The Meg Whitman for Governor campaign is engaged in creating a professional "videography" of the entire campaign — a big endeavor which involves a lot of work.  We see some of the work of these professional video folks when they roll our in-house videos here and there.

One can only hope that they were allowed to do video and audio taping of Whitman’s campaign team folks as they have been dealing with the results of an investigation undertaken by the Sacramento Bee, released today, that looks both at Whitman’s extremely poor voting record as well as the sparse and inconsistent statements coming from the Whitman campaign on the issue of Whitman’s past voting (or lack thereof) record.  I just think it would be fascinating the see the back and forth that lead to this, her official statement (thus far) on this controversy:

MEG WHITMAN STATEMENT ON HER VOTING RECORD

“Voting is a precious right that all Americans should exercise. I have repeatedly said that my voting record is inexcusable. I failed to register and vote on numerous occasions throughout my life. That is simply wrong and I have taken responsibility for my mistake. 
 
California needs leaders who are accountable for their actions. I take responsibility for mine, while my opponent, Steve Poizner, runs from his. On everything from his position on taxes to his political contributions, Steve hides behind others or misrepresents himself.
 
I look forward to a vigorous campaign and to a discussion of the issues that matter to the people of California.”

For my part, after reading the Sacramento Bee piece, I agree with Whitman that her voting record is "inexcusable" — from what I understand of it.  It’s unclear to me for which elections Whitman was registered and voting, versus for which she was registered but didn’t vote, as opposed to those where she was not registered to vote at all.

I recognize that spending a lot of time on this issue is not what the Whitman campaign wants to do.  Hopefully they will produce something that just lays out a chronology of where she has lived since being of voting age, whether she was registered to vote at those addresses, and whether she voted during times she was registered.

In politics there is a rule — never let the way you handle a potential crisis make it worse.  Right now we need to see a clean acknowledgment of Whitman’s voting history.  It feels like someone is hiding something.  This may not be the case, but you get that feeling reading the Bee story.  The Whitman campaign needs to make sure that everything is transparent.  At least that’s my opinion.

Between us (I guess that would be between me and all of you FR readers), I though that spending half of her statement attacking her opponent was misplaced.  Don’t get me wrong — I fully expect Whitman to blast Poizner every day, and visa versa.  As a website publisher who helps everyone follow political goings-on, I’m actually counting on it.

But it wasn’t the Poizner campaign that investigated Whitman’s voting record and published it in a story.  That was the Sacramento Bee. 

If Whitman has a problem with their story or thinks there are factual errors, they should get that out into the public marketplace right away.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.