カリフォルニア州知事選挙

カリフォルニア州知事選挙
共和党の候補ウィットマンがピンチに立たされたという話。富豪の同女史は莫大な金を使ってこの選挙を戦ってきた。が、思わぬことから窮地に陥っている。彼女は不法移民者を雇用している者に厳しく対処すべきということをいくども主張していた。が、ある女性が次のような発言をしたのである。「ウィットマンさんのところで家政婦として１０年働いていたんです。私、不法移民なんです。このまえ、急に解雇されてしまいました」。おそらく民主党側候補から仕組まれたのであろう。
　しかし、いま本当に重大なカリフォルニアの問題は、財政破綻である。とくに労組の年金が非常にルーズなことは、よく知られている(労組はつねに民主党側にいる）。財政の建て直し（これは全米のすべての州の問題でもある）が要請されている状況なのだが、２人の候補の討論会でも、この不法移民問題が重大な焦点となってしまった。カリフォルニアはラティノ（メキシコ系）が２１％の投票権をもつ州なのである。

The California governor's race
Enter the housekeeper
An illegal immigrant disrupts the race to run the world’s eighth-largest economy
Oct 7th 2010 | Los angeles

ON OCTOBER 2nd Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate, began her second debate against Jerry Brown, her Democratic opponent, by admitting to a Hispanic audience that “I cannot win the governor’s race without the Latino vote.” And yet the ensuing debate—with questions asked in Spanish by Latino moderators—might just have cost her that vote, and thus the entire election.
If Ms Whitman, a billionaire and former boss of eBay, had had her choice of topics, they would have been the evils of California’s belated budget, red tape and government waste, all of which she, as a tough businesswoman, promises to cut in an effort to create jobs. And she would have reminded voters that several public-sector unions, whose taxpayer-funded largesse towards their pensioners is one of California’s biggest economic problems, are putting their money behind Mr Brown. But the biggest issue, instead, was illegal immigration. And the reason for that was Ms Whitman herself.
Only days earlier, a sobbing Mexican mother, Nicandra Diaz Santillan, had told a stunned press corps in Los Angeles that she had worked as a housekeeper for Ms Whitman for nine years until June 2009, when she confessed that she was an illegal immigrant. According to Ms Diaz Santillan, Ms Whitman, who was promising to be “tough as nails” on illegal immigrants and their employers to win the Republican nomination, promptly fired her. Wiping away tears, Ms Diaz Santillan said that Ms Whitman was “throwing me away like a piece of garbage”.
Ms Whitman’s campaign immediately alleged that Mr Brown’s mob was somehow behind this performance. But the damage to her campaign was done, as polls are beginning to show. Ms Whitman is now open to charges of hypocrisy, after pledging ad nauseam for a year to hold employers of illegal immigrants “accountable”. As Mr Brown said during their debate, this apparently does not include herself.


Thus she began the final month of the campaign on the defensive. This was unexpected. By mid-September, Ms Whitman had already set a record by spending more of her own money for a state office ($119m) than anyone else in American history. Her strategy was to drown out the campaign of Jerry Brown, a former governor and current attorney-general but a pauper by comparison, with constant and ubiquitous attack ads, forcing him either to spend his money early or to leave her attacks unanswered.
Mr Brown chose the second option, hoarding his money, a bit more than $20m, all summer. Prominent Democratic consultants had advised against this strategy, warning that Ms Whitman would open a permanent lead before the autumn. The surprise was that she did not. Polls taken just before Ms Diaz Santillan’s revelations showed the race, in effect, tied.
Voters, moreover, remain genuinely split on the central question of the race. Some 43%, according to one poll, consider experience of running a business (ie, Ms Whitman) more useful for the governor’s job, whereas 44% value experience of running government (Mr Brown).
The good intentions of “outsiders” rarely go far in this complex state. The incumbent governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, also campaigned as a moderate Republican with a promise to “blow up the boxes” in Sacramento, but failed as he ran into the thicket of voter initiatives, interest groups and partisan legislators (see article). Mr Brown’s pitch is that after a lifetime of political experience (or two, if you include his father, who also ran the state), the older, wiser “Governor Moonbeam” knows his way through this particular galaxy.
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