I have a story in the new print issue about the mind-boggling $119 million in personal funds that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a billionaire Republican, has poured into her campaign for governor of California. Democrat Jerry Brown, by contrast, has only spent about $4 million (though he has raised $30 million).
But the spending deficit will be narrowed–slightly–by labor unions who support Brown, and a fine example is this remarkable $5 million Spanish-language ad campaign from the SEIU relaying the story of a former nanny/maid who is an illegal immigrant and says she was mistreated by Whitman. As Ben Smith writes, $5 million is “real money, even in California.” That said, even this ad campaign constitutes about three percent of the total $145 million Whitman’s campaign has spent.
As for the nanny’s allegations, aired at a media-circus press conference yesterday orchestrated by celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, Whitman is calling them a “lie,” and parts of the California media are covering them with seemingly appropriate skepticism. The San Francisco Chronicle writes that the charges have “all the elements of a classic late-campaign ‘October surprise’ – a sobbing victim, a media-savvy attorney, chargeof hypocrisy and dirty tricks.” The Brown campaign and its union supporters, meanwhile, apparently see an opportunity to attack Whitman both for having employed an illegal immigrant and to raise volatile memories of past California Republican anti-immigration stances.