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Brown V. Whitman: Today In The California Governor's Race, Oct. 14

Olga Khazan |
October 13, 2010 | 10:41 p.m. PDT

Senior Editor

Jerry Brown will be holding a press conference at Dorris Place Elementary School today at 1 p.m. 

Meg Whitman campaigned at Philippe's restaurant yesterday. The owner offered to buy her French dip, but she payed for it herself because she wanted to be independent of all those sandwich special interests.

High stakes and a tight race mean everyone and their brother - and Bill Clinton - is out stumping for California's senate and gubernatorial candidates. 

The state GOP released an e-mail yesterday reminding voters that Brown tried to appoint actress, peace activist and loose cannon Jane Fonda to the California Arts Council in 1979. It will be interesting if a bleeding-heart nominee from 30 years ago becomes an issue for a state that's bleeding jobs right now.

Other than that, Brown's doing pretty well for himself. He got the endorsement of the 80,000 member California Coalition of Law Enforcement Associations yesterday. And the Washington Post writes that Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen are throwing a fundraiser for Brown's campaign Thursday, charging $5,000-a-head at the Soho House in West Hollywood.  

Unfortunately, it seems the two charter schools Brown started aren't doing quite as well. Both the both the Oakland Military Institute and the Oakland School for the Arts ranked poorly compared to schools with similar demographics.

 

For her part, Meg Whitman is still trying to outspend to outlast, pumping another $20 million into her campaign. No wonder California's is one of the top ten most expensive gubernatorial races in the country.

 

Brown's camp said his comment about Prop 8 in Tuesday's debate was a just a conjecture that Protect Marriage would be able to uphold the proposition in court, but Brown's opinion "doesn't amount to a hill of beans," said Therese Stewart, the chief deputy city attorney.

Brown released a new ad focusing on Meg Whitman's "loose relationship with the truth."

Maybe he should watch words like "loose." Yesterday the National Organization for Women has called on Jerry Brown to fire the staffer who called Meg Whitman a whore, even though their PAC already endorsed him. Later they backed down, but not really..."What I should have made clear was that anyone who says the "W" word from here on should be fired." Good luck with that one.

A recent anti-Whitman jingle ad might be counterproductive by upping her "cute" points:

"I don’t have a vote in this race, but if I did, thanks to that song I’d be entering the voting booth with cutesy feelings towards Whitman and her name stuck in my head." - Techcrunch

Meg Whitman's "self-financed glory" is actually a veiled start to her 2012 bid for presidency. - Huffington Post

 

Reach senior editor Olga Khazan here
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