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October 5, 2009 (Sacramento) – Last week, the Sacramento Bee published an article stating that Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for Governor, did not register to vote in the past 28 years. Initially, Whitman responded by stating that her voting record was “inexcusable,” adding, “I failed to register and vote on numerous occasions throughout my life. That is simply wrong and I have taken responsibility for my mistake."
Today, however, the Whitman campaign has issued a press release accusing the Sacramento Bee of distorting her voting record and asking the newspaper to correct the record. Whitman “clearly remembers voting on multiple occasions, including the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections,” the release states. The release also asserts that the San Francisco registrar has no records for voters prior to 1992—and that the registrar could not produce voting records before 1992 for Senator Diane Feinstein or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, either.
The campaign has also asked the newspaper to retract a statement that Whitman was not registered in Ohio. According to the Whitman release, her campaign has obtained records from the Hamilton County Board of Elections confirming that she was registered to vote there from 1980 to 1982, 27 years ago.
The Bee’s assertions promoted Steve Poizner, one of Whitman’s opponents in the June 2010 Republican primary, to call for her to withdraw from the race.
But the Oakland Tribune has called Whitman’s voting explanation “a poor one” in an article published today, noting that when she finally did register in 2002, she missed voting in half the local, state and federal elections over the next five years. The newspaper notes Whitman’s disdain for the political process and for voters; when asked where she had been registered as a Republican prior to moving to California, she responded, “Go find it.”
Whitman previously explained her voting lapses because she was “focused on raising a family, on my husband’s career, and we moved many, many times.” But the Oakland Tribune editorial noted, “Family responsibilities and moving are no excuses for not voting. (What an insult to parents across the state who somehow manage to raise their kids and still cast a ballot.)” The editorial further chided Whitman for expressing concern over the plight of small business while ignoring the needs of others. “We don’t get any sense that Whitman cares about the poor, worries about the environment, or understands the complexity of say, state water policy. Indeed, thus far, she has ducked debtes with the other Republican candidates and, for the most part, avoided serious issue discussions with reporters.”
Conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt, however, in a blog posting claims to have documents proving Whitman’s registration records and called the Sacramento Bee story “a poorly sourced and very sloppy example either of agenda journalism or of lazy journalism, if you can call it journalism at all.”
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