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Poizner and Whitman battle for title of speech-maker in chief

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The Republican candidates for governor will test their mettle head to head in their first debate Monday night. But one of the candidates, Steve Poizner, was already trying to prove his oratorical superiority at the party’s convention Saturday evening.

‘As you can see here, I’m not going to use a teleprompter,’ Poizner, the state’s insurance commissioner, told delegates as they ate dinner. ‘I’m not going to read a speech. I don’t have a written speech. I’m going to speak to you tonight form my head, from my heart.’

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His opponent, former EBay chief Meg Whitman, used a teleprompter on the floor in front of the stage to deliver her speech on Friday evening. Her spokesman, Tucker Bounds, retorted that Poizner spoke extemporaneously because he ‘mailed in’ the same speech he routinely gives at campaign appearances, and that ‘Meg delivered unique remarks that were focused on rallying the party to face Jerry Brown,’ the state attorney general and presumed Democratic candidate.

Poizner, in a quick, somewhat excited 11-minute speech, promised to ‘send the California Republican Party to the border’ if other measures to stop illegal immigration fail, said he’d sue a federal judge to turn the water pumps in the state back on, and vowed to cut off benefits to undocumented immigrants (without noting, as he did Friday, that some of these benefits are required by federal law).

Poizner has been under attack from Whitman for running to the right by changing his formerly moderate stances on issues including abortion and taxes. He sought to nullify those accusations with a testimonial from a conservative backer, U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay), who unlike other endorsers, taped a video message instead of showing up.

McClintock, who has lost multiple races for governor himself, sought to tar Whitman as a moderate by likening her to another Republican scorned by the conservative Republican base.

‘We can’t afford to offer Californians Arnold Schwarzenegger’s third term,’ McClintock said. He called Poizner ‘the only candidate I’ve seen that’s taken a strong stand against the massive tax increases, the crushing debt, the rampant illegal immigration and the devastating regulation that have wrecked our state’s economy on a Republican governor’s watch.’ McClintock did not mention another factor that has contributed to the state’s financial woes: a global economic recession.

-- Michael Rothfeld in Santa Clara

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