Nondisclosure, Nondisparagement

The Trump campaign will probably yield fewer insider accounts than normal campaigns. Patrick Howell O'Neill reports at The Daily Dot:

Donald Trump's campaign requires volunteers to sign a contract that forbids them from criticizing the Republican presidential front-runner, his family members, any Trump businesses or products, or his campaign. The six-page contract, reviewed in full by the Daily Dot, theoretically lasts for the entirety of a volunteer's life.

Legal experts say, however, that the contract's non-disparagement clause would likely never hold up in court.

The tight control of volunteers stands in stark contrast to not only American political-campaign norms but also Trump's reputation for speaking his mind.

The contract first came to light late last week after Trump campaign emails indicated that some prospective volunteers were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to make calls for the campaign from Trump Tower in Manhattan.

“I don't see how a court enforces this.”

It wasn't until Monday that the contracts were unveiled to prospective volunteers at Trump Tower. A Daily Dot review of the contract found that the document extends beyond the non-disclosure agreement that was originally reported.

It would not be the first time that a candidate relied on non-disclosure agreements.  The 2010 California gubernatorial campaign of Meg Whitman reportedly used NDAs, which is probably why officials from her campaign skipped the customary post-election conference at Berkeley.  As CalBuzz explained; "The Team Whitman principals deny they have non-disclosure agreements that are keeping them from discussing the internal workings of the campaign (although their agreements could require them to deny they exist)."

GOP in CA

At The Orange County Register, Matthew Fleming reports that California GOP chair Jim Brulte is addressing the party's problems.

Republicans regularly held the governor’s mansion for years, said Brulte, and they enjoyed the big checks from donors, who often contribute to the party in power. As a result, Republicans “lost the mechanics,” he said.

“The California Republican party didn’t even have an online voter registration program in 2012,” said Brulte, who pointed to Democrat Steve Fox getting elected to the Assembly by 145 votes in 2012 in a district that includes parts of San Bernardino, Kern and Los Angeles counties, as an opportunity squandered by neglected mechanics. “That’s one Assembly seat that was lost simply because of that failure.”

Another factor could be a failure to recognize changes in demographics, most notably the rising Latino population. Republican efforts to tap into this growing electorate have been trivial at best. At worst, Republicans’ inability to coalesce around an immigration strategy may be pushing Latinos away.

Loss of hope and leadership could be another factor, according to longtime Republican operative Jonathan Wilcox. The last Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with the last Republican gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, have both been conspicuously absent, leaving an enthusiasm void.

“There’s not success without belief,” Wilcox said. “I think some Republicans have suffered from a lack of belief and they’ve gone through some tough times. ... Our standard bearers have removed themselves from the partisan or political process – that’s very unique in our politics. … I’m not trashing them, but if they were still involved, it would truly benefit the Republican Party.”

The article also notes some modest recent successes that reflect Brulte's emphasis on nuts and bolts.

Meg Whitman, Ashley Judd, and the Cost of Not Voting

In the 2010 California gubernatorial race, Republican Meg Whitman suffered political damage because she had sometimes failed to vote. Primary opponent Steve Poizner and Democratic candidate Jerry Brown both pounced. George Skelton explained in The Los Angeles Times:

Poll director Mark DiCamillo offered likely voters a long list of characteristics — or "attributes" — that fit one or both of the candidates, without mentioning their names. He asked people whether they would be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate with such a characteristic. Then he calculated the net positive or negative effect of each trait.

The biggest negative, by far, was if a candidate for high office "hasn't voted in many past statewide elections." That fits Whitman, who has acknowledged and apologized for a dismal voting record. Opponents accuse her of not voting during a 28-year span.

"I was focused on raising a family, on my husband's career and we moved many, many times," she told reporters last year in her only public explanation, adding, "It is no excuse. My voting record, my registration record, is unacceptable."

Specifically, 54 percent said nonvoting would make them less likely to vote for a candidate, 4 percent more likely, for a net negative of 50 percent.

