At Saturday’s gubernatorial debate in Fresno held by Univision, an unidentified and undocumented honors student at Fresno State asked a question about the DREAM Act that, I argued, offered the most important moment of the debate. Whereas Jerry Brown made a strong moral defense of all California’s children getting the chance to succeed in school and become citizens to contribute to our society, Whitman attacked the student and essentially told her she didn’t belong in school and was taking the place of a California citizen.
Today the student has spoken out about the way her question was answered, in a press release from the California Young Democrats:
In an anonymous statement provided to CYD the student said, “Ms. Whitman’s response made me feel undeserving of my academic success… until I realized that I was not admitted into universities because I was undocumented but because I was a hard-working student who maintained great grades, got myself involved, and did countless hours of community service. My education is the only thing I really have in this country, besides my friends and family, and I don’t understand why she would belittle my hard work and that of all other students in my situation. If Ms. Whitman cannot support young successful immigrants, how can she claim she will serve the Latino community?”
This is a devastating response to Whitman. The student in question is a model to young Californians around the state, regardless of their background or immigration status. Every parent wishes they could have a child who has the kind of academic success this student has had.
She should be the kind of person we build California’s future around. Instead, Meg Whitman believes this hardworking and successful young student should be kicked out of school, and probably kicked out of California. Whitman doesn’t see a successful student, she instead sees someone who can at best be exploited before being tossed aside.
Whitman’s former housekeeper may be getting the media attention. But it is Whitman’s awful, dismissive attitude towards a successful young college student that ought to define the choices Californians face in this election.
Most of the coverage of yesterday’s debate in Fresno between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown has focused on Whitman’s false accusation that Brown was somehow involved in the housekeeper scandal. But there was a far more meaningful moment later on, pertaining to immigration, that showed a huge contrast between the candidates and the cruelty of Whitman’s approach. If it gets the attention it deserves, it might even cost Whitman the election.
The exchange in question came when Univision went to an audience member to ask about the DREAM Act. She was a student who graduated first in her class in high school and is now an honors student at Fresno State, triple majoring! in poli sci, Spanish, and Latin American Studies. As a former college professor myself, I can tell you that these are the students you dream about having in class, the ones that make teaching worthwhile.
She explained that she was brought to California by her parents at a young age – in other words, that she was undocumented. (Which is probably why she did not give her name.) Her question was whether the candidates supported the DREAM Act, to let students like her get an education and, I’m paraphrasing, “contribute to the economy here.”
Brown’s response was direct and solid: he supports the federal DREAM Act, would sign the California DREAM Act, and believes it is our moral obligation to ensure that all our children, whether undocumented or not, got the opportunity to succeed, including getting a good education in California public schools, UC and CSU included.
But it was Whitman’s shocking response that, as far as I am concerned, ought to be a game-changer in this election. Here’s how Calbuzz quoted Whitman:
Here is the challenge we face: Our resources are scarce. We are in terrible economic times and slots have been eliminated at the California State University system – I think they’re down by 40,000 students. Same is true at the … the University of California system. Programs have been cut, and California citizens have been denied admission to these universities and I don’t think it’s fair to bar and eliminate the ability of California citizens to attend higher universities and favor undocumenteds.
Calbuzz omitted the first part of Whitman’s response, which was a very condescending “I’m glad you were able to get a good, free education in California’s K-12 public schools,” but the blockquote gives you the gist: Whitman attacked this successful young student, saying she shouldn’t even be allowed to attend Fresno State, and accusing her of taking someone else’s place. In other words, it’s this young woman’s fault that some other Californian can’t attend a CSU.
My jaw just about hit the floor when I heard Whitman say this. And I have to imagine everyone in the audience and watching at home had a similar reaction.
Every parent – whether Latino or not, whether documented or not – dreams of their child having the kind of success that this young woman is having. And when they watched Meg Whitman belittle and attack this woman for her success, saying that it was not only undeserved but that it was hurting others, their only reaction would be negative. Whitman’s attack on Brown over the housekeeper issue may have been entertaining television, but it was Whitman’s attack on one of California’s best and brightest that will cost her a lot of votes.
