanthropy of Bill Gates.
The cash obviously did earn Whitman a hearing. Halfway through September she was level with Brown in the polls. But being a billionaire candidate, she has learned, comes with billionaire problems. The press discovered that she hadn’t registered to vote in California at all over the past 28 years. Her elder son’s unsavoury legal problems—an unsubstantiated date-rape accusation at Princeton, a dropped battery charge arising from a bar brawl in Palo Alto—suddenly became news.
Most damaging: she had an embarrassing, prolonged blow-up over her treatment of a former housekeeper, employed as an illegal alien by Whitman’s family for nine years and discarded right around the time Whitman was consulting with advisers about the gubernatorial run. After a full month of quarrelling by proxy with Nicandra Diaz Santillan in the press, Whitman told Fox News on Oct. 29: “It breaks my heart, but [Diaz] should be deported, because she forged documents and she lied about her immigration status.”
On Oct. 24, a poll for the Los Angeles Times shocked the state by putting Brown 13 points ahead. Four days later, the venerable Field Poll put Whitman 10 points back, twisting the knife after the housekeeper explosion by emphasizing the candidate’s particular weakness among women and Latinos. Anonymous Republicans soon began popping up in the papers to curse the lost opportunity. California traditionally elects Republican governors, but somehow Whitman was fumbling away the state even as a Democratic president fought a recession halfway through his first term in the White House.
Remarkably, Whitman’s heavy spending did not even stop Brown from running circles around her in the advertising battle. The Brown campaign landed repeated blows in that arena, and the most devastating—still on everyone’s lips in the waning days of the race—was surely the ad titled “Echo,” released Oct. 19. In the ad, deft editing makes Whitman look like a brainless parrot as she recites the very same slogans that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used in 2003 and 2006. The Governator’s prestige stands at an all-time low, and California’s collective judgment on his performance is perhaps expressed best by Lou Pizarro, star of OLN reality series Operation Repo, who Maclean’s bumped into in Burbank. “I loved Schwarzenegger—as an actor,” a forlorn Pizarro said.
On Oct. 29 in Bakersfield, an oil town at the south end of the lush Central Valley, Whitman is greeted at the Kern County Museum by protesters driving a smaller parody version of her gigantic green bus, with its campaign slogan “Take Back Sac” (referring to Sacramento, the state capital). The affair is handled somewhat like the closed-casket funeral of a suicide. Whitman staffers use cops to drive various undesirables (including the Maclean’s correspondent) off the grounds of the museum as a campaign staffer snarls, “We own this venue.” At the edge of the force field, the protesters chant: “Hey, hey, Whitman, get out of our town! All that money and you’re 10 points down!” The justification for the straitlaced security becomes clear the next day in the L.A. suburb of Glendale, where hecklers descend on a Whitman bakery visit and disrupt her attempts to chat with customers. Troublingly, it has become impossible for Whitman to act like a normal human being in a venue she does not “own.”
The next day, at Bakersfield’s 24th Street Cafe, the house pushes the pear-chorizo panini while musicians outside strum the tunes of local legend Buck Owens. Republicans are not hard to find here. Jim, a wiry, straight-talking salesman from San Francisco, is voting for Whitman: “Jerry Brown already wrecked this state,” he says. But when asked how he rates Whitman’s chances, he says “Slim and none,” and doesn’t seem too disappointed.
John, a school bus driver and football coach from the nearby farming hub of Wasco, declares himself pro-life, pro-death penalty, and none too big a fan of the delta smelt, the endangered fish that is threatening farmer access to aqueduct water. (“They should just go ahead and build an aquarium for it.”) But John is unsure, three days before the vote, that he’ll vote for Whitman. “A month ago, I would have said yes, for sure.” John seems to have been hit particularly hard by “Echo”; as a hardline social conservative, he has seen enough of the Schwarzenegger style.
Whitman all but admitted her predicament in a late TV ad that had her addressing the camera and using her moist basset-hound eyes to maximum effect. “I know many of you see this election as an unhappy choice between a long-time politician with no plan for the future and a billionaire with no government experience,” she admitted. A capsule version of her biography follows in the remainder of the ad, but its daring opening line (how often does a billionaire actually refer to herself as a “billionaire”?) might stand as an epitaph.
Publicly, Whitman was still clinging to hope on the morning of Election Day. Many Californians don’t make their decisions until the final weekend, when they can settle in with the voluminous state voter’s guide and do their complicated democratic homework. But the labour unions were out in force for their Great Emancipator, and ballot initiative Proposition 19 on marijuana legalization seemed certain to attract some otherwise indifferent liberals, progressives, and single-issue stoners to the polls. In 2010 at least, California looked like something money can’t buy.
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