Now, another political novice turns out to have a spotty voting record.  Robert Costa reports at National Review Online:

Actress Ashley Judd is active in Democratic politics, but her voting history is spotty. According to public records, she did not vote in several elections over the past two decades.

Judd, a resident of Williamson County, Tenn., voted in the 1996 election via absentee ballot, but did not vote again until the 2004 general election — an eight-year gap. She then sat out another four years, before returning to vote in the 2008 Democratic primary.

Romney Draws on Obama, Who Draws on Brown

Sasha Issenberg writes at Slate:

In the primaries, Romney’s advisers had little confidence that there was much logic at all behind his rivals’ moves, and the two-time candidate outmaneuvered analytically amateurish opponents with well-plotted discipline and attention to detail. Now forced to play catch-up against a savvy incumbent, Romney’s team acknowledges they are not aiming to match what Obama has built in Chicago: A unique, in-house analytical empire that has developed an unrivaled capacity to churn through voter data and translate insights into tactics. Because of this capacity, Romney advisers assume that what they see the president doing in public must have a good deal of sense behind it. "The Obama team had the luxury of knowing exactly what they'd be doing on July 1, 2012 because they've been planning for six years—definitely three-and-a-half years,” says Zac Moffatt, Romney’s digital director. So instead of devoting their analytical energies to out-strategizing the president, Romney’s advisers are trying to hack Obama’s code and turn it against him.

As the dataset of Obama activity expands over the course of the campaign, the burden of finding those patterns will shift from the eyes of advisers huddled in weekly meetings to the statistical models they’ve written. Algorithms will test the association between vote goals and the candidates’ travel and ad placement, staring through Obama’s visible tactics to reveal a latent strategy beneath.

At the Los Angeles Times, David Lauter analyzes the Bain attacks as a way for Obama to turn white working-class voters away from Romney:

Obama aides have pointed to a couple of models, including the way California Gov. Jerry Brown defeated Meg Whitman, another wealthy corporate executive and a friend of Romney's, in 2010. Another is the way President George W. Bush's campaign portrayed Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004 as a rich elite who was out of touch with average Americans.

The Bain attacks further that strategy on two levels. The Obama campaign has been saying at least since January that companies Bain Capital took over had eliminated thousands of jobs. The Romney campaign's answer has been that Bain invested in those companies after 1999, when Romney left active management to run the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

That's where last week's attacks began. After the Boston Globe published an article that showed Romney had remained Bain's chief executive for three years after the Olympics, an argument over Bain's record quickly shifted to focus on Romney's truthfulness.

Romney's defense as it evolved over the weekend — that he had remained chief executive but hadn't taken an active role in management and had "retroactively resigned," as one advisor said, in 2002 — may only have reinforced in some voters' minds that his life and his concerns are far distant from theirs.

American Crossroads, Meg, and Money

The Wall Street Journal reports:

A Wall Street Journal analysis of campaign spending shows that Republican groups prevailed in nearly 75% of the House races in which they significantly out-spent Democratic organizations.

The analysis also shows that Republicans won 53 House seats in races where the Republican groups spent at least $200,000 more than rival Democratic organizations. Republicans, though, lost 20 races where they heavily outspent Democratic groups.

...

Among Republican groups, the two advised by Mr. Rove—American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS—spent a total of $71 million on the election, making them the top supporters of Republicans this election.

Mr. Rove's groups, which were founded earlier this year, surpassed the election-spending of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's leading business lobby.

The Chamber said earlier this year that it planned to spend $75 million on the elections. Instead it spent about $50 million. Officials said they fell short partly because Mr. Rove's groups siphoned off some donations it expected to receive.

But there are limits to the power of money:

Republican Meg Whitman, the former eBay Inc. chief executive, spent $140 million of her own cash in a bid to be California's governor, equivalent to about $45 a vote. She lost by 12 points to Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown.

"Money can't turn Democrats into Republicans," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Ms. Whitman's campaign.

CA: Why Whitman Lost

At Capitol Alert, Amy Chance writes:

Adam Mendelsohn, who served as a political consultant to Whitman from February '08 to January '09, said Wednesday he never saw a rationale for her run that voters would understand.

