Don't expect to see Republican Meg Whitman on the 2012 ballot.

The former eBay chief executive, who poured $144 million of her own cash into her failed gubernatorial bid, told the Wall Street Journal that she is "definitely not" planning to run against Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein in next year's election.

The Wall Street Journal Reports:

"I want to stay involved in public policy," Ms. Whitman said in an interview Friday evening. "Now I see things in a way that I had not prior to running for public office, she said.

Ms. Whitman, who was CEO of the online-auction company for a decade until 2008, said that she likely will campaign for Republican Mitt Romney in the next presidential race. She also said she will continue to serve on the boards of several organizations, including the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, which hosted a conference Friday where she moderated a panel discussion on the nation's long-term fiscal outlook.

Read the full post here.

Former GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has joined the board of directors for the car-sharing service Zipcar, according to a news release from the Cambridge, Mass.-based company.

Whitman has also joined the boards of tech company Hewlett-Packard and consumer products giant Procter & Gamble after losing her gubernatorial bid to Democrat Jerry Brown in November.

Whitman, the former CEO of online auction firm eBay, spent $144 million of her own funds on the race, putting together the most expensive nonpresidential campaign in U.S. history.

Photo: Former GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman speaks at a Sept. 29, 2010, debate at UC Davis. (Jose Luis Villegas/Sacramento Bee)

Every time Californians elect or re-elect a governor, the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley stages a daylong post-mortem on what happened during the campaign to produce the outcome.

While the candidates don't appear, their campaign and media advisers ordinarily show up for an almost day-by-day dissection of the contest. But when the latest version was held last month, it was noteworthy for the complete absence of anyone from Republican Meg Whitman's losing campaign.

Perhaps they were embarrassed that she could spend more than $150 million, most of it her own money, and lose in a landslide to a skinflint Democrat, Jerry Brown. But for whatever reason, they boycotted.

Nevertheless, political junkies who did not attend can now immerse themselves in the Whitman-less details because IGS is making the entire session available as a webcast here.

Former GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is adding to her post-election workload, returning to Procter & Gamble Co.'s board of directors.

The Associated Press reports:

The Cincinnati-based consumer products maker whose brands include Tide detergent and Pampers diapers said Friday that Whitman has been appointed as a 12th board member, effective immediately.

Whitman, 54, was on the company's board from 2003 to 2008.

P&G's CEO and board chairman, Bob McDonald, said in a statement Friday that Whitman was an outstanding director and P&G welcomes back her business knowledge, vision and "passion for winning."

Whitman, a Republican, resigned from the boards of P&G, eBay and DreamWorks Animation SKG shortly before launching her bid for governor.

Whitman, who has largely stayed out of the public eye since losing the November election to Democrat Jerry Brown, was named last month to the board of directors of Hewlett-Packard.

The books are closed on the most expensive non-presidential race in U.S. history, and defeated Republican candidate Meg Whitman's final tally is a record-breaking $178.5 million spent on her gubernatorial campaign.

That includes about $144 million of her own money, making her by far the biggest self-funding candidate in U.S. history. Despite the big bucks, the billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay lost to Democrat Jerry Brown by 13 percentage points.

Including the money she spent winning the Republican primary against Steve Poizner, Whitman spent about $43.25 for each of her 4,127,391 votes in the general election.

UC Berkeley's regular post-election conference is under way at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza, and the clear theme of the first session, which analyzed the gubernatorial primary -- billionaire Republican candidate Meg Whitman's money.

In the thick of the primary race, both Democratic candidate Jerry Brown and Republican Steve Poizner based many of their political calculations on how to counter Whitman's threat to spend up to $150 million of her own money on the race. She ended up spending more than $140 million.

Poizner strategist Jim Bognet said that money allowed Whitman to rebound after Poizner pummeled her with ads attacking her immigration positions and her ties to the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Whitman's monster lead over Poizner, which widened to around 50 percentage points at one point, shrank to single digits, according to some polls.

Whitman spent $15 million on direct mail criticizing Poizner compared to the $400,000 Poizner spent on mail, Bognet said. Poizner ultimately burned through about $25 million of his own money.

"We were taking punches left and right, on the radio, from September, on TV, from February," Bognet said. "We really couldn't punch back. When we did punch back on character and on immigration where there was differentiation, she didn't take the punch very well for six weeks. She then kind of rebooted her campaign with a new message."

The result: Poizner losing the nomination to Whitman by more than 30 percentage points.

Former GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman was named to Hewlett-Packard's board of directors today as the company announced a series of changes to its board.

The former eBay chief executive, who lost the November gubernatorial contest to Gov. Jerry Brown, is one of five new members appointed to the board.

Whitman has largely stayed out of the public spotlight since Nov. 2, surfacing today to speak at a private San Francisco event for young women associated with Harvard University, her own alma mater for business school.

Before the event, Whitman told the San Francisco Chronicle that she plans to "keep my hand in public policy and politics" and focus on work on several company and non-profit boards.

The New York Times has more on the HP board shake-up, which was triggered by the forced resignation of the company's top executive, here.

PHOTO CREDIT: California governatorial candidate Meg Whitman arrived at In-N-Out Burgers off Del Paso Heights Rd in Natomas to meet and greet while. October 15, 2010. Jose Luis Villegas/Sacramento Bee.

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is scheduled to speak Thursday at the Harvard Club in San Francisco, according to the club's website.

Attendance at the sold-out event is limited to 20 young female alumni, the site says. Since losing her bid for governor in November, Whitman has virtually disappeared from the public spotlight.

The online event announcement makes only a brief mention of Whitman's candidacy, instead stressing her decade-long run as CEO of the online auction firm eBay. Whitman received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a business degree from Harvard.

Whitman is also scheduled to address a group of women executive and entrepreneurs on Jan. 31 at a Redwood City event hosted by the business group the Bay Area Council. That event is closed to press and the general public.

Meg Whitman is scheduled to make one of her first public appearances since losing the gubernatorial race at a Jan. 31 women's executive roundtable to be held at Chantilly restaurant in Redwood City, according to Joe Arellano, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council business group, which is hosting the event.

The billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay will speak to 50 to 100 women executives and entrepreneurs from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., Arellano said. Continuing the tight-lipped practice of her campaign, media will not be allowed inside, and only council members and invited non-members may attend.

"To have a candid conversation with our women CEOs and executives, Ms. Whitman asked that the event be closed press," Arellano said.

Whitman, a Republican, lost the election to Democrat Jerry Brown in November while becoming the biggest self-funded candidate in U.S. history. She spent about $144 million of her own money on her campaign and lost by 13 percentage points.

PHOTO CREDIT: Former gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman speaks at a Sept. 29, 2010, gubernatorial debate held at UC Davis (José Luis Villegas / Sacramento Bee)

An editor's note: This post has been updated to reflect the spelling of Arellano's last name.

Sarah Pompei, the press secretary for Republican Meg Whitman's gubernatorial bid, has landed a job as communications director for Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy.

The Bakersfield congressman, a former state Assembly Republican leader, will serve as the Republican whip in the 112th Congress.

McCarthy announced the hire in a press release issued today. He also named Time Warner lobbyist Tim Berry, a former top aide to embattled former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, as his chief of staff.

The top bid, so far, for the "Queen Meg" tiara is more than $100.

The California Nurses Association is auctioning - on eBay - props its activists used to skewer Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman on the campaign trail this year. This time, the union is using eBay, Whitman's former domain as CEO, as a platform.

The proceeds are going to the Nicky Diaz Defense Fund, an effort supported by various unions to offer aid to Whitman's ex-housekeeper as she attempts to win legal residency in immigration court.

Diaz has become a hero to labor and immigrant activists, with the nurses union likely involved in helping her tell her story.

"Queen Meg was more than a parody, she was a symbol of our broken politics. Let's use her campaign for good, and do what Meg Whitman wouldn't, by supporting the legal efforts of housekeeper Nicky Diaz," nurse Zenei Cortez, a co-president of the union, said in a press release.

Diaz, who is from Mexico, was fired by Whitman in June 2009 after working for the family for nine years. Whitman said she didn't know Diaz was undocumented because Diaz had presented a false document when she was hired.

Diaz says Whitman surely knew, and that when Diaz confirmed her status - out of concern for the impact on Whitman's campaign - the billionaire fired her and told her she couldn't help Diaz find an immigration attorney.

Jerry Brown can add one more feather to his cap, right next to having won a third term as California governor.

Washington Post columnist Chris Cililzza, consulting with colleagues and political operatives, today called one of the Brown campaign's commercials the best negative ad in the whole country this election cycle.

The one-minute spot runs side-by-side video of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger repeating the same phrases such as "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results."

The ad, titled "Echo," doesn't directly comment on the comparisons, only quoting the San Jose Mercury News saying, "We tried that. It didn't work" and "She utterly lacks the qualifications to be Governor."

Cillizza writes about the ad:

Whitman spent the entirety of her campaign for governor -- and hundreds of millions of her own dollars -- presenting herself as a new sort of politician without any ties to those who had come before her.

This ad, which was produced by Joe Trippi, demolished that idea -- splicing clips from deeply unpopular outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and virtually identical comments from Whitman to devastating effect.

Soon after the ad began airing, Brown began to stretch his lead out over Whitman and went on to an 11-point victory. Television is still king in California and Brown's ad is rightly understood as the death blow to Whitman's chances of becoming governor.

The best positive ad in the country, according to Cillizza, came from the campaign of victorious Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

From Susan Ferriss in San Jose:

Former GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has agreed to pay her former housekeeper $5,500 to settle a complaint that she was underpaid while working for the couple.

The settlement includes a provision that Whitman and her husband, Griffith Harsh, admit no wrongdoing in the case.

Whitman spokesman Tucker Bounds told reporters after the conference that the complaint was "a political charade."

The housekeeper, Nicky Diaz Santillan, said she was satisfied with the agreement and that she spoke out because she wanted other housekeepers to be recognized for the hard work they do.

Her attorney, Gloria Allred said before the hearing that they had "Irrefutable" evidence that Whitman owed her former Mexican housekeeper between $8,000 and $10,000 in wages and mileage.

The amount - which includes what the housekeeper spent on driving - was more than the approximately $6,000 wage claim that was originally filed against Whitman on Sept. 29.

Harsh, an attorney for the couple and Bounds attended a conference this morning with Allred in downtown San Jose at the Department of Industrial Relations.

Republican Meg Whitman invested $2.6 million of her own wealth in her campaign on Nov. 2, the day she lost her bid for the governor's office to Democrat Jerry Brown, according to a filing that appeared yesterday on the Secretary of State's website.

That amount brought the billionaire former CEO's total personal contribution to her campaign to a record-shattering $144,155,806.11.

Despite spending more on her own campaign than any other self-funding candidate in U.S. history, Whitman lost to Brown by 12.5 percentage points, according to the most recent election results.

This morning, Whitman's husband Griffith R. Harsh IV, spokesman Tucker Bounds and her attorney were in San Jose meeting with her former housekeeper Nicky Diaz Santillan and attorney Gloria Allred to discuss a claim filed by Diaz Santillan demanding between $8,000 and $10,000 in alleged unpaid wages and mileage costs.

Photo: Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman speaks at a Sept. 29, 2010, debate in Davis. (Jose Luis Vallegas/Sacramento Bee)

In a read of last week's elections at the Sacramento Press Club this afternoon, the twin towers of California polling, Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll and Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California, said traditional Democratic constituencies such as women and Latinos ultimately came home to Democratic candidates while the statewide Republican Party was unable to resurrect its tarnished brand.

They also said voters were consistent in their positions on propositions, showing an anti-tax and reform-minded mood that Gov.-elect Jerry Brown will have to wrestle with.

DiCamillo expressed skepticism about the growing use of so-called "robo-polls," which automatically dial voters, saying they missed about a fifth of people who only use cell phones and require heavy after-survey weighting that opens the polls to possible manipulation.

"This I think is the most worrisome aspect of robo-polls," DiCamillo said. "It has given the pollster a wider latitude than traditional pollsters in influencing the poll outcome."

The last Field Poll showed Brown leading Republican Meg Whitman by 10 percentage points, while in the most recent election results, the margin of victory was 11.5 percentage points. Hundreds of thousands of ballots remain to be counted.

Baldassare said the election had revealed 10 trends in the state election: a strong environmentalist bent among voters, the importance of Latino voters, low approval for the Legislature, low trust in state government, the poor economy, disapproval of the budget crisis, the continuing popularity of President Barack Obama, an unpopular GOP, a reform-minded electorate and the large number of independent voters.

"The GOP in California, you know, I think has a number of issues related to their stance on abortion, to the environment, that are problematic certainly for independent voters and even some GOP voters," Baldassare said. "And that has been something that's alienated them."

Of Democratic voters, DiCamillo said, "In the end, they moved - because of party - to the standard bearers of the Democratic Party, and that was especially true of Latinos."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, still mum about his choice to succeed him, is scheduled to appear this evening on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno.

The outgoing governor announced his candidacy to Leno in 2003 and said on the show last year that then-Sen. Abel Maldonado was his pick for lieutenant governor.

Not all of his appearances, however, have been so revelatory: In 2007, Schwarzenegger promoted global warming and health care initiatives.

Schwarzenegger said before Election Day that he would say who he voted for once the election was over. He mostly stayed out of the race between Democrat Jerry Brown, the winner, and Republican Meg Whitman.

With the gubernatorial campaign in the books, both the victor, Jerry Brown, and the loser, Meg Whitman, are thanking their supporters on YouTube.

Brown's video includes clips from early advertisements and campaign appearances:

Whitman's effort is similar, though it also provides a tally of appearances (more than 750), volunteers (more than 40,000) and telephone calls (more than 2 million):

A strategist who worked with GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman as she considered running for governor says the difficulties of her candidacy were apparent from the beginning.

Adam Mendelsohn, who served as a political consultant to Whitman from February '08 to January '09, said Wednesday he never saw a rationale for her run that voters would understand.

"If you're going to take somebody who's an outsider who has no civic experience at all.....you have to create a really compelling reason for people to vote that person into office," he said. "My personal experience with the campaign often felt like they were approaching it like a marketing project rather than a political campaign."

That approach extended to the campaign's discomfort with the political press corps, he said.

"It was always very difficult to determine what she was comfortable doing and what she was not comfortable doing," Mendelsohn said. "She and her adviser, Henry Gomez, were very, very protective of where they put her and what she was doing. I think she was so over-managed and so over-advised, that she became intimidated by the media. I think they spent more time thinking about everything she could say wrong rather than what she could say correctly."

Whether it was naive or presumptuous, Mendelsohn said, the campaign believed it could bypass consistent communication with the reporters who were covering her campaign in favor of national media outlets and Internet communication.

"I don't see how you could think that someone can run for governor and not...consistently sit down with the journalists and media outlets that are covering you," he said. "It is as basic as running television commercials. You can't just say 'I'm not going to talk to the media.' It doesn't work. I know people want to think it works that way because of technology and everything else, but it doesn't."

He said Whitman would have benefited from day-to-day interaction with the press - that the distance "kept her from becoming a more nimble and thoughtful candidate."

"A lot of voters were aware that she was not accessible to the media," he said. "The stories about her reflected someone who had not answered a a lot of questions."

"You had a candidate who was basically saying, 'I'm not going to operate according to the traditional rules of journalism on the campaigns. I will dictate the new rules of journalism.' And it turns out that you can't do that."

Whitman's current campaign strategists weren't yet available for interviews.

Gov.-elect Jerry Brown has executed his first flip-flop just hours after winning an historic third term as governor, by saying in a morning news conference that he would not move to Sacramento but would stay in his Oakland hills home.

"I will live in Oakland, but given the fact I said I'm going to be working virtually nonstop on the budget, I'm going to have to find some place to sleep in Sacramento," Brown said. "I'll find a place."

He also said he wouldn't sell his five-level, $1.8 million Oakland home "until it attains its original value. And that's going to take a lot of work on my part."

Brown the candidate told The Bee's editorial board in September that he would move to the capital.

"I'm keeping my house there (in Oakland), but I will have a house here, " Brown said then. "I will move in here. There's plenty of nice places downtown."

No word on whether he will flop at the N Street apartment at which he famously placed his mattress on the floor during his earlier tenure as governor.

Photo: Jerry Brown delivers his victory speech on Nov. 2, 2010, in Oakland after winning the governor's race. (Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee)

The third round of recent exit polls just released show Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown winning 53 percent of voter support compared to 43 percent for his Republican rival Meg Whitman.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Barbara Boxer had 53 percent of votes cast, leading Republican Carly Fiorina with 43 percent, the exit polls found.

And 55 percent of voters voted no on Proposition 19, which would have legalized recreational marijuana cultivation and use, compared to 45 percent of voters who had voted yes.

Exit polls conducted by Edison Research show Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown building big leads over Republican Meg Whitman among Latino and women voters. Whitman is winning more votes among whites, or more specifically, white men - and non-partisan and minor party voters.

Brown, 72, also leads Whitman, 54, among all age groups under age 65, and among all voters with incomes lower than $100,000.

Brown is topping Whitman among white college graduates, non-white college graduates and non-white non-college graduates. Whitman leads among white non-college graduates.

State voters barely gave the Democratic Party a favorable rating, while the Republican Party had a largely unfavorable rating, the poll found.

The poll details the economic damage in the state, with about a third of respondents saying someone in their household had lost a job or been laid off in the last two years.

UNIVERSAL CITY - Supporters have yet to arrive at Meg Whitman's Election Night bash, but everything's in place for a party, never mind the polls.

Orange and green balloons dangle from the ceiling, waiting to drop. Large banners proclaim that "JOBS are on the way" and "BETTER SCHOOLS are on the way."

And true to form for a Republican party, the big screens flanking the main stage are tuned to Fox News Channel, where Juan Williams and Karl Rove are dishing out analysis on early returns in other states. CNN and MSNBC are relegated to smaller screens on the side of the ballroom.

Still three hours until doors open to Whitman supporters at 8:30 p.m., so the ballroom floor is empty. About the only activity at the moment is a half dozen television reporters doing their live Election Night reports.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's high-spending campaign has grabbed headlines across the country, making her the third most covered person related to the 2010 election, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The former eBay CEO, who shattered self-funding and spending records, was the subject of 90 election stories analyzed by Pew from Jan. 1 to Oct 31. President Barack Obama (343) and Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell (160) snagged the top two spots, making Whitman the nation's second most covered candidate.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown came in No. 10, making news in 49 stories.

The analysis counted pieces where the subject is featured in more than 50 percent of the story. To see the full chart and read more on the analysis, click here.

Hat tip: Politico.

PHOTO CREDIT: California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman joins volunteers, phoning voters on her and other Republicans' behalf, during a stop at her campaign office in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles Monday, Nov. 1, 2010. (AP Photo/ Reed Saxon)

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown walked this morning from his home in the Oakland hills to the fire station where he votes, greeted by about two dozen reporters and photographers.

"I won't take too long," he told them. "I know who I'm voting for."

The 72-year-old former governor sounded confident after casting his ballot at Fire Station No. 6, holding a wide lead over Republican Meg Whitman in the polls.

"It's a beautiful day. It's a great way to start the last day of the campaign," he said. "And I think the signs look favorable. But we'll know when the polls close."

Brown said that, if elected, the start of his term will be difficult.

"I think it's going to be very tough in the next year or two, because all signs point to some very hard decisions," he said. "My goal will be to get the Republicans as well as the Democrats, business leaders as well as labor leaders, to recognize that we're in a very tough fix. But if we all pull together, I think California can be prosperous again."

Voter turnout could make the difference for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman in tomorrow's election, and the candidate is stressing that today by visiting three field offices around Southern California where volunteers are furiously reaching out to voters and urging them to vote.

After earlier visiting a Peet's Coffee & Tea in Menlo Park, the candidate put on a chipper, upbeat face shortly before noon Monday in her Woodland Hills office, a storefront in a strip mall, where several dozen people were hunched over call lists with their cell phones.

She said the campaign had mobilized 40,000 volunteers and "absentee ballots are running in our favor."

Whitman herself sat down and called a few people. She tried to win over one by detailing her education plan.

The caller apparently didn't believe the candidate was really the one speaking.

"Yes, it really is Meg Whitman," she insisted.

Whitman eventually worked her magic and seemed to win herself a vote, ending the call with "It's absolutely essential that we get everybody out to vote" and exclaiming "Ding!"

During a similar visit to the same office the day before the June 8 primary, Whitman had been given a bell to ring after reaching a voter. A cowbell was provided Whitman minutes later on Monday.

Clouds of confetti, a live cover of the Rolling Stones hit "Jumpin' Jack Flash," candidates' hands held high in the air.

It looked like a victory night celebration for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman this afternoon in a ballroom of the Marriott hotel across from the Burbank airport.

Instead, it was Whitman's last full-scale rally before Election Day, and her campaign did its best to project confidence two days before polls open. The billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay will apparently do some trick or treating in Santa Barbara tonight and then visit field offices tomorrow.

Whitman delivered in Burbank her standard 10-minute speech, which she's been giving over the past few days, touting internal polls showing a dead-heat race and hitting Democratic rival Jerry Brown's ties to organized labor. Most public polls show Whitman trailing Brown.

"Jerry Brown has no prayer of ever fixing the school system," Whitman told several dozen pumped-up supporters. "You know why? Because the number-two contributor to his campaign, of all the independent expenditures that have been run against me, are the bosses of the California Teachers Association. I am going to take on the bosses of the California Teachers Association."

Protesters from the California Nurses Association provided the warm-up act for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman this afternoon at the Marriott hotel across the street from the Burbank airport, where several dozen supporters have crowded into a ballroom to hear the candidate.

The nurses union's green bus pulled into the hotel parking lot around 1 p.m. as a security guard at first tried to stop the protesters but was overwhelmed by the crowd.

The rally, which took place just outside the hotel convention center, included Los Angeles teacher Elaine Burn, playing in costume the satiric character Queen Meg, and another Los Angeles teacher Christina Conte playing Princess Carly, a send-up of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.

In one addition to the act, a person in a skeleton costume followed around Burn as she tried to shoo the ghoul away.

While the polls are pointing to a win by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown Tuesday and The New York Times just published its front-page postmortem, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and her supporters were fired up for victory during a loud, raucous rally held at the American River Packaging company's warehouse in Sacramento this afternoon.

A live band rocked a few hundred supporters with a cover of AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" before Whitman took the stage in a blue coat and black pants, joined by her husband Griffith R. Harsh IV, insurance commissioner candidate Mike Villines, U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren, controller candidate Tony Strickland and others.

Whitman was in go-for-broke mode as she hollered applause lines and bobbed and weaved her tall frame like a boxer as opposed to the measured, afternoon-talk-show tone she usually adopts on the stump.

The message from Whitman, Villines and Lungren: Don't call it a comeback.

"I've seen the energy like this all over California," Whitman told The Bee after her speech. "You know, just a couple more days, I'm psyched. We're going to win this."

She added, "Our internal polls look great, and you can feel the electricity."

Villines also felt ballot box glory coming on.

"We're going to win this thing because they're so tight," Villines said about the polls. "We're going to surge."

At the very least, some members of the crowd were taking a hint from Whitman and going for broke.

One man wore an Elvis wig, jump suit and fake leis while holding up a sign reading "Don't be cruel. Vote for Meg." Another man was the height of tea party chic as he wore an American flag shirt while waving a rifle with a 13-state American flag and a "Don't Tread on Me" flag attached to it.

The smell of barbecue cooking in the other room filled the space, as did waving Meg 2010 signs.

"We're thinking really positive," said Londi Medrano, of Sacramento, who has volunteered for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina. "I think the actual voting will make the difference, despite what the polls say."

Attorney Gloria Allred has issued a blistering response to former Gov. Pete Wilson's criticism of her, as told to The Bee this week, and released a 1986 letter in which Wilson expresses "great admiration" for Allred and congratulates her for receiving an award from President Ronald Reagan.

Wilson had criticized Allred for allegedly putting her client, Nicky Diaz Santillan, at risk of deportation by organizing a Sept. 29 news conference in which Diaz Santillan said Whitman had employed her for nine years despite having reason to know she was in the country illegally. Whitman responded that she only learned of her housekeeper's immigration status in June 2009 and then fired her.

In the e-mail sent to The Bee, Allred expressed doubt over Wilson's shows of sympathy for Diaz Santillan.

"Wilson appears to suggest that he has some concern for Nicky ( Meg Whitman's former housekeeper)," Allred wrote. "I believe that he has as much concern for her welfare as does Meg Whitman. Neither of them care one iota about Nicky. They only care about their own self interest."

