Whitman must really want the job badly. She has set a new record by spending 119 million dollars of her own money on the Governorship campaign. Brown has spent practically nothing , yet they are tied. How many Whitman ads are you Californites putting up with?
So what are the arguments? Who is going to win?
The governorship pays 206 K a year. She would have to be governor for over 500 years before she started to get her money back. She claims to be a good businesswoman?
What? She doesn’t give a crap about the money…neither did Arnold. I doubt she’ll take the salary.
How many ads is she running?
I think 3 different ones, airing pretty regularly as far as I can tell. Brown has 1 going.
She is trying to prove once again, you can buy an election. The Supreme Court believes it too. They approve of buying elections.
So, what do Californians think of Jerry Brown, these days?
If there are enough patronage jobs for staff & political appointees, her team will make a good chunk of it back in four years.
Besides, it’s power. It’s sound business sense to spend lots of money for a position of authority & coercive power.
When you remember how much Enron stole ,you can see why corporations want their people in power. It is not her getting the money back, but her ability to allow control to her fellow fat cats.
I’m not a Californian*, but I play one on TV. I actually don’t watch much TV, but when I do it seems like every other ad is about Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman. The alternating ad seems to be telling me to “Call Powell Electric, they’ll fix it in a flash”. Whitman is running a lot of negative ads about how Brown raised taxes and lost jobs when he was governor. The Brown ads are mainly about Whitman lying (current is a Pinocchio ad) about Brown’s record and shipping thousands of jobs overseas. There is also a Whitman ad showing Bill Clinton blasting Brown’s record in a debate.
I’m not as cynical as others here; I think Whitman just has a super-sized ego. The only way she could make any money, personally, out of this would be to run for mayor of Bell.
*Ok, technically I am a Californian by birth, but I’m not currently a legal resident of the state. When I’m home from work I get to watch ads by Rubio, Crist and Meeks.
Whitman is not in this for the money, she is in it for the job IMHO. That could be a combination of ego and desire to serve the state. Brown is also in it for the ego and the desire to serve. He wants another swing at it too.
The Governor who can help solve California’s problems will have a nice mark in the history books. The Governor who continues the same will simple be a memorized name and trivia answer.
If Brown wins, he’ll have solved California’s most pressing problem: Meg Whitman.
I’ll be honest: as a Californian who is generally pretty well versed in politics, I’m not anywhere near as hip to the specifics of this race as I should be. Any Dopers want to kindly give me the run down on the key points between the two? Or why you’re leaning toward one over the other?
In some ways, from what I’ve seen at least, Whitman seems like a good businesswoman who has some unique ideas. That said, I acknowledge that might be her ads working on me. Brown . . . I don’t know much about him, since he was our fearless leader before I was politically aware.
In fairness, I realized this morning that the “jobs overseas” thing was about Carly Fiorina or Joan Baez or whoever that is running against Barbara Boxer for Senator. Whitman also does run some ads (saw a new one this morning) praising what a great job she did at eBay and surmising that of course this means she’d add job in California. Whitman has spent almost enough to create a different advert for every family in California.
I’m a solid Democrat, so I probably would have voted for Brown anyway, but Whitman’s negative ads have been so relentless, stupid and annoying that they’ve killed off any interest I might have had in even considering her as a candidate.
The shipping jobs overseas is a Boxer ad against Fiorina. My wife and I saw it together. When it was over, we looked at each other and said “Hey maybe it would be a good idea to outsource Congress to India, that way they could not screw up this country any longer.”
I don’t think this is what Boxer had in mind when she approved of that ad. 
Whitman ran for the Republican nomination on jobs, education, and illegal immigration. She’s been backpedaling on the immigration front, getting some flack from early supporters, and I suspect she never really gave a crap about it. Her jobs platform is largely anti-regulation, her big target being a recent global warming law she wants to roll back. Her “fix education” program highlights reducing waste, encouraging charter schools, and grading schools A-F. She also want to transfer $1 billion in “welfare reform” savings to the state university systems.
Brown is running mostly on his name and experience (a double-edged sword), as well as a significant public distaste for self-funded campaigns like Whitman’s. His name recognition is huge, due to his two terms as governor (1974-1982), as well as the rest of his 40 years in California politics. Brown’s main political convictions appear to be environmentalism, diversity, and an aversion to spending money that “fiscal conservative” doesn’t begin to describe.
Both are avoiding specific proposals for dealing with the economy, an indication that they both know there’s nothing they can do.
So, Californians, who will fiddle while you burn? Decision 2010!
What do Californians think of Brown nowadays, anyway? Is he still “Governor Moonbeam”?
Brown has been a perennial winner in California politics since the 70s, and even gave Clinton a run for his money in the '92 presidential primaries. He was not only a successful governor, but also a successful mayor of Oakland and most recentily was elected (2006) state attorney general. The man does his job and voters appreciate it. California doesn’t need another bored and unqualified rich person running the state.