"If you're going to take somebody who's an outsider who has no civic experience at all.....you have to create a really compelling reason for people to vote that person into office," he said. "My personal experience with the campaign often felt like they were approaching it like a marketing project rather than a political campaign."

That approach extended to the campaign's discomfort with the political press corps, he said.

"It was always very difficult to determine what she was comfortable doing and what she was not comfortable doing," Mendelsohn said. "She and her adviser, Henry Gomez, were very, very protective of where they put her and what she was doing. I think she was so over-managed and so over-advised, that she became intimidated by the media. I think they spent more time thinking about everything she could say wrong rather than what she could say correctly."

At the Los Angeles Times, Cathleen Decker writes:

Latinos were more likely than other voters to say it was the governor's race that impelled them to vote, and they sided more than 2 to 1 with Democrat Jerry Brown over Meg Whitman, the Republican whose campaign had been embroiled in a controversy over illegal immigration. Once at the polls, they voted for other Democrats as well.
...

Holding their coastal strength, Democrats ran away with their big counties. Brown carried Los Angeles County, home to 25% of the state's voters, by 31 points, giving him almost 60% of his lead. Republican candidates, including Whitman, did better than Democrats in their traditional interior California strongholds. But the strong Republican counties tend to be heavier on acreage than voters.

...

Democratic successes in the midst of 2010's national Republican renaissance marked a sharp turnabout from how the state behaved during the last major Republican year, in 1994. That year, as Republicans took back Congress, they won in California as well, picking up five of seven statewide offices, including the governorship, and adding legislative seats. This time, Democrats picked up a legislative seat despite Republican gains nationally, and were waiting for uncounted ballots to see whether they lost a congressional seat or two.

The difference between then and now rests on the changes in the California electorate. Those changes also explain the gulf that now exists between California and the nation. California in 1994 was more white and proportionately less Democratic than it is today, thus more similar to the country today. Nationally, non-whites made up only 22% of the Tuesday electorate; in California they made up 38%. Latinos nationally represented 8% of the national electorate, just shy of a third of their power in California. The California and national exit polls were conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of news organizations, including television news networks and the Associated Press.

Tellingly, Latinos in California had a far more negative view of the GOP than other voters — almost 3 in 4 had an unfavorable impression, to 22% favorable. Among all California voters the view of Republicans was negative, but at a closer 61% negative and 32% positive. Latinos had a strongly positive view of Democrats, 58% to 37%, whereas all voters were closely split, 49% to 45%.

"The brand name is still a tremendous liability," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former Republican consultant who runs a nonpartisan election-tracking publication. "People of color are just turned off by the Republican Party."

Jack Chang and David Siders write at the Sacramento Bee:

Brown himself said Wednesday that he benefited from having no major primary opposition. Whitman, on the other hand, fought a bruising and expensive primary battle against Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

"Those two right there sets the stage," Brown said. "And then thirdly, there's more Democrats than Republicans, and we have a somewhat mildly liberal-leaning decline to state voters."

The 72-year-old former governor added, "And then, of course, you have my sparkling personality."

Timm Herdt writes at the Ventura County Star:

Typically an unknown candidate will take a get-to-know-me tour around the state, talking to any news organization that could help introduce him or her to voters.

A year ago, Whitman could have gone from Chico to San Bernardino doing exactly that, subjecting herself to scores of interviews. Undoubtedly, she would have slipped up in a few, but she would have had plenty of time to recover and the practice would have served her well.

Instead, she gave one coming-out interview — with the Los Angeles Times, the state’s largest news organization — and made a few gaffes. She then retreated.

When it came time in the fall to participate in her first televised debate and to personally appeal to newspaper editorial boards for their endorsements, she was unskilled at answering questions and uncomfortably robotic.

CA: Meg Softens

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Meg Whitman stopped by a Cuban bakery in Glendale Friday. And in the past few days, she's also hit a pizza parlor, an ice cream shop and a diner.

