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Meg Whitman swings again at voting issue
October 6th, 2009, 11:53 am · 22 Comments · posted by Martin Wisckol, Politics reporter
Updated at 1:15 p.m. with Whitman campaign explanation for the delay in releasing the latest information.
Meg Whitman’s latest effort to address her spotty voting record has me scratching my head. Do-over No. 3. She may have been slightly more active in voting than previously portrayed - but why did she wait until yesterday to say anything?
Last month, the Sacramento Bee reported that it could find no evidence that she’d been registered to vote before 2002, when she was 46. It also reported that repeated inquiries about the issue to Whitman campaign spokeswoman Sarah Pompei were not responded to.
On Sept. 26, Whitman apologized for not voting. A couple days later she offered an explanation - she’d been busy with family and work, but should have found time anyway. Last Thursday, I started a face-to-face interview by specifically asking her if she had anything to add about the report that she apparently only started voting in 2002. She said plenty - you can read the transcript by clicking here - but never claimed to have voted or registered to vote prior to 2002.
That claim came yesterday from the campaign.
A letter to the Bee from Whitman campaign Communications Director Tucker Bounds slammed the newspaper for lax reporting, saying that Whitman recalled voting in 1984 and 1988, that they had a letter saying she was registered to vote in Hamilton County, Ohio, from 1980-1982, and presented the voter registration number from when she registered to vote in Santa Clara County in 1999.
The Sacramento Bee did not claim she had never voted before 2002 - simply that it could not find evidence of it. If what Bounds says is true, the Bee could have dug a little harder. But jeez Louise - when a reporter is working on a story about a candidate not voting and reaches out to talk to the campaign about the issue, it might be a smart idea for the campaign to respond beyond the vague comment from Whitman at the time that she had been registered as a Republican before coming to California. (Whitman declined to tell the Bee at the time where they could find evidence of that registration.)
Similarly, I gave her an open invitation last Thursday to recount any voting activity prior to 2002. Here’s my first question, verbatim - it was the sole question I wrote down word-for-word ahead of time and read exactly as prepared:
“There’s been considerable discussion about your voting record. The Sacramento Bee could find no evidence that you voted before 2002, and that you didn’t vote in the 2003 special election. At first, you simply apologized, then Tuesday you said you didn’t become engaged with politics until you start working at eBay. Would you care to add anything to that explanation?”
By saying nothing to contradict the 2002 date, it reinforced the impression that she had no voting activity before that. And led me to write this column analyzing her handling of the matter.
I thought I’d be done writing about the issue for a while after that, but I guess not.
I left a message asking Bounds about why Whitman and the campaign didn’t say something sooner, and he said he’d get back to me. I’ll add his response below, along with links to any proof that she was previously registered to vote, when I get that information.
Update 1: Bounds sent me these documents. The last is the letter from Hamilton County, Ohio, saying Whitman had been registered to vote there from 1980 to 1982.
The first documents in that file were sent along to show that Whitman could have indeed been registered to vote in San Francisco prior to 2002 even though there’s no record of it. The Bee had reported that the Registrar of Voters said those old records “would have been transferred to the current system” and that there was no record of Whitman having been registered to vote in the 1980s.
Update 2: I just got off the phone with Bounds. As you can see in the documents linked in my first update, the Whitman campaign first got a statement from the San Francisco registrar in January. That said no records were available for voter registration in the 1980s.
Bounds said the campaign wanted to make absolutely sure that information was accurate before making a public statement, since appeared to conflict with what the Bee had written. The campaign also wanted to verify the Ohio and Santa Clara registration information.
“Last week, we had undertaken a comprehensive effort to verify what we knew and reconcile that with what the Bee reported,” Bounds said. “It was a process that took some time. Meg was clear that we were not going to address it until all our ducks were in a row.”
So why didn’t the campaign sort all that out when the Bee first inquired about Whitman’s voting record?
“We responded to the inquiries,” Bounds said. “We simply directed the Sacramento Bee to the public record. It’s not the responsibility of the campaign to provide documents to reporters who fail to do due diligence.”
Some might say, better sooner than later…. Bounds also emphasized that the new information is not intended to make Whitman look like a good, longtime voter.
“Meg was not as engaged as a voter as she is now,” he said. “She’s not making any excuses. It’s only in recent years that she’s become fully politically engaged.”
Click here to read - and hear - the Bee’s latest blog post on the brouhaha.
Update 3: Click here to read the Whitman campaign’s letter to the Sacramento Bee, outlining the campaign’s objections to the Bee’s report.
Bounds also sent me a longer version of his earlier explanation to why the campaign hadn’t provided Whitman’s voting information to the Bee when the paper first asked for it.
“In virtually every conversation with the Bee, the campaign indicated that Meg’s voting and registration history was a matter of public record and that the Bee should do its due-diligence. Knowing full well that Meg’s voting record could have been better and that the story was not going to be a favorable report, we explained during the earliest conversations that we had no interest in re-producing public records to accommodate the Sacramento Bee’s lackadaisical reporting. At no time did Andrew McIntosh or the Bee ever produce sourced, written documentation from a registrar reflecting Meg Whitman’s public voting record to our campaign.”
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DENA BUNIS, Washington bureau chief, 202-628-6381 or dbunis@ocregister.com
BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento correspondent, 916-449-6046 or bjoseph@ocregister.com
JENNIFER MUIR, County government reporter, 714-796-7813 or jmuir@ocregister.com
JOEL WALSH, Washington bureau intern, 202-628-6381 or jwalsh@ocregister.com
MARTIN WISCKOL, Politics reporter, 714-285-2867 or mwisckol@ocregister.com twitter.com/MartinWisckol
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I have been registered to vote as long as I can recall, but certainly could not provide and documents to confirm nor depend on some government entity to produce some evidence of this in a timely matter. Heck, it would be hard to remember how I voted on an issue 10 years, ago but could take a guess. It is up to those reporting on issues to confirm their facts and statements prior to accusations or statements implied incorrectly smears the media. Does a lack of voting prohibit someone from finding a renewed interest in voting or politics later in life?