The Bee has requested a response from Wilson.

He had earlier told The Bee about Allred, "She did something that is I think downright unethical for a lawyer to do. She totally compromised her client and exposed her to criminal charges, not just those for illegal entry but for perjury."

In her e-mail, Allred also accused Wilson of hypocrisy for criticizing her. In the 1986 letter released by the celebrity attorney, then-U.S. Sen. Wilson stated, "It is with great admiration that I write to congratulate you on on your receipt of the Volunteer Action Award from President Ronald Reagan."

Allred said in today's e-mail: "In 1986 then United States Senator Pete Wilson sent me a personal letter expressing his great admiration for me. Now that his candidate is losing he sinks to a new low even for him by engaging in personal attacks on me. I am honored to represent my client, Nicky, but Pete Wilson should be embarrassed to be associated with Meg Whitman."

Allred concluded with some political arrows directed at the former governor and Whitman.

"Pete Wilson and Meg Whitman deserve each other, and on November 3 Pete Wilson will have the dubious distinction of having been the chairman of yet another losing campaign."

Read Allred's entire e-mail after the jump.

Photo: Nicky Diaz Santillan, right, former housekeeper for California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, listens as her attorney Gloria Allred talks with reporters in Los Angeles Oct. 5, 2010. (AP/ Reed Saxon)

When Meg Whitman won the Republican nomination for governor in June, not only did she make her rival Steve Poizner disappear. Her campaign chairman, former Gov. Pete Wilson, also appeared to vanish from at least the more visible parts of the campaign.

Maybe it had something to do with Wilson's unpopularity among the state's Latino community, and Whitman's laser-guided effort to court said community. But as opposed to the primary, when Wilson promised in a radio ad that Whitman would be "tough as nails" on immigration, not one of Whitman's post-primary ads have featured her campaign chairman. By The Bee's count, the former governor hasn't appeared at any of her campaign stops.

Wilson broke the silence this week in an interview with The Bee in which he insisted the momentum had returned to Whitman's campaign and accused Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown of going against the spirit of the state's 1990 term-limits law limiting governors to two four-year terms.

Brown can run for a third term because he served his first two gubernatorial terms before the law passed.

"He has arguably violated the spirit of a law that the voters passed handily in which they thought that even a good governor should serve only two terms," Wilson said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman told Fox News on Wednesday that the illegal immigrant she employed for nine years as a housekeeper - unknowingly, she said - should be deported.

"It breaks my heart, but she should be deported because she forged documents and she lied about her immigration status," Whitman said.

On previous occasions when asked if Nicky Diaz Santillan should be deported, Whitman said she would leave it up to immigration authorities.

Asked why the change of heart, Whitman told reporters in Stockton this afternoon, "I don't know if it's been a change. It is ultimately up to the federal immigration authorities.

"You know, she is here illegally, forged documents. I feel terrible about it. I mean, this is a woman who worked for me for, you know, almost nine and a half years. But, you know, she is, she's breaking the law right now, and we'll leave it up to the federal authorities."

Whitman went on, "But you know what? I think people are tired of talking about my housekeeper."

They want to talk about jobs, education and other issues, she said.

PHOTO CREDIT: Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for Calif. Governor, waves to a crowd of supporters after a news conference in Spreckels, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010. (AP Photo/ The Salinas Californian, Conner Jay)

While Republican Meg Whitman crisscrosses the state, her gubernatorial campaign touching down in multiple cities each day, Democrat Jerry Brown is hardly anywhere to be seen.

And with a large lead in the polls less than a week before Election Day, it might be wise of him to lie low, observers said.

Brown's last public appearance was Tuesday, at an event in Long Beach with Whitman and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He sat out Wednesday and today, and he has no public events scheduled Friday.

Like many candidates with sizable leads, Brown has little to gain from such appearances.

"When you're ahead, you don't want to make a mistake," said Bruce Cain, a UC Berkeley political science professor and director of the University of California Washington Center. "And Jerry's capable of saying something that could offend women at the last minute or minorities at the last minute, or whatever."

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has a potent new ad ready to roll. In a bit of rhetorical yoga, it features Brown pledging to pull all negative ads in yesterday's Women Conference and Whitman refusing to do so. It might not be negative, but it's nasty.

Brown campaign manager Steve Glazer said in a conference call with media today that the 30-second spot has been shipped to TV stations statewide and will start airing unless Whitman changes her mind and agrees to the ad pledge, as offered yesterday by moderator Matt Lauer in Long Beach.

"We are hopeful that Meg will have taken the time to reflect on this opportunity to join with Jerry in only having positive ads in the finish," Glazer said.

The ad shows the much-reported exchange between Brown and Whitman yesterday and concludes with the crowd in the Long Beach Convention Center booing Whitman as she declines Lauer's pledge offer.

While campaigning in San Diego today, Whitman didn't appear to be changing her mind, instead saying about yesterday's event, "I wouldn't have handled it any differently. I told it straight."

Whitman spokeswoman Andrea Jones Rivera later issued this e-mail response: "Jerry Brown's phony pledge is just what you would expect from a cynical career politician. Jerry Brown is hypocritically pledging to take down negative ads, while his allies are launching new negative spots at the very same time. Jerry Brown and the public employee unions are running an around-the-clock character assault against Meg, and we're supposed to buy this new 'pledge'? It's the height of hypocrisy."

Whitman just debuted a TV ad that avoids any attacks on Brown, instead summing up her much-repeated three priorities for the state.

Also during the conference call, Glazer said the Brown campaign has bought plenty of air time during tonight's opening World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers. Viewers then will see a commercial featuring a clip of Whitman praising the opportunities in California when she arrived in the state 30 years ago. That happened to be when Brown was governor.

Glazer also detailed Brown's whirlwind, three-day tour starting Saturday in Oakland that will take him as far north as Chico and as far south as San Diego. The campaign will hold its final campaign rally in Oakland's Jack London Square Monday afternoon.

Glazer called Brown's Monday event "perhaps Jerry's final campaign event for himself and his career" but later clarified he wasn't suggesting Brown wouldn't run for a second term if he wins on Tuesday.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, whose infrequent voting record has been a persistent issue in the campaign, said this afternoon that she will vote by mail tomorrow morning.

No photo opportunity is planned.

Whitman told reporters after a campaign stop in Riverside that her ballot is filled out and "sitting on my kitchen counter."

Before traveling to Riverside, Whitman stopped in Ocean Beach to announce a wager with Texas Gov. Rick Perry on baseball's World Series, which starts tonight between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers. Whitman put a surfboard on the Giants; Perry bet a pair of boots, the campaign said. Whitman wears size 9½.

In Riverside, she continued to defend her refusal Tuesday to stop airing negative TV ads, saying it is fair to attack her rival, Democrat Jerry Brown, on his record. Brown had agreed to pull negative ads if Whitman would, too.

"He was not a good governor," Whitman said. "He was not a good mayor."

Whitman spoke to about 200 people at Johnson Machinery, which sells and repairs Caterpillar equipment in Riverside. She was joined by her husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, and U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona. As the TV cameras swarmed Whitman on her way in, Harsh briefly stepped away, inspecting a massive Caterpillar machine.

Whitman continued to attack what she said are unfair polls that show her trailing in the race.

"Our polls show that this is a dead heat," she said. "In a dead heat we win, because the people who want to take back Sacramento are going to come to the polls in huge numbers."

She said, "I'm going to fight for votes in every part of California."

The California Nurses Association, which has dogged Whitman throughout the campaign, was in Riverside, too, protesting outside the warehouse. Their chants could be heard inside.

PHOTO CAPTION: California Republican gubernatorial candidate and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (C) speaks with Ed Hopper (R) next to large spindle that holds the tire of a bulldozer as she tours Johnson Caterpillar Engines October 27, 2010 in Riverside, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/ Getty Images)

One day after being jeered by thousands of women in Long Beach for refusing to pull negative TV ads, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman this morning defended her position, saying Californians should be treated as adults.

"I wouldn't have handled it any differently," she told reporters at a campaign stop in San Diego. "I told it straight."

Whitman, on stage yesterday with Democrat Jerry Brown, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and "Today" show host Matt Lauer at an annual women's conference, declined Lauer's prodding to pull negative ads in the final week before Election Day.

Brown said he would pull his negative ads if Whitman did, too.

Whitman, the former eBay CEO, spoke for less than 10 minutes this morning to about 50 people at Sneak's Kicks, which sells shoes on eBay. It was her 53rd visit to San Diego County in the course of the campaign, she said.

"We have six more days until we win this thing," Whitman said.

She urged supporters not to concern themselves with polls showing Brown widening his lead, calling "bunk" a recent University of Southern California/Los Angeles Times poll that showed Brown leading Whitman 52 percent to 39 percent among likely voters.

Responding to first lady Maria Shriver's comment yesterday that it was difficult to get the candidates to meet on stage with Schwarzenegger, Whitman said she needed no convincing.

"I was actually excited to be there," Whitman said.

PHOTO CREDIT: California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman speaks to invited guests at a campaign stop at Sneak's Kicks Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010, in San Diego. (AP Photo/ Lenny Ignelzi)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has trailed Democrat Jerry Brown in several recent polls, but her Facebook popularity continues to grow.

Whitman led gubernatorial candidates across the country in new Facebook "likes" over the past four weeks, adding a thumbs up from 44,324 Facebook users, according to Targeted Victory, a Republican campaign and social media consulting firm based in Virginia .

More than 188,390 users have "liked" Whitman's Facebook page. Brown's page, meanwhile, has racked up roughly 94,300 fans.

The microphones have hardly cooled off over at the Long Beach Convention Center, but the campaigns of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown and his Republican rival Meg Whitman are already furiously spinning the candidates' lively exchange over whether to stop running negative ads.

While Brown pledged this afternoon to stop running negative ads if Whitman does the same, his campaign promptly blasted e-mails dinging Whitman for not taking that pledge, as suggested by moderator Matt Lauer at The Women's Conference hosted by state First Lady Maria Shriver.

Brown's campaign has also featured a one-minute clip of the exchange in an e-mailed fundraising appeal.

For its part, Whitman's press shop blasted e-mails repeating the Republican's refusal to accept Lauer's pledge and instead slammed Brown and his union allies for engaging in what it said was "character assassination." The press release even called into question Lauer's definition of negative ads.

Meanwhile, political ads, negative or otherwise, keep flying across the state's airwaves, including this new spot from the California Labor Federation hitting Whitman for her weak voting record.

The controversy over Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's former housekeeper has become fodder for political ad wars in this closing week of the campaign.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association is pulling no punches in a 30-second spot, shown below, reminding voters of housekeeper Nicky Diaz Santillan, who said Whitman employed her for nine years despite knowing she was an illegal immigrant. Whitman has denied knowing Diaz Santillan was undocumented until she fired the employee in June 2009.

Whitman has counterpunched with the following ad calling Nickygate another "dishonest smear" by her Democratic rival Jerry Brown. No evidence has emerged that Brown played any role in publicizing Diaz Santillan's case, which came to light late last month.

A new Los Angeles Times/USC Poll found 52 percent of likely voters thought Whitman didn't handle the housekeeper controversy well. The same poll found 43 percent of likely voters thought the same of Brown.

The latest TV ad from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown features a guest appearance from his Republican rival Meg Whitman musing in an interview about how "30 years ago anything was possible in this state."

The ad then reminds viewers that Brown was governor 30 years ago and launches into the campaign's first spot released around Labor Day, which trumpets Brown's record as governor.

State Democrats received a major-league assist from President Barack Obama today at a massive rally held at the University of Southern California, where top party leaders and even actor Jamie Foxx urged supporters to stay enthusiastic despite polls showing Republicans prepared to make major gains in the Nov. 2 elections.

Some 37,500 people attended the marathon three-hour rally held in USC's Alumni Park and heard from more than a dozen speakers, including the president, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, state attorney general candidate Kamala Harris, Assembly Speaker John Pérez, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and others.

The message from nearly all the speakers: Prove the naysaying pundits wrong, and vote.

"I told you this was going to be hard," Obama said, appearing in his trademark shirtsleeves and gray tie. "I told you power concedes nothing without a fight. You know, inch by inch, day by day, week by week, we've been grinding it out because that's the nature of change in a big, complex democracy."

Obama hit Republicans hard, comparing them to someone who had driven a car into a ditch.

"They say, 'We want the keys back,' " Obama said. "And we got to tell them, 'You can't have the keys back. You don't know how to drive.' "

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman spent nearly $23 million in the first 16 days of October, bringing her total tab to $163 million for the campaign, according to her final spending report filed today.

She reported $12.4 million on hand as of Oct. 16, with about $2 million in debts.

Whitman, a billionaire former CEO of eBay, has put $141.6 million of her own money in the campaign. In all, she has raised $173 million.

Democrat Jerry Brown reported that he has spent $38 million for the campaign and has $11.6 million on hand for the final push, with no outstanding debts.

Protesters from the California Nurses Association and other unions plan to tail Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman for the last 12 days of the campaign, said CNA spokeswoman Liz Jacobs.

The union started this morning when its members and other protesters appeared at a Whitman event held at the business Ramcast Ornamental Supply Co. in Los Angeles. The protest included the satirical character Queen Meg, a send-up of Whitman played by actress Elaine Burn, and a bus printed with the words "Queen Meg Farewell Tour" and "Lies, Hypocrisy & Pink Slips."

Whitman is also traveling to some events in a bus that reads "Jobs are on the way."

"I think the important thing is wherever she is to remind people that nurses, firefighters and teachers oppose her policies and why she's bad for California," Jacobs said.

In the last spending reported required before Election Day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown disclosed he's raised $32.6 million this year through Oct. 16 and had $11.6 million in reserves as of that date.

Including last year's contributions and money raised since the 16th, Brown has pulled in nearly $38 million for the campaign.

Brown had spent $14.6 million between Oct. 1 and 16, more than half of the total $25.3 million his campaign has spent this year.

His Republican rival Meg Whitman has yet to file her spending report, which is due today. She's invested $141.6 million of her own money in her campaign and had spent $140 million by the end of September.

The last 12 days of the gubernatorial race will see Democratic candidate Jerry Brown holding 22 public events, including one Thursday at San Diego State University and another Friday at the University of Southern California with President Barack Obama, according to Brown's campaign manager Steve Glazer in a media conference call this afternoon.

The Brown campaign is also spending $12 million in TV and radio ads in the 14 days leading up to the Nov. 2 election and $4 million to $5 million to send out between 10 million and 15 million pieces of mail to voters, Glazer said.

He estimated that only 10 percent of state voters are undecided between Brown and Republican Meg Whitman, lower than recent polls have shown. Glazer also pointed out that recent polls have estimated Democrats holding anywhere from a six- to a nine-point turnout advantage over Republicans compared to an overall 13.38 percentage-point Democratic registration advantage.

Recent polls have shown Brown building a single-digit lead.

"I'm confident that we're in a position to continue to grow our numbers as we continue to engage our more visible activity," Glazer said.

The labor-backed California Tax Reform Association said this afternoon that Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman stands to personally gain $8.2 million to $42.2 million over four years if the capital gains tax is eliminated, as she has proposed.

The association reviewed the candidate's financial disclosures, making assumptions about market performance and the value and timing of the former eBay CEO's investment activities.

Whitman, a billionaire, has said that she, like many investors, would benefit from the tax break. But she has said it is almost impossible to estimate by how much.

"It depends on when you sell stocks and bonds and all that kind of stuff," she said last week.

Whitman said it is wrong to suggest she is proposing the tax cut to enrich herself, given the fortune she has spent on her campaign.

In a conference call with reporters, the California Labor Federation's Art Pulaski said Whitman is in league with California's richest people, and he said her proposals would not create jobs.

Brown has made Whitman's proposal to eliminate the capital gains tax a point of emphasis in the campaign, particularly in their debates. The tax, which most directly affects wealthy people, is worth an estimated $5.3 billion to the state this year.

Whitman, like many Republicans, believes eliminating the tax would benefit the business climate in California, improving the economy, spurring job growth and eventually generating additional tax revenue.

Economists have long disagreed about the effect of such a tax cut.

Nov. 17 is the date set for a hearing on a wage claim filed by Nicky Diaz Santillan, the former housekeeper of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

The 8:15 a.m. hearing in San Jose is two weeks after the Nov. 2 election. Originally, the hearing was set for Oct. 20 to go over the allegations of Diaz's claim that Whitman owes her money.

The California Department of Industrial Relations asked to push forward the date because Diaz Santillan indicated she planned to amend her claim, said department spokesman Dean Fryer. He also said that before the hearing takes place, Diaz Santillan is required to break down how much of her $6,210 wage claim is for wages or mileage allegedly owed.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman took the battle to her Democratic rival Jerry Brown's home turf this morning by touring Jefferson Elementary School in Oakland, where she slammed her opponent for not doing enough for the city's schools when he was Oakland's mayor from 1999 to 2007.

Whitman, however, found herself in a rhetorical bind as she praised the school district's achievements over the past six years while blaming Brown for letting the district down.

Oakland school board member Noel Gallo introduced Whitman during a news conference by noting, "For the last six years, we've been the most improved academically school district in the state of California, so I must recognize the leadership of our principals as well as our teaching staff and, most of all, our students and parents."

Whitman, however, criticized Brown for letting the state take over the bankrupt district when he was mayor although he had pledged to save the city's schools.

"He broke his promise to the people of California that he was going to turn this education system around," Whitman said. "So everyone is clear that the record of Oakland is dismal."

The candidate did give some explanation for the school's turnaround.

"It was the few parents, a couple of principals who said, 'You know we're going to take this into our own hands,' " Whitman said.

When reminded that Brown didn't have control of the school board, Whitman responded, "He should have led, and he should have focused on this. What you hear about Jerry Brown's tenure in Oakland is that he lost interest. He made a first attempt. When it wasn't easy, he lost interest and went off and did other things. The thing is you got to take accountability as a leader."

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said Whitman was repeating the same lies about Brown that she has for months.

Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown this morning released new TV advertisements attacking each other.

Brown, the Democratic nominee for governor, compares Whitman, the Republican, to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose approval rating is in the tank:

Whitman, meanwhile, continues to tie Brown - literally, this time - to his union supporters:

Just hours after leading a raucous rally with former President Bill Clinton at San Jose State Sunday night, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown touted the support of several key Asian-American Democrats Monday morning and beat back criticisms of his record from the latest TV ads by Republican rival Meg Whitman.

Brown also repeated his demand that Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay, reveal how much she would personally save if the state followed her proposal to eliminate the capital gains tax.

The 72-year-old candidate and attorney general spoke at the Japanese Community and Cultural Center of Northern California office in San Francisco, where he was joined by U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, Board of Equalization member Betty Yee and the 27-year-old mayor of Campbell, Evan Low, among others.

Whitman has also courted Asian-American voters, including running TV advertisements in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. Her Asian American/Pacific Islander Coalition is led by businessman C.C. Yin, founder of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association.

Yee highlighted Brown's appointment of the first Chinese-American woman judge to the state Superior Court in Northern California, LiIlian Sing, and his pick of Filipino-American Ronald Quidachay for the San Francisco Municipal Court.

Honda said Asian-American activists have been working for Brown without much fanfare behind the scenes.

"All of us in the field keep working," Honda said. "We don't have a high profile."

Brown cited his late father California Gov. Pat Brown's support of the community.

"I think of my father's first appointment of the first Chinese-American in California, Jack Chow, and he's a deputy district attorney," Brown said.

Brown then got down to the politics of the day, which included responding to TV ads by Whitman criticizing him for being soft on crime and for granting collective bargaining rights to state workers as governor.

Is Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman directing some of her campaign dollars to target California voters on vacation in the Aloha State?

An Alert reader turned on the TV during a recent Hawaii trip to see Whitman's campaign ads gracing the screen.

The high-spending candidate has blanketed the Golden State with television ads, but a Hawaii buy isn't part of that media strategy, the Whitman campaign assured Capitol Alert.

Their explanation for why one of their spots is showing up 2,500 miles away from the Golden State: the channel in question must have been beamed in via satellite, bringing the California media market programming (and paid advertising) to the Hawaii airwaves.

Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown upped the male bonding Sunday night at a boisterous rally at San Jose State, where the two men warmly praised and embraced each other before thousands of cheering supporters.

It was the second such rally for the former president, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate and lieutenant governor candidate Gavin Newsom after a similarly energetic event held Friday night at UCLA.

Brown appeared more focused and looser Sunday night, hurtling through his stump speech and even referring to his clashes with Clinton throughout the 1990s. He and Clinton gave each other hardy handshakes and shoulder pats, a contrast to the seemingly more fatigued Brown from two nights ago.

"Now I know this president, it's amazing, he took a lot of, a lot of crap from a lot of people, OK - yeah, I did a little myself," Brown said, drawing a laugh from Clinton behind him. "But remember this is the guy that really persevered in the face of the most outrageous Republican opposition."

Brown also tried out rhetorical hits on Republican rival Meg Whitman's lack of government experience, while Clinton listened with arms crossed, as if evaluating Brown's acumen on the stump.

It might be ridiculous, as Meg Whitman said this afternoon, to suggest that she is proposing eliminating the capital gains tax to enrich herself, given the millions of dollars the Republican nominee for governor has put into her campaign.

But the billionaire former eBay CEO, like many wealthy people, would benefit from the tax break, and Tuesday during their debate, Democrat Jerry Brown asked Whitman how much she stands to gain.

Whitman told reporters at a campaign stop in Sacramento this afternoon that she "would benefit to some degree" but could not estimate the amount.

"It's almost impossible to estimate," she said. "It depends on when you sell stocks and bonds and all that kind of stuff."

Whitman has said eliminating the capital gains tax would improve the business climate in California and stimulate the economy. Brown has said it would harm the state budget with no guarantee of a return.

Democrat Jerry Brown's campaign today released a new ad blasting Republican challenger Meg Whitman as having a "loose relationship with the truth." The ad alleges Whitman has lied about her voting record and her tenure as a California resident, among other things. It says she has been hypocritical about her position on illegal immigration.

"You know it's bad when the press asks if you'd take a lie detector test," the ad says.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has launched a new ad slamming Jerry Brown's record on crime, including his appointment of Rose Bird as California Supreme Court chief justice. The Bird court overturned 64 death penalty convictions. She and justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso were ousted from the court by voters in 1986.

The ad touts law enforcement groups that have endorsed Whitman, countering pro-Brown ads featuring other police and fire groups that have endorsed him.

The president of the National Organization for Women, Terry O'Neill, put out today what at first seemed like a predictable news release.

She said Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown had taken a "necessary" step during Tuesday night's debate in apologizing for an unidentified campaign aide who was inadvertently recorded in a voice mail calling Republican rival Meg Whitman a "whore."

O'Neill's statement then took a harder tone by noting that Brown had said Tuesday about the use of the word, "That does not represent anything other than things that happen in a campaign."

"If so," O'Neill said, "that needs to change. While our California chapter's Political Action Committee voted to endorse Brown on the basis of his support for women's rights, the National Organization for Women clearly and unequivocally condemns calling Meg Whitman, or any woman, a whore. This term is hate speech that carries with it negative connotations associated with women, and it has no place in contemporary society."

O'Neill concluded, "NOW calls on Brown to fire any member of his staff who uses this word or any hate speech against women."

In an interview with The Bee Wednesday, O'Neill tried to soften the statement.

First she emphasized the word "uses," saying she was not calling for Brown to fire whoever used the word in the voice mail but to fire anyone who uses the word in the future. Brown has refused to identify the staff member who uttered the slur.

"I'm not asking Meg Whitman to fire Pete Wilson," O'Neill said, referring to the former governor and Whitman campaign chairman, who was quoted using the word in the 1990s while referring to the U.S. Congress.

"To me, let's use this as a teachable moment," O'Neill said. "It really not is a right word to use. Does it in any way undermine my belief that California NOW was right to endorse Jerry Brown? Of course not."

O'Neill had struck an even more conciliatory stance about the word's use on Friday, a day after news of the voice mail broke. That was the same day NOW's California chapter announced its endorsement of Brown.

"My point is that the word is not always used as a sexist and misogynistic attack," O'Neill told The Bee then. "It's not clear even reading the Salon piece (about the voice mail incident) that this was suggesting a sexist, misogynistic attack be mounted against Meg Whitman."

O'Neill had added Friday that "We could make a pledge that we not use the word 'whore' in political discourse and let's eliminate hate from political discourse as well."

