Try as he might, one-time candidate for governor Tom Campbell just couldn’t compete with the financial firepower of his wealthy rivals, former EBay Chief Meg Whitman and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

Those two Republicans have combined to give their campaigns for governor nearly $60 million. Campbell dropped his bid for governor and declared a run for U.S. Senate last month.

On Monday, campaign filings showed he raised roughly $900,000 in 2009 for his since-abandoned bid for governor. He spent $680,000 — much of it on online outreach; leftover funds cannot be transferred to the federal race. Campbell’s first Senate campaign report won’t be due until April.
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Tom Campbell like Chuck DeVore will NOT be able to compete with Carly Fiorina

Looking at the PPIC poll ‘s score of the governor’s race in the Republican primary, some might wonder if Steve Poizner is finished. I’m not one of them.

Even though Poizner is 30 points behind Meg Whitman this is no time to close the books on the campaign. Voters don’t pay close attention until a month or so out from Election Day. The recent heralded victory of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race is only the most recent example of a candidate coming from way down in the polls to snatch victory. Brown’s winning surge occurred over the last ten days of the campaign.

Richard Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles, was the prohibitive favorite to capture the 2002 Republican gubernatorial nomination. One month before the March primary election, Riordan was 33 points ahead of eventual winner Bill Simon.

Of course, in that race Simon had the benefit of Democratic Governor Gray Davis dropping millions of dollars in ads against Riordan
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Poizner is done.

Chuck DeVore's campaign set a February 1st deadline to raise $60,000. It appears this money bomb was a dud.

Update Eight hours later, DeVore's money bomb experiment increasingly appears impotent. Despite running ads on the Drudge Report, DeVore's campaign is still $15,000 shy of their $60,000 goal that they extended over several days. "Money bomb" was described as a "one-day fundraising frenzy." It seems that despite the weight of Drudge and Red State behind him, DeVore fell flat.
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Yep. All that is left for DeVore is to gracefully withdraw and plan for his next career move out of elected office.

Meg Whitman campaign strategist Mike Murphy has fired back at opponent Steve Poizner's accusation that he sought to force the insurance commissioner out of the race with threats that the cash-flush campaign would spend $40 million "tearing up Steve if we must."

"After reading the ridiculous charges made by Steve Poizner during today's strange press conference, all I can say is that I'm starting to worry about the Commissioner's mental condition," Murphy said in a statement

Poizner called today for state and federal law enforcement officials to investigate whether what he described as "crystal-clear" threats Murphy made to his campaign consultants violated any laws.
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Steve Poizner just stuck a fork in himself today.

Poizner is done in the governor's race.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner today said he has reported "threats" made by the Republican rival Meg Whitman's campaign adviser to law enforcement officials.

Poizner said at a press conference that Whitman campaign strategist Mike Murphy issued "crystal-clear" threats to his staff in an attempt to effectively "cancel the election" by pushing him to drop out of the race.

"This is not an attempt to be hardball and to be aggressive, but this is an attempt to effectively manipulate the election process, the integrity of the election process, by issuing these threats behind the scenes to get me not to run," he said.
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Say good night Steve.

Pathetic and desperate attempt to co-opt Whitman. At least Poizner won't have to spend millions now.