Behind the looking glass: Focus group sounds off on Brown, Whitman

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Political focus groups are typically off-limits to reporters -- for obvious reasons. The focus groups offer a chance for advisors to probe a group of average voters for potential weaknesses in their candidate. Entire ad campaigns have been kept off the air after bombing in such settings. Participants are encouraged to talk openly about why they might find a candidate creepy, dimwitted or aloof. Pollsters running the groups share damaging research and press reports about their own clients to get a handle on what might steer voters elsewhere.

But the Democratic strategists running the political committee Level the Playing Field 2010 decided there was something to gain from inviting reporters into a recent session. The strategists said they had no particular motive, calling it an unorthodox experiment. But they did appear confident that an unscripted bull session with average voters would bolster their contention that Democrat Jerry Brown has the common touch and that his GOP rival Meg Whitman is out of touch.

The group of 11 undecided, independent women who gathered Thursday behind the one-way glass in the Bay Area suburb of Concord nevertheless had some unhelpful things to say about Brown. Descriptions such as ‘liberal,’ ‘socialist’ and ‘wants everyone to depend on government’ were bandied about with a measure of disgust.

But Whitman’s slick campaign commercials, evolving stance on illegal immigration and cozy relationship with Wall Street investment banks gave them more pause.

The Times was unable to stay for a later session of undecided voters who were all men; Democratic pollster Paul Maslin, who ran both sessions, said in a follow-up interview that their opinions were much the same.

Whether the sessions accurately reflect the feelings of independent voters is impossible to say. But they do offer an early glimpse into potential Whitman vulnerabilities that Democrats will seek to exploit. Among them:

Outsider fatigue. Even the most conservative of the participants were wary of bringing another outsider into the governor’s office after the Arnold Schwarzenegger experiment, which many complained has been a failure. It was a theme that came up again and again. Whitman’s confessed failure to vote in numerous elections over the decades also made the participants particularly anxious.

Wall Street fatigue. The participants were largely unaware of the dealings Whitman had with investment banking giant Goldman Sachs. Those resulted in the candidate being named in a congressional investigation into Wall Street conflicts of interest and an embarrassing legal settlement in which she had to return $1.78 million. But many had the impression she was involved in unsavory deals of some sort, and they didn’t like it. Said one woman from Pittsburg: ‘She did what Martha Stewart did.’

Border fatigue. Anger over illegal immigration was intense. It is something that would seem to translate into support for Whitman, as she has been far more aggressive on that issue than Brown. He has dismissed her vows of crackdowns on undocumented workers, their employers and ‘sanctuary cities’ as political pandering and given little indication he would take the tough approach that many of the focus group participants are demanding. But Whitman was accused during the GOP primary of not having a consistent position and of vowing to get tough only when the race began to tighten. ‘They have the impression that she has flip-flopped, and they view her as too political,’ Maslin said.

Advertising fatigue. Commercials of Whitman shot in a documentary style, with relaxed interviews of her interspersed with inspiring views of California cityscapes, came across as too slick to the group. They preferred grainy images of Jerry Brown waxing nostalgic interspersed with old news footage of him trading in the governor’s limousine for a Plymouth.

Gridlock fatigue. There was no shortage of frustration with the political paralysis in Sacramento. Many in the group expressed concern that a career politician such as Brown won’t change the status quo. But it was overshadowed by concern that Whitman has no experience building the kind of legislative coalitions needed to make things happen in the Capitol.

-- Evan Halper