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pared nearly a billion dollars from the state budget, Democratic politicians and liberal groups cried foul and said they'd attempt to undo the cuts in health and social services when the Legislature returns to Sacramento in December.

Whether the cuts will be restored, however, depends largely on whether Democrat Jerry Brown or Republican Meg Whitman wins the governorship. Brown has been studiously nonspecific on what he'd do about the persistent state budget crisis while Whitman says she wants to cut more and reduce taxes to spur economic recovery.

A new study on state and local government financed by the Pacific Research Institute -- a conservative, San Francisco-based think tank -- implies that Whitman's position is the correct one, without specifically endorsing her approach.

If you missed last night's third and final debate between gubernatorial hopefuls Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, we have you covered.

You can listen to the debate on the California Report's website.

For video excerpts, see KCRA's website.

For a replay of the live chat hosted by Bee columnist Dan Morain, click the "continue reading" link below.

PHOTO CREDIT: Democrat Jerry Brown, right, and Republican Meg Whitman, left, shake hands as moderator Tom Brokaw, far left, passes them at Dominican University of California in San Rafael on Tuesday. (Associated Press Photo/ Paul Sakuma)

In one of the more touchy exchanges during last night's debate, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown apologized to Republican opponent Meg Whitman on behalf of a campaign associate who was recorded on a voicemail calling Whitman a "whore."

Brown also accused Whitman of being a hypocrite, pointing out that her own campaign chairman, former GOP Gov. Pete Wilson, once bashed Congress as whores, a reference recently resurrected by political blog Calbuzz.

"You know better than that, Jerry," Whitman fired back. "That's a completely different thing."

Brown, it seems, would know any difference first hand -- he has also used the slur to describe public officials in the past.

In a 1996 Q-and-A with Seasonal Chef, a publication focused on "finding and using
locally produced food," Brown called the entire government "a bunch of whores."

While the recent comment was directed as an individual, the slur was used in all three cases in a political context to describe someone selling out to a special interest, not working the street corner. Wilson called Congress "whores to public employees unions" over labor legislation. Brown's still unidentified associate was using the term in the context of pension promises they believe Whitman was making to secure a union's support.

Brown's 1996 remark, in response to a question about federal aid for farms, is posted after the jump. Click here for the full interview.

Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association said this morning that Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's pension reform plan is better than Jerry Brown's, but he said the organization is not prepared to endorse Whitman's proposal to exempt public safety workers from some pension cutbacks.

"This is where we may diverge a little bit from Meg's campaign," Coupal told reporters in a conference call.

He said public safety workers deserve superior benefits, but he said that could be achieved with 401(k)-style retirement plans instead of existing, defined benefit pensions.

Whitman has proposed raising the retirement age for most state employees and affording new hires 401(k)-style plans instead of defined benefit pensions. She has said public safety employees, however, deserve to keep defined benefits.

Brown, the Democratic nominee, would keep defined benefit plans in place for state workers while lowering benefits for new hires and requiring workers to pay more toward their retirements.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman went from this evening's gubernatorial debate to an after party at the GOP headquarters in San Rafael, telling more than 200 supporters to prepare for a fight in the campaign's home stretch.

"This is going to be a dog fight right to the end," she said.

Parked outside was a big green bus, with "Take Back Sac Express" printed on the front and "Jobs are on the Way" across the side. Whitman and the bus will be all over California in the final days of the campaign, staffers said.

Inside, Whitman said, "Twenty-one days left. Almost 20 now."

Polls show the race about even.

Whitman is expected to appear in Los Angeles tomorrow.

Republican Meg Whitman poured another $20 million into her campaign tonight, bringing her total investment in her gubernatorial bid to more than $140 million.

The contribution was reported to the secretary of state as Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown faced off in the third and final scheduled debate of the gubernatorial contest.

Whitman, the billionaire former chief executive of eBay, has already shattered the national record for self-financing in a political campaign.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman wouldn't go anywhere near the question when moderator Tom Brokaw asked near the end of tonight's debate if she would seek any of Sarah Palin's advice.

The crowd chuckled and Whitman paused, a smile forming on her face.

"So, Sarah Palin's coming to California," Whitman said. "She has a real following in the Republican Party."

Whitman said she has supported candidates other than Palin.

Brokaw asked Democrat Jerry Brown about President Barack Obama. Brown is a fan.

The controversy about Whitman's former housekeeper, Nicky Diaz Santillan, got only brief mention during the debate. The recording of a Brown associate calling Whitman a "whore" didn't dominate, either.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown apologized to Republican Meg Whitman this evening for a recording in which an unidentified associate of Brown's refers to Whitman as a "whore."

"I apologize, Ms. Whitman," he said.

Whitman wasn't having it.

"It's the people of California who deserve better than slurs and personal attacks," she said.

It devolved from there.

Brown said the point, that Whitman catered to a union for political gain, is valid. She disputed that.

Brown asked Whitman if she'd chastised her campaign chairman, former Gov. Pete Wilson, for using the term once in reference to Congress.

Whitman said that was different.

Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman have started trading jabs in this evening's gubernatorial debate with Brown calling Whitman's proposed tax cuts elitist and Whitman calling Brown's record as governor a failure.

Brown went first, criticizing Whitman's proposal to eliminate the capital gains tax. The tax affects mostly wealthy people, and Brown turned to Whitman, a billionaire, and asked how much money she'd save.

Whitman called herself an investor and that investors would benefit from the tax cut. But she said job-creating business-people would, too, and that the tax's elimination would improve the economy and, eventually, generate more tax revenue for the state.

Whitman said Brown's first terms as governor were marked by high unemployment and spending, claims Brown denied.

In soft openings on both sides of this evening's gubernatorial debate, Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown aren't taking shots yet.

Whitman said California is a place where "everything was possible," where she came to live the "California dream." But she said that dream is broken.

"That's why I'm running for governor," she said.

Brown said Californians must live within their means and come together as Californians.

"We're going to have to rise above the poisonous partisanship," he said.

Moderator Tom Brokaw, the former NBC anchor, opened the debate by calling this year's contest a "crucial election at a crucial time" for California.

Minutes before this evening's gubernatorial debate -- the last of three between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman -- moderator Tom Brokaw, the former NBC news anchor, appeared on crutches at Dominican University in San Rafael, joking with the audience about the broken state of California.

Brokaw told the audience that he, like California, is injured: "We're both broken at the moment."

The difference, he said, is that he'll be healed by the first of the year.

The debate could be the most freewheeling of the three, with Brokaw moderating and asking questions without a panel.

Demonstrators assembled by 4:30 p.m. across from the auditorium, with Brown and Whitman backers about equally represented. A third group called for the debates to be opened to minor party candidates.

One of them, Green Party candidate Laura Wells, was arrested trying to get into the debate.

"Democracy requires open debates," Wells' spokeswoman Marnie Glickman said as Wells was put into a squad car and taken to the San Rafael Police Department's command center up the road.

Whitman is scheduled to appear after the debate at a rally at the area's GOP headquarters, across town.

Polls show the race is about even.

PHOTO CAPTION: Democratic gubernatorial candidate and California State Attorney General Jerry Brown (R) and Republican gubernatorial candidate and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (L) look on as moderator Tom Brokaw speaks before the start of a debate on Oct. 12, 2010 at Dominican University of California in San Rafael, California. Brown and Whitman faced off in their final debate before election day on November 2, 2010. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/ Getty Images)

A coalition of women's rights groups is trumpeting support for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and other Democrats at the top of the ticket as Election Day approaches.

More than 40 female leaders have signed on to the coalition, pledging to run a volunteer-fueled ground campaign to make the case for why Brown and his Democratic counterparts are better candidates for California women.

The action comes in the wake of a kerfuffle over the release of a recorded conversation in which a Brown associate refers to Whitman as a "whore," an apparent reference to her efforts to secure an endorsement of a law enforcement union. The Brown campaign apologized for the remark, which was inadvertently left on the voice mail of the law enforcement group, but has not identified the person on the tape.

Former Democratic Sen. Deborah Ortiz, vice president of public affairs for California Planned Parenthood Advocates Mar Monte, called the statement offensive and unacceptable. She credited the Brown campaign for apologizing, however, and said she thinks women voters will still side with Brown after they "sort through (the comment) and all of the other information."

"You know, looking at (Brown's) record: consistently, courageously, and in many respects, very forward-thinking leadership that he had throughout his elected career on behalf of women and on behalf of working women and poor women, that speaks more highly to his record than an off-hand and inappropriate and unacceptable comment by someone on his campaign," she said.

What will matter on Nov. 2, said Ortiz and other leaders at a news conference Tuesday, is where Whitman and Republican Senate nominee Carly Fiorina stand on issues affecting female voters, including welfare and abortion rights.

The airwaves are awash with political ads, with more than half a dozen more spots for statewide candidates and measures being added to the airwaves in the last two days alone.

New sets of ads promoting candidates at the top of the ticket target specific voting blocs -- independents, women and Asian-American voters.

GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is airing two news ads blasting Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. One titled "Buck," blames Boxer for voting for "reckless spending" in the federal stimulus package. The second ad, "Label," seeks to court Democrats and decline-to-state voters, casting Boxer as a partisan career politician.

"When bickering ends solutions begin. I'm prepared to oppose my party when it's wrong. We can change Washington. But first you have to vote to change the people we send there," Fiorina says in the spot.

Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor, is getting a boost from his law enforcement backers. A coalition of firefighters and police, funded by the Peace Officers Research Association of California and the California Professional Firefighters, has launched two new ads claiming support from "100,000 police officers and firefighters." The ads, which you can watch here and here, feature a female police officer and a female firefighter. Versions of the ad show the women highlighting Brown's leadership experience as well as Republican Meg Whitman's history of not voting.

Whitman, meanwhile, is running two new ads reaching out to Asian-American voters. The 30-second spots, which the campaign says will run in the Los Angeles and San Francisco media markets, are in Cantonese and Mandarin.

"Meg Whitman understands our community. She knows entrepreneurship, high-tech jobs and education are the keys to our future," the announcer says, according to a translation provided by the campaign.

Other ads released this week.

• Treasurer Bill Lockyer wins this week's prize for bluntness in a political spot. The first ad of the longtime Democratic politician's re-election campaign pledges "Straight talk, no bull#*+!"

• The campaign for Proposition 26, which would raise the vote requirement for approving new fees, has a new spot called "Committee," featuring mock lawmakers plotting to pass a "new tax" by deciding to "call it a fee."

• Law enforcement is also going to bat for Republican attorney general candidate Steve Cooley. A new ad paid for by the Peace Officers Research Association of California touts Cooley's crime-fighting credentials as Los Angeles district attorney and hits Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney, for not seeking the death penalty in a 2004 case involving the killing of a police officer.

The campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown said this morning that the Democratic candidate did not suggest calling Republican rival Meg Whitman a "whore" on a voicemail recording to the Los Angeles Police Protective League that was made public last night.

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford, however, said he didn't know who used the word in the recording.

"Obviously, it's not the kind of thing people should say, and we've apologized for it," Clifford said. "It wasn't Jerry."

Listen for yourself here.

Brown campaign manager Steve Glazer did not address the issue of who said the word in an apologetic statement released last night.

Widely reported news of the comment could hurt Brown's support among women, who the Field Poll shows are already backing Whitman in greater numbers than Republican candidates usually manage.

The comments were inadvertently recorded when Brown thought he had hung up the phone while leaving a message for the police group.

In the recording, Brown complained about how Whitman had allegedly agreed to not touch police pensions to win their support.

"That I have been warned if I crack down on pensions ... that they'll go to Whitman, and that's where they'll go because they know Whitman will give 'em, will cut them a deal, but I won't," Brown said.

In a mix of voices on the recording, it appears Brown says, "What about saying" and perhaps another voice finishes "she's a whore?" Whitman's campaign suggested Brown may have said the word "whore."

"Well, I'm going to use that," Brown responds on the recording. "It proves you've cut a secret deal to protect the pensions."

Nicky Diaz Santillan has become a topic de jour on conservative talk TV and radio, with prominent figures grilling Obama Administration officials about what they will do about Republican candidate Meg Whitman's undocumented former maid who used false documents to get hired.

"This is the highest profile ilegal alien situation we have had here in this country for years. Everybody is locked in on this woman," Fox TV talk-show host Bill O'Reilly demanded to know Wednesday night during a broadcast interview with Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

"We don't have a decision made right now that I can tell you," Napolitano said. "But I can tell you that our efforts over the past 19 months have resulted in more people being deported who've used bogus social security numbers, who have criminal records, who have committed crimes, than any other period in our nation's history."

"Can you assure my viewers," O'Reilly pressed again, "and millions of people watching all over the world, can you assure them that the federal government will do something about this Nicky situation?"

Napolitano said officials "will look at this very seriously."

Greta Van Susteren, another Fox TV host, asked John Morton, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director, much the same thing.

"Oftentimes prosecutors take cases to send messages to everybody else out there who might be doing this," she said, referring to the use of false work documents. "What are you going to do about her?"

Morton said he wouldn't comment on specifics of a case that could involve "potential criminal allegations. . . But let's say we are going to take a look at that case and the facts, and we'll go from there."

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has released another TV ad attacking Democrat Jerry Brown, criticizing the former governor for authorizing a gas tax increase and for and his opposition - initially - to the property-tax limiting Proposition 13.

"Gov. Jerry Brown again?" the narrator says. "Hide your wallet."

Brown's campaign responded in a written statement.

"Under fire and out of ideas, Meg Whitman has fallen back to where she started - with an attack on Jerry Brown," spokesman Sterling Clifford said. "By now, we all know the facts - taxes went down under Jerry Brown, and he is committed to no new taxes without voter approval."

Immigration attorney Marc Van Der Hout, who is representing Meg Whitman's former maid, said his undocumented client has been in the United States for nearly 20 years and has a long work history and family ties to bolster her quest for legal residency.

"There are many people who get to stay who were in her circumstances," Van Der Hout said of Nicky Diaz Santillan, housekeeper for Republican gubernatorial candidate Whitman for nine years.

"But these are hard cases," the longtime San Francisco immigration attorney said in an interview Wednesday. He added that as she has worked over the years, "Nicky has paid her taxes the whole time," which helps her quest for legal residency.

Van Der Hout said Diaz Santillan was referred to him within the last couple of months by another lawyer. He said he wouldn't name that attorney as a matter of policy. He said he had no contact with anyone from the campaign of Jerry Brown, Whitman's Democratic rival.

Asked if Brown supporters, including labor union activists referred Diaz Santillan to him, Van Der Hout reiterated: "I can't go into any of that, who's involved and who referred" the housekeeper to him for immigration law advice.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has spent a record $140 million on her campaign through the end of September, according to a campaign finance statement just filed.

The billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay had $9,183,510.78 in reserves at the end of September. Her Democratic rival Jerry Brown has $22.5 million in reserves and has spent about $10 million, according to his campaign. Brown hasn't yet filed a detailed campaign finance statement, which is due today.

Whitman spent $39.8 million from July to September, which comes out to about $3 million a week. Much of that money went to TV and radio stations all across the state, the new records show.

Whitman has already become the biggest self-funding candidate in U.S. history, having invested more than $119 million of her own money into the race. She's said she's prepared to invest as much as $150 million of her own wealth.

Public opinion polls show Brown and Whitman locked in a tight race, despite Whitman far outspending Brown.

Photo: Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman speaks in Roseville on June 29, 2010. (Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee)

The wage claim against Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman filed by her former housekeeper says the employee estimates she is owed approximately $6,210 for mileage and hours of work she says Whitman didn't compensate.

Nicandra, or Nicky, Diaz Santillan, says on a one-page wage claim filed with California's Department of Industrial Relations that she was "only paid for 15 hours per week, yet I worked 18 hours at a minimum, per week." It also says she didn't get mileage reimbursement.

The claim says that the unpaid wages Diaz claims are for work performed between Sept. 30, 2007 and June 19, 2009. She says she was paid $23 an hour.

Diaz also indicates that Whitman had approximately four employees at her Atherton home. The former housekeeper says on her claim that that she asked in person in May 2009 for the money that she is allegedly owed.

Here's one way to respond to attacks from a former employee that risk casting a pall over your campaign: Poll the popularity of your accuser's attorney.

The campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said today it conducted a poll showing 68 percent of California voters have an unfavorable view of Gloria Allred, the lawyer representing the undocumented housekeeper fired by the Whitman family last year.

Allred has been making headlines handling Nicky Diaz Santillan's claims that Whitman did not fully compensate her and should have known about her illegal status. Team Whitman touted the poll results, which also showed a close race for the candidates, as a sign the Diaz Santillan dustup isn't making a mark on her gubernatorial prospects.

Representatives of the Service Employees International Union -- a strong supporter of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown -- say the union had no previous knowledge of Nicky Diaz Santillan, his GOP rival Meg Whitman's undocumented housekeeper.

"We found out like everyone else did -- on TMZ," said Courtni Pugh, campaign manager for Cambiando California, an SEIU Latino-focused independent expenditure committee supporting Brown. TMZ, the celebrity gossip site, carried the first two press conferences Diaz Santillan gave with her attorney Gloria Allred last Wednesday.

When the news broke, SEIU had a Spanish-language TV ad ready to air the next day that says: "Whitman attacks undocumented workers to win votes, but an undocumented woman worked in her home for nine years. ... Whitman says one thing in Spanish -- and something different in English. The real Meg Whitman has no shame. She's a two-faced woman."

Pugh said SEIU labored much of Wednesday night to finish the ad, adding that work went quickly because it was essentially a remake of an existing Spanish-language ad with the same graphic elements and a similar script that also called Whitman "two-faced." The graphics in both ads rely heavily on still shots of billboards, which is a play on Whitman's use of Spanish-language campaign billboards in Latino neighborhoods.

The Bee's Jack Chang collected video and audio from Meg Whitman's and Nicky Diaz Santillan's press conferences yesterday and today.

Below is a video clip from Whitman's morning press conference, where she calls the allegations a "political smear."

Click here to listen to Diaz emotionally describe the circumstances of Meg Whitman and her husband, Griff Harsh discovering she was an illegal immigrant.

Also, read the 2003 "no match" letter from the Social Security Administration on which Harsh allegedly wrote a note to Diaz.

Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, the Republican candidate for the office he occupies, said he thinks "Nicky is being utilized" but said the Whitman housekeeper incident shows that the country needs a new immigration system.

"Here we have a woman who came here looking for a better life. She was willing to not be consistent with her facts to get a job," Maldonado told the Bee in an interview Wednesday.

"I think this demonstrates that we do need immigration reform," he said.

Maldonado said he didn't think Whitman had any reason to doubt that her housekeeper Nicky Diaz Santillan wasn't documented because the Mexican immigrant had shown Whitman a Social Security card and a driver's license.

Maldonado's Mexican immigrant father runs a strawberry farm on the Central Coast, and his mother is the receptionist who asks to see workers' documents when they apply for a job, Maldonado said.

"She has to respectfully tell them if it doesn't look right," he said, "but she has to be careful" because "you can't turn people away" without a good reason.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's husband said in a prepared statement this afternoon that he does not recall receiving a letter from the Social Security Administration about a discrepancy between his then-housekeeper's name and Social Security number, but he said it is possible he did receive it and referred it to the housekeeper to follow up.

In a conference call with reporters, Whitman adviser Tom Hiltachk said the so-called "no-match" letter would not have given Whitman or her husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, reason to believe their housekeeper, Nicky Diaz Santillan, was in the country illegally.

Whitman adviser Rob Stutzman said it is likely, if the letter is authentic, that Harsh referred it to Diaz Santillan so that she would complete the paperwork necessary to receive Social Security benefits.

In a prepared statement read by Stutzman, Harsh said, "Neither Meg nor I believed there was a problem with Nicky's legal status." He said he did not show Whitman the letter.

Whitman and Harsh fired Diaz Santillan last year, when they said she confessed she was in the country illegally.

In his prepared statement, Harsh said, "Meg and I played by the rules and followed the law. Ms. Diaz did not."

Diaz Santillan and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, have said Whitman knew for years that Diaz Santillan was in the country illegally.

PHOTO CREDIT: Meg Whitman and her husband, Griffith Harsh IV, meet the media and answer a few questions after the California gubernatorial debate at UC Davis' Mondavi Center on Tuesday evening Sept. 28, 2010. Paul Kitagaki Jr./ Sacramento Bee

Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman blasted Democrat Jerry Brown today for what she said is his campaign's involvement in the controversy involving Whitman's former housekeeper.

Citing a report in which KTVU's Randy Shandobil said Brown's campaign told the Bay Area TV station two weeks ago that it had heard a rumor Whitman had "housekeeper problems," Whitman spokeswoman Andrea Jones Rivera said in a written statement that "this is part of a coordinated effort to smear Meg Whitman."

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said Wednesday that the campaign had heard rumors about the controversy. He said the campaign was not involved in propagating it and did not coordinate with the housekeeper, Nicky Diaz Santillan, or her lawyer, Gloria Allred.

Whitman has said she did not know until last year, when she fired Diaz Santillan, that she used falsified documents to obtain employment. Allred said Whitman knew for years and only fired Diaz Santillan when starting her gubernatorial campaign.

A lawyer for Meg Whitman's former housekeeper this afternoon released what she said is a 2003 letter from the Social Security Administration with Whitman's husband's handwriting on it, a measure to refute Whitman's claim she never received such a letter or knew the housekeeper was in the country illegally.

The so-called "no-match" letter advised Whitman and her husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, of a discrepancy between the housekeeper's name, Nicky Diaz Santillan, and her Social Security number, celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred said.

She said Harsh wrote on the letter, "Nicky, please check this. Thanks."

Whitman has said Diaz Santillan was responsible for picking up the mail at her house. Allred said she did that only when Whitman and Harsh were on vacation.

But the handwriting on the letter, Allred said, indicates Whitman's husband was aware that their housekeeper of nine years was in the country illegally.

Whitman said Tuesday that she fired Diaz Santillan when Diaz Santillan told her last year that she was an illegal immigrant. The housekeeper used falsified documents to obtain employment, she said.

Asked how she could be sure that the handwriting on the letter is Harsh's, Allred said Diaz Santillan recognizes it as such. Allred said she is also prepared to present additional evidence, depending how Whitman responds.

"Meg Whitman is exposed as a liar and a hypocrite," Allred said.

Whitman said this morning that she would be willing to take a polygraph test to demonstrate she did not know Diaz Santillan was in the country illegally. Asked if Diaz Santillan would do so, Allred said she does not need to.

PHOTO CREDIT: Attorney Gloria Allred, center, displays a copy of a 2003 letter she says shows Republican gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman knew all along that her maid, Nicky Diaz Santillan, might be an illegal immigrant, keeping the letter from the government after Whitman's husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, partially filled it out and told the housekeeper to deal with it, in Los Angeles. At right assisting Allred is attorney, Dolores Y. Leal. At left is former maid, Nicky Diaz Santillan. (AP Photo/ Nick Ut)

In the wake of gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's acknowledgment Wednesday that she employed an illegal immigrant as her housekeeper for nine years, a labor-backed independent expenditure committee this morning said it will start airing a TV ad on Spanish-language stations attacking her on the issue.

The housekeeper used falsified documents to obtain employment, and Whitman said she fired her once she learned her status. At a press conference this morning, Whitman blamed the controversy on Democratic rival Jerry Brown, calling it a "smear campaign by a desperate Brown campaign. ... Jerry Brown and (attorney) Gloria Allred are doing a massive smear campaign on me and my family."

She said Brown is worried that Whitman has made inroads with Latino voters, usually a dependable democratic constituency.

"I think they're nervous about it," she said. "They took Latinos for granted."

Video: Whitman says controversy is a 'political smear'

Cambiando California, an independent expenditure committee launched by Service Employees International Union, said it will spend $5 million against Whitman, the Republican nominee.

In an ad to start airing Saturday in Fresno and Los Angeles, a narrator says, "Whitman attacks undocumented workers to win votes, but an undocumented woman worked in her home for nine years," according to a translation provided by the campaign. The ad also criticizes Whitman for having as her campaign chairman former Gov. Pete Wilson, who remains unpopular with many Latinos.

Senate majority leader Dean Florez blasted Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman for talking tough on holding employers responsible for hiring undocumented workers when her own housekeeper worked for the family illegally for nine years.

"Clearly, Meg Whitman had an opportunity to disclose the fact that she had hired an illegal immigrant during last night's debate. She had the chance to clear the air but she decided to hide this information," the Shafter Democrat said in an e-mailed statement.

Whitman called for stronger accountability and enforcement of businesses that hire undocumented workers during last night's gubernatorial debate.

