Word: californiaisms
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...woman's right to choose. She tries to project a muscular toughness, as Hillary Clinton did, with plans to fire 40,000 state employees and constant talk about her "spine of steel." "Sarah Palin almost ruined it for women," says Bruce Cain, executive director of the University of California Washington Center. "But Hillary Clinton did wonders. If you want to run, you want to be like Hillary. You want to know your stuff cold." (See pictures of wildfires in California...
That's particularly true in California, a state in almost perpetual crisis - it's "effectively bankrupt," as Whitman likes to put it - with a budget deficit befitting Argentina and crises with water, highways, prisons, schools, immigration and unemployment. The legislature and the governor are openly hostile to each other, and the electorate is disgusted with both of them. (Their approval ratings are 18% and 28%, respectively.) This state of affairs is alternately described as the end of civilization or America's bright future, depending on whom you ask. Driving around the state, you'd never know that California...
...trying to start at the top, like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, without having paid their dues," says Lew Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee, an antitax group, who is supporting one of Whitman's opponents. It takes a vast amount of money to be competitive in California, but the road to Sacramento is littered with the bodies of failed parvenus: Michael Huffington, the former Republican Congressman and ex-husband of Arianna, blew $28 million on a failed Senate bid in 1994; Al Checchi, a former co-chairman of Northwest Airlines, spent $40 million losing to Gray Davis...
...convincing voters that she actually knows what she's talking about - and there she has a ways to go. "Primary voters are very intrigued by the concept of Meg Whitman," says Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "Her challenge over the next months is going to be to replace that concept with something more tangible...
...four times, while Whitman has committed to just one debate in March. "She's clearly one of those people who likes to study and study an issue, really have an in-depth comfort zone with something, and then move forward," says Jon Fleischman, a vice chairman, south, of the California Republican Party who characterizes Whitman as "a little bit awkward" when interacting with the media. "It's O.K. to do that in business, but politics tends to be more spontaneous...