My Wife Did It!
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner stuck to his story today that a $10,000 donation he made to the Gore-Lieberman recount committee in 2000 was probably made by his wife -- despite a NewMajority investigation which proved this to be deeply implausible.
At an event held earlier today at the American Enterprise Institute, Poizner insisted the donations to the Gore-Lieberman recount committee were made from a joint-checking account that he holds with his wife, again implying that she was the one who made the donations – even though he signed the check.
The same NewMajority article pointed out that Poizner mischaracterized the nature of his job in the Bush administration as a White House Fellow, suggesting it proved his GOP bona fides. After being pressed on this matter at the AEI event, however, Poizner backtracked from comments he made in August that suggested his job was political, and instead admitted that the Fellowship was a non-partisan program. Asked by NewMajority about whether he thought Al Gore would have been a better president than George W. Bush, Poizner responded by saying only that he “never voted for Gore.”
The campaign of his opponent, Meg Whitman, responded to Poizner's explanations by saying that while their candidate "in isolated instances has donated to candidates of the other party in order to support opponents of internet taxes or a co-worker who was a candidate, one thing is certain: she isn't making excuses and she isn't blaming her spouse," said spokesman Dan Comstock.
At his AEI appearance, Poizner criticized Whitman - former eBay CEO - for stating that there was “nothing wrong with the existing tax structure in California.” In a speech flush with campaign rhetoric, Poizner said he would slash taxes - proposing to cut personal income, sales and corporate taxes by 10%, and capital gains taxes by 50% - he was lukewarm about cutting the budgets of poorly performing state agencies.
“I’m not a big fan of taking an axe and starting to slice... if you take an inefficient state agency and just slice it up, [the agency] will just get worse,” he said.