Meg Whitman’s NASCAR attire leads to campaign fire

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Two GOP candidates for California governor, Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, spent part of their weekend at the NASCAR racetrack in Fontana trying to build up support and working-class street cred for their campaigns.

But it is what Whitman wore that the Poizner campaign is seizing on as a fashion faux pas. Whitman posted a photo of herself on Twitpic waving the green flag in what appears to be a designer Burberry coat.

‘Let’s say you are an out-of-touch billionaire running for governor and everyone is accusing you of trying to buy the election,’ Poizner spokeswoman Bettina Inclan wrote in an e-mail to reporters this morning.

‘You need to show that you are in touch with regular working people, so you go to a NASCAR race on a Saturday night. But was that a Burberry coat that Meg chose to wear to NASCAR? Isn’t that against some kind of unwritten rule?’

Whitman is a billionaire from her days as chief executive of EBay. Poizner, the state’s insurance commissioner, is a multimillionaire himself from selling a high-tech company in 2000.

-- Shane Goldmacher in Sacramento