The Sacramento Bee did an investigative report last week on Meg Whitman's voting record - or lack thereof.
Meg Whitman is the former CEO of eBay who is running for California governor on the Republican ticket. Her platform consists primarily of right-wing talking points about lazy government workers, and how if she were governor she would fire 40,000 of them.
It turns out her voting record is sparse to nonexistent. At some point she was asked to show it and she told the newspaper "Go find it." Well, they took that in the same vein that reporters took Gary Hart's challenge, and came up with ... pretty much nothing at all.
The review covered six states and a dozen counties, including towns and counties in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California where public records indicated that Whitman lived, worked or attended college.
They looked up her voting record in each one of these places starting in 1974 when she turned 18, and found no record that she was even registered to vote at all until 2002, and then did not start voting regularly until 2007. She didn't vote in the recall election that brought Schwarzenegger into office in 2005, for example. One of her opponents in the primary, Steve Poizner, has demanded she drop out of the race as a result.
Here's her statement in response:
"I failed to register and vote on numerous occasions throughout my life," Thursday's statement said. "That is simply wrong, and I have taken responsibility for my mistake. California needs leaders who are accountable for their actions."
Uh-huh. Accountability. What does she mean, do you think, by "accountability"? Apparently it doesn't mean "I'll admit it before making you go hound it out of every county elections office from here to New Jersey." Nor does it mean "Don't vote for me," I don't imagine.
So some people aren't interested in politics. Fine. Some people don't care - although I don't buy the argument that she was "too busy," considering you can register as a permanent absentee voter in California and vote at home on your kitchen table in about 5 minutes. I don't have a problem with people who are apathetic. But I don't recommend that those people run for high elected office.
It irks me that somebody who obviously didn't pay any attention to politics until about two years ago now thinks she has the right to be in charge of, and to denigrate, a state government with thousands of employees and thousands of functions. The comments she has made in the press prior to this investigation have primarily focused on her perception that the state government does nothing in particular and that it can easily be trimmed. How is somebody who pays no attention to politics and government whatsoever qualified to make a statement like that?
Here's a quote from her announcement of her run:
"If elected, I will identify and implement at least $15 billion in permanent spending cuts from the state budget. I'll eliminate redundant and underperforming government agencies and commissions," she said in the prepared remarks, which were provided by her campaign to The Associated Press. "And I will reduce the state work force by at least 40,000 employees. That's a 17 percent reduction that would reset the work force to 2004-2005 levels and save the state a projected $3.3 billion annually."
More than 200,000 state government employees already are being ordered to take three days off a month without pay, cutting their income by 15 percent. The state work force has shrunk by 10,700 jobs this fiscal year compared to 2008-09, according to the governor's office.
I am extremely skeptical that someone who has paid as little attention as she evidently has in the past 35 years of adulthood knows the first thing about what government agencies and commissions are "redundant and underperforming."
By the way, there's a piece in the Washington Post today about other nonvoting politicians.