DC to CA

George Will comes out to California to take the lay of the land in the race to be the GOP's nominee for governor in 2010, and comes out granting his imprimatur to Meg Whitman: Can California Be Sold On ebay's Former Leader

California's campaigns introduce candidates not only to the state's voters but to its immensity. In Bakersfield, Meg Whitman, 52, the former CEO of eBay who is campaigning for the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nomination, learned about carrots.

In 1968, the Grimm brothers were selling vegetables at a roadside stand in Anaheim. They moved to Bakersfield and today Grimmway Farms and one rival provide 80 percent of the nation's carrots, partly because the brothers figured out how to make the vegetables pleasingly uniform in shape.

Who knew? Whitman didn't, and the story, which she tells enthusiastically and at length, delights her because it confirms her conviction that California "was built by intellectual capital," and not just the Hollywood and Silicon Valley sort.

Whitman makes a lot of good noises in Will's column. She wants to make it much harder to put propositions on the ballot, which has long been a hobby horse of mine. Her's is a reformers message, but if she really is going to reform CA's government in the face of the state's entrenched progressive interests in the State House, the bureauocracy, the media and the public employee unions, she will need to hone her rhetoric to a steely point for the street fights that lie ahead.