
Whitman and Fiorina, Candidacies That Did Not Compute - J3L2404
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/politics/07bcweber.html?src=twr
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_delirium
What's odd is that they didn't even win more than other Republicans _in
Silicon Valley itself_ , let alone elsewhere in the state. If you look at the
numbers for Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, they did no better than non-
tech Republicans (30-35%).

I don't think they're good examples of how a "silicon valley candidate" would
do, though. They were both candidates who were popular in the business world
but didn't resonate in Silicon Valley at all; Fiorina was actually actively
unpopular with engineers. So you can't necessarily draw conclusions from this
result to how a candidate that SV saw as one of its own would be perform.

~~~
anigbrowl
I was a bit surprised by the demographics. I knew Fiorina was unpopular
locally over the way she ran HP, but thought she ran a much better campaign
than Boxer and that she would do rather better outside the Bay Area than she
did - but I wouldn't be surprised if she ran again.

Conversely, I thought Valley folk might overlook Whitman's (reputedly)
abrasive personality in favor of a fairly successful tenure at eBay, although
her campaign was a disaster on wheels from the start. Spending $140 million of
your own cash only to be decisively rejected...ouch. For that much she could
have just bought Somalia or something, their entire budget last year was about
$11m.

~~~
_delirium
I think Whitman might've done better in the Bay Area if she hadn't tacked as
much to the social-conservative right in the Republican primary (or had
successfully backed away from that in the general election). Supporting
Proposition 8 probably cost her a few points in the region just by itself. On
the other hand, not supporting it probably would've sunk her in the primary.

~~~
anigbrowl
I wonder why she ran with the Republicans at all. She could have run as an
independent; plenty of California voters are equally annoyed with both
parties' poor legislative and administrative record.

~~~
rhizome
Third-party candidates can't have Presidential ambitions. Not being a major-
party candidate would hamstring her credibility in a national campaign.

~~~
anigbrowl
Ross Perot made a reasonable fist of it; the only major obstacle is money. Of
course, an independent candidate won't have the political network necessary
for effective governance, but even that could be spun into an asset; if she
had won the governor's spot and performed with reasonable competence that
would have sold better than any partisan merit badge.

I don't think that getting heavily defeated at the polls outspending your
opponent ~5:1 and changing positions repeatedly is much good for her national
credibility either.

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ScottBurson
Whitman's very candidacy was an insult to those of us who have gone out of our
way on many occasions to discharge our civic duty of voting. I'm sorry, Meg,
you don't just wake up one morning, having never participated in the political
process, and say "hey, you know what, I'm so great, I should be governor". It
was an exercise in ego from the get-go, and thank the gods that the voters saw
through it.

BTW I'm no Jerry Brown fan either. The candidate I would actually have liked
to vote for was Tom Campbell. Had Whitman not blown him out of the primary,
maybe I could have.

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fleitz
The biggest problem with these candidacies is that they did not follow the
valley way. Ebay and HP didn't spring up overnight driven by a huge ad budget.
They solved problems real people had starting small and growing as they
delivered. Neither of them had the experience of winning a spot on the city
council. The tech industry unlike Hollywood doesn't lend themselves to being a
household name. It's easy for an actor to launch a political career because
they are already well known to the public.

Those candidacies are the quintessential VC fueled hype company. Whitman
probably wouldn't give a fresh startup $140 million in the seed round and
expect them to use it wisely, so why would anyone expect a different outcome?

It has nothing to do with the Valley and everything to do with how the
campaign was grown.

~~~
anigbrowl
Oddly, maybe Whitman would have done better if she had started later. She was
running commercials every single break for months before Brown even started
advertising- I think people literally got tired of her being on TV all the
time.

Repeating the text of her then-current advert _verbatim_ during the debate
didn't help either; she came across as very scripted. I wonder if it was her
campaign or her own preference to keep the media at arm's length? I've heard
her speak before and she struck me as pretty personable, and I didn't expect
her to be so stiff and formal during the election campaign. Her last ad had
the line 'I'll treat you [the voters] like grown-ups,' which is how you speak
to a ten year old.

I'd rather like if Brown would hire her as his business adviser or something,
because she had a few good economic ideas, like reducing the cost of business
registration and suchlike. But that's probably not happening, they don't seem
to like each other much.

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cletus
Frankly, I consider it a "win" for all of us that people who try and buy
political seats from their own cash fail.

I don't know what it is but I find it deeply unsettling when the likes of Jon
Corzine pump so much of their own money into these things, particularly when
they're former business types.

You have to expect that if they're putting in $60+ million of their own money
they expect to get that back at some point.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Were it not the case that contemporary politicians essentially can't win
without spending millions of dollars, I'd agree with you hands down.

But as it is, either they're billionaires that fund themselves, or they get
funded by Wall Street, Telecoms, Big Oil, Tech, Defense Industry, other
billionaires, etc.

I think I'm more comfortable with a billionaire spending his own money, than a
non-billionaire completely in the pocket of some particular industry.

At least with the former, the payoff they're looking for could alternately be
fame, love, legacy, or simply because being in government is the one thing
they haven't done yet (besides maybe going to space).

With the latter, the payoff will certainly be shaping the laws in their favor,
sometimes at the expense of the country or overall economy.

