Is this election really the most important election? We hear this every election cycle, however this year might indeed be a watershed. Just look at the current shape of California’s economy. Last year we had to issue IOUs to pay off our debts. Our taxes are some of the highest in the nation. Our business climate is so bad that companies no longer want to be based out of this once premier state. Thousands of jobs and potential taxpayers have left because of the unfriendly approach we take toward businesses. Our state has one of the highest unemployment rates (12.4 percent) in the nation. We have more people leaving our state than coming in for the first time in our history. The left wing of the Democratic Party has driven our state off a cliff. It is time for California to have a leader with some real world business experience, not a politician whose only business experience is in the business of politics.

Meg Whitman transformed eBay from a small company of only 30 workers into a multi-billion dollar global enterprise of 15,000 employees right here in California. In an election where job growth is the number one issue, Whitman is the only candidate who has actually created jobs and, more specifically, private sector jobs. Jerry Brown has already failed twice as governor during his 40-year career as a politician. He left California with a then record high unemployment of 11.1 percent and managed to turn a $6 billion surplus into a $1 billion deficit. Brown epitomizes the kind of politician that California does not need. The labor unions, which sap up 80 percent of our state’s tax revenue, have bankrolled his campaign. I can promise you, if Jerry Brown is elected governor, those labor unions and special interest groups will be lined up all the way from Storke Tower to the governor’s office waiting for their payback.

I’m tired of being labeled as a heartless, corporate-sheltering bigot for being a Republican. That’s not what we stand for. Our party has been run out of the state and the Democrats have failed; California is now on the brink of collapse. Our school systems were once the top in the nation, now we are one of the worst. We have scared off business opportunities and jobs through destructively high tax rates, excess regulation and red tape. Our tax revenue and our paychecks have gone to conservative business-friendly states like Texas and Arizona.

Whitman not only knows what to do, but also how to do it. She is highly focused on three things: creating jobs, cutting government spending and fixing our education system. Whitman knows the only way to fix our job market is to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to operate in California. Meg knows California doesn’t have a revenue problem, but a spending problem of epic proportions. Our legislators continue to spend money we don’t have on meaningless pet projects and entitlements. Meg knows that she must break up the centralized bureaucratic school system and make labor unions and teachers more accountable. In addition, she has a plan to invest $1 billion back into the UC and CSU systems in order to prevent our tuition from increasing year after year. Meg believes that the “Golden State can be golden again,” but we cannot continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Therefore I ask all my fellow Californians: Are we going to elect Jerry Brown yet again and expect a result other than failure? Or are we going to elect a proven leader and wealth creator? The choice is ours.