With a Field Poll this week showing the GOP gubernatorial candidate trailing Democrat Jerry Brown by 10 points - and with more than half of Californians having a negative view of her - Whitman's Rolls-Royce campaign is trying something new: Honda Civic-style charm.

The former eBay CEO is sliding into diner booths and talking to small-town voters, sampling goodies at butcher shops, waving to passers-by, strolling Main Streets and airing soft-focus ads that rhapsodize about how "real" she is.

With three days left in a campaign that has lasted 18 months and cost her $142 million of her own money, analysts are wondering why Whitman hasn't done more unscripted events like those before the final lap of her campaign.

CA: Fiorina Doing Better Than Whitman, So Far

Ron Brownstein observes at National Journal:

For all of the contests’ surface similarities -- high-tech female Republican CEO vs. venerable California liberal -- the races are running on very different dynamics. The difference was apparent within minutes when Brown and Boxer each appeared before President Obama during his rally at the University of Southern California last Friday.

Still, probably the most important difference between the two races is their contrasting backdrop. “It’s the Washington dynamic versus the Sacramento dynamic,” said a senior Democratic strategist working in the state, who asked for anonymity while discussing the vulnerabilities of the party’s contenders. “Which is to say you’ve got a Democratic president, Democratic Congress and Democratic senator who get blamed, if you will, at the federal level while you have a…Republican governor in Sacramento [Arnold Schwarzenegger] who is extraordinarily unpopular and that hurts Whitman. Boxer gets hurt by the national scene; Whitman gets hurt by the local scene.”

CA: Whitman at $162m and Counting

Martin Wisckol reports at the Orange County Register:

Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor has spent $162 million, with a record $142 million coming from the Republican billionaire’s own financial portfolio, according campaign finance reports filed Thursday. The reports cover the campaign through Oct. 16.

Democratic opponent Jerry Brown has spent $25.5 million, coming on particularly strong in recent weeks with $14.6 million of it spent this month, according to his report. Whitman has spent $22.8 million this month.

Brown had $11.6 million left. Whitman had $12.6 million in her campaign account, but hasn’t hesitated to add more from her fortune when needed.

In addition to money raised by Brown, public employee unions have spent more than $20 million in separate independent expenditures, helping keep Brown in the lead in most recent public polls.

CA: PPIC Poll

PPIC reports that the Senate race is closer than the governor race -- the opposite of what one might have expected months ago.

Democrat Jerry Brown leads Republican Meg Whitman in the governor’s race, and Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer is locked in a close contest with Republican challenger Carly Fiorina in the U.S Senate campaign. These are the results of a survey released today by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) with funding from The James Irvine Foundation.

Likely voters favor Brown over Whitman by 8 points (44% Brown, 36% Whitman, 16% undecided). The two candidates were in a virtual tie in September (38% Whitman, 37% Brown, 18% undecided). The Senate race is tight (43% Boxer, 38% Fiorina, 13% undecided) among likely voters. Boxer held a 7-point lead in September (42% Boxer, 35% Fiorina, 17% undecided).

In the final weeks of the campaign season, California’s likely voters express discontent in a number of ways: approval ratings of elected officials that are at or near record lows, a belief that the state and nation are headed in the wrong direction, and pessimism about the economy. While most (62%) are satisfied with their choice for U.S. Senate, more than half (55%) are dissatisfied with their choice for governor. Farther down the statewide ballot, none of the four state ballot initiatives included in the PPIC survey has the majority support today that is necessary for passage on November 2.

CA: Meg=Arnold, Jerry=Puppet

CA: Brown's "Trash Apology

Brown didn't exactly put the "w-word" controversy to rest, as Dan Morain writes at the Sacramento Bee:

Psychiatrist Aaron Lazare, author of a 2004 book, "On Apology," described Brown's apology as a "trash apology."

"He is evading his responsibility to be a moral person. He is not being a stand-up man," said Lazare, a professor and former chancellor at University of Massachusetts medical school.

The exchange showed voters what insiders know – that Brown can be abrupt, arrogant and dismissive. Perhaps this once-and-maybe-future governor doesn't see the need for a simple, "I'm sorry."