This woman is a joke, plain and simple
nathan-You are so obviously a Democrat;no facts just a biased opinion.
nope far from dem sorry to break your heart
I can understand someone in her position being too busy with moving frequently and any other reason for not voting. I would MUCH rather that an uninformed voter please stay home and don’t bother. When so many voters make their decisions based on TV commercials, race or what their teachers say without doing any homework, it screws up the whole system.
lindav123-You are so obviously a Republican; no facts, just biased opinion.
you mean like the republicans do, like when they hang on everything rush, hannity, oreilly and the rest of the fear mongers say.
Granted, but I would certainly NOT want this “uninformed voter” representing my party as a gubernatorial candidate, particularly here in CA where there are so many issues that must be addressed.
Who cares?
I’m not a big fan of the executive turned politico (Romney, Corzine), but whether she voted or not is trivial. A mistake for her not to move on, though. It can’t help her to revive this non-issue.
A person who does not vote, does not expect representatives to hear them via the polling booth. They have not respect for the representative process.
Will she care what voters do once she’s in office? Not likely.
Poizner’s stock just went up again; hopefully, he’ll begin to get some more respect.
I have never failed to vote. It is my duty and my right. How can you be too busy to vote? Its not like you have to do it every week or month or even every year.
I don’t want anyone representing me or my state who hasn’t felt it their duty to vote. I don’t know enough about her to have a personal opinion but based on what I do know, I wouldn’t vote for her just because she couldn’t be bothered to care about us before, what makes her want to now? Oh yeah… $$$$$
exactly, the way I look at it is, this woman is a billionaire as it is, she felt it not important enough to vote for many years, which means apparently politics didn’t mean squat to her, now she wants to make it seem like she cares.
Please, this is just another person trying to get into a position of power to abuse on the tax payers dime.
Just ask ACORN.. they might be able to pull her Voting Records…
hahha..
Just say you didn’t VOTE because you didn’t want to
and leave it at that…..
Or say like Clinton… You didn’t have a Voting Relation with that Voting Ballot….hahahah….
nathan, I like the way you think… she is just looking to feather her already huge nest on the backs of taxpaying voters… and no, I am not a dem and I would die before becoming a repub… eew…
I can understand that as a business leader she would be too busy for ordinary things like housework, voting, and so on. She would make a great governor though.
Baloney. I know many business leaders that recognize the importance of voting and make time for it. I’ll bet she had time for social events and other similar activities.
Given the haphazard manner in which she and her staff have responded to this issue, I’m sincerely hoping the GOP can come up with a better candidate, or we’ll wind up with Jerry Brown back in office before you know it.
And in all honesty and as much as I hate to admit it, I think he’d do a better job than she would, political considerations aside.
Meg is Arnold in a skirt. Another bazillionaire who thinks they can buy their very own state to play with and then mess it up for all of the hard working people who live there. It is going to take a far better peson than Meg to get out us of the debacle our current governor and our legislature has gotten us into. Read what she stands for, read what they all stand for, then make an informed decision of whom would best represent the interests of the people of California.
Oh PLEASE! There is in my opinion NO excuse for NOT voting…ever. Sorry folks but I personally have not missed voting in ANY election or even serving my time on jury duty. Obviously patriotism to her is standing on the sideline and watching until she needs to run for office. Just another hypocrite.
Meg Whitman is a no-nonsense business woman, she would cut 40,000 PUBLIC EMPLOYEE JOBS, and this is a mode gaining voter support. So, for those of us who have voted all these years, what have we got? Who are prospects for genuine leadership in the period of economic and social crises?
As the public has become increasingly alarmed about the Obama Administration, the media folks that drove that campaign wagon allege it is because of his race, which he used to advantage as a candidate, ACORN boasted of intent to register every black soul, inclusive of those awaiting trial on felony charge and felons recently released from prison. So all of those who voted “aye?”
Non-committal responses in the Senate as “present,” not votes on issues? A “community organizer,” he had been a legal representative for ACORN. His cabinet has to be one of the worst ever assembled, while Obama has focused on bolstering his image instead of “tending to business.” “Date nights,” Copenhagen? Something about such displays of frivolity while Americans are sinking into despair, unemployed, homeless, without health care?
Anyone seriously concerned has to be dispense with labels; they are meaningless as the gloss of those campaign promotionals of politicians, both sides. Perhaps all along Meg Whitman had the same insight now emerging among many of us as we watch the “cast of clowns” prepping for another “political season?” How is it that our political arena has no viable leadership presenting? And as for “political coverage” of The OC Register and its columnist, what might they have done to reverse the apathy and political decay in this county by reporting fairly, accurately, timely and completely on actual political issues? Widespread corruption because all politics are “fixed!” .
I’m not sure what Obama or anything else in this comment have to do with the topic, except perhaps for the first two sentences. And if you look into the details, there’s absolutely no way she could cut 40,000 state jobs, given the myriad of MOU’s, legal constraints, political lobbying and other obstacles, least of which are the more than 100,000 positions that the governor has no say in.
I predict that if Meg Whitman ends up as the GOP gubernatorial candidate, we’ll end up with Jerry Brown as governor.
She’s a day late, dollar short, and several decades of not voting to get my vote. I don’t buy for one minute that her recent enthusiasm for civic action is anything more than seeking power.
Meg’s a no vote.
Too late lady meg! Best bow out now and save what dignity you may have left.