Jerry Brown Will be Elected Governor of California

Come November, Californians will elect Jerry Brown as the new governor of California. Why? Not because his Republican opponent, the former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, has blown it with her callous treatment of her Latino housekeeper of nine years, although that certainly is a factor, but because Brown is simply the better choice.

On every single issue, Brown has come across as the more pragmatic as well as the visionary candidate, from school reform and treatment of immigrants to putting people back to work and rebuilding the infrastructure of the Golden State undermined by fiscal mismanagement.

Whitman seems determined to buy her way into the governorship, having spent $120 million on her campaign so far. (In contrast, Brown has spent a total of $4 million, or about 3% of Whitman’s total.) This is the most any political candidate has ever spent in the United States, including presidential candidates. By November, she is expected to have spent $150 million dollars on her campaign, a monstrously arrogant proposition in a time of sky-high foreclosures and mass layoffs.

Americans are fed up with candidates who think money can substitute for ideas and action. They are sick and tired of the super-rich who use manipulative media consultants and slick technology to influence the electorate. Meg Whitman fits these labels and more. She is a political novice who hardly distinguished herself as a CEO. She amassed her wealth only because she was lucky to be at the right place at the right time, riding the fortunes of eBay during the dot-com boom to enormous personal gains. When she left eBay, shareholders were already disenchanted with her performance and the future of eBay appeared bleak. Her questionable acquisition of Skype was one of many bad judgments she displayed throughout her tenure at eBay.

Whitman targeted California’s Hispanic population with coy messages of support and sympathy but her hypocrisy was revealed when she claimed that she did not know the immigration status of her longtime housekeeper Nicandra Diaz Santillan before firing her. This turned out be an outright lie. It is now clear that Whitman knew that Santillan was an undocumented worker. (“You have never seen me and I’ve never seen you,” Whitman told Santillan at the time of firing her, after the former CEO decided that she was going to run for governor.)

Two aspects of this issue are deeply disturbing.

First, Whitman refused to appoint an immigration attorney (it would have cost her a few hundred dollars) when Santillan asked her for help. Santillan’s attorney has also accused Whitman of cheating Diaz out of years’ worth of wages. Originally hired at $28 an hour for 15 hours per week to clean her home, Whitman kept adding more duties to her job without compensating her or increasing her hours.

What is it with some billionaires that they count their pennies when it comes to paying their maids and servants, even going to the extent of cheating them?

Second, Whitman claimed that Brown and his “surrogates” were behind breaking the Santillan story, without offering a shred of evidence to support the claim. Jerry Brown denied the allegation, telling Whitman in their second gubernatorial debate: “Don’t run for governor if you can’t stand up on your own two feet and say, ‘Hey, I made a mistake.’”

Why is it that lack of character is often the hallmark of the entitled?

Whitman’s disdain for the democratic process is well-known. She did not register to vote until 2002. Her reason? She was too busy building a career and focusing on her family for 28 years to bother with voting. To which one may ask, “What about the rest of us? Don't we have careers? Don't we have families to focus on?”

Jerry Brown may not be the ideal candidate to lift California out of its present predicament but undoubtedly he is the better candidate of the two. Most Californians see it this way and that’s why Jerry Brown will be elected the Golden State’s governor in November.