Schwarzenegger defends Nuñez sentence reduction, slams Whitman

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger justified his eleventh-hour sentence reduction for the son of a fellow Sacramento politician, saying “of course you help a friend” and that he felt good about the decision.

Schwarzenegger came under heavy fire for the move, which took place hours before he left office in January. In May, former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s son Esteban accepted a plea deal in the death of Luis Santos, a 22-year-old college student. Schwarzenegger decided to reduce the sentence from 16 years to seven years, which infuriated prosecutors as well as the victim's family, which was not notified beforehand.

“I understand people’s disappointments. I understand the parents’ anger. I would probably feel the same way,” Schwarzenegger told Newsweek in an article published Sunday. “My office definitely made a mistake in not notifying the parents beforehand … and I’m ultimately responsible.

“I feel good about the decision .... I happen to know the kid really well. I don’t apologize about it,” said Schwarzenegger, who noted in his commutation order that Esteban Nuñez, 21, did not deliver the fatal wound that led to Santos’ death. “There’s criticism out there. I think it’s just because of our working relationship and all that. It maybe was kind of saying, ‘That’s why he did it.’ Well, hello! I mean, of course you help a friend.”

Schwarzenegger made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview in London in which he also discussed failed gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman, his wife, Maria Shriver, and his aging physique.

Schwarzenegger deliberately stayed on the sidelines of the race to replace him last year, declining to endorse Whitman, a fellow Republican. But in the interview, the movie star criticized the former EBay chief and billionaire as too conservative and praised the campaign tactics of the Democrat who did succeed him, Jerry Brown.

“She kind of took herself out of the game,” Schwarzenegger said. “What she did was play to the right, and she couldn’t come back for the general election to grab the center .... Brown was very smart to do exactly the opposite of what she did — which was to say, ‘I’m not a rich guy, all I have is my knowledge and experience, and I don’t need to cater to anyone, I will do what is right for California.’ She was not as effective as a communicator, and her ideas were too extreme.”

The former Mr. Universe also pined about the effects of age on his physique.

“I’m not competing, I’m not ripping off my shirt and trying to sell the body,” Schwarzenegger said. “But when I stand in front of the mirror and really look, I wonder: What … happened here? Jesus Christ. What a beating!”

-- Seema Mehta in Los Angeles

Potential 2012 contender Haley Barbour tells Caliifornia Republicans they can win if they 'try hard enough'

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who said he is “seriously considering” a run for president in 2012, told delegates at the California Republican convention Saturday that they should not be discouraged by their losses in November and that voters would be receptive to the economic arguments that helped the party pick up seats in other parts of the country. 

During a weekend in which state Republicans set about trying to rebuild their party’s clout in a political environment that favors Democrats, Barbour sought to buck them up. Closing out the Saturday night session, Barbour recalled that President Reagan, his former boss,"used to say that California was the wind tunnel of America -— anything that worked in California, people would try everywhere else.

"That works in the other direction too,” Barbour told delegates. “We didn’t win this year in California, but it isn’t because we didn’t have the right ideas. We just didn’t drive them home well enough; we didn’t cast the net wide enough."

He added that “what works in the rest of America will work in California if y’all try hard enough," Barbour said.

The Mississippi governor did not elaborate on why the party was unable to get its message across in 2010 in the race for governor, where former Ebay chief executive Meg Whitman outspent Democrat Jerry Brown by a 5-1 ratio.

More at:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-pn-barbour-convention-20110321,0,6060503.story

 

 -- Maeve Reston in Sacramento

RELATED:

State GOP delegates debate what it will take to rebuild

John Bolton blasts Obama on foreign policy at GOP gathering

California's redistricting panel can't escape partisan pressure

 

Despite record-breaking spending, Whitman's wealth unchanged

Being a billionaire has its benefits.

Despite Meg Whitman’s record-breaking $144-million personal spending on her unsuccessful 2010 gubernatorial campaign, the former EBay chief’s wealth remains unchanged, according to Forbes’ annual ranking of billionaires, which was released Thursday.

Whitman’s wealth is estimated at $1.3 billion, the same amount it was in 2010, 2008 and 2007. (Whitman saw her bank balance dip to $1.1 billion in 2009 because of a decline in the price of EBay stock).

Although Whitman’s personal fortune remains stable, her ranking among the world’s billionaires dropped. She placed 938th, down from 773rd last year, according to Forbes.

The neophyte candidate has held no public events since her loss in November. But she has reentered the world of business, joining the boards of Hewlett-Packard, Proctor & Gamble and others, and previously said she would support former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney’s expected presidential bid.

-- Seema Mehta in Los Angeles

Former gubernatorial candidate Whitman joins Hewlett-Packard Board of Directors

Former EBay chief Meg Whitman, who has maintained an exceedingly low public profile since she lost the governor’s race in November, has been named to Hewlett-Packard’s Board of Directors, the company announced Thursday.

The firm was once led by Whitman's Republican ballot mate, former Senate nominee Carly Fiorina, who was fired after clashing with the board and members of the founding Hewlett and Packard families.

