Whitman Sets Up Campaign Shop in Brown Territory

California is a big state with more than its share of big cities.  So it makes sense for a candidate for governor to open campaign offices in as many of those cities as possible.  They do it to establish a presence and to attract campaign volunteers.

That is unless the city is Oakland and the candidate is Meg Whitman.

This candidate doesn't have to worry about  a return on investment. Whitman has plenty more where that first $104 million came from.  She has set up a campaign office in the shopping district of Lakeshore Avenue.

Being the business woman she is, it was all about location, location, location.  But this is the business of politics and how much walk-in traffic will there be when only six percent of the registered voters in the community happen to be Republicans?

Apparently, the Whitman camp sees Oakland's unemployment rate of nearly 18-percent as a sort of welcome mat.

Oakland, of course, is the home base of Democrat Jerry Brown whose campaign headquarters is located near Jack London Square.  The Brown camp scoffs at the Whitman office.

According to Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford, "It's all front, no store.  We have a bigger substance campaign."

A campaign spokesman told the Chronicle that Whitman wants "to make sure that everybody hears Meg's universal message of job creation."

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