Meg Whitman: "Fresno looks like Detroit. It's awful."

[Kadie]

Whitman: Fresno 'looks like Detroit'
Posted at 11:00 AM on Wednesday, Sep. 22, 2010
By John Ellis / The Fresno Bee


Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman on Tuesday told the San Jose Mercury News editorial board that "Fresno looks like Detroit. It's awful."

According to the Mercury News website, Whitman was commenting on Fresno's economic state and the effect of recession on the region, and the former eBay CEO's campaign said as much in a statement released this morning.

"It was clear in the interview that Meg was talking about the economic duress in Fresno and the awful pain that results from record high unemployment," Whitman spokesman Andrea Jones Rivera said in an e-mail. "Meg knows that Fresno cannot be left behind as it has been in the past when the economic situation around the state gets better but Fresno doesn't respond as quickly."

But Tom Holyoke, a political science professor at California State University, Fresno, said Whitman should know better.

"It was not a smart move on her part," he said. "It was not particularly well thought out. It sounds like an off-the-cuff comment. Off-the-cuff comments are a politician's worst nightmare."


Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/09/22/2088372/whitman-fresno-looks-like-detroit.html#ixzz10I5gZPS6

[PBS Poll-435]

1. Did she just lose JimRob's vote?

:rofl:

[Kadie]

6. Fresno Bee Editorial: Whitman didn't really trash Fresno with Detroit remark-it just sounded like it

Whitman didn't really trash Fresno with Detroit remark -- it just sounded like it

snip...
That passage set some of us off early this morning, and the emails quickly raced around our favorite city complaining about Whitman's insensitivity.

It seems that Whitman's point was California has a 12.4% percent jobless rate and that's terrible. But in Fresno, which she's visited 15 times, the rate is even higher: 15.4%. We should be cheering that someone outside of Fresno understands our economic misery. Too often, the economic hardships of this region are ignored by the state's leaders, who cater to the population centers in L.A. and San Francisco.

This is how Fresnan Bill Jones, the former secretary of state, termed it after the mini-controversy broke out: She was trying to make the comparison about the jobless rate here being similar to Detroit's, he said. "It was a comment about the Fresno economy collapsing, much like Detroit's did when the auto industry went under." Jones said this was about jobs. Fresno has a 15.4% unemployment rate, and that's "awful," he said.

But the real problem with Whitman's assessment of the Fresno economy is that our jobless rate has always been higher than the state rate, even when Big Ag was booming. She has been to the region many times, but it's problems are a lot broader than just those of agriculture. It appears that Whitman believes that if farmers get enough water for their crops, all will be well in Fresno.

Read more: http://fresnobeehive.com/opinion/2010/09/whitman_didnt_really_trash_fre.html#ixzz10I8dVsVa

[blue_onyx]

11. She just meant to trash Detroit

Nice. I'll enjoy seeing her waste over 100 million dollars more than I thought.

[kiranon]

19. Right! She probably meant it about Fresno but not directly. I expect she likes the

finer things and places in life. Perhaps the TV station could rerun "Fresno" - it was really funny. Sorry Fresno but I don't think Meg liked it although I believe her comments were about the economy and not the place but she said it the way she did because of her visual reaction to Fresno.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. huh. Fresno is kinda rural, nothing like Detroit.

[stopbush]

9. Fresno has a deserted downtown that is crumbling, like many inner city areas.

All the action is in the reclaimed farmlands that surround the place. The planned communities where the rich people live.

Whitless shot herself in the foot with this. Fresno is a conservative bastion in a liberal state, and while Fresnoians are perfectly happy dumping on their dump of a town, that's a right they reserve to themselves. I know. I lived there for 3 years. All I can say is, all in all, I wish I had been in Detroit instead.

[Liberal_in_LA]

20. I know that downtown area. It's little!

[Cleita]

3. Well, she just lost those votes and in a very Republican

zone. Keep it up Meg. I'm loving it. I wonder what she thinks of Sacramento, where she will have to spend a lot of time, or even if she's ever been there?

[LuckyTheDog]

4. A gratuitous slap at at a majority black city just to make half-baked point?

Keep it classy, Meg.

:eyes:

[lunatica]

5. She would need an assistant to follow her around and translate to us

"What she really meant to say" will be the first words out of said assistant's mouth.

It' only because she doesn't have a clue about how to act around us peasants.

[devilgrrl]

7. Freepville looks like Detroit? I'd rather live in Detroit.

eom

[SoCalDem]

8. The object of management should be stability, but in recent years

GROWTH is the only thing that seems to be of value. When a boom happens, wild growth takes place, but people rarely realize that BUST follows boom..

Kooks like Meg are used to the "beat the street" mentality, which is dangerous if one thinks in decades and not election-cycles. Fresno went through what many places went through and are still going through. Rapid growth does not equal longterm prosperity.

Detroit was just fine until it's stability was whisked away because it cost more to modernize the industries there than it was to carpetbag them down south where the livin' was eeeeeeeasy..and cheap.

Anyone who has ever played Jenga knows how it all works..:(

[MineralMan]

10. Silly Meg....Fresno has always looked like Detroit to me.

[Canuckistanian]

12. Looks like she'll have to spend more money for damage control

Ka-ching $$$$$$

[Kadie]

15. LOL

Time to write another check!

:rofl:

[NWHarkness]

13. "Detroit" is GOP-speak for "n*gger"

Does Fresno have a large African-American population?

[slackmaster]

14. About 40% Hispanic or Latino, more Asians than African-Americans

It's a typical California agricultural area melted pot.

http://www.explorefresno.com/demographics.html

I think of "Detroit" as "Capital of the Rust Belt"; a place where a once-thriving economy has been ruined by migration of production overseas.

I think of Detroit as a city where you can buy a beautiful Victorian house for under $10,000, then expect to pay about $6K per year in property tax and another $6K in insurance, but homes aren't moving because there are no jobs.

[JuniperLea]

16. Are there a lot of immigrant farm workers in Detroit?

Because that's what I think of... big farm companies and their bus loads of workers from Mexico... you know, those brown people the GOTP is trying to get everyone to hate, and that their RW crony companies "hire."

I hope that stupid statement makes a lot of GOTPers stay home from the polls.

[Barack_America]

17. It doesn't matter what they do, it just matters that they're not white. nt

[JuniperLea]

18. Indeed...

So are Muslims... so is the president... we're being encouraged to hate the brown every day.

Yet we have so many addicted to tanning... or the fake orange tan...