GOP candidate hopes to outrun the ghost of her voting past

A piece of good news for Meg Whitman regarding her years of avoiding voting: She has eight months for the disclosure to become old and boring – eight months until the primary to prove to Republican voters that her assets outweigh her late coming to the electoral process.

The former eBay CEO is the early GOP frontrunner for governor. But the revelation that she didn't vote until she was 46 gave pause to some who were considering jumping aboard her bandwagon and who would've help pad her lead.

A Sacramento Bee investigation found no evidence of Whitman voting until 2002 and that she didn't register as a Republican until 2007. She later acknowledged that she didn't become politically engaged and start voting until recent years.

"Republidemotaria," who wrote on the Total Buzz blog of the hope that Whitman would be a "fresh and invigorating" candidate, was among those disillusioned by the news.

"The fact that for practically her entire adult life she didn't think voting was important saddens me," Republidemotaria wrote.

"Registering to vote is simple and actually voting, even by absentee ballot, doesn't take much time. She is basically saying that she didn't have an hour to spare to read about the issues and vote her conscience because she moved frequently and was too focused on other aspects of her life. That is pitiful."

I read that to Whitman when we had coffee Thursday in San Juan Capistrano. She said she didn't disagree with the statement. "Voting is a precious right, everyone should take time to vote, and I should have voted," she said.

Do-overs

Whitman's approach to damage control backfired at the Sept. 26 state GOP convention in Indian Wells. She apologized for her poor voting record at a press conference, and then was pressed extensively and repeatedly for an explanation for why she didn't vote. Her refusal to offer any explanation beyond the apology can be heard in its agonizing duration on an audio recording on YouTube.

After the convention, she realized she should have offered some insight into the candidate who steered clear of the polls for most of her life. So she then explained to reporters that there was no excuse for not voting, but that she'd been busy raising kids, working and being the wife of a neurosurgeon. But further damage had been done by the two or three days of stonewalling.

"It was a tough press conference and I don't think I did my very best job," she told me. "So, yeah, I'd have done it differently if I could."

The field

Democrat Jerry Brown sits high atop the polls for the governor's race – and he hasn't yet officially declared his candidacy, held a public campaign event or outlined a platform. Fellow Democrat Gavin Newsom, along with Republicans Whitman, Tom Campbell, and Steve Poizner, meanwhile, are relentlessly cruising the state, fighting for every leftover scrap of support they can get.

In polling, Campbell typically trails Whitman but stays close to the statistical margin of error. However, he has the noble but un-politic habit of thinking deeply about issues and proposing his best solution, regardless of how it will play with voters or how it might be used against him. He also lacks the nearly boundless personal wealth that both Whitman and Poizner can pour into their campaigns.

Poizner, the state's insurance commissioner, trails Whitman by double digits in some polls, and his foothold among grassroots Republicans seems tenuous.

"Whitman may have only been a voter since 2002," quipped Jack Pitney, political scientist at Claremont McKenna College and a former GOP staffer. "But Poizner's only been a conservative since 2006."