Democrats launch new website focused on Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner

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Democrats have launched a new online effort to put out information they think will be harmful to Republican gubernatorial hopefuls Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner. The California Accountability Project, funded with seed money from the Democratic Governors Assn., launched its new website Thursday.

‘We are going to be focused on aggressively fact-checking the Republican candidates for governor,’ said project director Nick Velasquez. ‘We’re going to counter their rhetoric with reality, counter their fiction with fact.’

The site is complete with audio clips about Whitman’s voting record, videos from the nasty EBay-versus- Craigslist trial and blog posts painting Poizner as someone who has sided with the insurance industry over consumers in his years as state insurance commissioner.

The effort is part of a three-pronged attack from groups that want a Democrat back in the governor’s chair. Emily DeRose, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Governors Assn., says the California Accountability Project’s charge is different from the other two groups, which promise to have larger budgets and provide television advertising in support of likely Democratic candidate Jerry Brown.

DeRose says the group will be following Whitman and Poizner at campaign events and providing video clips from those events on its website. ‘We’re making sure there is a public record of what the Republican candidates are saying and doing at their events,’ she said.

-- Anthony York in Sacramento