This morning the California Pro-Life Council has released this statement exclusively to the FlashReport (well, for a few hours anyways) — it is an announcement concerning the United States Senate race taking place this year in California…
You have seen discussion of the CA Governor’s race in other places on this web site. Today we want to discuss the candidates and campaign for the U.S. Senate nomination to replace Barbara Boxer..
Months ago we were in an enviable position, both candidates were pro-life. Pro-life assemblyman Chuck Devore was running and Carly Fiorina, who had made public statements of being pro-life. What remained was assertaining just how real those commitments were.
Fiorina is the former Chairman of Hewlitt-Packard and her pro-life comments were in contrast to the typical Silicon Valley ‘culture’ of monied Republicans. Her pro-life commitment meant she would be risking the alienation of some of her ‘pro-choice" Rockefeller Republican friends. It turned out that Fiorina was indeed genuine and has been endorsed by the Susan Anthony List, which only endorses 100% pro-life candidates.
Fiorina has since met with National Right to Life Committee leadership, and committed to very specific issues of pro-life public policy. Board members of California ProLife also met with her and all have been impressed by her genuine and heartfelt commitment to the cause of Life.
All of the election’s dynamic changed when pro-abortion candidate Tom Campbell moved from the Governors race to the U.S. Senate race. Would this create a scenario we’ve seen too many times before? The pro-life candidates split the vote between them allowing the pro-abortion candidate to become the nominee. We hope not.
The Board of California ProLife has been watching this race carefully and hoping that Campbell would not pose a threat, but now the scenario is requiring incisive action. DeVore has been attacking Fiorina for not being conservative ‘enough’ because she is seen as competing for his conservative base. And Campbell has continued to gain in the polls posing as a conservative.
Perhaps most importantly, though all of CPLC’s Board knows Chuck, all were equally concerned about his actual ability to break out beyond ‘our base’ to reach the wider electorate (which is how elections work.)
Chuck has had a very hard time demonstrating the ability to raise the funds necessary to compete in a state the size of California, and this has been frustrating to many involved.
At the last reporting DeVore had $300,000 on hand; Fiorina $2,800,000; and Campbell $800,000. Perhaps more importantly, like other statewide candidates of note, Fiorina also has substantial, personal financial resources she has still not drawn on.
Who will have the resources to close the gap on Campbell and then turn around and do the same to Boxer?
While Devore is indeed pro-life and familiar to us all, Fiorina is clearly better situated to fight an incredibly expensive campaign in the most costly state of the union.
Carly Fiorina has shown a genuine personal commitment to life, as well as clearly articulated policy commitments. Her husband’s mother was told to abort him, as she has said, his presence is ‘central to Carly’s well-being,’ and as a recent cancer survivor she knows the threats posed by euthanasia and rationing. She is assertively opposed to both, in addition to opposing the Obama plan for Healthcare. She is outspoken against the ‘climate mongering’ which appears to have as a goal the reduction of human population.
She has been endorsed by the national pro-life women’s group, Susan B Anthony List, the conservative and and pro-life Senators Kyl, Graham, Coburn, McCain and Inhofe.
California ProLife Council PAC has added its endorsement as well. CPLC’s endorsement of Carly is not a repudiation of Chuck DeVore as much as it is an earnest desire to defeat both Tom Campbell and Barbara Boxer. In our considered opinion, Carly Fiorina is the pro-life candidate that can do that.
You can read more about Carly here.
(H/T to FR friend and SF Chronicle reporter/blogger Joe "Scoop" Garofoli who was in the right place at the right time to first break the news of this endorsement.)
May 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Stupid! This is the same logic that gave us Arnold.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
This demands a response. If you’re a pro-life Californian, ask yourself: Where was Carly Fiorina on any pro-life fight, in any state, in any year, ever? The answer is, sadly, “Nowhere.”
Chuck DeVore, by contrast, was standing with you.
Full disclosure up front: I’m Chuck DeVore’s communications director, and at the suggestion of this site’s generous proprietor, I’d like to respond to this remarkably ill-informed piece directly here in comments.
The author of this essay from the California Pro-Life Council writes, “Carly Fiorina has shown a genuine personal commitment to life, as well as clearly articulated policy commitments.” This is rather astonishing, given Fiorina’s record — or more accurately, the lack thereof — on pro-life issues. The fact is that Carly Fiorina has ….
1) …. no record of pro-life activism whatsoever.
2) …. affirmed her willingness to confirm pro-abortion judges.
3) …. demonstrated an ignorance of pressing pro-life issues.
4) …. publicly stated that the pro-life movement is a de facto waste of time.
Let’s look at specifics from this election cycle alone:
1) Fiorina told a group of reporters in November that she would have voted to confirm the pro-abortion Sonia Sotomayor to SCOTUS:
Source: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34552
2) On November 5th, 2009, Fiorina was directly “asked whether she would vote to reverse” Roe v. Wade, and dodged the question: “The focus of my campaign are the issues that matter to the people of California, and what matters is what’s on the table right now — is how to we create more jobs and how do we get federal spending out of control.” Translated, that’s a “no.”
Source: http://bit.ly/2IsIER
3) On November 9th, 2009, in a KPCC interview, Fiorina downplayed her pro-life stance, saying, “I believe that life begins at conception … I also recognize that these social issues are not whats on the table today.” Astoundingly, she said this at the same time the so-called Stupak Amendment — the most important pro-life issue of the past year — was a topic of national debate.
