Meg Whitman Coughs Up Another $13 Million
The Sacramento Bee reports the former eBay CEO Meg Whitman upped her personal contribution in her attempt to win, or is it buy, the Governorship of California by another $13 million bringing her total out-of-her-own-pocket investment to a cool $104 million. Attorney General Jerry Brown's campaign had $23 million in the bank as of June 30.

Florida GOP Gubernatorial Primary Poll
A new poll by the St. Petersburg Times gives Rick Scott, the former Columbia/HCA CEO, a ten point lead over Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum.

Despite lingering questions about his business record and a Medicare fraud scandal in his background, the former health care executive has a 10 percentage-point lead over rival Bill McCollum ahead of the Aug. 24 primary in part because voters see Scott as the candidate who can best pull the economy out of the doldrums.

"Whoever's better on the economy is going to win this thing," Ipsos pollster Julia Clark said. "I would be happy to put money on it."

The statewide telephone survey conducted for the St. Petersburg Times, Miami Herald, Bay News 9 and Central Florida News 13 shows Scott with 42 percent support, McCollum 32 percent, 3 percent favoring another candidate and 23 percent undecided, even after the two men and their allied groups have spent a combined $47 million on TV ads.

The poll of 602 registered voters was conducted Aug. 6-10 by Ipsos Public Affairs, a nonpartisan research company based in Washington, D.C. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points overall and 5.9 percent for questions asked of Republicans.

The Times's poll also previews the three way race in the general election come November between Rick Scott, Democrat Alex Sink and independent Lawton "Bud" Chiles. Scott leads Sink, 30 percent to 29 percent with Chiles garnering 14 percent. A quarter of the electorate is still undecided. 

Meanwhile the Orlando Sentinel reports that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink is launching her first TV buy next week. Sink has raised $7.4 million. Sink has largely sat on the sidelines this summer while Republicans Bill McCollum and Rick Scott have combined to spend $47 million so far. Sink made a $853,000 TV ad buy. Sink's ads will run in Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach and Tallahassee starting Monday through the August 24 primary.

As of August 1, Scott had spent $25.2 million on winning the Republican primary for governor, not just shattering the record set by Charlie Crist in a general election but also breaking the $24.9 million state spending cap. In the last two weeks, Scott has spent another $9 million. In addition to the $34 million Scott has spent, his affiliated 527, Let’s Get to Work, has spent more than $30 million in advance of the August 24 primary. The Florida Independent has more on the record amounts being spend in the Sunshine State just to win the GOP primary.

Mark Dayton, The Early Favorite in Minnesota
For someone whose political career was deemed at an end after one rather ignominious term in the Senate, Mark Dayton is enjoying quite the revival to his political fortunes. After narrowly winning the Democratic-Farmer-Labor primary, Mark Dayton has vaulted to an early lead in the Minnesota Governor's race. A Rasmussen Reports poll finds Dayton with 45 percent of the vote compared with 36 percent for Republican Tom Emmer. Tom Horner of the Independence Party trails with 10 percent; another 10 percent are undecided. More on the race from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Bill White, "I'm in It For Texas"
Here's an ad that the Bill White campaign has been running now for about two weeks. It's a 60 second spot articulating his vision for Texas.

Having moved to Dallas at the onset of the fierce Texas summer, I've spent parts of every weekend afternoon at
apartment complex' pool.  You meet the same people over and over again.

Everyone seems very happy and content, as interested in their beer bellies ans their suntans.  The sides of the pool are littered with beer cans after awhile.  No worries about jobs, just good times, even in the 100-degree heat.  It just seems eerily disconnected from reality.

Which brings me to our political class.  They're also disconnected and content in their own way, including
President Obama.  I just don't think he gets the real world.
He came to Dallas and Austin for fund raisers, oblivious to
to his 63% disapproval rating in Texas.  And he's put Bill White in a difficult spot, having to campaign in places like Abilene and Alvarado just to prove his distance from the president.  If Bill White loses a close election, I think the blame will go to this poorly-timed fund raiser.

There is an equal obliviousness to the unemployed and how dire the fiscal situation of state and local government.
Dallas, like most cities, is relying on budget cuts and increases in user fees to balance the budget.  And when I read about roads being turned to gravel, something's really wrong.  Does anyone really want to drive on dirt roads? 

Getting Americans back to work seems beyond the "ability"
of both Democrats and Republicans.  While the GOP has obstructed meaningful aid to the unemployed, Obama and the Democrats have been unable to come up with a message that says simply--The Republicans want America to fail.  They're still drinking too much deficit Koolaid, and Obama still thinks he can work with the GOP.  Time to get real.

Part of Obama's problem is that he still relies too much on Larry Summers, someone who is really out of touch on the economy.   The stimulus has faded, and we're debating cutting veterans' benefits.  It's time to get real, else it will
be the end of America as I know it, with much less freedom and opportunity.

