California RINO gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has blundered into the hazardous firing range of Los Angeles radio guys John and Ken for her rapid switch from ”tough as nails” immigration enforcer in the primary to hispandering liar now in the general election. They are not happy that the E-bay billionaire is ”talking out of both sides of her mouth in two different languages.”
In 2004, I wrote about John and Ken’s Political Human Sacrifice campaign to smack open-borders R-reps around: The John And Ken Show Roils California’s Congressional Republicans. They organized a campaign of voter anger upon many supposed SoCal conservatives who thought they could support open borders yet keep their seats in Congress. The main target ended up being Rep. David Dreier, who was not defeated but was given a serious scare and has improved his voting behavior since then (rating an A in 2008).
More recently, the radio guys have been running the Heads on a Stick campaign to fight out-of-control spending by the California government.
Whitman’s Spanish-language advertising (including billboards like the one pictured that condemn Arizona’s immigration law and Prop 187) does not match up with her statements in English, and John and Ken have noticed – big time. For the past couple days, their website has demanded of Whitman, ”Stop the Pandering!” and includes contact information for her campaign; plus the radio show has been filled with fierce invective against lying politicians. During the 2003 Gray Davis recall, they supported Schwarzenegger for governor as being the real deal on the immigration issue. But he turned weasel, and as a result of being misled, John and Ken say they are now more demanding of straight talk from candidates.
(For a sample of what’s going on, listen to the 3pm hour from July 21, where the Meg-bashing starts at 3:19 in: AUDIO.)
Their radio show has a huge audience in Los Angeles, and the Meg-bashing is now getting attention from other media, even the liberal LA Times:
Don’t Mess with John and Ken, LA Times Magazine, July 20, 2010
A wise gubernatorial candidate should know better than to mess with John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, hosts of one of the most listened to radio programs in the United States. The John & Ken Show broadcasts live from Los Angeles every weekday on AM-640, for an astonishing five consecutive hours–including during peak drive time.
Since the early 1990s, John and Ken have built an audience of millions–one listener at a time–by waging grass-roots campaigns against elected officials they find hypocritical. Where they have made the most serious ground is in taking on governors, which is why their newest target, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, should take heed. In 1993, John and Ken were instrumental in toppling New Jersey governor Jim Florio. In 2003, they were instrumental in getting Governor Gray Davis recalled.
”In October 2009, Meg Whitman came on our show and made her position on illegal immigration very clear,” John told me in an interview earlier today, explaining that Whitman’s ”tone and her words were all about how tough she was going to be.” Then last Friday, a Spanish-language op-ed quoted Whitman as saying there was little difference between her and Jerry Brown when it comes to immigration issues. John and Ken read that and were stunned–Brown supports amnesty as ”a path to citizenship.”
On Monday morning, along came the final straw: ”Visuals have great impact,” John said, relating a tale told by a listener, who was driving though the San Fernando Valley, when he spotted Meg Whitman billboards all across Latino neighborhoods, in Spanish, using ”defiantly words you’d expect from Jerry Brown!”
The billboards read, ”No a la Proposicion 187 y NO a la ley de Arizona” and are signed by Meg Whitman. (Prop 187 aims to deny illegal immigrants access to health care, public schools and other social services; Arizona law aims to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants.) […]
Will the candidate defend her actions on The John and Ken Show? She might have to–only this time, her campaign managers would be wise to brush up on the hosts’ backstory. ”Cause when John and Ken talk, people listen and governors (or governors-to-be) fall.
Can eMeg’s copious millions of dollars spent on ads overcome the well-deserved bile from John and Ken? She spent over $70 million of her fortune in the primary alone, so she isn’t shy about shoveling out cash in hopes of hypnotizing voters. A Rasmussen poll taken July 12 showed Whitman virtually even with Democrat Jerry Brown, so she has been doing okay up to this point.
But a tangle with John and Ken will seriously hurt her. She has been making rookie mistakes in a big league game, and is likely to spend over $100 million and lose the election— because she thought she could hispander on immigration and get away with it.
