Did Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for Governor of California commit a fatal mistake? In an appearance with rival Democrat Jerry Brown at the the annual Women’s Conference last night NBC’s Matt Lauer tried to get both candidates to agree to pull all negative ads. Brown finally agreed. Whitman did not — and the audience booed at one point. And when Lauer went back the question again, Brown agreed even more strongly to do it and Whitman clearly would not. Then Brown seemingly said it wasn’t fair to press them on it there.
The net result? Brown agreed to pull them if she agreed — and she would not agree. Since she’s reportedly behind in most polls that suggests a)it was a mistake OR b)she has a slew of negative ads read for the closing days of the campaign. Here’s the segment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hslVp8dc1ys&feature=player_embedded
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.