…NOT Jerry Brown’s.  The sticky situation that Meg Whitman currenlty finds herself in can be traced back to the primaries and the Steve Poizner effect.  In essence, Poizner poisoned the debate with anti-immigrant rhetoric back then, forcing her to “prove” that she was as “tough” as he positioned himself to be on immigrant economic refugees in order to win over the right wing base of the Republican Party.  It’s no surprise that the ads in Spanish have come out now in full force to bite her back for what she did during the primaries and it couldn’t have come sooner, being that Meg Whitman had actually been making gains with Latinos in the polls thanks to her effective in-Spanish ads and Jerry Brown’s lack-thereof.  In fact, she had been registering as of last July a 14 point gain on the Latino vote, just enough to secure a strong coalition that would guarantee her win come November.  She managed to make such rapid gains thanks to a very effective in-Spanish media strategy and on-the-ground meetups in predominantly Latino communities, going virtually unchallenged by the Brown campaign.  That has now changed; enter the Cambiando California group to the rescue:

Now that she’s being exposed for what she did to outdo Steve Poizner at his own bigoted game (namely, going as far as recruiting Pete Wilson as campaign chairman), she chooses to place the blame on others like Jerry Brown’s campaign for her own party’s bigotry (she’s claiming that the revelations that she hired an undocumented worker are actually just a political stunt).  Political maneuver or not, the fact is that she’s playing the blame game, even demonizing the unions now, nevermind that the unions are just every day working people … why she’s adopting anti-union right-wing rhetoric in a state like California, demonizing working Californians, is just odd.  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was on Andrea Mitchell Reports to discuss education reform and was asked about it: 

I agree with Mayor Villaraigosa: Meg Whitman is the one that made immigration a big issue for her, thanks in large part to Poizner.  But who is advicing Meg Whitman?  Is it Pete Wilson?  It’s time to take personal responsibility for your own actions and for the actions of some extremists in your own party, Mrs. Whitman.  Stop blaming others, it’s time to own up to your own mistakes and the tactical mistakes of the people in your own party: people like Steve Poizner and Pete Wilson.  You can’t do much about Poizner now, but you could certainly do something about Pete Wilson: fire him now.