California Working Families for Jerry Brown, a large labor coalition, is circulating a Web ad today mocking Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and her heavily self-financed campaign.
CWF's ad amounts to a music video for Travie McCoy's recent Billboard hit, "Billionaire," and includes glamorous photos of the GOP candidate spliced in with rally-style campaign footage. In photo after photo, the former eBay CEO looks the part of a rock star; two of the photos that open the video show her leading boardroom discussions in rooms full of men.
One of the lines in the song says: "I want to be on the cover of Forbes magazine, smiling next to Oprah and the queen." Did CWF find that cover shot of Whitman? Close. There's an older Forbes cover of her accompanied by the subheading: "Meg Whitman's Ebay is still the top online auctioneer. You ain't seen nothin' yet."
There also is a Fortune magazine cover with Whitman, a horse and the text, "Can Meg Whitman Save California?"
CWF's ad pushes the idea that Whitman's wealth campaign financing mean she's out of touch, mentioning that she has already dropped $150 million on her own campaign before concluding, "We don't want a Billionaire Governor. We need a leader who lives in OUR world."
Other subtitles in the video tick off her past actions at eBay; one says she hiked the company's spending 2,000 percent, while another says she "hiked customer fees six times in six years." It also makes passing references to "insider deals" at Goldman Sachs and hiding profits in the Cayman Islands.
In response to the ad, Whitman spokesman Dan Comstock said, “Class warfare doesn’t really work when you are the son of a governor, you have been governor, and you received an allowance from your parents until you were in your 50’s like Jerry Brown.”
This isn't the first video that lampoons Whitman's personal fortune and heavy spending. The method Whitman's opponents are using to disseminate that message - Internet video clips - is another reminder that their resources are badly outmatched. The RCP Average has Whitman leading Democratic former Gov. Brown by 1.5 percent.
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