It would appear Meg Whitman has taken a page from the Palin campaign playbook if one were to judge from a most unusual campaign event in Oakland yesterday. Whitman invited the press to cover a meeting she was to have with a railroad executive, but upon its completion she refused to take any questions. After a long pause and some nervous laughter, she had security block the cameras, and finally had them escorted out by her press aid.
The Washington Post puts this event in context:
The danger for Whitman is that her aversion to taking questions in non-controlled situations becomes part of a broader narrative (that Poizner is trying to build) that she is simply trying to buy the race without ever really engaging with voters.
California politics is littered with wealthy candidates who spent millions of their own money but were unable to connect with average voters. (See Checchi, Al) Whitman runs the risk of being lumped into that ignominious category if this story grows legs and become a broader thematic heading into the June primary.
Democrats were predictably quick to jump all over this snafu, but even the local news reporters could not help from taking a few jabs at Whitman in the report below: