Last evening, I attended an event in Oakland where 250 people—mostly Republicans—gathered to listen to Meg Whitman discuss why she wants to be California’s next governor.  After a brief speech in which she laid out her three top priorities—cutting spending, creating jobs and improving education—she took questions from the audience.  There were a number of interesting questions asked, including her position on Prop. 13 (she doesn’t want to touch it), how would she deal with the powerful public employee unions (tough negotiations) and how she would improve schools (among other things, increase the number of charter schools and give public schools a letter grade, A-F).

On economic and government spending issues, Whitman says all of the right things.  She even says she plans to take on the CTA in order to improve the schools.  But I can’t help to think back to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign for governor.  He was saying the same things.  Yet, in the end, he never had the skill set to actually achieve those reforms.

So my question to Meg Whitman last night was, essentially, how are you going to be different than Arnold Schwarzenegger?  As conservatives, last time around we put our faith in a Sacramento outsider who had no experience as an elected official who told us that he was going to deal with the state’s budget and spending problems.  That didn’t turn out so well.  And now we’re asked again to give our votes someone who doesn’t have any practical experience negotiating with the Democrats in the legislature or dealing with the public employee unions.

I thought FR readers would be interested in her answer: 

“As Governor of California, you have four levers that you have to use to get things done.  First is the appointments process.  Did you know that as the governor you get a chance to make 4,000 appointments?  For perspective, the president of the United States gets 3,800.  My question was: can we do with 2,000?

The top 400 are incredibly important.  They are agency heads, your department heads and gubernatorial appointments to 600 boards and commissions.  If you go out and talk to small business, they will tell you that the boards and commissions are as much of a problem as anything else.  So, I will interview all 400 of those individuals.  They will be the right person in the right job and they will share the governor’s agenda. 

This is where having run a large organization is incredibly helpful. I did not run eBay by myself.  I will not govern California by myself.  If you don’t have the right people in the right job, you start with one hand tied behind your back.  And this is, I think, a big difference in someone who has run a company of one versus a company of 15,000.

I, by the way, think a third of those people need to come from the private sector because you cannot actually ask civil servants to work their way out of a job.  It’s too hard.  What I want to do is ask people like you in this room:  Will you join me in Sacramento?  I’m going to give you assignment.  Take 10,000 people to 4,000 people, eight agencies to two and at the end of it I want you to work yourself out of a job.  And there are many people who will serve because people know that California is at a tipping point.  So first, is appointments.

Second is the veto pen.  Yes, the governor has to work with the legislature but the legislature has to work with the governor because the governor has line item veto in California.  And you have to be tough as nails and you have to incredibly consistent in what you will veto and what you won’t veto.  It is how you let the legislature know what you will and will not put up with. 

The legislature has become a bill factory.  Since the beginning of the year, there have been 2,400 pieces of legislation introduced and virtually none of it is on point to the problem.  So, you veto that and get people focused on what can make a big difference.  And my view is, ‘can we actually realign?’  Instead of creating new stuff, can we realign this legislature to fix things that we are already doing? 

And here’s the next thing:  the next governor of California has to move to Sacramento.  You have to buy a house and you have to be part of the community.  You have to know every assemblyman and woman by name and know every state senator by name, what their election issues are and what coalition of spending, jobs and education you can get them involved in.   And you have got to build trust.  I believe that relationships still matter.  I’m not kumbaya about this, but relationships and trust matter. 

And then lastly, this job being governor of California—it’s the ultimate test of leadership and conviction.  You have to have a spine of steel because this is one tough job.  And if you have a huge need to be liked and a huge need to be popular, I will tell you this is a very bad job fit because half of the people will be upset with you all the time.  Think about it—while you’re taking on education, spending and the bureaucracy around regulation, 75% are going to be unhappy with you.  So you have to have a core set of convictions.  You have to know exactly what you are doing and you have to be okay when you have massive incoming that is not happy with you.  And I think in the end the next governor of California has to know exactly what she believes and she has to stick it.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.