If such talk truly burns Whitman's ears, she should have remained in Atherton and not entered the indelicate world of politics. More likely, she and her aides are thrilled about the turn of events.

Brown's fumbling allowed Whitman to shift attention from her own problem involving her housekeeper, an illegal immigrant. And Whitman knows the word is a slur, and will be viewed as such by some women who will be voting in the next few weeks.

Brown is supposed to be the political professional. He should have put the matter to rest fast by acknowledging the insult and apologizing, and not trying to shift blame. Instead, he committed the rookie political mistake of extending what should have been a blip into a story that has lasted a week.

CA: Dan Walters Gives the Debate Edge to Whitman

Dan Walters writes in the Sacramento Bee:

Whitman was clearly the more aggressive during their third and last debate at Dominican University in Marin County, taking advantage of the Brown campaign's embarrassment about an accidentally recorded phone message in which someone close to Brown, in his presence, called Whitman a "whore" in obtaining a police union endorsement.

Brown apologized again, but then may have stumbled by declaring that calling someone a whore is not as bad as using the N-word to describe an African American, running the risk of alienating women, who are half of the state's voters.

Sensing an opening, Whitman declared that California "deserves better than slurs and personal attacks" and that calling someone a whore is "a deeply offensive term to women."

...

By and large, both stuck to their standard positions on those issues and at every opportunity returned to their core campaign themes – Brown that Whitman is a tycoon who lacks political experience, Whitman that Brown is a political retread beholden to unions.

However, Whitman presented a more animated and extemporaneous demeanor than she had in past debates, while Brown, one of the glibbest politicians ever to draw a breath, often found himself on the defensive and made a couple of verbal gaffes.

If debating is scored by how one meets, falls below or exceeds expectations, Whitman probably won on points Tuesday night – although whether her jousting with Brown has any lasting effect on their campaigns remains uncertain.

CA: The Housekeeper Issue Makes SNL

Actually, the target is Gloria Allred, and it sounds as if the Whitman campaign wrote it:

CA: How the Primary Campaign Set the Table for the Housekeeper Issue

At Capitol Weekly, Anthony York writes about Whitman's management of the housekeeper issue. In hindsight, it was a blunder for Whitman to speculate that the housekeeper intercepted the "no-match" letter, since Allred was then able to produce a copy bearing the husband's handwriting. More generally, though, the primary campaign proved to be a problem:

Whitman said she learned about Diaz Santillan's immigration status in June 2009 as she was preparing her campaign for governor. Her primary challenger, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, had staked out positions to Whitman's right including a hard-line stance on immigration. Poizner announced his support for the Arizona immigration law and called for elimination of some state services for undocumented residents.

“There are two schools of thought. The first is you inoculate yourself with the flu shot,” said one Republican communications consultant. “That would have been getting this out a year and half ago. But I think Poizner would have attacked her unmercifully,” if she had revealed this during the primary campaign.

[Democratic consultant Chris] Lehane admitted as much but said Whitman made matters worse by taking an aggressive stand on immigration during the primary campaign. “Her campaign has pushed so hard that (the issue of hiring illegal immigrants) should be the employer responsibility when they knew they had this issue. That's not something they needed to do. It’s like a preemptively self-inflicted wound.”

But Lehane said Whitman may have made the story worse with her press conference Thursday. In an effort to preempt Allred, Whitman said she would take a lie-detector test to prove she and her husband had no knowledge of Diaz Santillan’s immigration status. She also suggested her former housekeeper may have stolen the letter from the Social Security Administration addressed to Harsh.

“The sound you hear out there is the trap closing,” Lehane said.

CA: Housekeeper Issue, Voting by Mail

Today, Carla Marinucci writes in The San Francisco Chronicle:

Nicky Diaz Santillan, GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's undocumented ex-maid, Wednesday insisted she is "not anyone's puppet,'' and said she came forward to tell her story about working for the former CEO to be a voice for others who are still "in the shadows."

