Whitman, Poizner campaign on their home Silicon Valley turf

The two Silicon Valley Republicans running for governor campaigned a few miles apart in their own backyard Friday, near the end of a contest that has taken both Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner far from their political and professional roots.

Whitman spoke in an equipment room at Graniterock, a concrete business in Redwood City, up the road from her home in Atherton. Poizner’s rally, at an airplane museum in nearby San Carlos, was only a bit farther from his hometown of Los Gatos.

Both candidates sprang from this world, where Democrats outnumber Republicans, who are generally moderate. Whitman, the former chief executive of EBay who registered Republican in 2007, and Poizner, the state insurance commissioner and a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, have donated to politicians of both parties and expressed temperate views on a variety of issues.

But as they have vied for the diehard Republican voters who will determine the nominee in the June 8 primary, they have moved to the right on issues including abortion, the environment and illegal immigration.

“It’s great to be back in Silicon Valley,” Poizner told his audience at the Hiller Aviation Museum on Friday. “Are there any conservatives here? Well, you know, sometimes living in this area, it can be pretty lonely being a conservative.”

Although in past campaigns he described himself as a moderate, Poizner told his audience Friday that he had been greeted with hostility while knocking on doors in Palo Alto during one of those races because he was conservative. The culprit: a scowling 12-year-old girl who pointed at him and said, he recalled, “ ‘I know who you are: You’re Steve Poizner the capitalist!’ It was a bit like meeting Barbara Boxer as a child!” he said of the Democratic U.S. senator from California.

Whitman, who leads Poizner in polls, has tried to straddle a line: taking conservative positions in some areas and attacking her opponent as liberal without talking much about being conservative or even Republican.

As if to punctuate her appearance here, Van Jones, the former environmental chief for President Obama, whom conservatives regard as a radical, was interviewed on local public radio just before her rally. Poizner has pilloried Whitman for praising him and taking an Arctic cruise with a group that included Jones several years ago.

Burlingame Mayor Cathy Baylock, who attended both events, said after Whitman’s speech that she did not believe either candidate had actually changed. Their conservative rhetoric, she said, was a byproduct of the polarization of politics by extremists in both parties.

“We can’t go by what is being said today,” said Baylock, a Republican. “You can go back three or four years and see the positions they took, and none of us should take at face value what we get in a brochure.... They are moderate Republicans.”

Whitman favors abortion rights but has attacked Poizner for expressing “liberal” positions on abortion in the past, including support for “partial birth abortion,” a name opponents of the procedure use for late-term abortion, which is illegal in most cases. She moved to the right on illegal immigration in response to Poizner calling her weak on the issue, saying she’d be “tough as nails” and send the National Guard to the border. And she has derided Boxer, whom she endorsed when the senator last ran for reelection.

At the concrete yard, Whitman focused mostly on more centrist issues. Through targeted tax cuts, less regulation and other efforts, she said, she would stop Nevada, Utah, Colorado and other states from enticing business to leave California.

“They’re after our jobs, and we have to stand up and compete,” Whitman said. “I want to set an objective of not losing another job to a neighboring state. We should really set this objective.”

She did not mention illegal immigration in her speech. She did not repeat the statement she’d made at an event Thursday in Modesto to a conservative group of politically active farmers about who deserves the “innovation award” of the last decade in California. “It’s not Silicon Valley. It’s not the biotech industry,” she said then. “It’s the farmers,” working with a lack of water and what she said were excessive environmental regulations.

Whitman briefly mentioned that she supports putting a one-year moratorium on the state’s 2006 law to curb global warming, though she previously donated $300,000 to a group that sponsored it and took the Arctic cruise. She, like Poizner, says the regulations, which haven’t taken effect yet, would hurt the state’s economy.

In Silicon Valley, the law is seen as a boon for green-energy businesses. Whitman acknowledged to reporters after her speech that “many of my venture capital friends on Sand Hill Road [in Menlo Park] disagree with me on this, but I have done the analysis.”

Poizner on Friday spoke in front of signs saying “Tax Cuts for Everyone,” but he continued to focus on illegal immigration. He cited Whitman’s opposition to the Arizona law that cracks down on illegal residents to support his accusations — which she denies — that she supports amnesty for people here illegally.

“This is pretty much all you need to know,” he said. “How on earth can you be a conservative and be against what’s going on in Arizona? Obviously it exposes her true position here on immigration.”

Joline Oberhelman, a retired flight attendant who also attended both events Friday, said there were “not nearly enough” conservatives in the area. At least for her, the illegal immigration issue resonated.

“I go to Home Depot. I see probably about 20 illegal immigrants hanging around, trying to get a job,” she said. “While I think many of us have sympathy for the fact these people are trying to survive, they need to come in legally.”

michael.rothfeld@latimes.com