The Whitman maid Nicky Daiz' illegal alien disclosure came at the worst time. The facts are in, almost all of them are not contested by the Whitman campaign, and there are several things we are finding out.
First let me say that Meg paid her maid Nicky good wages, about 23 dollars an hour. Or she might have paid the money to an employment service, which then probably paid Nicky about 12 bucks an hour, which is still good wages. I'll give Meg credit for that. We are not sure exactly what happened. That's the problem.
Mrs. Whitman announced her campaign for governor in February, 2009, and promptly hired GOP professional campaign managers, some from the campaign of Mitt Romney (there is a diary on this; I won't bore you with the details). This is a million dollar purchase right off the bat. The first thing they should have done is hire an opposition research person that would go over her personal life with a fine tooth comb. Apparently they either did, or if they did ignored the advice, which was probably the way she will govern, if elected.
Second, 4 months later, in approximately June 2009 they find out that their maid of the last 9 years told her that she was an illegal alien. This is pretty embarrassing for someone whose campaign is for holding employers responsible for hiring illegal aliens.
But at this point it's probably an honest mistake. This could have been handled effectively, and it would not be an issue right now. I doubt that she even told her campaign managers. She had probably spends millions of dollars at this point. The few million dollars would have been wasted, she probably thought.
What did she do? She recognized that this was a huge problem, and talked to her lawyer (she says). She then promptly fired her maid, Mrs. Daiz, and said that you don't know me and I don't know you.
Cover-up. Not a good thing and it was what brought the Nixon presidency down. Cover-up.
How could she have handled it? First, disclose what happened to your campaign managers. Then do the right thing and report it to the press. This was about 14 months ago. This would have been forgotten by now. She could have also helped Nicky get an immigration attorney, kept paying her salary as a retirement from 9 years of work. Let's say for a minute that she put 400,000 in a retirement account for her and she immediately started drawing out 2,000 a month. How could anybody complain about this? A retirement, she's not working for Mrs. Whitman anymore, but she has some financial support, and she is using an immigration attorney to help her get a resident alien permit and a work permit. Perhaps Mrs. Diaz would have to return to Mexico City and wait for a few months to get a work permit to go back to work with Mrs. Whitman.
This is a serious issue that could have been handled properly by Mrs. Whitman and actually earned her votes from the Latino community, and even some tea-cuppers. She actually handled the problem, addressed it in a humane way.
How did she handle the problem, cover-up, and no financial support? She turned a problem that could have been a good public relation event, good management of the undocumented workers in California, and turned it into an election nightmare.
This goes to her management style, she has none, her people handling skills, they are non-existent or awful, and her respect for the law IF she owes employment taxes. Mrs. Whitman won't even disclose if she was an employee, which she obviously was, and if so, did she pay employment taxes, withhold social security taxes, file the proper tax reports, etc...
I think a lot of Silicon Valley executives are simply terrible at effective organization administration, as well as having no management style. Net DISASTER for Mrs. Whitman.
Do you want someone that doesn't know how to handle a problem and Governor of California? She took a problem and turned it into a crisis.
Mrs. Whitman, if she doesn't win the Gov race will have thrown away $120,000,000 dollars and will lose in some part because of this crisis, that was a problem 14 months ago, an easily manageable problem.
And for her to say she's not used to smear tactics when she brought this on herself, she loaded the gun and handed it to Gloria Allred. Come on Mrs. Whitman, take some responsibility.