"Illegal immigration is just that -- illegal. We have to stop the magnet," she said.

Former Whitman housekeeper Nicky Diaz, who was fired in June 2009, alleged today that Whitman had reason to believe she was not eligible to work legally during her time with the family. The Whitman campaign disputed the claim, releasing signed documents in which Diaz states she is eligible to work.

Diaz, who is filing a complaint seeking compensation for extra hours she says she worked unpaid, said at a press conference that Whitman treated her like "garbage" and that the family cut off all ties after she approached them for help gaining legal status.

Florez said the allegations raise "serious concerns" about the character of the candidate, who has targeted Latino voters with a Spanish-language media campaign.

""Meg Whitman's actions are reflective of a destructive attitude toward Latinos - and apparently vulnerable working Latinas in particular. ... Latinos have seen one side of Whitman through her Spanish language campaign commercials-- what they haven't seen is Whitman's truly personal view of Latinos as we have seen today," he said in the statement.

UPDATE 2:07 p.m.: Whitman addressed the issue during a campaign stop in San Jose, telling reporters she didn't use her own experience as an example on the campaign trail to protect her former employee.

"It never came up... I didn't think there was any reason to put Nicky up as an example of someone that is here illegally and I am sorry she has been made an example of," she said during a Q-and-A with reporters, which the San Francisco Chronicle has posted here.

She said she fears Diaz is being "manipulated." Whitman's campaign staffers echoed that concern, casting the revelation as a politically motivated stunt orchestrated by Whitman's rivals.

"The Democratic Party and Jerry Brown just turned (Diaz's) whole life, her world and her family's life upside down," spokesman Hector Barajas said. "They did this all for just a few more votes... if that isn't two faced, I don't know what is."

PHOTO CREDIT: Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, left, during a hearing held at the Capitol in Sacramento on April 26, 2010. (Associated Press Photo/ Rich Pedroncelli)

Meg Whitman's campaign has released documents it says shows the Republican gubernatorial candidate was unaware that her former housekeeper was undocumented and unable to legally work for the family for nine years.

The documents, posted here, include a social security card and California driver's license provided by former Whitman employee Nicandra Diaz and signed U.S. Department of Justice employment eligibility forms in which Diaz claims she is a "lawful permanent resident."

Diaz today unveiled through celebrity attorney Gloria Allred that she had worked for Whitman's family for nine years illegally. Allred said in a press conference that Whitman never asked about Diaz' legal status and received notice from the Social Security Administration in 2003 that the Social Security number provided by Diaz did not match her name, calling that a "a clue that the employee may be undocumented."

Diaz, who alleges she was fired in June 2009 after she approached the family to ask for help gaining legal status, is filing a complaint seeking back pay for extra hours she says she worked unpaid during her nine years working for the family.

The Whitman campaign said the "charges are without merit" and that Diaz was fired after admitting to Whitman she had falsified documents. They released an employment application Diaz submitted through a housekeeper placement agency that indicated she is able to work legally, copies of the Social Security card and driver's license provided by Diaz and federal tax forms signed by Diaz.

"As required by law, once we learned she was an illegal worker, I immediately terminated Nicky's employment," Whitman said. " It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I considered Nicky a friend and a part of our extended family."

The statement and employment time line from the Whitman campaign is posted after the jump.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's former housekeeper and nanny, an undocumented worker, accused Whitman this morning of not paying her for all the hours she worked or reimbursing her for miles she drove, and she said Whitman laughed at her when she asked for her help obtaining legal status.

Nicky Diaz, whom Whitman fired in 2009, said she told her, "From now on, you don't know me, and I don't know you."

Diaz said Whitman "treated me like a piece of garbage. She treated me as if I were not a human being."

Diaz's lawyer, Gloria Allred, said Whitman was aware that Diaz was an undocumented worker.

Meanwhile, Whitman's campaign dispatched a copy of a Social Security card that Whitman's consultants said Diaz used as proof of legal status. Whitman consultants have said Diaz represented herself as a documented worker.

Allred said Social Security officials had contacted Whitman and her husband to tell her the Social Security number given for Diaz did not match her name. She said Whitman did nothing but refer the letter to Diaz and then ignored subsequent warnings from the government. Whitman told reporters Wednesday she never received the letter.

"If Ms. Whitman would like to dispute our claims of what she knew and when she knew it, then she should be prepared for the release of evidence," Allred said.

Photo: Attorney Gloria Allred (left) speaks to reporters alongside Nicky Diaz Santillan, the former housekeeper of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, on Sept. 29, 2010, in Los Angeles. (Jack Chang/Sacramento Bee)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman employed an illegal immigrant for nine years, then fired her when the employee said in 2009 that she was in the country illegally, Whitman's campaign said this morning.

The announcement was made in a media call ahead of a press conference at which the employee is expected to claim she was mistreated by Whitman. The Whitman campaign has characterized the claim as political.

Whitman lawyer Tom Hiltachk said the employee was hired in 2000 and provided standard forms showing she was a lawful permanent resident. He said that in June 2009 the employee confessed she was not a legal resident and used false documents to gain employment.

Hiltachk said the employee was subsequently fired.

Stutzman said the employee was "close to the family" and that the situation saddened Whitman.

The Bee is following the employee's press conference now. Check back for updates.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman debated her Democratic rival Jerry Brown for the first time Tuesday night at UC Davis. We'd like to know who, if anybody, you thought came out ahead.

Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred's office sent out a news release this morning announcing that Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's former housekeeper is filing a lawsuit against the candidate.

The announcement follows news reported in The New York Times in June that Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, had been involved in a physical altercation with a former employee at the company. The company paid around $200,000 to settle with the employee, Young Mi Kim, who had threatened a lawsuit, according to The Times.

Here's the Allred news release:

Meg Whitman's housekeeper for 9 years will hold a news conference today, Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 11:00 A.M. to tell how she suffered as a long time Latina household employee in Meg Whitman's home and why she is filing a claim against Ms. Whitman.

Ms. Whitman is the Republican nominee for Governor of California.

The news conference will be held at the office of attorney, Gloria Allred, at 6300 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1500, Los Angeles. Ms. Allred represents the housekeeper.

Ms. Whitman's former employee will be making what are sure to be controversial and explosive allegations about her former employer.

No interviews will be given by the housekeeper or Ms. Allred prior to the news conference. Press credentials are required to be admitted.

Though the specifics of the allegations have not yet been made public, the Whitman campaign went on the attack to preemptively refute the claims, saying the "sleaze machine of the political left is now focused on the politics of personal destruction."

"Gloria Allred is a shameful manipulator and the timing of today's news conference so close to the election should serve as a warning to Californians that they are witnessing dirty political smears at their worst," Whitman spokeswoman Andrea Jones Rivera said in a statement.

Post updated at 8:40 a.m. with statement from the Whitman campaign.

Paul Rodriguez, a comedian and political activist with strong ties to the Latino community, endorsed Meg Whitman's gubernatorial bid today.

Rodriguez, whose political activity is centered in the Central Valley, chairs the California Latino Water Coalition, a group closely aligned with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that was active during last year's water policy debates.

The endorsement comes one day after a poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California showed Democratic nominee Jerry Brown leading Whitman among Latinos by 19 points.

Rodriguez called Whitman an "independent thinking candidate who is committed to what we care about most: jobs and education" in a statement released by the campaign. He also praised her efforts to reach out to Latino voters; though she trailed Brown in the recent poll, Whitman is thought to be outperforming expectations for a Republican courting the Democrat-leaning voting bloc.

PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Rodriguez introduces Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday, October 9, 2009 in Sacramento, Calif. during a Latino Water Coalition rally at the Capitol East steps.

Voters will hear three times the talk from the candidates at the top of the ticket this week, with a trio of debates for the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races on the calendar.

Here's the rundown:

TUESDAY:

Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman go head to head in the first televised debate of the gubernatorial campaign. The hourlong debate the University of California, Davis Mondavi Center is sponsored by The Bee, KCRA-TV, Capital Public Radio and UC Davis. The debate, which will air on KCRA-TV and Capital Public Radio, kicks off at 6 p.m. Visit Sacbee.com for live coverage of the event:

Live chats
5:30-6 p.m.: Bee Editorial Page Editor Stuart Leavenworth takes your questions in the live chat and tells you what to watch for from the candidates.
6-7 p.m.: Bee columnists Dan Walters and Dan Morain offer instant analysis from the debate.
7-7:30 p.m.: Leavenworth rates the candidates' performances.

Wednesday, noon-1 p.m.: The Bee's Head-to-Head team of Pia Lopez and Ben Boychuk take your questions and debate the debate.

WEDNESDAY:

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and Republican challenger Carly Fiorina sound off in a radio debate sponsored by KPPC Public Radio and La Opinión Spanish-language newspaper. The1 p.m. debate is the second between the two Senate candidates.

SATURDAY:

It's round two (of three televised debates) for Brown and Whitman, as the rivals spar at a daytime debate sponsored by The Fresno Bee and Spanish-language network Univision. That debate will be held at California State University, Fresno, at 11 a.m. and broadcast in Spanish and English on Univision at 4 p.m.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown is leading Republican candidate Meg Whitman 49 percent to 44 percent, according to the results of a Los Angeles Times-University of California poll released this weekend.

Brown's five point lead in the Times-USC poll was conducted during the same period that Field Poll results showed the race as a tie, though the Times' numbers point to a tight contest with a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.

"It is all basically telling the same story, it is a close race," LA Times managing editor David Lauter said in a call with reporters Sunday.

The poll, which surveyed 887 likely voters, showed Brown leading among Decline-to-State and Latino voters, two voting blocs Whitman must court to overcome Democrats' 14-point registration advantage.

It was conducted by the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic firm, and American Viewpoint, a Republican firm.

Click here for the full results and cross-tabs.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's camp is getting a kick out of Democrat Jerry Brown's telling The Sacramento Bee this afternoon that he never said he morally opposes the death penalty, just doesn't prefer it.

Whitman spokesman Tucker Bounds, saying Brown tells "bald-faced lies," sent over an audio clip from the campaign archive.

In a presidential debate in 1992, Brown said, "I'm morally opposed to the death penalty." According to a transcript, he said it is an issue for states to decide.

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said whether Brown is "morally opposed" to the death penalty or does not prefer it is immaterial.

She didn't issue a press release - as she usually does when releasing a new ad - but Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman this week unleashed another TV spot attacking the Democratic nominee, Jerry Brown.

The ad wrongly suggests that Brown is to blame for the state taking control of Oakland's troubled school system in 2003.

If anything, Brown over-promised. He said in his mayoral campaign that he could help improve Oakland schools, backing a ballot measure allowing him to appoint three members to the district's governing board.

However, he never gained control of a board majority. Like most mayors, Brown's involvement in the school system was limited.

Was Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown being ironic or just unaware this morning when he slammed Republican rival Meg Whitman for not taking a position on Proposition 23, which would suspend the state's greenhouse gas emissions law?

Whitman had just come out against the proposition about an hour before the Brown news conference at the Newark facility of PetersenDean Roofing and Solar System, and a campaign press release Brown was holding in his hand plainly said, "Meg Whitman stated her opposition to Proposition 23 today."

Brown, however, told reporters, "Our goal here is to defeat Proposition 23, what I call the oil-addicting proposition, and to let the world know that Meg Whitman has still not taken a position. It's double-talk. Is she for 23 or against 23?"

Brown added later, "Get Meg Whitman to stand up and say one way or another is she for or is she against. She is right now sitting on both sides of the fence. And that is not leadership, it's capitulation."

When a reporter told him moments later that Whitman had indeed taken a stand, Brown responded, "Well good, my reaction is good, better late than never, and secondly, she should now take the next step and renege on her commitment to delay AB 32 (the state law that caps greenhouse gas emissions). Proposition 23 is an effort to delay AB 32 by five to 10 to 15 years."

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown admitted this morning that Republican rival Meg Whitman's heavy spending is paying off with women voters, as a new Field Poll shows the two candidates tied among women, who traditionally lean Democratic in the state.

Speaking to San Francisco radio station KGO-AM, Brown also said that "the current state salary commission" should be allowed to control the salaries of local officials such as those in the small city of Bell, where the city manager and others were paid salaries that far exceeded what state and federal leaders earn.

On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Bruce Reeves suggested forming an oversight commission to oversee city officials' salaries while speaking to legislators at a Joint Legislative Audit Committee hearing.

Brown, however, referred to the "current state salary commission, which has the power to lower the constitutional officers' salary."

"I want that commission to be given the power to be able to set standards for these local officials," Brown said. "The local pay is much higher in many cases than what we see in the state government."

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said today that she will vote against Proposition 23, the measure to suspend implementation of the state's greenhouse gas reduction law until the statewide unemployment rate hits 5.5 percent for four consecutive years.

Whitman has said she would suspend the law, AB 32, for at least one year, and in a written statement this morning she called the law a "job killer" and said it needs to be revised.

However, Whitman said Proposition 23 "does not offer a sensible balance between our vital need for good jobs and the desire of all Californians to protect our precious environment."

Jerry Brown, the Democratic nominee, has opposed Proposition 23 from the start. He is an ardent supporter of AB 32, saying its implementation would protect the environment and create clean energy jobs.

PHOTO CREDIT: Meg Whitman meets with The Bee editorial board. Hector Amezcua, Sacramento Bee.

Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown both announced new TV ads today. Only one problem with the Brown camp's announcement: It links to the wrong ad, an issue piece in which Equality California attacks Whitman on Proposition 8.

It's just a bad link. But for a gubernatorial candidate accused by his opponent of having other groups do his dirty work, it is perhaps unfortunate.

Brown's ad - really his - is a hit on Whitman, too, claiming tax cuts she proposes would benefit wealthy investors while increasing the state deficit.

In her ad, below, Whitman claims reducing taxes and regulations will create jobs.

Equality California, the state's leading gay-rights advocacy group, is targeting Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and GOP attorney general nominee Steve Cooley with new ads on Proposition 8.

The ads seek to tie an appeal of federal Judge Vaughn Walker's decision to overturn the 2008 voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage to the state's fiscal woes, arguing California cannot afford to get involved in the legal challenges. The ads claim the state could spend up to millions in taxpayer dollars on an appeal, a figure an EQCA spokeswoman said was based on staff time and resources required to get involved in the litigation, as well as the possibility that the state would be liable for reimbursing the plaintiff's attorneys' fees if the initial challenge to the law prevails.

Whitman, who opposes same-sex marriage but supports civil unions, has said she believes the governor is legally bound to defend the law passed by voters and would appeal Walker's ruling. Cooley has also said he would defend Proposition 8.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown both declined to join a challenge of the ruling.

The ads, which you can watch below, will run on cable news stations --CNN, FOX and MSNBC -- in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego and Palm Springs markets, according to the group. They will begin airing next week.

This post was updated at 11:07 a.m. with additional information from the EQCA spokeswoman.

Credit: Bloomberg TV "InBusiness with Margaret Brennan"

EBay founder Pierre Omidyar told Bloomberg TV's "InBusiness with Margaret Brennan" today that he would "find it very difficult" to vote for former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, the Republican nominee for governor, according to a transcript of the interview scheduled to air Wednesday.

Omidyar praised Whitman for her business acumen, calling her a "fantastic executive" and saying that "on that basis, I think she would do a great job as governor," according to the transcript.

However, he said he was disappointed by Whitman's support for California's same-sex marriage ban and by her "alignment with former Gov. Pete Wilson on immigration issues."

Omidyar said he "can't quite support her" because of those issues.

Former President Bill Clinton sat down with Yahoo! News and the Huffington Post to talk about his endorsement of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, Republican rival Meg Whitman's TV ad featuring an old clip of Clinton and the California Legislature, which he said was the most creative in the country.

About his old rivalry with Brown, Clinton said, "We buried that campaign hatchet years ago ... This Meg Whitman ad really got under his skin, and I understand why. It's a devastatingly good ad if it had been accurate, you know, and so, but it wasn't."

About the Legislature, Clinton said, "I think California has the most creative Legislature in America if you just look at all the things they've done. On the other hand, they also get into financial trouble."

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will appear at a fundraiser with Republican rival Meg Whitman tonight at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport in Burlingame.

Rice, now a professor at Stanford University, campaigned with Whitman during the Republican primary, as did other top GOP stars such as former presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Union groups, including the California Nurses Association and the California Teachers Association, are planning to protest the event. Expect an appearance by Queen Meg, played by actress Elaine Burn, a parody of Whitman that the nurses have staged at several of the candidate's events.

Photo: Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears on ABC's This Week, in Washington, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2008. (Fred Watkins/ABC News)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman was interviewed by The Bee editorial board today. View Whitman's opening statement in the video posted below. Check back soon for selected clips from the hour-long interview.

For more on Whitman's interview, click here.

VIDEO CREDIT: Hector Amezcua, Sacramento Bee.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman told The Sacramento Bee editorial board this morning that, if elected, she'll negotiate with the three biggest public employee unions to create 401(k)-style retirement plans for new state workers.

She also said she would "take a whack" at reining in the state's prison costs, including moving prisoners to other states and cutting prison health care costs.

She added that she would seek pension reforms for prison guards and other public safety employees. Whitman also said she could see building another prison if elected governor but would try to avoid building a new "death row" prison.

"Part of the reason we find ourselves in the situation we now find ourselves in is we had banked on a very high investment portfolio return, which didn't materialize, and now we are on the hook for defined benefits, very generous defined benefits, to not only the prison guards but all the others," Whitman said. "We have got to renegotiate these benefits. And I will negotiate in good faith with all the different unions."

In response to a question from the editorial board, Whitman also said she wanted to "look at what the opportunities are for privatizing the prisons."

Whitman admitted that enacting such reforms wouldn't happen overnight but said she was optimistic she could make a quick impact. She said she would consider putting pension reform on the ballot.

"It's going to take some time," Whitman said. "There's no questions about it. But I think we can make a lot of progress in the first 12 months... about attacking, if you will, how to run the government more efficiently, how to take on the pensions, how to reform welfare."

When asked about Proposition 23, which would suspend the state's global warming law AB 32, Whitman said she would release a list of her proposition positions at the end of this week or at the start of next week.

Rex Babin is the political cartoonist for The Bee. You can see a collection of his work here.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown said this morning that he and former President Bill Clinton had moved on from their often nasty 1992 presidential primary battle and that "Bill Clinton and I share very similar ideas on how to build up the California economy, how to treat working people fairly."

In his weekly call into San Francisco radio station KGO, Brown also estimated that 95 percent of rival Meg Whitman's recent ads were negative and said "she is so unpopular now that the only way she can win is to tear me down, not build her up. So you'll hear very little about the Whitman record going forward."

Host Jennifer Jones-Lee asked him about his recent mocking of Clinton, followed by his apology to the former president and Clinton's subsequent endorsement of Brown. Whitman is running a TV spot featuring a 1992 clip of Clinton citing a CNN report finding the average state tax burden was higher when Brown left as governor than when he started office.

Note: This is a copy of the unrevised ad.

The California Teachers Association added the word "could" to its TV ad slamming Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, prompting the cable carrier Comcast to resume broadcasting it.

Whitman's campaign had sent Comcast and other TV stations letters threatening legal action over what they said was the "slanderous" ad. Comcast pulled the ad Tuesday.

The union fiddled with the spot, which accuses Whitman of proposing $7 billion in school cuts and 100,000 teacher layoffs. Instead of saying Whitman proposes the cuts, the ad now says "Whitman's plan" proposes the cuts, according to CTA spokesman Mike Myslinski.

Listening to the new ad, however, Capitol Alert caught some more substantial changes.

Instead of "Whitman says we should cut another $7 billion from our schools" in the original ad, the new spot says "Whitman's plan could cut another $7 billion from our schools."

The new ad also features in small print the words "Assumes proportional budget cuts."

That's because the union came up with its figures by crunching Whitman's promise to cut $15 billion from the state budget. The union says K-12 and higher education funding makes up about half of the state budget so those areas would naturally be hit by about half of the $15 billion in cuts.

Whitman's campaign has called that assertion a "lie."

The edit, however, was good enough for Comcast, which will start running the ad again Thursday morning, said spokesman Andrew Johnson. Comcast reaches 2 million homes all over Northern California.

"Our legal team reviewed it and it's good to go," Johnson said. "It meets our guidelines and we'll start running it tomorrow."

Whitman spokeswoman Andrea Jones Rivera said, "This ad run by Jerry Brown's union allies continues to be false. Meg's plan to fix California schools would direct more money into the classroom. it would reward outstanding teachers. It would institute a system that grades our schools on an A-to-F scale and eliminate the cap on charter schools. Once again, the CTA gets an F for accuracy on this ad."

Former first lady Nancy Reagan has publicly thrown her support behind the two women at the top of the Republican ticket.

The wife of late President and California Gov. Ronald Reagan today endorsed U.S. Senate nominee Carly Fiorina and gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

The candidates praised Reagan in separate statements announcing the endorsements.

"I am honored and humbled to have earned the endorsement of Mrs. Reagan, whom I greatly admire and respect," Fiorina said in a press release. "She and I share the same core values...."

"The legacy of President Reagan and Nancy Reagan have long been an inspiration to me, and their impact on our state and our nation is immeasurable," Whitman said in an e-mailed statement.

Both candidates met with Reagan yesterday at private meeting in Los Angeles, producing a rare photograph of Fiorina and Whitman together.

PHOTO CREDIT: Meg Whitman, Nancy Reagan and Carly Fiorina at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library. Courtesy of the Fiorina campaign.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman spoke this afternoon to a young crowd of Yelp employees in their San Francisco offices. It wasn't Folsom, and the employees weren't pitching softballs.

First, a woman in the audience called a lie Whitman's ad featuring a clip of President Bill Clinton criticizing Democratic nominee Jerry Brown in a 1992 presidential debate. In the clip, Clinton relies on a discredited CNN report about the tax burden in California when Brown was governor, from 1975 to 1983, and the employee asked Whitman why she wouldn't pull it.

Whitman said "the facts in the ad are accurate," saying an alternative calculation of the tax burden supported her claim.

Whitman said Clinton, who endorsed Brown on Tuesday, did so because he is a "loyal Democrat," not because he was wrong.

Later, a man asked if it wasn't "cynical and disingenuous" for Whitman to spend so much money on her campaign and to not engage in unscripted debate.

Whitman, who is scheduled to debate Brown three times, plunked another $15 million of her own money into her campaign on Tuesday, raising her total self-contribution to just more than $119 million, a record for a non-presidential race.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman became the biggest ever U.S. campaign self-spender yesterday after putting another $15 million into her campaign, bringing her total contribution to $119,075,806.11.

Whitman surpassed New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who invested $110 million of his own money to win a close race last year. Whitman has also raised more than $20 million from outside sources.

Despite the record spending, Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay, is still locked in a close race with her Democratic rival Jerry Brown, who only began running paid advertising last week. His campaign has raised about $35 million so far, virtually all of it from outside sources.

Whitman has said she will spend whatever it takes to win, and predicted ultimately putting in up to $150 million into her campaign.

Photo: Meg Whitman speaks at a campaign rally in Roseville on Tuesday, June 29, 2010. (Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee)

The cable company Comcast has stopped running a TV ad by the California Teachers Association accusing Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman of proposing to lay off teachers and slash school budgets, according to Comcast spokesman Andrew Johnson.

Comcast made the call this morning after receiving a letter from Whitman campaign lawyer Thomas Hiltachk accusing the teachers' union ad of slandering Whitman. Comcast serves 2 million households from Salinas to Mendocino County.

"We received documentation from attorneys representing both sides," Johnson said. "We reviewed the documentation and after review, our legal team determined the allegations made in the ad could not be substantiated and we pulled the ad."

Other stations around the state have also reportedly stopped running the ad.

Johnson added, "This is not rare. It happens every election cycle."

CTA spokeswoman Sandra Jackson said the union stood by the ad, which bases its claims on Whitman's promises to cut $15 billion from the state budget.

"So far, we haven't seen how she's going to cut the state budget without cutting education," Jackson said. "Show us the numbers. Show us how that can be done."

Former President Bill Clinton endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown today just two days after Brown mocked him during a campaign appearance. Brown apologized yesterday for that statement, in which he questioned Clinton's honesty and joked about the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Clinton issued his endorsement in a statement to The Los Angeles Times, saying, "I strongly support Jerry Brown for governor because I believe he was a fine mayor of Oakland, he's been a very good attorney general, and he would be an excellent governor at a time when California needs his creativity and fiscal prudence."

According to The Times, Clinton said a current ad run by Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman featuring Clinton was "misleading" and that Brown and Clinton had buried the hatchet after decades of animosity.

"Moreover, the tough campaign we fought 18 years ago is not relevant to the choice facing Californians today," Clinton said. "Jerry and I put that behind us a long time ago."

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown is firing back at rival Meg Whitman's new ad, which uses a now-discredited attack former President Bill Clintonlaunched when the two vied for their party's presidential nomination in 1992.

"Meg Whitman, she stops at nothing, she's even got Clinton lying about me," he told a crowd at a weekend campaign event, according to a video recording posted online.

Brown, who brawled with Clinton during the 1992 campaign, also took some swipes at the former president, with a sharp-tongued reference to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

"I mean, Clinton's a nice guy, but who ever said he always told the truth?" he quipped.

"I did not have taxes with this state," he jabbed, invoking Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" defense to the Lewinsky allegations.

The Whitman ad, which you can read about and watch here, features a 1992 clip of Clinton citing a CNN report to say Brown raised taxes during his first two terms as governor.

As several media outlets have reported, the state Department of Finance says the claim is inaccurate. The reporter who wrote the CNN piece wrote this weekend at Factcheck.org that he used the wrong years to complete his analysis.

View the video of Brown's comments, posted by Mark Halperin at Time Magazine's "The Page," below.

The union-funded independent expenditure committee California Working Families may have just left the airwaves, but the California Teachers Association is stepping in with a 30-second spot attacking Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman for supposedly backing education cuts.

The teachers union ad says Whitman would cut $7 billion from the schools and lay off 100,000 teachers. On the campaign trail, Whitman has not said she wants to cut school funds but has proposed redirecting money from school administrative costs to the classroom. She's also proposed creating more charter schools and setting up a bonus system to reward teachers and administrators.

Whitman spokeswoman Andrea Jones Rivera said in an e-mail, "The CTA hasn't done its homework. Meg's plan to fix California's schools would direct more of the money spent on education into the classroom, reward outstanding teachers, institute a system that grades our schools on an A-F scale, and eliminate the cap on charter schools. The CTA gets an F for accuracy on this ad."

Here's the text of the ad:

"Should California continue the cutbacks that are crippling our classrooms? Meg Whitman says yes. Whitman says we should cut another seven billion dollars from our schools. Teacher layoffs -- 100,000 more. 33 percent larger class sizes. And even more cuts to arts and music programs that deny our kids a well-rounded education. Tell Meg Whitman that cutting education to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy is wrong for our schools and California's future."

The ghosts of the 1992 presidential race are haunting the current gubernatorial campaign as Republican candidate Meg Whitman unveiled a TV ad this morning featuring a clip of Bill Clinton criticizing Democratic candidate Jerry Brown, who was running against Clinton in the 1992 primary.

In the spot, Clinton lambastes Brown's record in what appears to be a debate with the former California governor, using some of the same charges Whitman has aimed at Brown this year.

"CNN, not me, CNN says his assertion about his tax record was, quote, just plain wrong," Clinton says in the clip. "Jerry Brown went out there and took credit for the fact that the people of California voted for Proposition 13, which lowered taxes which he opposed. And now he's going around taking credit for it. He raised taxes as governor of California. He had a surplus when he took office and a deficit when he left. He doesn't tell the people the truth."

In a statement, Whitman said, "The truth is he raised taxes, he left the state with a then-record 11 percent unemployment rate and he turned the $6 billion surplus into a $1 billion deficit."

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford responded, "The CNN report in 1992 was wrong, and the facts are clearly established that Jerry Brown reduced the tax burden in California by billions of dollars. I would like to add that Meg Whitman has failed to tell the truth at any point in this campaign, and it appears she's just going to keep lying to Election Day."

When asked at a Santa Rosa event on Aug. 25 about support from President Barack Obama, Brown told reporters, "I talked to former President Clinton's people tonight ... I'm just saying I've talked to him."

Brown and Clinton clashed repeatedly during the 1992 presidential race, when Brown was running an insurgent, grass-roots race for the Democratic nomination.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown unveiled his first radio ad this morning, following the Labor Day debut of his first television ad.

The radio spot expands on the earlier ad, touting his time as governor from 1975 to 1983 and playing up his self-professed frugality. Both the radio and TV spots are narrated by longtime Brown ally and actor Peter Coyote.

Republican rival Meg Whitman has been running paid advertising for nearly a year now and began airing TV spots hitting Brown shortly after the June 8 primary. Several union-funded independent expenditure committees have run advertising attacking Whitman.

A CNN/Time poll released yesterday shows the two candidates in a statistical tie, with Whitman earning the support of 48 percent of respondents to Brown's 46 percent. The margin of error of the poll was 3.5 percentage points.

Here's the text of the radio ad:

Announcer: Never accused of following conventional wisdom, Jerry Brown took on the status quo. As governor he refused to take a pay raise and vetoed pay raises for state employees - dumped the governor's mansion and the limo to save money. And with Jerry Brown as Governor California was working. Four billion in tax cuts - 1.9 million jobs created. Jerry Brown has the knowledge and know-how to get California working again.

Jerry Brown: As Governor, I was known for frugality. I thought if people were cutting back, Government should too. Today our state is in serious trouble. We need to make major changes - think differently and govern differently. By making the tough decisions now, we can get California back on track. We have to start living within our means. We need to return power and decision-making to the local level, closer to the people. And no new taxes without voter approval.

Announcer: Jerry Brown. The knowledge and know how to get California working again. Paid for by Brown for Governor 2010

Voters will now have at least three chances to watch the gubernatorial candidates go head to head on the issues before the Nov. 2 election.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown today said he has accepted an invitation to debate Republican rival Meg Whitman on Oct. 2. The debate, sponsored by the Fresno Bee and Spanish-language network Univisión, will be held at California State University, Fresno, at 11 a.m. and broadcast on Univisión at 4 p.m. that day. Whitman had already agreed to participate.

The RSVP comes after a series of editorials in the Fresno Bee urging Brown to agree to the debate. In a statement announcing the decision, Brown called for another debate to be scheduled in the Los Angeles area.

Both candidates have also agreed to attend a Sept. 28 debate sponsored by the Sacramento Bee, UC Davis, KCRA and Capital Public Radio and an Oct. 12 debate at San Rafael's Dominican University, sponsored by NBC Universal.

This post was updated with debate times.

An energized Jerry Brown made an impassioned pitch for his Democratic gubernatorial candidacy this afternoon at a union-organized Labor Day picnic at William Land Park, where he portrayed himself as the lifelong Californian running against Meg Whitman, an East Coast transplant sympathetic to the wealthy.

The speech was part of what Brown has characterized as the launch of his full campaign after he made sporadic appearances and refrained from running TV advertising all summer. His campaign will air its first TV spot tomorrow.

Brown received a hero's welcome at the annual picnic thrown by the California Labor Federation, which featured a who's who of Democratic candidates and power brokers, including Senate President Darrell Steinberg and federation head Art Pulaski.

Brown spoke to the crowd of more than 100 people in a quick patter, slamming Whitman as a consultant-driven politician who couldn't be trusted. He also beat back criticism from the Whitman camp that he was a "Sacramento politician" to blame for the state's political and fiscal mess.

"I'm not in Sacramento," Brown said. "I'm from Oakland, OK? And all this stuff that's going on here...it's from people up here."

Brown didn't offer many policy proposals, instead basing his pitch on a pledge to be honest with Californians about the problems in the state and to work with everybody.

"You can't buy the the confidence or trust of the people," Brown said while criticizing Whitman's heavy-spending campaign. "They're distrustful of government, but you're not going to win their trust by trying to buy it. It's not for sale. You have to earn it."

Whitman spokesman Darrel Ng was also at the picnic where he offered a rebuttal after Brown had left for another event in Fairfield.

"The question is when these unions give him all this money, what do they expect in return?" Ng said. "They're not giving him money out of the goodness of their heart. They know that they need an advocate in Sacramento. Someone who will protect their interest, someone who will look after pensions, will look after state spending, and they know that's Jerry Brown."

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown is kicking off his campaign in earnest today with a flurry of activity, starting with his first TV ad, which his campaign just debuted online.

The fast-paced, 30-second spot introduces voters to the former governor and the themes he's been highlighting for months - his claims to frugality, his promotion of clean energy and his record of job creation.

Republican rival Meg Whitman has been running paid advertising for a year now, starting with her primary fight and barely pausing after winning the GOP nomination on June 8.

Several independent expenditure groups, funded largely by unions, have been running paid advertising attacking Whitman since the primary.

The two candidates are locked in a close race, although a few recent polls suggest Whitman may have built a slight lead.

Brown's packed day starts at 7:30 a.m. at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in Los Angeles, moves on to a California Labor Federation picnic in William Land Park in Sacramento at noon, then a Solano County Democratic Central Committee northern campaign office opening in Fairfield around 1:30 p.m. and concludes at 3 p.m. at the Alameda Labor Day Picnic at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Park in Oakland.

Don't be surprised if Brown adds another event at the last minute. The Fairfield stop was only announced yesterday, and the campaign publicized an appearance in Manteca yesterday with less than four hours warning.

(Ever industrious, Capitol Alert was there in Manteca.)

Here's the text to the new TV ad:

Voiceover: As governor, he cut waste - got rid of the mansion and the limo. Budgets were balanced. Four billion in tax cuts. World-class schools and universities. Clean energy promoted. One-point nine million new jobs created. California was working.

Jerry Brown: I'm Jerry Brown. California needs major changes. We have to live within our means, we have to return power and decision-making to the local level, closer to the people, and no new taxes without voter approval.

Voiceover: Jerry Brown. The knowledge and know-how to get California working again.

The nearly $100 million price tag on Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman's primary win breaks down as the second-highest spending per primary vote by a largely self-funded gubernatorial candidate, according to an analysis released today by The Fair Political Practices Commission.

Whitman, who faced a tough primary challenge from Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner , spent $65 for each vote she won in the June 8 primary. That figure is about $5 less per vote than Al Checchi spent on his failed 1998 Democratic gubernatorial primary run.

Poizner spent $43.64 per vote to come up short while Democratic nominee Jerry Brown, who did not face a serious challenger, spent just 38 cents for each vote he bagged.

Brown, Poizner and Whitman spent a combined $128 million on the June primary. That's six times the inflation-adjusted total from 1978 when five candidates, including Brown, dropped a total of $23 million on their bids. (Brown, who was running unopposed for re-election, spent $576,000 more in 2010 dollars in 1978 than he did this time around).

The high spending doesn't mean more voters are coming out to the polls -- the report also found that voter participation has declined during the period that spending has increased.

Here are the self-funded candidates who spent the most per vote. Just Whitman and Bill Simon won their primary contests:

1. Al Checchi $70.21 (1998 Democratic gubernatorial primary)
2. Meg Whitman $65.29 (2010 Republican gubernatorial primary)
3. Steve Westly $45.29 (2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary)
4. Steve Poizner $43.64 (2010 Republican gubernatorial primary)
5. Jane Harman $29.59 (1998 Democratic gubernatorial primary)
6. Bill Simon $17.31 (2002 Republican gubernatorial primary)

Click here to read the full report.

This post was updated with more information from the report.

PHOTO CREDIT: Meg Whitman at her June 8 primary victory party. Hector Amezcua, Sacramento Bee.

Facing a barrage of Spanish-language advertising from Republican Meg Whitman, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown was joined by Latino legislators and community leaders at Laney College in Oakland Thursday to tout his history supporting causes dear to the state's growing Latino community.

The guest list included state Senate Majority leader Dean Florez, D-Shafter, Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont, and various city officials from around the Bay Area.

Their message: Whitman's Latino outreach isn't producing dividends.

"He was the first to create the Labor Relations Act," Florez said. "He was the first to embrace Cesar Chavez. He was the first to stand with farmworkers when it wasn't popular."

Brown delivered a variation of his standard stump speech, stressing creating green jobs but not spending much time on Latino-specific issues.

"We're going to turn this breakdown into a breakthrough," Brown said. "Real change, not bought change, not marketing propaganda."

After the speech, Brown told reporters he didn't think Whitman was making many inroads in the Latino community.

Whitman spokesman Hector Barajas thought otherwise, saying surveys show Whitman winning more than 30 percent of the state Latino vote, which would be a strong showing for a Republican. The Whitman campaign touted a letter from Democratic state Sen. Gloria Romero praising Whitman for opening a campaign office in East Los Angeles.

"People don't care that you marched with Cesar Chavez 40 years ago," Barajas said. "People want to know what you're going to do now."

UPDATE: The defense attorney in a child molestation case in San Mateo County Superior Court has excused Whitman this afternoon from the jury pool.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman reported back to the Superior Court in Redwood City this morning to find out whether she'll be selected to serve on a jury for a high-profile child molestation trial, Whitman spokesman Hector Barajas said.

Whitman had first reported to the Hall of Justice and Records Monday and was told she would be on call for the next 48 hours, Whitman's campaign said.

Barajas confirmed media reports that Whitman was being considered for the trial of Tarquin Craig Thomas, a British citizen charged with molesting a 9-year-old boy he was trying to adopt.

Although Whitman frequently missed elections, she's registered to vote in San Mateo County, where she lives. Jurors in the county are selected from voter lists, as well as driver license records, according to the county Superior Court Web site.

PHOTO CREDIT: Meg Whitman discusses her campaign to workers of Altergy Systems after touring their fuel cell manufacturing plant in Folsom on Wednesday. (AP Photo/ Rich Pedroncelli)

Leaders of the independent expenditure committee California Working Families said in a media conference call this afternoon that they will take a "less visible" role in the governor's race going forward after spending $8.7 million running TV, radio and online ads attacking Republican candidate Meg Whitman.

The union-backed committee went on air the week after the June 8 primary and ran several spots slamming Whitman for her record as CEO of the online auction firm eBay and her poor voting record. Whitman, a billionaire who has invested $104 million of her own money in her campaign, has been running paid advertising for nearly a year now.

Democrat Jerry Brown hasn't run any paid advertising yet but has promised to get more active after Labor Day.

California Working Families' coalition includes a variety of labor and liberal activist groups.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman took a short break from the campaign trail this afternoon to clock in some jury duty at the Superior Court in Redwood City, according to her campaign.

Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay, spent the afternoon at the courthouse with her fellow potential jurors but wasn't selected, her campaign said. The candidate will be on call for the next 48 hours.

Whitman spokesman Sarah Pompei said in a written statement, "She enjoyed meeting her fellow potential jurors this afternoon, but looks forward to returning to the campaign trail ...."

Photo: Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee

Three past governors - Jerry Brown, George Deukmejian and Gray Davis - will be honored at a Thursday night fundraiser at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles for signing a letter last year urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to retain funding to the state California Conservation Corps, which Brown created.

The only other living ex-governor, Pete Wilson, had signed the letter too but won't be attending Thursday's event because of a scheduling conflict, said Karmi Ferguson, executive director of the California Conservation Corps Foundation.

Wilson also happens to be the chairman of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's campaign, which is locked in a tight governor's race with Brown. The event was scheduled six weeks ago, and Wilson was already planning to be out of the state, Ferguson said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's ground operation has merged with that of the state Republican Party's and will be focusing not just on the governor's race this fall but also on targeted legislative races, said Whitman strategist Jeff Randle this morning in a conference call with reporters.

That joint effort was already tested in the special election to fill the 15th state Senate seat vacated by Abel Maldonado, Randle said, when Whitman herself and her aides worked in the district to coordinate the ground plan. The result, he said, was 60 volunteers walking precincts and 275,000 phone calls to support the eventual victor, Republican Sam Blakeslee.

"We have fully integrated our group operation, meaning the Whitman campaign from the primary into the Republican party victory operation to ensure we are helping all Republican candidates," Randle said. "So it's now one big victory operation to help everybody."

Party-run consolidated campaign ground operations are nothing new in California, but Randle said this effort is "really the most team-oriented integrated victory operation I have ever seen or ever run in my 22 years in politics."

UPDATE: Ho hum, responded California Democratic Party spokesman Tenoch Flores to Randle's statements about the Whitman/state GOP ground game.

"It may be novel for the Republicans, but Democrats consider statewide coordination a given," Flores said. "That's why it's called a coordinated campaign."

Flores added, "We're going to be concentrating on turning out core Democrats. This is something we're taking very seriously, from door-knocking to phone-banking to online media to get the word out about the Democratic ticket and Republican ticket and what this would represent for California. We feel pretty good about our volunteer efforts."

The California Nurses Association staged a march and rally this afternoon that filled the streets around the state Capitol with a dual message both celebrating women winning the right to vote and criticizing Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's penchant for skipping elections.

The CNA rally, which drew about 1,500 people, fell on the 90th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women suffrage. Many of the protesters got in the spirit of the day by dressing in early 20th century-style dresses and hats while carrying signs saying in old-fashioned font, "Women vote for women who vote."

Protesters chanted slogans such as "Nurses vote without fail! California is not for sale!" as they marched the few short blocks from the Sacramento Convention Center to the state Capitol.

The rally also drew unions representing firefighters, teachers, truck drivers, carpenters and other trades.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has launched a new TV ad criticizing Democratic rival and Attorney General Jerry Brown's use of a state-owned turboprop plane to attend two events where campaign donors attended and to travel 74 miles to another event.

According to the attorney general's office's flight data logs, Brown has used the state plane 10 times since 2007. He mostly used the plane to attend police officer funerals and other law enforcement functions.

The Whitman commercial dings Brown for using the plane to attend an event held by the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business's Fisher Center for Real Estate at a Pebble Beach resort. It also slams Brown's use of the plane to attend another event organized by the California Hospital Association in Carlsbad and to travel to Stockton for a gang takedown.

The Pebble Beach event honored Gerson Bakar, a real estate investor who has contributed to Brown and other Democratic candidates, according to The Associated Press.

The ad quotes Brown saying, "I got rid of the private jet. I flew on regular, coach airways."

Actually, Brown was talking to Spanish-language channel Univision about his travel customs while governor from 1975 to 1983.

The announcer in the ad then says, "Except when he flew a state plane to the La Costa Resort and Spa or to an ocean view room at Pebble Beach -- both to woo big campaign donors. Or when he fueled up and flew 74 miles for a press conference. Why drive when you can fly? After all, it's your money -- not his."

Speaking last night after a Santa Rosa rally, Brown defended his use of the plane, saying, "Sometimes, funerals are very good to go to."

He explained later, "It's civil enforcement. ... The truth is I'm asked and shall I say, 'I won't go to places?' Hospitals are a big group. And the land use is fundamental to my whole green jobs strategy. And when people ask me, 'Say, hey, will you come and talk?' Most of the time I don't, but sometimes I do."

The attorney general's office said that, by comparison, former Attorney General Bill Lockyer, another Democrat, had used the state Department of Justice's plane 36 times during his first term and 30 times during his second term. The Bee has left a message with Lockyer, now the state treasurer, seeking confirmation of the flight numbers.

UPDATE: Locker spokesman Tom Dresslar, who was also his spokesman at the attorney general's office, responded, "We have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the information you have there" from Brown's office.

Dresslar said Lockyer used a state Department of Justice-owned Cessna aircraft during his first term as attorney general and then, during his second term, the King Air turboprop that Brown flew in. Lockyer flew to attend four local law enforcement meetings a year, to visit the state's prisons and to attend law enforcement funerals, Dresslar said.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has pulled eight points ahead of Democrat Jerry Brown, according to poll results released today by Rasmussen Reports.

Whitman, who has spent more than $100 million on her campaign, now leads Brown 48 percent to 40 percent, according to the poll. Six percent of likely voters said they were undecided.

Today's results mark the largest lead Whitman has posted during the general election. The two were locked in a statistical tie in a Rasmussen Reports poll published earlier this month. That poll showed Brown leading by two points, 43 percent to 41 percent.

The shift prompted the national polling organization, which has a reputation for leaning right, to change its rating of the California governor's race from "toss up" to "leans GOP."

The telephone survey of 750 likely voters was conducted Aug. 24. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points.

Click here to read the full poll.

PHOTO CREDIT: Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman speaks to supporters at the California Republican Party 2010 Fall Convention Friday, Aug. 20, 2010, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Chris Park)

A fired-up Jerry Brown held one of his biggest campaign rallies to date Wednesday night in Santa Rosa where he pledged to start working on the budget a week after Election Day if he's elected and hinted to reporters that former President and longtime nemesis Bill Clinton might lend his support.

The attorney general and Democratic gubernatorial candidate spoke to about 800 people in an event organized by the Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee at the Veterans Memorial Hall here.

His appearance also drew about 25 protesters holding the campaign signs of Republican rival Meg Whitman and homemade signs bashing Brown.

During the 25-minute-long speech, Brown repeated the central tenets of his campaign so far - a jobs plan tied to clean energy production, the need to work with all sides to issues such as pension reform and criticism of Whitman as an out-of-touch former CEO.

He also criticized legislators for not passing a state budget months after the constitutional deadline to do so had passed and said he wouldn't let that happen if he was governor.

Unlike Whitman's highly produced events, Brown's speech was a stripped-down affair. The only thing in the way of a campaign decoration was a "Jerry Brown Governor 2010" sign taped to the podium.

"I'm not going to wait by the way until August 25," Brown said, referring to legislators still deliberating the current budget. "They're still not sure. I'm going to start about a week after the election. ... With enough energy and strength, I would start some time in early November. I'm going to ask all 120 legislators to keep working until we get it done. That's never happened before. But it'll happen this time and we will get it done."

Brown won his biggest applause of the night by championing the contributions of immigrants to the state.

"The people who want to point the finger and blame the immigrants, that's who built this state," Brown said.

Just another day in the governor's race, and both Democratic candidate Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman are on the defensive.

Let's start with Brown, who was reported to be visiting George Landers, executive director of the UFCW Western States Council. The source was Robin Swanson, a Democratic public relations consultant, who wrote about the encounter on her Facebook page.

Landers' group is a coalition member of California Working Families, an independent expenditure committee that's run TV and radio ads attacking Whitman. According to state law, Brown is prohibited from coordinating with such committees.

Swanson wrote on her Facebook page yesterday: "Random visitor of the day - Jerry Brown strolling into the office to meet with my office-mate, George Landers. With no entourage. And since he asked me to "like" him on Facebook, I figured I'd pass it on: http://www.facebook.com/jerrybrown"

Conservative blogger Jon Fleischman broke the news today.

Swanson told The Bee today, "I would ask Jon Sherlock Holmes Fleischman whether as a communications professional would I really post about a clandestine meeting? You all really need to brush up on your Nancy Drew skills. (Jerry) just popped in to say hello."

The liberal advocacy group Courage Campaign played down Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's announcement yesterday that she would defend Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex marriage, if elected governor.

Courage Campaign director Rick Jacobs noted that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has already scheduled a hearing for the week of Dec. 6 to determine whether the initiative's sponsor, the advocacy group Protect Marriage, has legal standing to defend the voter-passed measure.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown are not defending the proposition in the courts. Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California, who declared the proposition unconstitutional Aug. 4, had suggested that only the state could defend the law.

If elected, Whitman would take the oath of office on Jan. 3, although it remains unclear whether she could join the lawsuit as a defendant after the December hearing.

"She wouldn't be governor yet," Jacobs said. "The appeals court will decide before there would be a change of governor and attorney general."

UC Hastings College of the Law professor Rory Little said Whitman's ability to defend the proposition would hinge on several factors - the biggest of which, of course, is whether she becomes governor.

It would also depend on whether the 9th Circuit decides the standing issue before January 6 and how the court decides.

"There are a lot of ifs," Little said. "If the 9th Circuit hasn't decided the matter by December, she could attempt to file a brief to say, 'Now, the state of California enters the case.'"

The Courage Campaign is an official supporter of the main independent expenditure group opposing Whitman, California Working Families.

Jacobs said Whitman's announcement from yesterday bolstered the group's resolve to oppose Whitman, although it doesn't endorse candidates.

"You're going to see us making it clear that Meg Whitman is unqualified to be governor on any stand," Jacobs said.

Responding to a question from The Bee yesterday during a campaign stop, Whitman said, "The issue right now is, as I understand is 'Will Proposition 8 have the appropriate support to actually make an appeal to the circuit court of appeals?'And I think the governor, the attorney general today has to defend the constitution and has to enable the judicial process to go along and has to enable an appeal to go through. So if I was governor, I would give that ruling standing to be able to appeal to the circuit court."

Whitman's campaign later told The Bee that she would become a defendant in the appeal of Walker's ruling if needed.

Half of the Republican statewide ticket pumped up the party faithful Friday night to cap the first day of the state GOP's semi-annual convention at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego.

Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman was the star of the night, but she shared the spotlight with secretary of state candidate Damon Dunn and state controller nominee Tony Strickland.

In her fourth address to a state Republican convention, Whitman delivered a populist and at times pep rally-like address, albeit with a business school tinge.

The former CEO of online auction firm eBay took the stage as classic rock shook the hotel ballroom. "Damon Dunn, you are a star!" she bellowed and then told Strickland, "You're going to be the most awesome controller! The CFO of the state!"

Sitting with Strickland at the front table were also Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, who's running for re-election, and Whitman's husband Griffith R. Harsh.

No political convention would be complete without a health dose of inner-party squabbling.

As the California Republican Party's semi-annual convention opened today, delegates representing the party's more conservative faction blasted GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman, accusing her of backing away from positions she took in the primary on key issues.

Members of the California Republican Assembly, many of whom backed Whitman's GOP rival Steve Poizner in the primary, took aim at Whitman's stances on illegal immigration, taxes and Proposition 23, a November ballot initiative that would suspend the state's landmark greenhouse gas emissions reduction law until the economy rebounds.They warned her current positions could cost the entire GOP ticket votes in November

"There's almost nothing left of primary Meg," said Mike Schroeder, a former state party chair and past CRA president. "As long as that's the case, she's not going to get Republican voters to turnout."

Young Republican Federation of California President Adam Abrahms echoed Schroeder's concerns, saying while he would "absolutely" vote for Whitman, he thinks turnout could be a problem.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said this afternoon that if elected governor, she would defend Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex marriage, by appealing a recent federal court ruling declaring the proposition unconstitutional.

Whitman made her clearest stand to date on the issue while speaking at the warehouse of Solar Gard Window Film in San Diego, hours before she's scheduled to address the California Republican Party's convention downtown.

During a brief news conference, the Bee asked Whitman whether she would defend Proposition 8 if elected governor. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has taken up the issue after Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court of Northern California declared the measure unconstitutional earlier this month.

"The issue right now is, as I understand is 'Will Proposition 8 have the appropriate support to actually make an appeal to the circuit court of appeals?' " Whitman said. "And I think the governor, the attorney general today has to defend the constitution and has to enable the judicial process to go along and has to enable an appeal to go through. So if I was governor, I would give that ruling standing to be able to appeal to the circuit court."

The appeals court plans to hear the case in December, but Supreme Court appeals are planned by both sides, so Whitman would have plenty of time to intervene if she wins and takes office in January.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown said this morning that he opposes furloughing state workers to cope with the budget crisis while accusing current legislators of not dealing with the mess until the last minute.

Brown made the comments on his weekly call in to San Francisco radio station KGO where he was also asked about his use of a state plane as attorney general and of the state pension he would receive when he retires. Listen to the call here, which starts around time mark 42:30.

When asked by host Ed Baxter about furloughs, Brown responded, "No, I don't think as a general practice furloughs are not the best way to go. And secondly, because the Legislature doesn't produce a budget on time, I don't think that's grounds for holding the state workers responsible."

He went on to speculate about possible solutions to the budget mess, including taking budget issues to the ballot box.

"Look, they've got to make the cuts," Brown said of state leaders. "They've got to find, whatever they can do. Move functions in local government, find some fees ... talk to Obama, get some more bailout. Their back is to the wall, and the reason is they didn't make the hard decisions in January or February when they could have gone to the voters to ask to be relieved of certain constitutional mandates or to let the voters vote on some choices about what they want or don't want in state and local government."

A business organization backing Meg Whitman has launched a new "issue" ad attacking Democrat Jerry Brown's record on job creation and spending.

"Two million Californians out of work, and Attorney General Jerry Brown makes it harder to create jobs," says the narrator in the beginning of the 30-second spot, which will air across the state.

The ad from the Small Business Action Committee takes the same tone as many of the Whitman campaign's attacks against Brown, including casting his decades-long career in politics as a record of high spending and debt. But because the advertisement does not explicitly refer to Brown's gubernatorial candidacy, it qualifies as "issue advocacy" and is not subject to campaign disclosure requirements for independent expenditures.

Political blog CalBuzz reported that the television buy was $1.6 million. SBAC spokeswoman Jennifer Dudikoff said she could not confirm or deny the price of the ad and would only say it was funded by both small and large businesses.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has contributed another $13 million to her campaign.

The contribution, reported Friday evening to the secretary of state (listed on page 5 of the report), brings Whitman's personal investment in her bid to become California governor to $104 million.

The billionaire former eBay CEO reported spending a record-breaking more than $99 million on her campaign as of June 30.

Whitman faces Democratic state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose campaign had $23 million in the bank as of June 30. Independent groups funded by unions have reported spending millions to boost his campaign.

PHOTO CREDIT: Meg Whitman and husband Griffith Harsh, celebrate with supporters on election night at the Hilton hotel in Universal City on June 8. Hector Amezcua/ Sacramento Bee

A labor-backed coalition supporting Jerry Brown is going on the airwaves with a new television ad attacking Republican Meg Whitman over pricey legal settlements in which Whitman was involved as a top executive of two companies.

The 30-second spot by California Working Families blasts Whitman for two settlements that occurred during her tenure as eBay CEO -- one involving an altercation between Whitman and a co-worker and another to settle a lawsuit filed by shareholders over stock practices. The third settlement involved an age discrimination lawsuit filed while Whitman headed flower delivery company FTD.

"In business, money works like magic. But when a governor faces trouble, the trick's on us," the narrator says.

The ad, which you can watch below, will air statewide on cable starting Monday:

UPDATE: Whitman spokeswoman Andrea Jones Rivera shot back by pointing out that the city of Oakland spent $50,000 when Brown was mayor to settle a sexual harassment claim against Brown's longtime friend and aide Jacques Barzaghi.

"Just like they said they would, Jerry Brown Incorporated is desperately trying to slur Meg's character because after 40 years in politics they can't win with Jerry Brown's failed economic record," she said in a statement.

The California Labor Federation and other labor groups are planning a protest this afternoon outside a fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to be held at the historic downtown Elks Tower.

The federation, along with members of the Service Employees International Union and other groups, have been rallying this past week at Whitman events across the state, including the opening of her East Los Angeles field office last week and a Bakersfield event yesterday.

The unions have criticized what they say are Whitman plans to weaken worker protections and cut 40,000 state worker positions. Three anti-Whitman, union-funded independent expenditure committees had spent $5.9 million as of June 30, largely on TV and radio ads attacking the billionaire candidate.

Photo: Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee

Rex Babin is the political cartoonist for The Bee. You can see a collection of his work here.

Rep. Tom McClintock hasn't changed his feelings about Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

The conservative icon, who backed Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the GOP primary, said on KNEW 910 AM in San Francisco yesterday morning, "I'm not prepared to endorse her right now."

McClintock went on, "If it comes down to a choice between Arnold Schwarzenegger's third term with Meg Whitman, or Jerry Brown's third term with Jerry Brown, anyway you cut it, it's going to be a long four years."

PHOTO CREDIT: Rep. Tom McClintock, April 1, 2009. (Olivier Douliery/ Abaca Press/ MCT )

GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's views on immigration reform were in the spotlight again yesterday, as she told conservative radio hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou that she would not support allowing undocumented immigrants currently in the country to apply for citizenship.

"I don't think we should have blanket amnesty, and I am not for a path to citizenship. I have been very, very clear," she said during a segment on John and Ken show on KFI 640 AM.

The radio hosts have relentlessly criticized Whitman in recent weeks, accusing her of changing her positions on key issues. They took their trademark aggressive tone in the interview, frequently interrupting and challenging Whitman's statements.

"Are you going to answer the question? ... No illegal alien is going to get any sort of citizenship unless they leave the country and apply through the process. Is that true?" Chiampou interjected during the interview.

Whitman responded "yes," adding that she does support a temporary guest worker program.

Whitman has faced criticism from opponents who say she has shifted her position on the issue since the primary. She has said in the past that deporting immigrants currently living in the country illegally is "simply not practical."

"Can we get a fair program where people stand at the back of the line, they pay a fine, they do some things that would ultimately allow a path to legalization?" she was quoted as saying during a 2009 event.

Spokesman Tucker Bounds said Whitman's position has remained consistent: "She does not support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants that are in the state currently."

Whitman was also asked about her position on Proposition 23, the November ballot measure to suspend California's landmark emissions reductions law indefinitely. When pressed by the hosts, she came closer to taking a stance than she has so far in the campaign, saying "in all likelihood" she would vote no on the initiative. She supports instead ordering as governor a one-year moratorium on the law.

Click here to listen to the interview.

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this post misspelled the hosts' last names. The Bee regrets the error.

American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees is airing a new 30-second television ad attacking GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

The ad, titled "Shameful," portrays the billionaire candidate as a self-serving liar. It hits her on several fronts, including stock "spinning," a now banned practice of investment banks giving clients early access for buying stocks in companies about to go public, and for playing "loose with facts" in her campaign against Democrat Jerry Brown.

"Meg Whitman never let the truth or the rules get in the way of helping herself," the narrator says.

AFSCME, the nation's largest public employee and health care workers union, reported this week spending $2 million on television ads. Other union-backed coalitions supporting Brown have already spent roughly $6 million to counter the millions Whitman has spent on television ads so far.

A news release from the group says the ad will air for 10 days in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Whitman spokeswoman Andrea Jones Rivera called the ad "false and misleading."

"These unions know Meg is an independent candidate who will bring real changes to Sacramento and end their hold in Sacramento, which is why they are spending millions in attack ads." she said in a written statement.

An earlier version of this post attributed the Whitman campaign quote to Sarah Pompei. Although it was sent by Pompei, it should have been attributed to Rivera.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said today that, if elected, she would use the veto pen "very aggressively" to stop the Legislature from doing work she said is off-task.

At a campaign stop at SynapSense Corp. in Folsom, Whitman said the Legislature has become a "bill factory" and should instead focus on California's budget crisis and other priorities.

She also said the state's next governor should buy a house in Sacramento and live in town, interacting more with lawmakers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger flies back and forth to his house in Southern California or stays at a hotel by the Capitol.

PHOTO CREDIT: Meg Whitman attends a campaign rally at Roseville Yamaha dealership on Tuesday, June 29, 2010. Sacramento Bee/ Hector Amezcua

GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has spent nearly $100 million on her bid for governor, campaign finance figures released today show.

Whitman, who has put $91 million of her own cash into her campaign, reported spending roughly $80 million in 2010. She spent more than $19 million of that during the most receipt reporting period, which ran from May 23 to June 30.

The former eBay CEO has about $10 million in the bank, according to her report.

Her rival Jerry Brown, who did not face a primary challenge, reported spending roughly $633,000 and having $23 million on hand.

Click here to see Whitman's full report, filed today with the secretary of state's office.

Three union-backed groups targeting Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman have spent a total of $5.9 million, nearly 10 times what Whitman's Democratic rival Jerry Brown has spent.

The heavy hitter among the three was California Working Families, an independent expenditure committee backed by unions representing firefighters, teachers and others.

The group spent $4.2 million this year through June 30 largely on TV ads in Southern California and Sacramento and had $2.1 million in reserves. The California State Council of Service Employees - the state branch of the Service Employees International Union - put in $3.15 million of that sum.

Coming in second, Working Californians received $1.6 million in contributions this year through June 30 and had spent $1.2 million of it. The group, backed by the State Council of Service Employees and unions representing electrical workers, debuted a Spanish-language TV ad last week criticizing Whitman.

And despite promising to raise up to $20 million when it launched, the third group, Level the Playing Field, raised $387,433 this year through June 30 and only $110 between May 23 and June 30. The bulk of the independent expenditure committee's money came from the California Nurses Association and a union representing college faculty. Level the Playing Field spent $441,691 this year.

The group's sole contribution over the last reporting period was from John Weil, a retired man in El Cerrito. The committee had $42,200 in reserves as of June 30 but $96,338 in unpaid bills. More than $40,000 of that debt was owed to consulting firm SCN Strategies, which was co-founded by the committee's leaders Sean Clegg and Dan Newman.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown is continuing his low-budget ways four months before the election, with his campaign spending just $633,205 this year, a just-filed campaign finance statement shows. He had about $23.2 million in cash on hand.

The filing also reveals a paid staff of five people and two consultants, including campaign manager Steve Glazer, who received $30,000 in the filing period of May 23 to June 30 and $75,000 throughout the year. Spokesman Sterling Clifford received $8,256 in that period and $23,386 altogether.

The other consultant listed in the report was San Francisco-based Schuyler Hudak, who's identified as a volunteer coordinator on her Linkedin page. The campaign, in fact, depends heavily on volunteer aid.

Also listed in the campaign filing was a $2,796 payment to Joe Trippi & Associates, run by Democratic Internet guru Joe Trippi, which is coordinating much of Brown's new media strategy.

The campaign reported receiving $19.4 million in contributions this year.

Among other tidbits, Brown stays at the Los Angeles Athletic Club and the Courtyard by Marriott in Los Altos and flies Southwest Airlines a lot. His May 17 rally at UC Santa Barbara appeared to prompt a $3095.27 payment to the school's campus Democrats.

Republican rival Meg Whitman has yet to file her campaign finance statement, which is due today, but is expected to near or surpass a record-shattering $110 million in spending, including $91 million of her own money.

Brown is also receiving the help of union-funded independent expenditure committees, which have so far spent several millions of dollars attacking Whitman. Their campaign finance statements have yet to be filed.

Photo: Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee

Note: The headline and lede of this post have been corrected to include nonmonetary contributions to the Brown campaign in the total expense figure.

The battle for Latino voters is heating up on California's airwaves.

A coalition of unions called Working Californians has debuted a Spanish-language TV ad accusing Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman of misrepresenting her positions on immigration and other matters in her own TV ad targeting Spanish-speaking voters.

This morning, the Whitman campaign countered with a Spanish-language radio ad that touts her experience leading the online auction firm eBay.

The billionaire candidate has already run several Spanish-language TV ads highlighting her opposition to the 1994 anti-immigrant voter initiative Proposition 187 and a recent Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants. Whitman, however, said this week that she believes the courts reviewing the Arizona law should let it stand.

The union coalition, which was formed in 2006, is composed of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Service Employees International Union and the California Teachers Association.

The TV ad is set to run in Southern California and the Central Valley for three weeks and will possibly hit other markets later, said SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina.

Already, another union-funded group, the similarly-titled California Working Families, has run five English-language TV ads against Whitman since last month. The California Teachers Association is also supporting California Working Families.

The new TV ad by Working Californians, however, is the only Spanish-language spot so far attacking Whitman.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman - who has campaign billboards and Spanish-language ads in California declaring "NO to the Arizona law" - told talk show hosts Wednesday that the same controversial immigration law should be allowed to stand in Arizona.

"You know, I'm running for the governor of California so I had to make a decision," Whitman said. "Does the Arizona law make sense for California? And I have said no, I don't think the Arizona law makes sense for California because we have a much bigger state with much bigger geography."

Whitman appeared on the America's Morning News, a conservative show that's a venture of the Talk Radio Network Entertainment and the Washington Times newspaper. The first question Whitman was asked had to do with Arizona's immigration law.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown said this morning he's open to debating his Republican rival Meg Whitman on San Francisco radio station KGO, although he wouldn't commit to the days - Oct. 5 or Oct. 6 - that Whitman has apparently agreed to.

During Brown's weekly call-in to the station, host Ed Baxter said the producer for radio host Ronn Owens had so far been unable to get a response about the radio debate from Brown's campaign. But Brown said this was the first time he was hearing about the debate offer.

Baxter also said Whitman's campaign had agreed to the Owens debate.

"If you can get Whitman on the Owens show, hallelujah," Brown said. "I'm sure if it's the right time, I'll be in my office in half an hour and I'll check my schedule and if I can get you guys on the phone, I'll call you."

Brown has so far accepted 10 debate offers, including one this Saturday, while Whitman has accepted three, on top of the KGO debate. The only debates where both have agreed to attend are a September event at UC Davis sponsored by The Bee, KCRA, Capitol Public Radio and UC Davis and an October event at Dominican University in San Rafael sponsored by NBC affiliates.

Photo: Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee

Democrats Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer hold narrow leads over their Republican challengers with more than three months of campaigning to come before the November election, a new Public Policy Institute of California poll has found.

The poll, conducted during the first weeks of July, found that Attorney General Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor, is virtually tied with Republican Meg Whitman, leading 37 percent to 34 percent among likely voters with 23 percent still undecided.

PPIC also found Boxer, a three-term U.S. senator, leading Republican Carly Fiorina 39 percent to 34 percent with 22 percent undecided.

The margins are similar to those in other recent polls, but PPIC's survey found substantially more undecided voters than the others.

The PPIC poll was geared to environmental concerns and found that Brown and Boxer both hold large leads among voters who consider environmental issues "very important."

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown released an education plan today proposing that the state spend more money on higher education and shift more K-12 decision-making power to local schools.

The eight-page plan was posted on Brown's campaign website.

His Republican rival, Meg Whitman, has been criticizing the Democrat, saying Brown has no plan for governing California. Today she started airing "No Plan," a statewide radio ad similar to one already on TV.

Also today, the California Teachers Association, a major supporter of Democratic candidates, announced that it is joining the "California Working Families 2010" pro-Brown independent expenditure effort.

"(Brown) gets that California's future depends on a world class, quality public school system and that's why we're proud to join California Working Families 2010," CTA President David A. Sanchez said in a statement.

The union-backed independent expenditure committee has been running radio and television ads backing Brown and attacking Whitman. It's expected to spend tens of millions of dollars on the campaign.

Bee colleague David Siders contributed to this report.

PHOTO CREDIT: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown answers questions during Wednesday morning's press conference at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. June 8, 2010. José Luis Villegas/ Sacramento Bee

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has agreed to participate in a September debate co-sponsored by The Sacramento Bee.

Other sponsors of the event, to be held Sept. 28 on the UC Davis campus, are KCRA, Capital Public Radio and the University of California, Davis.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown had previously accepted the invitation. Brown announced earlier this month that he has agreed to participate in 10 debates and forums leading up to the Nov. 2 general election.

Whitman plans to participate in three, including the Sacramento-area event announced today. She has also agreed to two debates in October - one sponsored by The Fresno Bee and Univision and one sponsored by NBC and Dominican University.

The Sacramento group is working with La Opinion and public radio station KPCC for Southern California publication and broadcast of its debate.

Cheryl Dell, president and publisher of The Sacramento Bee, issued a statement thanking the candidates and partnership organizations for coming together to organize the debate.

"We want to thank the candidates for agreeing to participate in this debate. It is an important and difficult time for California voters and I'm proud of your efforts to help educate them," she said in a statement.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post misspelled Capital Public Radio. We regret the error.

Update: This post was updated at 2:15 p.m. with a response from the Brown campaign.

GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has a new television commercial blasting Democratic rival Jerry Brown.

This one pulls clips from the '90s in which Brown acknowledges he didn't have a plan heading into his first go round as governor, from 1975 to 1983.

The announcer intones: "Jerry Brown. No plan then. No plan now. Meg Whitman. A plan for jobs."

The Brown campaign says the Whitman ad is taking his comments out of context. In the second quotation in the ad -- "You need a real plan. Something I'll acknowledge I did not have" -- Brown was referring to his failed presidential bid, according to the Brown campaign.

"This ad is another example of Meg Whitman taking statements out of context. Her shameless advertising continues to reflect on her desire to fool voters rather than speak the truth," the Brown campaign said in a prepared statement.

Watch the ad:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman appeared this morning on the morning show Good Day LA, where one of the hosts said she felt differently about Whitman after meeting her.

"Meeting you, you're lovely, you're a warm person," she said. "Seeing your ads, I'm a little afraid of you."

The host asked, "Do you ever feel it's just gone too negative, your campaign has gone too negative?"

Whitman said the ads are necessary to "set the record straight on Jerry Brown," the Democratic nominee.

Some claims in Whitman's TV ads are misleading. Whitman said this morning that her ads are accurate and that she stands by them.

In the closest forum to a debate so far, Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman appeared on Larry Kudlow's show on the cable business news channel CNBC this afternoon, but not at the same time.

Under quick-fire questioning from Kudlow, the two candidates talked about how they plan to create jobs and also fired rhetorical darts at each other.

Whitman went on first in a taped interview, touting her jobs plan as featured in a revamped policy booklet to be sent out to thousands of California households. The plan includes targeted tax cuts such as eliminating the capital gains tax and reduced regulations on businesses.

"We've got to give businesses more cash flow to invest in their business," Whitman said. "This is an incredibly difficult time for businesses."

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown accused Republican rival Meg Whitman of lying - although he went out of his way not to use that verb - about both of their stands on illegal immigration, with Whitman arguing in a recently published op-ed that the two have virtually the same positions on the issue.

Speaking to San Francisco radio station KGO in his weekly chat, Brown pointed out that he supports "comprehensive immigration reform" that would give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship while Whitman does not.

He also noted that Whitman supports barring illegal immigrants from attending publicly funded colleges and universities, a stance Brown called "horrible."

Brown then compared her to her Republican primary challenger Steve Poizner, who took a hard-line stance on immigration in his losing campaign.

"She was more anti-immigration than Steve Poizner," Brown said. "That's how she beat him in the closing weeks."

But with tongue in cheek, Brown refused to say Whitman was lying.

"This is an intentional, terminological inexactitude," he said. "She's not telling the truth."

In the op-ed, Whitman tried to neutralize the immigration issue by writing, "Clearly, when examining our positions on immigration, there is very little over which Jerry Brown and I disagree. Latinos seeking a candidate who supports amnesty for illegal immigrants won't find one on the gubernatorial ballot this year."

After saying all spring that she opposed amnesty for illegal immigrants, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman tried to neutralize the immigration issue in the general election by arguing in an op-ed published Wednesday that she and Democratic rival Jerry Brown have virtually the same positions on the issue.

The two candidates, however, disagree on a key component of the immigration debate: Brown supports offering permanent residency and citizenship to illegal immigrants while Whitman proposes only a guest worker program without a path to citizenship.

Whitman argued her case in a piece published by Eastern Group Publications, which owns 11 bilingual English-Spanish newspapers in Southern California. In recent weeks, Whitman has run Spanish-language TV ads highlighting her opposition to legislation such as 1994's Proposition 187 and a recent Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman continued wooing the state's nurses Tuesday by sending more than 100,000 of them a four-page letter highlighting her support for nurse staffing ratios and inviting them to join a campaign advisory board of nurses that will consult the candidate on nursing issues.

As her campaign has been doing for weeks, the letter also slams the California Nurses Association as a partisan group that's misusing member dues on political activity.

"For them partisan politics comes first," the letter reads. "That's why they've already spent almost $1.5 million of your dues money on partisan politics, to help only one party (without asking the members I might add.)."

Whitman has already sent other literature to nurses' homes criticizing the CNA's leadership and trumpeting her support for the staffing ratios. Since the primary campaign, the CNA has dispatched dozens of protesters to Whitman events.

Last month, the CNA invited Whitman to address nurses at a public forum to be held Thursday near the candidate's home in Atherton. Although Whitman declined the invitation, the nurses are still expected to rally there.

Photo: CNA Co-President Geri Jenkins rallies against GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman in Oakland on June 25, 2010. (Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee)

UPDATE: CNA Executive Director Rose Anne DeMoro has responded to Whitman's letter, saying the union's members support its political activities.

"Every penny that we've spent to educate the public of why they should be fearful of a Whitman governorship is a penny well spent," DeMoro said. "We're a very transparent organization."

About Whitman going around the union and mailing letters directly to nurses, DeMoro said, "What she's doing is underestimating the intelligence of the registered nurses. Even if they weren't paying attention, all of a sudden, they're against her now."

Republican Meg Whitman's camp is continuing its attacks against the labor groups backing Democrat Jerry Brown, launching a new television spot hitting Brown's union supporters.

The 30-second ad, titled "Their Governor," targets labor group-backed independent expenditure committees that have been funding ads attacking Whitman.

"They want Jerry Brown because he won't rock the boat in Sacramento. He'll be the same as he ever was," the narrator says, going on to warn that a Brown win would lead to higher taxes, job losses and continuing large public employee pensions.

A spokesman for "California Working Families 2010," one of the committees targeted by Whitman's ad, said the spot illustrates that Whitman's "solution to everything is to throw money at the problem."

"Our ads call Meg Whitman out on her campaign of misstatements and outright lies," committee strategist Roger Salazar wrote in an e-mail. "It's clear our messages are resonating, otherwise Whitman wouldn't respond by trying to bully the messenger. It's also clear with this new ad Meg Whitman wants to once again buy her way out of trouble."

