November 17, 2011, 12:05 AM
Politicos have been abuzz about insider trading this week, after a "60 Minutes" piece released Sunday detailed questionable stock-trading rules that do not prohibit members of Congress from trading on information they hear during the course of their lawmaking. But the issue should...
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February 8, 2011, 12:05 AM
The candidate was poised, motivated and smart as a whip. She had an impressive resume, influential supporters and unlimited resources. In the end, none of it mattered. Meg Whitman’s Republican campaign for governor stalled over such issues as her alleged involvement in insider Wall...
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January 24, 2011, 9:54 AM
By the end of last weekend's panel on the 2010 election, Duf Sundheim, the former chairman of the California Republican Party, came to a stark conclusion: "The Republican brand in this state is death." Even if Republicans were enjoying successes throughout the country in November...
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December 13, 2010, 12:05 AM
Never let it be said that the $160-plus million that Meg Whitman spent on her record-shattering gubernatorial campaign didn't bear at least some returns: If the good folks at Google are to be believed, that money elevated her to a level of political celebrity that even national GOP headline-...
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November 23, 2010, 12:05 AM
You've heard this before, but just in case the point didn't register, the National Institute for Money in State Politics last week decided to beat you over the head with it one more time: Self-funded political candidates almost always lose. Despite spending more than a quarter-billion...
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November 17, 2010, 3:39 PM
As her campaign for governor collapsed around her, retired eBay CEO Meg Whitman kept up a cheery, optimistic front. Perhaps she really was optimistic. On Election Day, hours before California voters rebuffed the Republican challenger in favor of Democrat Jerry Brown, Whitman wrote her...
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November 8, 2010, 12:05 AM
Meg Whitman didn’t just outspend Jerry Brown in her losing campaign for governor. The billionaire Republican outspent the entire field of 15 other candidates for statewide office combined, Democrats as well as Republicans. The secretary of state’s totals don’t cover...
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November 5, 2010, 12:05 AM
Statewide candidates and ballot measures who ended up on the wrong side of Tuesday's election spent nearly a quarter billion dollars on their failed election bids, including at least $15 million on campaign consultants and more than $120 million on ad spending, state and federal campaign...
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November 4, 2010, 12:05 AM
Not all of the victors and the vanquished from California’s state election Tuesday were apparent from scanning the returns. Here are California Watch’s nominees for some other election winners (W) and losers (L): “Queen Meg” and the unions (W): The California Nurses...
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November 3, 2010, 9:03 AM
Kamala Harris slight lead for attorney general Democrat Kamala Harris, the district attorney of San Francisco, has pulled ahead of Republican Steve Cooley in the race for California attorney general. Harris was receiving 46.1 percent of the vote compared to Cooley, the Los Angeles...
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November 3, 2010, 12:04 AM
For the first time in a generation, California voters elected a governor without getting a peek at the candidates’ tax returns. By law, 1040s are confidential. But in the interest of transparency and full disclosure, candidates for governor have provided news reporters access to several...
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November 2, 2010, 12:05 AM
As California's gubernatorial campaign comes to an end, the issues raised by Meg Whitman's hiring, and then firing, of an unauthorized worker as her housekeeper have yet to be resolved. The controversy was arguably the game changing event of the campaign as polls indicate that it...
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November 2, 2010, 12:05 AM
There were the fundraisers at the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego (cost to stage: $71,000), the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills ($42,900), the Bernardus Lodge & Winery in Carmel Valley ($20,564), and the Princeton and Harvard clubs in New York City ($12,300 combined). Then there were the...
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November 1, 2010, 12:05 AM
Over the last two weeks, more than two dozen major campaign donors to Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown have been scrambling to hedge their bets. At least 14 donors who once backed Whitman have donated $5,000 or more to Brown's campaign since Oct. 14, perhaps owing to her recent decline in the...
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October 29, 2010, 12:05 AM
Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown both say reforming the state’s beleaguered education system is a top priority, but they have very different proposals for getting there. California Watch has been tracking every statement, promise, prediction and deflection by Whitman and Brown over at...
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