Bill White, the popular former Mayor of Houston, seems to be running a pretty good strategy as the Democratic nominee for Governor of Texas. He and his campaign are hammering incumbent Rick Perry for corruption and failed policies in press releases and interviews, but their new TV ad is a positive one focusing on White. This should help drive a narrative about Perry and get the facts out to reporters while still allowing White to give voters the positive campaign they want.

PPP has the race tied up at 43, and you can help White win this impressive prize (Governor of Texas in a census year!) at our ActBlue page.

Here’s White’s new ad called “San Antonio.”

The campaign is also touting the endorsements of 23 sheriffs who “represent about 50 percent of Texans and 99 percent of Texans who live in counties that touch the border with Mexico.”

But on the quieter attack side, here’s a July 27 press release hitting the ten-year incumbent for his corrupt land deals.

We learned for the first time this week that the buyer of Perry's plot of land was business partners with the person who sold it to Perry through an intermediary. The timeline of this scandal clearly shows that Perry coordinated with two business partners to flip land, buying way under value from one partner and then selling it way over value to the other business partner. In total, Rick Perry coordinated with the business partners for ill-gotten gains totaling about $500,000.

In 2000 and 2001, the land buy was arranged by Doug Jaffe, who sold Perry a plot of land through an intermediary for a whopping $150,000 less than it was worth.

In 2007, the land sale was arranged by Ron Mitchell, an trusted associate of Doug Jaffe, during a time when the property was off the market. Mitchell found a willing buyer in a business partner of Doug Jaffe. Mitchell then negotiated a price for Perry with Jaffe's partner, a price a whopping $350,000 over market value.

Mitchell's real estate firm waived the typical 6% fee for Perry, amounting to a $70,000 gift that was never reported by Perry on personal financial disclosure statements. When Mitchell was asked by the DMN whether they would have waived the fee if it was someone other than Perry, Mitchell laughed and said, "We're here to make money.” …

Perry is refusing to release the public listing agreement, had previously hidden the identity of the land buyer and had hidden the fact that the buyer was a business partner with the original seller.

Other Perry scandals include what the White campaign is calling “cash for appointments and cash for favors."

You may not like where they come down on the subject, but it can’t be argued that Texans at least take the issue of primary education seriously. The electoral success of George W. Bush’s 1994 gubernatorial and 2000 presidential platforms proves that, as does the enormous public interest in the Texas School Board textbook shenanigans.

It’s no surprise, then, that Democratic candidate for governor Bill White has been focusing on education this week. Today his staff hammered incumbent Repub Gov. Rick Perry for his record on education, but not before White himself went positive with his own plan, outlining five points at the National Council of La Raza's annual conference yesterday. It’s heartening see a border state Democrat standing up to vicious right-wing lies about Latinos and La Raza, especially with so many running the other way after the administration’s Arizona lawsuit. Thank you, Bill “Backbone” White. This from White’s campaign:

White hammered incumbent career politician Rick Perry on recent revelations of the Texas Education Agency's Enron-style accounting on school accountability measures.

"They decided to cheat, and then once caught cheating they failed to acknowledge responsibility and accept accountability. They counted failing scores as passing," White said. "How can you teach individual responsibility to students, or emphasize the importance of parental responsibility, if the state's CEO and his appointees don't accept responsibility? How can you hold teachers, principals and school boards accountable if accountability does not start at the top?"

"Pretending that schools are improving, rather than actually improving them, has been a pattern in Texas during the last decade under this governor," White said, citing Perry's failure to account for the actual dropout rate and his veto of a bipartisan bill that would have expanded early childhood education.

"The choices confronting Texas are very stark and very plain. Will the state with one out of every ten Americans in public schools set a goal, tell the truth about where we are and where we want to be, and act to educate its younger population that is largely Hispanic? Will we, as did generations before us, act on the fact that young Texans are our greatest resource, or will we simply pretend they are? Will we plant for a future with great abundance, or will we forgo that hard work and live off our harvest?" White asked.

Perry spoke at an education event today, and White’s spokesperson Katy Bacon fired back in a press release: "Does Rick Perry think it's acceptable that Texas ranks 49th out of 50 states in the percentage of adults with a high school diploma? That SAT and ACT scores are lagging while college tuition rates have skyrocketed 93 percent. Only a career politician would try to brand this as success, accountability and preparing the workforce for the future."

La Raza? Education? A tie in the polls? The chance to bump up of secessionist Rick Perry ahead of redistricting? Support Bill White now at our ActBlue page.

Bill White, the Democrat with a decent chance to become Governor of Texas, has been hitting incumbent Rick Perry hard the last few days for not working very much. A recent campaign press release said stat records show "Part-Time Perry" look 15 long weekends last year. That's followed up by this video, talking to normal Texans about records showing Perry works just 7 hours a week:

What scares me about this is that if Perry was able to cause this much damage to the state in just 7 hours a week, how bad would things have been had he worked a full 40? I guess he needs the extra 33 to maintain that perfect hair helmet, though, so that's fair.

You can donate to White, who was tied with Perry 43-43 in the latest poll, at the Going On Offense ActBlue page.