Watch the spot, which the campaign says will air statewide, below:

This post was updated at 2:55 p.m. with a response from California Working Families.

California Working Families 2010, a labor-funded group backing Democrat Jerry Brown's gubernatorial bid has launched a new ad defending the 72-year-old attorney general against attacks from Republican rival Meg Whitman.

The 30-second spot, titled "Misleading," takes aim at Whitman's recent ad slamming Brown's decades-long career in politics as a "legacy of failure."

"How many lies can Meg Whitman jam into one ad? At least seven," the narrator says as the ad challenges the Whitman spot's claims about Brown's record as governor and as Oakland mayor.

Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei called the ad "a ridiculous attempt by government unions to cover up Jerry Brown's 40-year record of politics as usual."

Pompei cited an independent analysis of the Whitman ad by the nonpartisan FactCheck.org, pointing out that the fact-checkers also said some of the Whitman ad's claims refuted by Brown supporters were "on point." What the organization really said, however, was some claims "are mostly on point, but could use some explanation." Its overall analysis found that "Whitman's attack ad fails to tell the truth" and lacks context.

Watch the ad below. The Brown supporters' campaign says it will air statewide on cable and in select broadcast markets.

This post was updated to clarify attribution of the FactCheck analysis.

One day after a poll showed Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman doing well with Latino voters, Democrat Jerry Brown shared a podium in Los Angeles this afternoon with 14 Latino leaders, blasting her for what he called cynical and misleading advertising.

"The people aren't fooled," he said at a press conference behind the student union at California State University, Los Angeles.

Brown's supporters praised the former governor for his work for immigrants and farmworkers while in office.

"Jerry Brown broke bread with Cesar Chavez," U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra said. "His opponent breaks bread with Pete Wilson."

The event followed by one day a nonpartisan Field Poll showing Whitman was supported by 39 percent of likely Latino voters, 11 percentage points fewer than support Brown but better for Whitman than many observers expected.

After being pulled to the right on immigration by Republican rival Steve Poizner in the GOP primary - alienating some Latino voters, experts said - Whitman started her general election campaign by advertising heavily on Spanish-language radio and TV, trumpeting her opposition to Arizona's immigration law and to Proposition 187.

Guv hopefuls Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman are in a statistical dead heat, with the Democratic attorney general leading his Republican rival among likely California voters by just one point, according to a Field Poll released today.

Brown polled at 44 percent, Whitman at 43 percent. Another 13 percent are still either undecided or support other candidates.

The results come from a telephone survey of 1,005 likely voters conducted between June 22 and July 5. The margin of error on the Brown-or-Whitman response is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Whitman has gained ground since pollsters began asking in October about hypothetical matchups, though she lost the three-point advantage over Brown that she posted in March before she ramped up her on-air primary campaign against Steve Poizner.

One thing the poll suggests? The barrage of attacks from both camps is affecting voters' views of the candidates -- the more they hear, the less they like.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown is foreseeing troubles for his Republican rival Meg Whitman because a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed him leading Whitman by six percentage points.

Brown made his comments during his weekly talk with San Francisco radio station KGO, which visited diverse subjects ranging from Whitman's campaign tactics to his first gubernatorial stint from 1975 to 1983.

Listen to the interview here. His comments start at the 14:45 mark.

Asked about the poll, Brown noted that his lead had widened compared to previous other polls although Whitman has been running negative TV ads against him for about a week while Brown has spent virtually nothing. One union-backed independent expenditure committee, however, has been running negative TV ads against Whitman.

"She's been on the air," Brown said. "I think she's spent almost $6 million on television, and she hasn't moved a point. In fact, I think she lost a point. So what seems to be happening is the credibility of the Republican candidate has really deteriorated and suffered some real blows because of the Poizner campaign," referring to defeated Republican primary gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner.

"And then, her continuing being on the air, at some point, people say, 'Gee, enough already. I mean this is the summer. The kids are out of school. Let's kind of have a normal life. Do we have to listen to this ad every hour?' And it's the same old stuff, and I think people aren't believing it. And when that happens, a candidate is in deep, deep trouble."

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is sending a second batch of mailers to thousands of the state's licensed nurses slamming the California Nurses Association, a union representing 86,000 nurses, for wastefully spending its members' dues. Click here to see the flier.

The mailer asks, "Is this how nurses' hard-earned money should be spent by their union bosses?" under a picture of a bus the union paid $50,000 to decorate and send to Whitman campaign events. It also criticizes the salary paid to the union's Executive Director Rose Anne DeMoro and her husband and the trips and other expenses paid for by the union.

Whitman, the former CEO of online auction firm eBay, and the nurses have been battling each other for months now, with the rhetoric heating up in recent weeks. The Whitman campaign sent out a first batch of fliers to nurses last week, while the union invited the candidate to a public forum to be held in Atherton, the Bay Area city where she lives. Whitman turned down the invitation, calling it a "rigged" event.

Whitman spokesman Tucker Bounds said in an e-mail statement Wednesday, "One radical nurses union, representing fewer than 1 out of every 4 California nurses, doesn't speak for the entire profession. And we're confident that with additional information about Meg, these radical union bosses will be marginalized and nurses will be more likely to speak out for themselves in support of her."

As of last month, there were 357,202 registered nurses in the state, accord to the state Board of Registered Nurses.

About Whitman's actions against the nurses, union co-president Deborah Anne Burger said last week, "The nurses that Meg Whitman is trying to push around are caring, sensitive and compassionate caregivers. It just shows that there are extraordinary heroes in this state that are willing to take on another corporate Wall Street CEO."

Rex Babin is the political cartoonist for The Bee. You can see a collection of his work here.

The independent expenditure committee California Working Families for Jerry Brown for Governor 2010 is running a third ad attacking GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

This one depicts Whitman as an aloof wealthy former CEO of the online auction firm eBay and accuses her of seeking tax breaks for the state's wealthiest people.

Past ads run by the group have highlighted Whitman's poor voting record and her participating in IPO spinning, in which she was allowed to buy stocks before the general public could.

The committee is funded largely by money from labor unions and is headed by Democratic strategists such as Roger Salazar.

Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei responded this morning:

"Governor Brown's ideology of more taxes, more spending, and more regulations is the real enemy of middle-class Californians. Jerry Brown Incorporated is a political conglomerate of unions and special interests determined to defend Sacramento's status quo and launch misleading attack ads against Meg. Jerry Brown Inc. is learning that voters know Meg Whitman is the only chance for middle-class Californians to get meaningful tax relief, accountability in Sacramento and the jobs our state desperately needs. Meg's plan eliminates the start-up tax for middle-class entrepreneurs and the capital gains tax for smaller investors, and it provides a new tax credit for middle-class homebuyers. What is Jerry Brown offering? Nothing."

As GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman mails fliers to nurses criticizing the California Nurses Association, the union held a rally and news conference Friday in Oakland hitting back at Whitman and inviting her to a July 15 forum with nurses to be held in her hometown of Atherton.

Friday's event drew several dozen nurses from around California and also featured an appearance by Queen Meg, a parody of Whitman played by teacher and actress Elaine Burn.

Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei responded by e-mail, "The California Nurses Association is a group of one-party union activists that unequivocally support Jerry Brown. It is tightly controlled by partisan union bosses, and they are knowingly misrepresenting Meg's positions on the issues and the opinions of California's nurses."

Pompei later sent a response declining the offer: "Of course we're not going to participate in a stunt rigged together by CNA's radical union leadership. If they were serious about transparency, they would allow Meg to send a personal letter to their members explaining her support for staffing ratios and other issues important to nurses."

It was the latest volley in a war of words between Whitman and the CNA.

Flower power has entered the gubernatorial race.

Instead of bumper stickers blaring the candidate's name, Republican Meg Whitman is offering female supporters a "free poppy decal to put on your car, computer or window!"

The poppy stickers will go to anyone who signs up with Whitman's MEGaWomen coalition, the campaign's effort to rally female voters.

"With the primary behind us and the general election ahead, my goal is for California's dynamic women to take action," the e-mail reads. "By joining MEGaWomen we can make the Golden State great again. Whether you are working, in school, raising a family, enjoying your grandchildren, or a young professional, we want you involved in this important effort."

(For the record, the campaign says male voters are welcome to display their Whitman poppy decals, too.)

The poppy, California's state flower, is a central image in Whitman's campaign, representing, according to the campaign website, "all that Meg values about California: prosperity, renewal, unity."

"Early settlers saw poppy-covered hills and believed they had found the Golden State. From Lake Tahoe to the Central Valley, poppies are everywhere. Just like all of you and your dreams for California," the website says.

But the symbolism behind the flowers isn't all roses -- poppies have been used since World War I to signify remembrance of wartime deaths. And because of the opium poppy, the flower also signifies sleep. In Frank L. Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," a field of poppies lures Dorothy into a deep slumber. Maybe it's a good thing we're not in Kansas.

PHOTO CREDIT: Poppies grow in the California native plants section of the UC Davis Arboretum. Florence Low / Sacramento Bee file photo, March 12, 2007.

Republican nominee Meg Whitman has launched a new television ad attacking opponent Jerry Brown.

The 60-second ad, which the campaign says will air statewide starting today, casts Brown's longtime political career as a "legacy of failure."

The spot hits Brown on his record during his first stint as governor, as well as mayor of Oakland and during his U.S. Senate and presidential campaigns.

"Forty years in politics and failure follows him everywhere," the narrator says in the ad opening.

Brown's campaign, which has highlighted his experience as an attribute, called the ad "more negative attacks from a campaign that can't seem to tell the truth."

"It's politics as usual, backed by Wall Street billions. If Meg Whitman had ever bothered to vote, she might know that Jerry Brown cut taxes by 4 billion dollars, built up a surplus and created 1.9 million new jobs for Californians," Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford wrote in an e-mail.

Watch the spot here:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman escalated her battle with the California Nurses Association this morning by debuting a website criticizing the union and unveiling internal polling showing Democratic rival Jerry Brown leading Whitman by three percentage points among nurses statewide.

The website, titled "Truth for Nurses," features articles and a video accusing the nurses union of, among other things, paying exorbitant salaries to its president and other executives and wasting members' dues on political activity, such as a running protest featuring an actress playing Queen Meg - a parody of the billionaire candidate.

The internal poll, conducted by Hill Research Consultants, says 34 percent of the state's nurses belong to a union and that 57 percent of the state's nurses "are more likely to support Whitman when they hear that 'she supports California's current law on nurse-to-patient ratios and that she opposes any effort to weaken those rules ratios,'" according to a memo by the polling firm.

At a May 18 town hall in Roseville, Whitman declined to take a position on the staffing issue, saying, "I haven't actually said anything about nursing ratios."

The rhetorical battle between Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and the California Nurses Association raged on today with the union inviting the candidate to meet its membership in at least one solo forum without the attendance of her Democratic rival Jerry Brown.

The Whitman campaign had not yet responded this afternoon but was expected to do so shortly.

According to a news release, the forum would be set up at a time convenient for Whitman and feature unscripted audience questions to be moderated by nonpartisan journalists.

Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's campaign asked the California Nurses Association this morning for its mailing list, the Republican billionaire lambasting the union's leadership for "partisan theatrics" and asking for direct access to its members.

The nurses association and other labor unions have lined up behind Democratic nominee Jerry Brown and figure to play heavily in the election. Nurses, teachers and members of other labor groups protested Whitman events even in the primary campaign, and teacher and actress Elaine Burns played "Queen Meg," a Whitman standup.

In a letter to CNA, Whitman's campaign said, "We believe California's hardworking nurses deserve to hear both sides of the campaign argument during this year's important election for governor. Unfortunately, it seems the leadership of the California Nurses Association is far more interested in partisan theatrics in support of one candidate than a civil discussion of the issues."

In its letter, the Whitman camp says its candidate "has a special appreciation for the dedication and commitment nurses have to their noble profession."

The campaign said it would send union members a letter from Whitman printed in California by union printers.

IMAGE: Elaine Burn, of Los Angeles, arrives at an April Meg Whitman fundraiser dressed as "Queen Meg For California 2010" as part of the California Nurses Association satire campaign against gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. CREDIT: Hector Amezcua/SacBee.

UPDATED at 4 p.m to include response from California Democratic Party.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is hitting the airwaves with two Spanish-language television ads during today's World Cup match between Mexico and France, her campaign said this morning.

Her camp said in a statement: "Meg will win over this vital constituency because she is the only candidate who will create jobs and bring accountability to Sacramento."

One of the ads, "Different Kind," notes Whitman's opposition to Arizona's tough new immigration law and to Proposition 187, a voter initiative that sought to reduce state services to illegal immigrants. Her opponent in the Republican primary, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, supported Arizona's law and went after Whitman as soft on immigration.

In a primary that saw both candidates track hard to the right, Whitman fought back - though on English-language TV. In one commercial she said she would secure the border and send in the National Guard if necessary. For illegal immigrants, she said, "I say no drivers' licenses, no sanctuary cities, and absolutely no amnesty, period."

Today on Spanish-language TV, Whitman's second ad, "Jobs," the former eBay CEO touts her business cred. The ads are scheduled to run on Univision, Telemundo and Telefutura, the Whitman campaign said.

The California Democratic Party criticized the ad campaign this afternoon.

In a written statement, party spokesman Tenoch Flores said, "Apparently Meg Whitman forgot that we live in the age of 'the internets' - ironic for someone who touts her eBay experience. She sincerely believes a Spanish language advertising buy is going to gloss over the fact that together with her mentor Pete Wilson, and her rival Steve Poizner, she engaged in the greatest Republican Party anti-immigrant hate-fest this side of the California-Arizona border."

Also today, Whitman put up a website, Latinos for Meg. Her campaign said in a statement that it is "part of a comprehensive, multimedia effort to engage Latinos during this crucial election year."

While the state Republican and Democratic parties have opposed the voter-approved open primary measure Proposition 14, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown expressed support Tuesday for the idea, saying it could help break partisan gridlock paralyzing Sacramento.

When asked by The Bee in March about the initiative, Brown refused to take a position.

Brown was in Mountain View on Tuesday to announce an eight-point plan for investing in renewable energy technology, which he says will create more than half a million green jobs. He opened his remarks to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group by lamenting polarizing partisan politics. He then segued into Proposition 14, which would advance the primary's top two vote-getters to the general election, regardless of their party affiliations.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has pumped another $20 million of her personal funds into the campaign to succeed outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Whitman's latest multimillion-dollar contribution was made last Thursday, two days after the gubernatorial primary. It was recorded by the secretary of state's office on Monday.

Whitman, former eBay executive, now has spent more than $91 million of her own money in trying to secure her first political office. The job pays $173,987 annually, but Whitman's campaign has said she, Like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would not take a salary if elected.

Whitman will square off against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown in the Nov. 2 general election.

The New York Times is reporting that Meg Whitman was involved in a physical altercation in 2007 with an employee who later received a paid settlement.

Read the story here.

Jerry Brown pledged that there will be "no mudslinging" in the gubernatorial campaign.

Well, the gloves are off for the general, and when KCBS radio reporter Doug Sovern ran into Brown recently during a bike ride in Oakland, the ever-quotable 72-year-old attorney general was quite candid about how he sees rival Meg Whitman, comparing her campaign to Nazi propaganda operations.

Sovern posted his version of the conversation on his personal blog:

Brown boasted about his legendary frugality. "I've only spent $200,000 so far. I have 20 million in the bank. I'm saving up for her." It's true -- his stay-on-the-sidelines, bare-bones primary run cost him almost nothing, at least in California political terms. But he also fretted about the impact of all those eBay dollars in Whitman's very deep pockets. "You know, by the time she's done with me, two months from now, I'll be a child-molesting..." He let the line trail off. "She'll have people believing whatever she wants about me." Then he went off on a riff I didn't expect.

"It's like Goebbels," referring to Hitler's notorious Minister of Propaganda. "Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world. She wants to be president. That's her ambition, the first woman president. That's what this is all about."

The Whitman campaign issued a statement condemning the remarks.

"Jerry Brown's statements comparing our campaign to a propagator of the Holocaust is deeply offensive and entirely unacceptable," said Whitman campaign manager Jillian Hasner.

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said the comments were made during a jog and taken out of context.

The "Working Families 2010" independent expenditure campaign created to support Democrat Jerry Brown says it will go on the air wherever Republican Meg Whitman does.

So today, when Whitman launched a new TV spot, the labor-backed committee did too.

The first ad, which targets Whitman's spotty voting record, will start airing between now and Monday on broadcast stations statewide.

Watch it here:

The state Democratic ticket made its first joint appearance Thursday morning at the Solaria solar panel plant in Fremont, where gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown said his party's ticket represented much-needed frugality and authenticity compared to the Republicans' free-spending ways.

Brown also laid out more details about how he would balance the state's budget, such as starting the budget process before January every year and taking budget proposals to the ballot.

If anything, Brown showed Thursday why he's one of the most quotable people in state politics, speaking at a quick patter and shooting out a thick mix of attacks, jokes and data. Whitman, by contrast, stays closely to talking points when talking to crowds and the media.

"The governor is one person, the Legislature is the other, you've got to bring us all together in a very deliberative process," Brown said to dozens of media and white-jacketed company employees. "We'll cut everything we can."

Brown spent much of the morning repeating his challenge to Republican rival Meg Whitman to debate, dismissing her criticisms that he hadn't released enough policy details yet. Whitman has said she's done just that by putting out a 48-page policy booklet.

Brown's take? "She doesn't have a plan," he said. "She has a pamphlet, and most of it is pictures."

Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman took the stage in Silicon Valley today with her first general -election commercial on the airwaves and the song, 'Eye of the Tiger' firing up partisans for her anti-Sacramento message.

Before a packed studio room at the San Jose Tech museum, Whitman promised to bring technology and innovation to the Capitol to make state government leaner and more responsible to the people.

With supporters chanting, 'Take back Sac!'" Whitman offered a certain high-tech populism, saying state government in would be better served if it followed the practices of Silicon Valley.

"We're only 130 miles from Sacramento, we might as well be a million miles away," Whitman said.

Meeting with reporters afterward, Whitman said she had agreed to a debate with Democratic nominee Jerry Brown on October 11. But she spurned the Democrat's invitation to join him in 10 town-hall style forums.

"If he wants to do 10 debates, I suggest he get 10 ideas on how to fix California," Whitman said.

A labor group backing Democrat Jerry Brown has already fired back at GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's new ad claiming the former eBay executive is better positioned than traditional politicians to understand the "human cost" of the state's unemployment levels.

California Labor Federation communications director Steve Smith said it is "patently offensive that a billionaire like Whitman would even suggest she understands what families that have been devastated by unemployment are going through."

"Meg Whitman's life of wealth and privilege means she's never had to worry about losing her home, paying household bills or affording to put her kids through college," he said in a statement. "We need real solutions to the jobs crisis, not slick sound bites that fit neatly into a 30-second TV ad. And we certainly don't need a billionaire telling our state's unemployed that she understands the 'human cost' of joblessness."

The California Broadcasters Association and the Public Policy Institute of California announced today that they invited gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman to participate in a gubernatorial debate on Oct. 5.

CBA and PPIC are proposing to diverge from a common debate format where a panel of reporters asks questions of the candidates. Instead, the 90-minute debate would be split into segments on five issues or policy issues, with a different moderator for each topic, according to a release.

"California faces critical challenges, and we need to set a new standard for substance in the campaign for the state's top office," PPIC President and CEO Mark Baldassare said in a statement. "This debate is designed to give Californians a better understanding of how the candidates intend to address these challenges and build a better future for our state."

A location has not been set, but the debate broadcast will be available for television and radio stations across the state.

Certified gubernatorial candidates who receive at least 10 percent support in one of three major public polls -- PPIC, Field or Los Angeles Times/USC -- by Sept. 15 will be eligible to participate, according to the release announcing the debate.

Dominican University of California and NBC also issued an invitation this morning to an October debate at Dominican's Angelico Hall. That debate is set to be aired on NBC affiliates across the state.

The Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown campaigns have not yet said whether they will accept either invitation, though Dominican President Joseph R. Fink said in a statement that the school has "contacted their campaign managers and we anticipate that both candidates will agree to engage in a debate on the Dominican campus before the general election in November."

UPDATE 3:33 p.m. Whitman's campaign announced that she has accepted the invitation from Dominican/NBC for October. "I accept that debate invitation because I can't wait to talk specifics with Jerry Brown," she said in a statement. A spokesman for Brown said the campaign has received and is considering both invitations, and wants to see if Whitman agrees to the town hall appearances he has proposed.

Thought Tuesday's primary would create a break from campaign spots saturating your commercial breaks?

Think again. GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman launched the first gubernatorial campaign TV spot of the general election today.

In the 30-second ad, titled "One Thing," Whitman proposes streamlining regulations and lowering taxes for businesses to address the "human cost" of California's unemployment rate.

"I think, often politicians forget about that because they don't see it every
day. I see it every day," the wealthy former eBay executive says in the spot.

Watch the spot below.

The camera was rolling Wednesday morning when Carly Fiorina made some small talk she might come to regret. Watch her comment on, among other things, Barbara Boxer's hairstyle.

Watch the video, originally on Sacramento's KXTV Channel 10, below.

Newly minted Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman sidestepped Democratic rival Jerry Brown's invitation this morning to participate in 10 town halls, saying he should release more policy details before debating.

Whitman also argued that she had spent her money well in the primary. Her campaign burned through about $90 million -- including $71 million of her own wealth -- to win 1.1 million votes, at a price of roughly $90 per vote.

As she did throughout the primary, Whitman mostly stayed on script during her news conference, which followed a rambunctious GOP victory rally held in the Hilton hotel in Anaheim showcasing the party's statewide candidates. Whitman's speech at the rally largely echoed the speech she gave last night at her election night party, where she again talked about her three focuses of cutting government spending, fixing education and creating jobs.

"There will be plenty of debates," Whitman said about Brown's challenge when asked about it by a reporter. "What I would say to Jerry Brown is instead of calling for debates, he should lay out his plan for California. You know, his Web site has virtually nothing on it. I would call for Jerry Brown to lay out his plan for California, so we'll at least have something to debate about."

An energized state Republican party launched the general election campaign this morning at a victory rally at the Hilton hotel in Anaheim. The theme of the day and perhaps of the campaign: The GOP nominees represent new blood while the Democratic ticket is dominated by career politicians.

Without a doubt, the GOP ticket is its most diverse in years in ethnicity and gender. It's led by two women -- gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman and U.S. Senate nominee Carly Fiorina; a Latino -- Lt. Gov. nominee Abel Maldonado; and an African American -- Secretary of State nominee Damon Dunn.

Fiorina drove home the theme, saying, "This election is about the future, not the past, not the tired old politics from a bunch of kind of tired old career politicians." She was referring to Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown and U.S. Senate incumbent Barbara Boxer.

Protesters including teacher Elaine Burn, playing Queen Meg, rallied this morning outside the Hilton hotel in Anaheim, where the state Republican Party is holding its victory breakfast. The organizers include the Orange County Labor Federation and the California Nurses Association.

Joining Queen Meg, a spin on Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, is Princess Carly, a send-up of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.

By Jack Chang
jchang@sacbee.com

Less than 18 months ago, Meg Whitman began her race for the governor's office as a political blank slate.

The 52-year-old had never held elected office before and wasn't connected to any cause. In fact, she had rarely voted in her adult life.

That didn't stop Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay, from vanquishing Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner on Tuesday night to win the Republican nomination for governor.

She and U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina made history by becoming the first women to win the California Republican Party's nomination to the state's highest elected offices.

She told supporters that Sacramento politicians now face their worst nightmare: "Two businesswomen who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done."

Democrat Jerry Brown, who easily won his party's nomination for governor, reminded his backers that "I've done this before."

"If we pull together we can fix things," he said. "I know how Sacramento works, and more importantly, I know how it should work."

The victory balloons are still stirring on the floor at GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman's primary night victory party, but the general election spin is already well under way.

Top Whitman advisor Rob Stutzman told The Bee the Democrats should be worried that their gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown, received only about 84 percent of the Democratic vote - at the latest counting - while facing no major opposition.

Another campaign staffer had sidled up to a Bee reporter and made the same observation about 15 minutes before. In other words, expect that to be the line of argument in the morning-after news releases from the Whitman campaign.

