Debate showcases candidates’ verbal tics

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

A debate, Monday night’s included, can showcase the verbal tics politicians have.

For Steve Poizner, there is a tendency to shout random words in the middle of sentences, for instance, ‘I believe that our environmental rules need to be IN SYNC!!! with what’s going on in the rest of the country.’

For Meg Whitman, it is a habit of beginning nearly every answer with the word, ‘So.’

‘So, let’s do another fact-check on Steve’s record on immigration.’

There haven’t been too many attack lines so far, but this was one of them. Poizner, Whitman says, used to support amnesty for illegal immigrants when he ran for Assembly and lost in 2004 and says even now that he couldn’t restrict education for children of illegal immigrants because it is required by federal law (she wouldn’t either).

‘Steve’s done a complete about face where he was in 2004 and 2005.’

Poizner, not a delicate flower when it comes to attacking opponents, took umbrage at her attacks on him: ‘They’re nasty, they’re wrong, you’re not getting my story straight at all …. I was running for state Assembly against one of the most liberal people in the state Assembly in 2004 … What were you doing in 2004? You endorsed [Sen.] Barbara Boxer, you campaigned for Barbara Boxer, you contributed to Barbara Boxer.’

Poizner says he is so Republican that he was, as a kid, like Alex P. Keaton, Michael J. Fox’s preppy character on ‘Family Ties.’

--Michael Rothfeld in Costa Mesa