But Diaz's Los Angeles attorney, Gloria Allred refused to disclose how the immigrant worker's case came to her attention -- and again denied she was connected to the campaign of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.

The timing may not be coincidental. Yesterday , Capitol Alert reported:

Ladies and gentlemen, you may start your voting. California counties start mailing out vote-by-mail ballots today for the Nov. 2 general election.

Postal employees have their work cut out for them. About 42 percent of California voters cast their ballots by mail in November 2008. An even higher proportion -- 58 percent -- did so in the June primary.

How many ballots are we talking about? As of Sept. 3, nearly 17 million people were registered to vote in the state, according to the secretary of state's office.

Of those, 44.3 percent are Democrats, 30.9 percent are Republicans, and 20.2 percent are decline-to-state. The remainder are registered with the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, or other parties.

Click here for county-by-county voter registration numbers.

Politicians used to refer to the Thursday before the election as "Dirty Tricks Thursday." The idea was that the Thursday before the election was the ideal moment for an attack: there would be enough time for it to sink in, but not enough time for the target to respond. But voting by mail may have changed the timetable.

CA: Whitman, the Housekeeper, and Immigration

David Siders reports at Capitol Alert:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman told reporters this afternoon that she told her consultants about Nicky Diaz Santillan, an illegal immigrant and her former housekeeper, when she fired Diaz Santillan last year.

Asked if she did so because she anticipated it would be problematic for her campaign, she said, "I didn't think it would be a problem."

Still, the campaign was prepared on Tuesday, when the story broke, to immediately release documenation about it.

Whitman said she fired Diaz Santillan once she learned she was an illegal immigrant. She called the controversy a "sideshow."

Dan Walters writes at The Sacramento Bee:

For weeks, Republican Meg Whitman demanded that Jerry Brown, her Democratic rival for governor, debate her in Fresno, clearly hoping it would shore up support in the GOP-leaning San Joaquin Valley and among Latino voters, but Brown stalled.

Whitman finally got her wish Saturday in a bilingual debate sponsored by Univision, but it quickly became a slugfest as Brown pummeled her on how she handled a former housekeeper who was an illegal immigrant – a case that had erupted just days earlier.

CA: Whitman and the Housekeeper

Celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred held a Wednesday press conference with Meg Whitman's former housekeeper, an illegal alien. The housekeeper said that Whitman knew of her status all along and abruptly sacked her when she decided to run for governor. Whitman said that she did not know until the housekeeper revealed it last year. The campaign quickly produced the housekeeper's employment documents, which had falsely claimed legal status. Whitman denied that she had received any government correspondence questioning the housekeeper's social security number. But the next day, Allred produced such a letter from 2003, with a handwritten note from Whitman's husband asking the housekeeper to look into the matter. Whitman has offered to take a lie detector test.

The episode points out the problem of political neophytes running for high office. People holding office, running for office, or even thinking about office are usually pretty careful about these things. Civilians are not, and in 2003, Whitman and her husband were civilians. It is entirely plausible that her husband thought that the letter was just a response to a clerical error rather than a huge red flag about immigration status. Rich doctors are not necessarily attentive to these matters. But as a candidate, Whitman and her husband have to live with the choices they made before she entered politics.

Dan Walters writes:

But even if Whitman is an innocent smear victim, one has to wonder why she didn't go public with it after she learned of Diaz Santillan's immigration status last year to avoid later problems.

After all, allegations about hiring illegal immigrants are an old story in California politics. At the least, then, it was a huge tactical error by Whitman's multimillion- dollar campaign staff, and it could be her undoing.

CA: Pinocchio

Jerry Brown is responding to Meg Whitman's attack ads with a "Pinocchio" response ad.



As Calbuzz notes, the Pinocchio-nose is an old gimmick. Heck, it's even been in vodka ads:

CA: Brown Attacks Clinton

Almost exactly one year ago, this blog included a post about the bad blood between Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton.

Hard feelings endure, leading Jerry Brown to botch his rebuttal to a Meg Whitman ad.

This is not smart: