Whitman urges volunteers to keep the ‘pedal to the metal’

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She may be up by more than 20 points in the polls, but Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman urged volunteers in San Diego on Monday evening to keep the pressure on as the campaign worked toward its goal of 1 million phone calls to voters.

“We’re just a few hours out from the end of the road, and here’s the good news: We’re ahead in the polls,” she said to the cheers of more than 60 volunteers and campaign staffers who fanned out across the campaign’s San Diego phone bank. “I always say it’s never over until it’s over, right? So we have got to put the pedal to the metal; we’ve got to make those last phone calls. I want to get every single voter that we can on our side of the ledger.”

Inviting volunteers to come back and make calls Tuesday, Whitman said she wanted volunteers to keep dialing ‘until tomorrow at 8 o’clock, and then we’re going to have a good time.”

When she sat down to make her own first call, Whitman got drilled via telephone by a voter named Gerald from the Imperial Valley — who asked her to explain her past support for California Sen. Barbara Boxer, her plans to help farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, what she would do to rein in public employee unions and her position on Arizona’s tough new immigration law.

But his first concern was about her spotty voting record.

“My voting record is not perfect,” she told him, but she noted that she did vote in the “much of the ‘80s.”

“I think I just wasn’t completely convinced that the political process mattered as much as it does,” Whitman said into the phone. “And then I came to EBay and saw the power of small business and what the California government was doing to small business — the bureaucracy, the taxation, the regulation. And that experience combined with the work I did on Mitt Romney’s campaign and John McCain’s campaign actually inspired me to re-up and redouble my efforts. And I am now 100%, all in.

“So I am sorry for not voting,” she continued. “And I apologize to you, because I bet you are a very regular voter.”

After a nine-minute chat, Gerald was apparently still not ready to commit. When Whitman asked for his vote before hanging up, he merely thanked her for calling.

“I worked hard for a maybe,” Whitman said.
-- Maeve Reston in San Diego