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Team Whitman tweets about H-P -- Fiorina’s former company -- sending jobs out of state

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Someone may need to have a little talk about social media and message control.

Meg Whitman’s young professionals’ coalition, trying to make the point that California businesses are under siege, has been tweeting a list of corporations that have sent jobs to other states.

The latest on their roll? Hewlett-Packard, which “Gen-M 2010” tweeted “at various times has moved jobs to Tennessee and Texas.”

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Hewlett-Packard is the corporation run for nearly six years by Carly Fiorina, Whitman’s GOP ticket-mate who is running against Sen. Barbara Boxer. Fiorina has come under withering criticism from Democrats for laying off tens of thousands of workers and sending jobs overseas.

It was not immediately clear whether the job transfers cited by Whitman’s campaign occurred during Fiorina’s tenure. But it is not the first time the two candidates have been on different pages. Earlier this year, Fiorina was caught questioning, on a live microphone, Whitman’s political strategy.

The two women, both high-powered chief executives during their years in Silicon Valley, say they are good friends, despite reports to the contrary.

A Whitman spokesman said the “Gen-M 2010” Twitter account is run by volunteers.

[Updated at 4:33 p.m.: The Twitter page for ‘Gen-M 2010’ and all of the groups’ tweets have been deleted. A visitor attempting to view the page is told ‘Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!’

Updated at 5:56 p.m.: A Whitman spokesman e-mails that the group has actually changed itsTwitter handle to ‘GenMVolunteers.’ The former ‘Gen-M 2010’ tweets can be found there. ‘They wanted to make sure that it was explicit that they were independent volunteers and that their grass-roots efforts weren’t misinterpreted,’ said spokesman Darrel Ng.]

A Fiorina spokeswoman said the candidate stood by her record.

“While Barbara Boxer has been in Washington for 28 years passing laws that create more regulations and higher taxes and force companies to send jobs elsewhere, Carly Fiorina has been in the real world creating jobs and making the tough choices required when government makes it harder to do business,” said spokeswoman Julie Soderlund.

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-- Seema Mehta in Los Angeles

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