Source: http://bit.ly/40UzGN
4) Finally and most revealing, in a conversation to with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, Fiorina reiterated her support for Sotomayor, saying, “I do not believe where a potential judicial nominee stands on that issue [of abortion rights] is a qualifier or an unqualifier.”
She then went on to characterize the entire American pro-life movement as essentially a waste of time, saying: “[M]any, many voters are going to conclude while that is a very important issue, it is frankly a decided issue. The law is clear in the state of California, where there is a constitutional guarantee to the right to an abortion. So why are we talking about a theoretical issue?”
Story and audio here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/02/MN8J1CP7H5.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/opinionshop/detail?&entry_id=60529
Presumably the supporters of the California Pro-Life Council will ask why it chose to endorse a candidate who believes that the pro-life cause is a struggle against what “is frankly a decided issue.”
Chuck DeVore doesn’t believe the fight between pro-life and pro-abortion in America is “a decided issue.” He believes the matter is very much in contention — and that the pro-life cause can and will win.
Contrast Fiorina’s record on pro-life issues with Chuck DeVore’s. He has a 100% pro-life, pro-family rating from the Capitol Resource Institute — and multiple 100% ratings from the California Republican Assembly to his credit. That’s because he has a record stretching back years — rather than campaign-era declarations stretching back weeks.
Chuck DeVore has been a consistent fighter for the unborn throughout his entire public career, and he’s not afraid to be forthright about it now. He’s also been with California’s pro-life community — including the California Pro-Life Council — through every fight over the years. His dedication to the pro-life cause isn’t an electioneering tactic: it’s a core principle. Unlike Fiorina, you won’t find a single example of him telling liberal journalists otherwise.
So much for the value of Carly Fiorina’s “genuine personal commitment to life.” A few minutes with Google would have put the lie to that.
Now, on to the issue of electoral viability: the California Pro-Life Council has decided that Carly Fioria has it, and Chuck DeVore does not. Some reference to data is useful here, but accurate data is remarkably absent from this piece. Let’s take the two pillars of the given argument, cash and polls, in turn.
On cash: The author didn’t accurately cite the last round of FEC reports: he or she gives a too-low estimate of Chuck DeVore’s last cash-on-hand figure with debts subtracted, but does not do the same for Fiorina’s number. The sad fact is that when the same treatment is given to Carly for California — backing out loans which must be repaid and debts — that campaign is several hundred thousand dollars in the red. (Don’t take my word for it: go to FEC.gov and look for yourself.) Contrast with DeVore’s healthy, in-the-black operation, and the proposition that Fiorina’s campaign is more financially viable is flatly risible.
On polls: Recent polls agree that Chuck DeVore is rising fast, while Carly Fiorina is slipping. Certainly that’s been the trend for each since late January. There are even recent polls — Capitol Weekly/Probolsky statewide, and Lewis Group in Orange County — indicating that the two candidates are now in a statistical tie. Furthermore, in the latest Rasmussen poll pitting each of the three Republican candidates versus Barbara Boxer, Carly Fiorina does the worst — behind Chuck DeVore. The notion that Fiorina’s stupendous resources and cash burn rate has earned her anything more than an uncertain second-place is simply unsupportable.
Let’s recap: the California Pro-Life Council has chosen to endorse a candidate who says the pro-life movement is a waste of time, whose campaign is in stupefying debt, and who can’t even eke out a lead — over a candidate who is a proven pro-life warrior, whose campaign is in the black, and who continues a steady rise in the polls.
Well. If the California Pro-Life Council won’t remember who fought for the pro-life cause, California’s pro-lifers assuredly will.
Sincerely,
Joshua Treviño
Communications Director
DeVore for California
May 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Hey California Pro-Life Council:
Big, big, big mistake! Very, very embarrassing! Chuck DeVore is the one to unseat Boxer.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
I did not realize the key of getting this endorsement was the size of the candidate’s bankroll! I wonder how big of a check Carly promised to write them?
May 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
This is outrages = stabbed in the back by one of our own!! or so they say!!!
I am taken back to the days of McClintock vs. Arnold and look seriously at what selling out to the highest bidder got us!!!! 7 years of hell!!!
California needs real conservatives that stand for their real values and don’t blow in the winds of change – call me crazy but so far those winds of change haven’t worked out well for me!! how is that hope and change working for you?? Remember Arnold promised us change too!!!
I worked at HP while Carly destroyed a great company and now she wants to run my country into the ground too!! I understand people taking sides, but for a group like the Ca Pro Life Council to shaft Chuck DeVore after years and years of dedicated support and 100% rating year over year they bring me back to a time when we worked soooo hard to recall Gray Davis and the conservative establishment stabbed their greatest ally Tom McClintock in the back and backed Arnold!!!!
Guess what it’s time for “WE THE PEOPLE” to back a real statesman, a true conservative, a real patriot, and a great leader that represents the people!!!!
My need to flood the phone lines and let him know how upset you are that a group like the Ca Pro Life Council is selling it’s very soul and it’s own future credibility with us!!!
This has to stop and it ends with you!!! If not now when, if not you WHO????
May 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
It is nearing the point that one just has to throw there hands up in the air and say why do I continue to fight and live in CA. I could go on and on but the bottom line is the nice weather in San Diego only goes so far.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
For some reason I do not trust Fiorina. But more than that I am very dissapointed with Pro Life Council.