Meg Whitman adds a new line to her explanation of why she did not register to vote until 2002. | POLITICO Staff Whitman: Too busy with family to vote

Meg Whitman has added a new line to her explanation of why she did not register to vote until 2002, telling reporters that she was too preoccupied with “raising a family.”

Following a speech to a group of Yolo County Republican women on Tuesday, the Republican California gubernatorial hopeful said that she was “focused on raising a family, on my husband's career, and we moved many, many times” in response to a reporter’s question on her past voting record.


“It is no excuse. My voting record, my registration record, is unacceptable,” she added.

Whitman further explained that she was not engaged in politics until she became CEO of eBay, where she saw “inspired individuals who created business who got slapped down by taxation, by bureaucracy and regulation.”

“When I came to eBay, what I saw was the incredible difficulties that government created for small business,” she said, according to press accounts of the event.

Whitman’s campaign has been plagued by unrelenting questions about her voting record since the Sacramento Bee revealed that she had not registered to vote until she was 46-years-old. Whitman has spoken to the issue in remarks and interviews with the media numerous times, but has yet to get past the story.

Earlier in the week, the Whitman’s camp adopted a line from Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), who noted over the weekend that her late husband, Sonny, did not register to vote until he ran for mayor of Palm Springs.

“He went on to be a successful mayor and a successful member of Congress,” Bono Mack said.

The fellow California Republican also said that Whitman’s “leadership issues” and not her experience makes her “an amazing candidate for governor.”