The appointment of five new members to the board, announced after the stock market closed for the day, comes as the company is trying to clear the board of those loyal to former chief executive officer Mark Hurd. He resigned from the company amid controversy and has since joined rival Oracle.

“Meg Whitman is a true visionary and thought leader who brings to the HP board unique experience in developing transformative business models, building global brands and driving sustained growth and expansion,” Raymond J. Lane, non-executive chairman of the Board of Directors, said in a press release.

Whitman led EBay for a decade, during which the startup online auction firm grew into a multibillion-dollar  global force. The billionaire then plunged into politics, first advising Mitt Romney's and John McCain’s 2008 presidential bids before making her own record-breaking run for office.

Whitman spent more than $141 million of her own money on her run, shattering records for both self-funding and for overall spending in a non-presidential race. Though she pummeled former Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner to secure  the GOP nomination, Whitman lost decisively to Democrat Jerry Brown in November.

Whitman has not spoken publicly since losing the race,  and declined to comment through a spokesman.

“She'll be taking assignments to some boards that are important companies to the future of California and the country,” said spokesman Rob Stutzman.

Former H-P chief executive Fiorina had no immediate comment. She has laid low since her November loss to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and, like Whitman, has not yet announced whether she sees a future in politics. The two candidates appeared together the day after their primary wins, and pledged to campaign together, but never did.

Others named to H-P’s board were Shumeet Banerji, chief executive officer of Booz & Co.; Gary Reiner, former chief information officer of General Electric Co. and a current special advisor to private equity firm General Atlantic; Patricia Russo, former chief executive officer of Alcatel-Lucent, and Dominique Senequier, chief executive officer of AXA Private Equity.

-- Seema Mehta in Los Angeles

Whitman advisors unlikely to take part in traditional campaign rehash

Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor set a national spending record, and now looks like it will reach another milestone -– becoming the first campaign not to participate in a traditional postelection conference where winning and losing strategists dissect their work and spill secrets about the machinations behind the scenes.

The conference has been held by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies after every gubernatorial contest since 1990. “The 2010 Governor's Race: The Inside Story” is scheduled for Jan. 21-22.

“I don’t think we’re going to go,” said Rob Stutzman, a senior adviser to Whitman. “It’s self-indulgent, by self-important scholars and journalists. It is what it is.”

Stutzman said Whitman’s chief strategist Mike Murphy will definitely not attend, and he and other senior staffers don’t feel a need to participate.

Organizers, who could not recall a prior campaign declining to participate in the conference, said they had not heard back from any Whitman representatives and remained hopeful that someone would attend.

Two representatives from Gov.-elect Jerry Brown’s team will participate -– campaign manager Steve Glazer and senior adviser Joe Trippi.

It’s an easier decision for Brown’s strategists -– they get to take a victory lap and crow about how their frugal, lean campaign ended up crushing Whitman, despite being outspent more than 4 to 1.

But in years past, losers have shown up to face their fellow strategists, professors and journalists. If Team Whitman did attend, its members would surely be grilled about how they managed a landslide loss despite the most favorable political climate for Republicans since 1994.

Virtually all of the billionaire’s consultants have refused to speak publicly about the loss; the few who had opened up blamed it on California’s Democratic tilt.

-- Seema Mehta in Los Angeles

Photo: Meg Whitman concedes the race at her election-night party in Los Angeles on Nov. 2. Credit: Chris Carlson / Associated Press

Report: Nurses union pushed Whitman's illegal immigrant housekeeper into spotlight

Ever since Nicandra Diaz Santillan, the illegal immigrant who was GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s former maid, emerged during the 2010 election, insiders wondered how the woman came to light at the side of celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred.

Whitman frequently accused Democratic rival Jerry Brown or his allies in organized labor of being behind her former housekeeper’s emergence.

Turns out the candidate appears to be right, at least in part. According to an account published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, the California Nurses Assn. helped Diaz get in touch with Allred. The nurses union had been a thorn in Whitman’s side throughout the campaign, protesting at events and dressing up an actress as “Queen Meg.”

Diaz’s emergence was a damning moment in her campaign. Whitman spent a week defending herself, wrongly accused the woman of stealing her mail in the process and ultimately paid her $5,500 in unpaid wages.

The incident was believed to harm her standing among Latino voters and moderate women who Whitman had been wooing, many of whom appeared to question her refusal to help a woman who worked in her household for nearly a decade. Conservatives also questioned why she didn’t report Diaz to immigration authorities.

-- Seema Mehta in Los Angeles

First Take: Poll shows voters want it both ways. Nancy Pelosi reelected Democratic House leader. Grading Arnold Schwarzenegger

Californians don't want to pay more in taxes to help close the state's $25-billion budget deficit, but they want to hold on to the social programs that are paid for by the state. Those are the findings of a new L.A. Times/USC poll.

George Skelton offers up some grades for Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger.

Nancy Pelosi was reelected as Democratic House leader while California Republican Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) assumed the No. 3 leadership post in the new Republican majority.

Four officers were hurt and 13 students arrested outside a UC Regents meeting in San Francisco Wednesday as students protested higher university fees.

Meg Whitman reached a settlement with her former housekeeper over unpaid wages.

