Word: first
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Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
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...becomes problematic when swing voters start to confront costly realities and the soaring sweep of campaign promises gets lost in programmatic details. Since last spring, there has been a sizable drop in the portion of voters who think Washington should guarantee health insurance, with Gallup now recording--for the first time since it began asking the question--more people saying it is not the government's responsibility (50%) than saying...
...tell you about my mother," she said, not for the first time that week. She talked about Margaret Whitman Sr.'s daring service as an airplane and truck mechanic for the Red Cross in New Guinea during World War II and how it motivated the younger Meg. She rattled off her own accomplishments - college at Princeton followed by Harvard Business School, her move to San Francisco with her neurosurgeon husband, her transformation of eBay from a midsize start-up into a high-tech powerhouse while raising two boys, her postretirement role as an adviser to Mitt Romney and later Senator...
Whitman paused, almost as if it were the first time that day that she had to think about her answer. "I am happy to tell people where I stand on the social issues, but I think, as Republicans and Californians, we have to lead with the things that will make the most difference in the near term," she said. "I don't want to exclude anyone from the party. I don't want to exclude anyone from my campaign. I want everyone to be a part of this. But let's rally around what we can mostly agree...
...Road to SacramentoThe downside of Whitman's trial-by-fire learning process became obvious when she confronted the first major hiccup of her campaign. The Sacramento Bee reported in late September that Whitman had barely voted during her adult life and questioned whether she had registered as a Republican at all before 2007. The story quickly swirled into a scandal, and during a heated press conference, Whitman floundered as she tried to sidestep the questions, a beginner's mistake in a statewide race...
...businessman Bill Simon, who campaigned unsuccessfully against Davis in 2002. All of them were seen as overconfident and underprepared, liable to self-destruct when pressed on basic policy questions. Raphael Sonenshein, a political-science professor at California State University at Fullerton, notes that self-made, first-time candidates often imagine incorrectly that politics can be made as efficient, orderly and logical as business. "While [very wealthy candidates] are usually competitive, it's not nearly as easy as they think it's going to be," he says. "There's a reason that politics is a profession...