If current results hold, the Republican statewide ticket will be its most diverse ever, featuring two women - Whitman and U.S. Senate nominee Carly Fiorina; a Latino - Lt. Gov. nominee Abel Maldonado; and an African American, Damon Dunn, who's running for Secretary of State.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are offering two white males at the top of the ticket - Brown and Lt. Gov. nominee Gavin Newsom, as well as black female Attorney General nominee Kamala Harris and female Debra Bowen running for Secretary of State.

"It's an interesting contrast," Stutzman observed. "The diversity is on the Republican side. It's encouraging that leaders are coming from the private sector and women coming from the private sector."

When all's said and done, tonight's basement-low voter turnout could mean Whitman spent as much as $100 per vote. The Bee pointed that out to Stutzman, who argued the figure will be more in the $90 range and responded that the campaign was also investing in general election votes.

"We're also presenting to all the voters in this primary campaign," Stutzman said. "It's not just about dollars per vote tonight."

And then it was back to the campaign's line of argument: Brown's primary result.

"There are some problems there for him," Stutzman said. "He's not as secure with his base as he should be."

Photo: Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman's victory party wraps up in Los Angeles on June 8, 2010. (Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee)

The Sierra Ballroom of the Universal City Hilton hotel exploded in applause and cheers tonight as Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman took the stage to celebrate her crushing primary win over rival Steve Poizner.

Standing in front of a multicultural backdrop of dozens of supporters, Whitman said she had received "a very gracious call" from Poizner and then went after her Democratic rival Jerry Brown, who easily won his primary race tonight.

Whitman, the former CEO of online auction firm eBay, also congratulated former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina for winning the Republican nomination in the U.S. Senate race.

"Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. be warned," Whitman said. "You now face your worst nightmare - two businesswomen from the real world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done."

About Brown, Whitman said, "Jerry Brown has spent a lifetime in politics, and the results have not been good. Failure seems to follow Jerry Brown everywhere he goes. It's a record of promising much and delivering little. Of saying one thing, and then doing quite another."

She blamed Brown for rising unemployment and state spending during his first two terms as governor, from 1975 to 1983 and for the poor state of Oakland's school when he was mayor in that city from 1998 to 2006.

Brown's campaign has responded to such criticisms by saying the Democrat created 1.9 million jobs during his time as governor and had to increase state spending because local jurisdictions lost billions in revenue after voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978.

"I say California can do better," Whitman said. "Because while politics is Jerry Brown's business, my business is creating good new jobs."

Like she has throughout the primary, Whitman also targeted state employees, saying, "If you give me the honor of being your next governor, the special interests and public employee unions won't stand a chance, because I will owe my office to no one but you."

Independent expenditure committees funded by such public employee unions are in fact preparing to spend millions of dollars taking on Whitman, with TV ads against her expected to hit the airwaves within days.

Whitman, a billionaire who has poured a record-breaking $71 million so far into her campaign, said she was beholden to no one - echoing rhetoric used by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was running for his office.

Brown, she said, could not make such a claim.

"He has aligned nearly every single interest group in Sacramento against us," Whitman said. "And that means favors will be owed to every power broker with a vested interest in keeping our state budget broken, our schools underperforming and the state pension system spinning into insolvency."

Whitman finished her speech with an exhuberant "God bless California!" Green and orange balloons dropped from the ballroom's ceiling, and confetti flew. Her husband, two sons and extended family joined her onstage. The sound system rocked country star Kenny Chesney's song "This is Our Moment," a fixture of her campaign.

Tomorrow, Whitman is scheduled to attend a California Republican Party unity breakfast in Anaheim.

Photo: GOP gubernatorial nominee Whitman and husband Griffith Harsh greet supporters at her election night party in Los Angeles June 8, 2010. (Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee)

Below is Meg Whitman's prepared acceptance speech.

Thank you so much... What a great night!

This victory is yours!

I just received a very gracious phone call from Steve Poizner conceding the race. I want to commend Commissioner Poizner and his supporters for the energy they brought to their campaign.

It has been a tough campaign, but I'm a stronger candidate tonight because of it. I'm battle-tested.

And I'm ready to give Jerry Brown the toughest election fight he's faced in his 40 years of politics!

Let me take a moment to congratulate our great Republican Senate nominee Carly Fiorina on her victory this evening. Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington be warned - you now face your worst nightmare; two business women from the real world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done!

I have so many people to thank... So many made tonight possible.

First, let me thank my husband Griff and our two sons. You can't take on a challenge this big without the love and support of family.

I want to thank Governor Wilson, the chairman of my campaign. My co-chairs, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack, State Senator Tony Strickland, Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, former Assemblywoman Sharon Runner and Bill Simon.

Let me also thank my great campaign team and the more than 20,000 volunteers across the state that helped make tonight possible... What an amazing effort. I'm so proud of all of you. In particular, I want to say thank you to Jillian Hasner, Mike Murphy, Jeff Randle and Henry Gomez.

But tonight's win would not have been possible without the trust of the voters. I'm humbled by this victory. I am so grateful for the support and the trust you've shown in me today. And I'm deeply committed to running a campaign that gives you hope for a better tomorrow.

Meg Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay, will square off in the November general election against Democrat Jerry Brown.

With 13 percent of precincts reporting, Whitman, 54, had captured 64 percent of the Republican vote, while GOP rival Steve Poizner had 26 percent. Brown claimed his party's nomination with 84 percent of the Democratic vote.

Since declaring her intention to run on Feb. 9, Whitman virtually rewrote the rules of campaigning. She spent twice as much as any statewide candidate in primary history, starting her paid advertising campaign 14 months before the general election.

She joined U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina in making history as they became the first women to win the California Republican Party's nomination to the state's highest elected offices.

She told supporters that Sacramento politicians now face their worst nightmare: "Two businesswomen who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done."

Brown reminded his backers that "I've done this before."

"If we pull together we can fix things," he said. "I know how Sacramento works, and more importantly, I know how it should work."

Whitman entered the race promising to spend as much as $150 million of her own money on her campaign. By primary day, she had put in $71 million and raised another $16 million.

"From the beginning of the campaign, we built a plan and executed against it," said veteran Republican consultant Jeff Randle, a top Whitman adviser. "When the campaign got really ugly this year, we stuck to the plan. That's a complete reflection of who the candidate is."

The marketing expert rarely strayed from her script, rolling out catch phrases such as "spine of steel" and "the power of many" at her February 2009 campaign launch and repeating them at countless events in the following 16 months.

She also largely stuck to her three-pronged policy platform -- cutting government spending, fixing education and creating jobs.

Whitman showcased those messages when she started her radio campaign in September 2009 and began running TV ads in February, far earlier than any other statewide candidate.

"A good portion of her success has to do with the way she rolled out her campaign with virtually no opposition," said San Jose State University political science professor Larry Gerston. "Steve Poizner didn't spend during that period. That allowed her to start at a much more advanced level. It's really forced him to play a lot more catch-up ball than he might have."

The careful planning, which included hiring high-priced consultants tied to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Gov. Pete Wilson, didn't stop the campaign from hitting bumps along the way.

Revelations about Whitman's poor voting history sent her campaign into a tailspin in September. She spent about two weeks apologizing for what she called an "atrocious" voting record, then began insisting that she recalled voting in "on numerous occasions" in elections for which no records currently are available.

Whitman's support also fell after Poizner began his paid advertising campaign slamming her ties to the maligned investment firm Goldman Sachs and staking a hard-right position on illegal immigration.

By May, Whitman's 50-point lead in a Public Policy Institute of California poll had shrunk to nine points.

Whitman responded by using her campaign's key advantage: money.

She filled the airwaves with new ads responding to the criticisms, rebuilding her lead. Poizner, another wealthy former Silicon Valley CEO, declined to match Whitman dollar for dollar.

Heading into the primary election, he had spent about $24 million of his own money on his campaign and raised $2.4 million from outside sources.

Meg Whitman's election night party is filling up at the Hilton hotel in Universal City, and many of the attendees are volunteers who have shown extra dedication to the campaign, such as making over 300 phone calls for the cause.

Many of them whooped as word news spread that the Associated Press had called the race for Whitman.

That includes insurance agent Scott Warneck, of Winnetka, Calif., who said he and his wife each volunteer about three days a week at the Whitman field office in Woodland Hills.

Warneck said he's made about 800 phone calls for the Whitman campaign.

"I never wanted to be involved in a campaign before," Warneck said. "But Meg seems to be the only one who will listen to people for a change."

He said he also liked her focus on budget issues and on cutting government spending.

Josephine Chong, a small business owner from Burbank, said she heard about Whitman through a flier she received at home and now works the phones for her in the same Woodland Hills office. Chong said she also spreads the word about Whitman in her Southern California Thai community.

"Everything should be fun like a corporation," Chong said. "It shouldn't be political."

LOS ANGELES --Meg Whitman convincingly won the race for the Republican nomination for governor Tuesday after spending a record $90 million to introduce herself to voters and bash rival Steve Poizner.

The billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay will square off in the Nov. 9 general election against Democrat Jerry Brown, who faced no serious opposition in Tuesday's primary vote.

With 7 percent of precincts reporting, Whitman, 54, had captured 66 percent of the Republican vote, while Poizner had won 25 percent. Brown claimed his party's nomination with 84 percent of the Democratic vote.

Since declaring her intention to run on Feb. 9, Whitman has virtually rewritten the rules of campaigning. She spent twice as much as any statewide candidate in primary history, starting her paid advertising campaign 14 months before the general election and heavily limiting her exposure to journalists.

If tonight's results hold, she will be the first woman to win the Republican nomination for governor.

Whitman entered the race promising to spend as much as $150 million of her own money on her campaign. By primary day, she had put in $71 million and raised another $16 million.

"From the beginning of the campaign, we built a plan and executed against it," said veteran Republican consultant Jeff Randle, a top Whitman adviser. "When the campaign got really ugly this year, we stuck to the plan. That's a complete reflection of who the candidate is."

The marketing expert rarely strayed from her script, rolling out catch phrases such as "spine of steel" and "the power of many" at her February 2009 campaign launch and repeating them at countless events in the following 16 months.

She also largely stuck to her three-pronged policy platform -- cutting government spending, fixing education and creating jobs.

Whitman showcased those messages when she started her radio campaign in September 2009 and began running TV ads in February, far earlier than any other statewide candidate.

"A good portion of her success has to do with the way she rolled out her campaign with virtually no opposition," said San Jose State University political science professor Larry Gerston. "Steve Poizner didn't spend during that period. That allowed her to start at a much more advanced level. It's really forced him to play a lot more catch-up ball than he might have."

The careful planning, which included hiring high-priced consultants tied to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Gov. Pete Wilson, didn't stop the campaign from hitting bumps along the way.

Revelations about Whitman's poor voting history sent her campaign into a tailspin in September. She spent about two weeks apologizing for what she called an "atrocious" voting record, then began insisting that she recalled voting in "on numerous occasions" in elections for which no records currently are available.

Whitman's support also fell after Poizner began his paid advertising campaign slamming her ties to the maligned investment firm Goldman Sachs and staking a hard-right position on illegal immigration.

By May, Whitman's 50-point lead in a Public Policy Institute of California poll had shrunk to nine points.

Whitman responded by using her campaign's key advantage: money.

She filled the airwaves with new ads responding to the criticisms, rebuilding her lead. Poizner, another wealthy former Silicon Valley CEO, declined to match Whitman dollar for dollar.

Heading into the primary election, he had spent about $24 million of his own money on his campaign and raised $2.4 million from outside sources.

With this primary season about to finish, take a look at the key events that defined the governor's race in this timeline. It all started in July 2008...

The journalists are waiting, the buffet tables are set and the orange and green balloons are ready to drop from the ceiling of the Sierra Ballroom at the Hilton hotel in Universal City, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's election night party will start in about an hour.

The Whitman campaign and the media are clearly expecting this to be a victory party about $90 million in the making, including $71 million spent by Whitman herself. In fact, Whitman's victory speech was already flashing on the teleprompters when Whitman stepped on stage earlier this afternoon to look over the ballroom.

Big banners on three sides of the room drive home the central tenets of Whitman's campaign. "Better schools are on the way," reads one. "Jobs are on the way," reads another behind the podium where Whitman will speak. "Fiscal responsibilty is on the way," says another.

Whitman's guests tonight will include former Gov. Pete Wilson, Whitman's campaign chairman, U.S. Rep Darrell Issa, R-Vista, state controller candidate and state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, and Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Whitman's main GOP rival Steve Poizner is holding his election night party at the Hilton hotel in Irvine.

If Whitman does win, the general election campaign will start within hours.

Whitman is scheduled to hold a rally Thursday at the Tech Museum in San Jose, where she announced her intention to run in February 2009.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, who's expected to win the nomination easily tonight, will hold a 10 a.m. news conference tomorrow at the Los Angeles Athletic Club where he'll make "a general election announcement," according to a news release.

Campaign ads from Whitman and independent expenditure committees supporting Brown are also expected to start filling the airwaves soon, even within days.

Photo: Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and close advisor Henry Gomez review preparations for her election night party on June 8, 2010, in Universal City. (Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee)

Voter turnout is already expected to be low today, but anxious candidates have another component to factor in: Game 3 of the NBA Finals, which starts at 6 p.m. tonight with the Los Angeles Lakers facing off against the Boston Celtics in Boston.

Campaigns are clearly worried that people will skip voting after work to watch the game, which is a real likelihood in Southern California. The region's normally packed freeways were virtually empty Sunday night during Game 2, when Boston tied the series at 1-1.

Candidates will also have to consider the Lakers factor when planning their victory or concession speeches. Polls close at 8 p.m., and election results should be coming out over the next hour - just as the game is likely to wrap up.

Already, opponents of Proposition 17, which would affect auto insurance rates, and the campaign of Democratic Lt. Gov. candidate Janice Hahn have sent out news releases urging voters to cast ballots before the game, with Hahn's campaign touting their endorsement from former Laker star Magic Johnson. Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's victory party will be broadcasting the game at least in the media room.

IMAGE: Boston Celtics player Paul Pierce (L) tries to block LA Lakers guard Shannon Brown (R) before Boston Celtics went on to win 103-94 in game two of the NBA finals at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on June 6, 2010. CREDIT: Mark Ralston/Getty Images.

While the leafy scene around the polling site at the South Pasadena Public Library's community room appeared bucolic this morning, the mood of voters casting their ballots was anything but.

"Disgusted" was the word several people, both Republicans and Democrats, used to describe their choices this primary and how the campaign has been waged so far. The top two GOP gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner alone have spent nearly $110 million this primary, with much of that money going to advertising.

"I'm really disgusted with the total waste of money, the ads, TV, the mail, you can't get away from them," said Walter Cervantes, a 62-year-old retired flight attendant. The Democrat said he had just voted for his party's gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown and U.S. Senate candidate Barbara Boxer.

"If they spent that money to help the people in New Orleans instead of on these ads, we'd be better off," Cervantes said.

Those views were echoed by three Republican voters, who also used the word "disgusted" to describe their mood.

Republican Jim Cain, a real estate developer, said he'd reluctantly voted for Whitman but had showed up Tuesday mainly to support GOP Attorney General candidate John Eastman.

"Both Whitman and Poizner supported Gore and Boxer," Cain said. "There's no way you can be a conservative and support Al Gore."

"Whitman has better chances because she has the money. She'll come in and talk tough, and the public employee unions will kill her. She's slightly better than Poizner, who'd done a 180 over the last few years."

Gubernatorial candidates Steve Poizner and Jerry Brown plan to spend Election Day morning voting at their local polling places, while Meg Whitman will wait to make an appearance until tonight.

Her campaign said she'd already voted by absentee ballot last week and will spend most of today in Southern California. She's holding a victory party tonight at the Hilton hotel in Universal City.

Her main Republican rival Poizner, on the other hand, will dash around the state today.

He's scheduled to vote at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters at 9 a.m., visit his campaign's phone banks in Torrance and San Marcos and end up at an election night party at the Hilton hotel in Irvine.

Democrat Brown is scheduled to vote at Oakland Fire House 6 at 7:30 a.m. and end the day at a party at Club Nokia in downtown Los Angeles.

Whitman and Poizner, currently serving as state insurance commissioner, spent much of the spring battling for the hearts of the most conservative voters in the state Republican primary. Poizner emphasized illegal immigration in his television advertising, while Whitman attacked him as just another "liberal Sacramento politician."

If Whitman's lead in late polling holds, the billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay will square off in the Nov. 9 general election against Brown, who faced no serious opposition in Tuesday's primary vote.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman made another north-to-south sweep of the state today to thank volunteers for their work and to shoot some rhetorical darts at Democratic candidate Jerry Brown.

Whitman's campaign said she'd already voted by absentee ballot last week and will spend Election Day in Los Angeles. The candidate had been expected to vote near her house in Atherton tomorrow morning.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman received high-profile support in appearances in Escondido and Fullerton Saturday, with former Gov. Pete Wilson and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney stumping for her.

In Fullerton, Whitman appeared in the courtyard of the mission-style Villa Del Sol complex where she made her candidacy official in September. Like that event, several hundred people stood under the baking sun to listen to the candidate.

Wilson preceded Romney and called Whitman a threat to public employee unions, warning, "They have a very good reason to be scared to death of Meg Whitman." Whitman has pledged to cut state employee numbers by 40,000 people.

The former governor also went after Democratic candidate Jerry Brown, saying, "He's the one who signed the bill that created those unions that made your taxes go so high."

Romney followed, predicting that Whitman would revive a state economy that has seen better days, bemoaning, "California used to be the job capital of the country. it's not now."

Whitman gave her stump speech, hardly mentioning Republican rival Steve Poizner, except to mention "my opponent's commercials." The most recent Field Poll found Whitman leading Poizner by 26 percentage points.

Whitman summed up much of her campaign platform, pledging to cut state spending, fix education and create jobs and saying, "The truth is we have to run our state a bit more like a business."

Most of all, Whitman exuded confidence, telling her crowd, "We're coming down to the short strokes, aren't we? Three days! And we're doing real well in the polls."

Photo by Jack Chang

With just four days until the polls open, GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman leads rival Steve Poizner by a 2-to-1 margin among likely Republican voters, 51 percent to 25 percent

Whitman's current 26-point lead is about half of the 49-point lead Whitman held over Poizner in the March Field Poll, but polls in recent weeks had shown the race narrowing, with Whitman up just nine points in a Public Policy Institute of California poll.

The survey of 551 voters who either have already cast their ballot by mail or plan to vote in the Republican primary next Tuesday was conducted May 27-June 2. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

Jack Chang reports in today's Bee that Field poll director Mark DiCamillo attributes Whitman's big lead to voters' perception that she has a better shot at winning against presumed Democratic nominee Jerry Brown come November.

"If you believe Whitman has the better chance, you'd be more likely to support her," DiCamillo said. "When you're looking at Poizner's numbers, he has not been able to attract support among the target populations he was trying to go after. And that's a large part of why he's trailing so badly."

But it ain't over until the polls close Tuesday, and both candidates continue to campaign hard.

Poizner plans to attend a noon rally in Chico before joining phone bank volunteers in San Jose. Whitman will spend the day calling in for interviews with radio programs.

Click here for the full poll results. Don't forget to check out The Bee's GOV2010 page for all the latest information on the gubernatorial contest.

SENATE2010: Carly Fiorina plans to swing by phone banks in San Diego and Palm Desert. Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, is at the U.S.-Mexico border to talk about immigration.

STATE SALARIES DATABASE: Sacbee.com's database of California state employee salaries now has a new feature: Search by agency and immediately see the highest paid employees at www.sacbee.com/statepay.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman pressed her smaller-government, lower-taxes message to receptive retirees at a toasty Roseville rally this afternoon.

The Sun City Timber Creek Lodge event struck the kind of themes resonating with Republican voters this year: Government needs to seriously shrink. It needs to be more technologically efficient. And the next governor must cut taxes and government regulation to release the private sector's job creation potential.

After a warm introduction by Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association President Jon Coupal, Whitman said, "We don't have revenue problem in California, we have a spending problem of epic proportions. I've never seen anything like it in my 30 years in business."

And a little later: "You'll not find a stauncher defender of Prop 13 than me. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association ... said Meg Whitman is the only candidate that we believe Howard Jarvis himself would trust to defend Prop 13."

Two Democrat-backed groups formed to back Jerry Brown and oppose Republican Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial race announced today that they will join forces and combine resources ahead of the general election.

The Democratic Governors Association, which had launched the anti-Whitman California Accountability Project is joining the effort of California Working Families for Jerry Brown for Governor, a committee backed by labor unions including California Professional Firefighters, SEIU State Council and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California.

"Now, as the primary draws to an end, we must turn our focus to ensuring Democrats take back the California governorship. No other candidate is better equipped to handle the priorities of California's working families in today's tough economic reality than Jerry Brown," DGA Executive Director Nathan Daschle said in a statement.

California Working Families has not reported any contributions in campaign filings, though organizers have said they plan a budget of $20 million to $30 million. The DGA fund reported $147,000 cash on hand when it filed its state campaign finance report last week.

A source affiliated with the Working Families campaign said the group has secured more than $12.5 million in commitments and plans to run a "very aggressive" $26 to $34 million campaign this summer.

UPDATE: 1:36 p.m.: The California Federation of Teachers also announced today that it would come on board with the Working Families effort.

"Jerry Brown is the right choice for California's teachers, support staff and students," said CFT President Marty Hittelman said in a statement. "No other candidate is better equipped to understand and deal with the issues facing education in California. Meg Whitman has already pledged to corporatize and shrink educational opportunities in California and we will not let that happen."

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner might be down in the polls, but he can still fire up his conservative base, like he did tonight at the Villa Park community center.

The clearly conservative audience asked him a flurry of questions that went down the checklist of right-wing hot topics.

How did Poizner feel about an Assembly bill prohibiting people from carrying unloaded handguns in public?

He said he was against it, adding, "People have the right to own and bear arms and I will fight for people's right to do that." He added that he would repeal AB 962, which would, among other things, require people buying ammunition be fingerprinted.

How about the idea of a global government? Poizner said he was against it.

And abortion? He said he wanted to drive the number of abortions performed down to zero although he didn't mention he was, in fact, pro abortion rights.

What about the lieutenant governor's race?

"Take Back Sac" went mano a mano with "Meg for Queen" at high noon Tuesday, as about 50 protesters from the California Nurses Association and the California School Employees Association disrupted an outdoor rally by Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

The site of the clash was the parking lot of the Asian Garden Mall in Westminster, where Whitman addressed about 150 people, many of them from the city's giant Vietnamese community.

While the unions have showed up before at several Whitman events, the open-air location of Tuesday's rally gave the protesters a rare chance to get in the candidate's face. A bus adorned with the words "Queen Meg" also drove -- slowly -- many times around the block.

Whitman delivered an abbreviated version of her standard stump speech while flanked by large signs reading "Take Back Sac." Or at least she tried to. About 30 yards away, from the sidewalk of Bolsa Avenue, the protesters chanted, blew whistles and did everything they could to drown out Whitman's speech.

Rex Babin is the political cartoonist for The Bee. You can see a collection of his work here.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has rebuilt a 24-point lead over state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the Republican gubernatorial primary, according to results of the latest University of Southern California/Los Angeles Times poll.

With less than two weeks until the June 8 election, Whitman leads Poizner 53 percent to 29 percent. The results were released this afternoon by research firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which conducted the poll for the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Times.

After Whitman had jumped to a roughly 50-point lead earlier this year following months of television advertising, Poizner clawed back to within 9 points in a Public Policy Institute of California survey taken May 9-16. The USC/Times results confirm private polls that had shown Whitman widening her lead in the last two weeks.

Poll analyst Dan Schnur, director of USC's Unruh Institute for Politics, said that Whitman regained a double-digit advantage by emphasizing more conservative positions and focusing less on positioning herself for the general election. But that came at a cost, given that she now trails Democrat Jerry Brown in a head-to-head matchup, 44-38.

It's hard to miss the flood of Meg Whitman TV spots blanketing the airwaves in the final weeks of the primary.

Unless you're Meg Whitman, it seems.

POLITICO's Jonathan Martin leads his story on immigration in the GOP gubernatorial race with a slightly awkward exchange he had with the candidate:

"You haven't seen an ad from me with the border fence," Whitman told POLITICO. "That has been Steve's campaign. My campaign has been around jobs and spending and education."

Actually, the reporter reminded Whitman, her campaign ads do feature a shot of the fence--a potent image used by lots of Republican ads this year to show they are ready to crack down on illegal immigrants.

"I don't think so," Whitman replied.

It fell to the candidate's press secretary to settle the dispute, correcting the boss and confirming the fence image.