Get the latest from California politics. Follow PolitiCal on Twitter.

Mike Murphy: 'Blue riptide' pulled Meg Whitman under amid GOP wave

Mike Murphy, chief strategist to Meg Whitman, blamed public-employee unions and California's status as "a very blue state" for the GOP gubernatorial candidate's loss to Democrat Jerry Brown on Tuesday, even as she spent a national record $142 million of her own money trying to beat him.

Voters rebuffed Whitman and the entire GOP ticket in California, as the party lost every statewide race -- with one, for attorney general, still too close to call -- while Republicans swept into power across the nation.

"We got beat. And, you know, I ran the campaign. I take responsibility for it," Murphy said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's a very blue state, and it's getting bluer. As the red, you know, wave, kind of went one way, there was a bit of blue riptide coming the other way."

Whitman was able to win GOP and independent votes, he said, but not Democrats, and "in California, if you don't win a lot of Democrats, you don't win."

Murphy, who was paid $90,000 a month by Whitman for his strategic advice, had avoided questions about the race since Tuesday's defeat. The voters, he said Sunday, rejected "CEO candidates who were doing kind of a tough-medicine message."

Whitman and former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, the Republican challenger to Sen. Barbara Boxer, lost by wide margins.

Murphy also blamed spending by the state's influential public-employee unions, in part, for the loss, saying they "run California politics." Unions spent heavily on TV ads attacking Whitman during the summer months as Brown hoarded his limited treasury.

"They paid for Jerry Brown's campaign," he said.

Murphy was previously the mastermind behind Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's failed 2005 special election –- in which voters rejected every measure on the ballot –- after unions spent millions of dollars against him.

"The big unions in the last couple of years have spent $300 million on politics," Murphy said. "So, you either can't raise enough money to compete, and they swamp you ... or you spend your own money, but if you're a self-funder, the press wants to make that money the issue."

Related: Experience counts, money doesn't

-- Shane Goldmacher

Photo: Meg Whitman concedes the governor's race to Democrat Jerry Brown. Chris Carlson / Associated Press

Which pollsters called California's top races correctly, and which missed the mark?

In the final 10 days before the election, 14 polls of the races for governor and U.S. Senate in California were released by 10 nonpartisan polling organizations.

Those pre-election polls divided into two noticeably different camps.

One group, which included the L.A. Times/USC poll and the Field Poll, projected hefty wins by Democratic candidates Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. The other, which included polls by the Rasmussen organization and Public Policy Polling, showed both Democrats likely to win, but by much smaller margins. Some showed the Senate race in particular getting closer.

Republican candidates and strategists were, of course, eager to draw attention to the surveys in the latter group. The Republican candidate for governor, Meg Whitman, directly attacked the Times/USC poll in several speeches, saying incorrectly that Times polls always favored candidates the paper had endorsed.

In the end, Brown won by 12 points and Boxer by nine. The poll that came closest to nailing the results: The L.A. Times/USC survey, which had projected a 13-point margin for Brown and an eight-point margin for Boxer. Field, which had projected margins of 10 points for Brown and eight for Boxer, came in a close second.

The worst record? The Rasmussen surveys, which were conducted for Fox News and Rasmussen’s own survey website. Those polls projected a Boxer margin of three points and a Brown win by four.

Several differences could account for the gap among the polls. The polls that did best are ones that used the traditional method of live interviewers calling people and interviewing them on the telephone. The Field Poll and the Times/USC poll called both landlines and cellphones.

Some of the polls that were in the less-successful group are so-called robo-polls that use automated interviews. Those polls have been reasonably successful in the past, but some polling analysts this year said they thought the robo-polls were producing results that were too weighted toward Republican candidates.

Another point of difference involves the models that pollsters use to determine which voters are likely to actually cast ballots. The Times/USC survey based its likely voter model on questions about a person’s enthusiasm about voting this year, the respondent’s expressed certainty about voting and his or her voting history. Some Republican analysts said that the emphasis on past voter history was screening out Republicans who had not voted in 2006 and 2008 but who would show up this year. In the end, those hypothetical voters turned out to be something of a mirage. Exit polls this year showed an electorate that was quite similar to the group that voted in the 2006 midterm elections.

RELATED:

Carly Fiorina concedes defeat

Prop. 19 had strong youth and Bay Area support

-- David Lauter

Meg Whitman concedes governor's race to Jerry Brown

Meg Whitman conceded defeat in the race for California governor. Whitman said she called Jerry Brown to congratulate him on his victory.

“Tonight has not turned out quite as we had hoped," she told supporters in Universal City. “I gave it my all, and so did you.”

Whitman said she hoped Californians could come together after a long and divisive campaign season. "It is my hope that a new era of bipartisan problem solving can begin tonight," she said."

Whitman shattered American political records, spending $141.5 million of her own money on the campaign.

RELATED:

Barbara Boxer claims victory as Carly Fiorina refuses to concede

Brown stops short of declaring victory in speech to Oakland crowd

Prop. 19 headed to defeat, exit polls show

-- Anthony York and Michael Finnegan

Photo credit: Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press