Steve Poizner Rally in Laguna Hills

Well, I attended my first official campaign rally featuring a statewide candidate and it wasn't quite what I expected. It was the Orange County Kick-off for Steve Poizner for Governor. Keep in mind the primary election is only a month away, so it seemed a little late for a kick-off, but apparently that's the campaign plan. Wait until the voters are starting to pay close attention and flood the zone.

I was expecting a large event in a big ballroom, but found the parking lot almost empty when I got there and maybe 20 or so people in a small ballroom.  The crowd grew a bit, but was still surprisingly small for a county kick-off.

There were several local politicos who spoke before the candidate, including this Villa Park councilwoman who acted as the emcee.

Poizner spoke without notes for maybe 20 minutes including taking a few questions.

The crowd grew to about 100-125 in the relatively small area for the rally.

Poizner seemed to hit all the right conservative notes on issues like illegal immigration (he wants to cut off all State funding of benefits for illegals), taxes (10% cuts in personal income tax/50% cut in capital gains), 10th Amendment stuff (such as demanding the State have control over its own natural resources), Prop 13 (he said he is strongly in favor if it, including the 2/3rds voting requirement for raising taxes) and abortion (cutting off all government funding, though he didn't make a blanket statement about banning the barbaric practice).

He took a few questions from the voters.

And took a little time to press the flesh as they set up a phone bank operation in the room.

I liked what I heard, but I'm still not ready to endorse anyone. Meg Whitman worries me in that she appears to be another Arnold Schwarzenegger, too squishy on conservative issues and more likely to side with Democrats in order to achieve "bipartisanship", which we all know is defined these days as "going along with what Democrats want".

More research is needed before I can really sort the two candidates out.