Don't know who here follows Cali politics, but this one is sorta interesting to me.

One one side Brown, a literal career politican, served two terms as Governor already, and succesfully enough that he's able to run again (as opposed to thinking of Carter try and run again for president, the built in opposition is already too established.) He pretty much follows the Democrat lines, tends towards a government solution to problems as opposed to private sector.

Now on the other is Whitman-a relative 'outsider" with no prior political experience, a voting record I'd call average (I'm one of those who votes only when i care to, I value my right to abstain as highly as my right to vote,) but with a succesful career in business. Her main (and seemingly only from her advertisements) accomplishment is her tenure as CEO of Ebay, taking the company that was already established and building it into something more succesful than it was. Her intentions (taken from her website) for getting California out of some of its bigger problems are essentialy cutting taxes in a variety of areas.


My take-
I actually don't have many faults with Brown. I expect him to behave like a typical politician, and while I wasn't around enough to have a lot of information on his previous terms as governor, he won a re-election and Whitman's negative adds denouncing what he did during his terms have been resoundly proclaimed false by press from all sides of the aisle. Without digging up anything fact wise, I'm of the thought that if Whitman's campaign can't put forth any real negatives (as opposed to made up ones that they are) there's not a lot there to fault Brown for. So my scorecard on Brown is a neutral one-Don't have an opinion either way.

Whitman however...perhaps I'm just wanting her to have done more. She's become mirred in the Diaz scandal (her illegal immigrant housekeeper of 9+ years who got fired right before Whitman ran for election, who Whitman claims hid the mail that would have told Whitman that she was illegal) and instead of offering a truly outsider opinion of "Yea, I employed her, and though I didn't know she was illegal, I didn't do the digging to really find out. This is obviously a problem that we can find a solution to with things such as a guest worker program/euthanisation of anyone found to be an illegal alien/a bigger fence, etc" just something to set her apart from the market group answers of the RNC. Instead she's just followed party lines. Why the hypocracy denouncing Whitman for following party lines but giving Brown a pass on it? Brown's a career politician, Whitman is billing herself as an "outsider." becuase of that, I expect her to bring some new ideas, some outside trains of thought. My pop (a diehard conservative) told me he's voting for "new blood and new ideas" I told him that's great, I just wish she had new ideas.
Now the main thing that really bothers me with Whitman is her affiliation with Ebay. I swear I'm watching adds for Ebay and not for her. Now if she had founded and started it up, I'd be much more affected by these adds. But she came on to a company that was already started up and helped it grow. Yes that's impressive, but to me it's not enough to claim what she has from it. She takes credit for all the people who use Ebay as "jobs" that she's created. If she had founded/started up ebay, I'd give her that credit, as a carpetbagger who jumped on for the ride, I'll give her credit, but not NEARLY to the level she's claiming.
Luckily there's other thinsg she's running on, right? Well...by her TV, mail, and radio adds, that's actually about it. She's responsible for Ebay (according to her) and the way she's claiming it is the same way Gore claimed to have created the internet.
Well, she does claim to also have a plan to create jobs on Day 1 of taking office. If you go to her website, it's not a plan to create jobs, it's a plan to cut taxes on industry and commercial businesses. Yes this could lead to jobs, but it could also do the opposite. Not to mention she sees a lot of the jobs coming from heavy industry, with her intent to cut the environmental restrictions and taxes CA put in place to clean up our air. I'm normally a fan of tax cuts, but I believe in terms of industrial polution, they simply make sense to me after visiting Los Angeles on a bad day.

Basically for me it's boiling down to: Brown-nothing good to say about him, and don't know a lot of bad things about him. The few things I had learned from Whitman's campaigning have been proven to be false, thus anything her campaign is saying I tend to discredit owing to that, giving Brown an advantage (if you have trouble believing the main mud slinger, there's not a lot more mud being thrown)

Whitman- Nothing super negative, nothing to make me think she's some horrible anti-christ or something, but just so many little things adding up to the point that I couldn't see myself voting for her and feeling good about it.

So do I vote for Brown, or simply choose not to vote once again owing to the choices I'm offered? At the moment leaning towards Brown (there's several props that I will be voting on) but would much rather see the country shift to a smaller government, personal fiscal empowerment country. Brown's clearly not a shift that way, but Whitman's not an apealing alternative.

Privatizing states...now thats an interesting idea to think about.

...but it would probably end up being like Robocop.