look at how she is doing, quite well. still leading in this race, against the democratic challenger and last night s debate they stayed away from the personal rumors which have dogged the race and tried to reach through that and out to the voters. take a look: i think both parties have let them down and the republicans made mistakes and i think the m through that, the birth of the tea party came and i said the tea party is not a party, they are republicans, democrats and independents who said they have had enough. i don t want anybody to vote for me because i m a democrat. and i don t want anybody to vote for haley because she s a republican. we have to vote for people because they are good leaders. i have a quick question, do you like each other. yes. i used to. [laughter] [cheers and applause].
they would commit to banning negative campaigning in the final days of the race, and, here s what happened: a lot of people would love you to say, governor brown, shake hands, you are on. let me try a different approach. i understand it s not easy for either of you. . to make decisions in the if i was all of this. i need a little time. martha: that happened last night, republican governor candidate, now, meg whitman joins me now, great to have you with us today, welcome. thanks, glad to be here. martha: you know, did you think it was a fair question from mat lauer, fair that he put you on the spot in that way? well, you know, i learned anything is fair in politics and i would have liked nothing better than to run an entirely positive campaign on the issues,
opponent and possibly in large part because of an endorsement she received earlier this year from former alaska governor sarah palin. but, charleston professor sekena stewart says the race may be tighter when you consider other indicators such as fund-raising. listen. sheheen is competitive and they are running neck and neck when it comes to the amount of money raised which is unusual for a democratic candidate in south carolina especially looking at the last two gubernatorial races. reporter: polls continue to suggest haley is the favored candidate and however the polls are too close for either candidate to be comfortable, martha. martha: that will be a good one to watch and enjoy your time in charleston, jonathan, jonathan serr serrie. bill: the balance of power is critical, too, next tuesday night, i want to remind viewers what is at stake, especially, on the house side. the house side, right now, you need a majority of 218, to take
him is that he is doing better amongst male voters by a margin of about 15 percentage points according to polls and he has drawn even with feingold as far as female voters. that s bad math for the feingold campaign because traditionally women break strongly towards senator feingold and if he s even there that s a sign that johnson may be in command in this race. bill: thank you for that, steve brown, live there in milwaukee. russ feingold, junior democrat out of wisconsin, elected in 1992, reelected 2004 with 55 percent of voters putting him back into office and tuesday night, watch the critical balance of power on the senate side right now, republicans need ten seats to get a clear 51 seat majority. a lot of handicappers say okay, you can get six or seven for sure, #, ten, 11 might be a bit more of a challenge but we ll all see and that s the drama that tuesday night holds for all of us. martha: we ll be here, that s for sure. how about this, president obama responding to the big di
so here let me try a different approach. i understand it s not easy. it s hard to make decisions in the face of all of this. bill: it went from there, polling shows jerry brown is holding a nine-point lead on meg whitman, it s the real clear politics average, 49.2 for brown, 39.7 for meg whitman. martha: boy oh boy, that was an interesting moment and a big question about whether or not that was a fair question, a fair position to put these candidates into, and as you point out, arnold schwarzenegger is sitting in the middle in between them, he hasn t endorsed either candidate in this race and at one point he took a shot at meg whitman at the end of this discussion, so that was an interesting dynamic. so meg whitman is going to be with us next hour, we will get her reaction, what was going through her mind as all of that was unfolding on that stage last night, was it a fair question, how she plans to turn around she s got a nine-point decifit according to these polls, she s go