That exchange was also revealing in how the two candidates treat the issue of immigration. Brown was very strong and clear that he did not support – at all – any form of immigrant-bashing. He didn’t justify this by pointing to the economic contributions of immigrants, but by speaking a very clear and compelling moral language about our obligations and duties to our fellow Californians. He slammed Whitman for opposing a path to citizenship, which he said would force the deportation of 2 million people living in California – something Brown called “immoral.”
For Whitman herself, like the rest of the California Republican Party, the undocumented are perfectly acceptable when they can be exploited for their cheap labor and living with the constant threat of deportation – but the moment they have anything approaching success, they’re suddenly a threat to California and must be dealt with harshly.
Whitman’s personal approach to immigration therefore matches Republican anti-immigrant policy quite well – exploit immigrant labor as long as you can, and get rid of them when you no longer need them. Brown made an extremely strong and powerful attack on Whitman’s support for a guest worker program, explaining how it would allow workers to be exploited unfairly. In fact, Brown deserves kudos for his deeply progressive framing of the immigration issue.
Still, it was Whitman’s shocking attack on the Fresno State student that was the most important moment of this debate. Let’s hope it gets the attention it deserves.
Back when Jacques Chirac was president of France, the media began calling him “superliar” as a result of his frequent inability to tell the truth about the numerous scandals linked to him.
It might be time to apply the label to Meg Whitman.
Earlier this week Meg Whitman changed her story suddenly on the issue of her housekeeper. On Thursday morning Whitman denied that either she or her husband had seen a letter from the Social Security Administration informing them there might by a problem with Nicky Diaz Santillan’s paperwork. When Gloria Allred produced the letter in question, with Whitman’s husband’s handwriting on it, the Whitman campaign suddenly changed tune, claiming that Whitman’s husband never told Meg about the letter. Uh-huh.
That was bad enough. But at today’s gubernatorial debate in Fresno, Whitman told a whopper of a lie in response to a question about the housekeeper scandal – claiming that Brown put her up to it:
“The Nicky I saw at the press conference three days ago was not the Nicky that I knew for nine years,” Whitman said. “And you know what my first clue was? She kept referring to me as Ms. Whitman. For the nine years she worked for me she called me Meg and I called her Nicky. “You should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions,” Whitman told Brown.
Let’s be very clear here: there is no evidence whatsoever that Brown was involved in this, certainly not that he “sacrificed her” to win the election. Whitman’s accusation here is one of the most stunning lies ever told at a debate in California. It certainly earns her the title of “superliar.”
But Whitman told the lie because she thinks she can get the media to simply play along with it, repeat it uncritically as a “he said, she said” story and not tell the public that in fact Whitman has no basis to make this baseless charge against Brown, and that she is saying this only to try and minimize the damage to her own campaign.
Indeed, the LA Times story I just quoted, by Michael J. Mishak and Seema Mehta, takes a “he said, she said” approach and does not tell readers anywhere that Whitman’s claim is baseless.
Let’s hope that the California political media does the right thing and tells the truth about the story, instead of letting them be used as tools by the Whitman campaign.
(Note: the debate is happening right now in Fresno; it will be televised on Univision stations across the state at 4PM. Click here to watch it online.)
I’m probably giving these right-wing immigrant-hating folks more attention than they deserve, but the American Legal Immigration PAC, based in North Carolina, is calling for the arrest of Meg Whitman and her former housekeeper, Nicky Diaz Santillan, for violation of immigration laws:
In response to the explosive revelations that California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman employed illegal alien Nicky Diaz for nine years, ALIPAC is asking Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest and charge both Whitman and Diaz for numerous immigration and employment law violations.
This is something of a stunt by the bigots, but it does indicate the broader unease starting to be felt by Whitman’s anti-immigrant base. They’ve never quite been happy with her stance, as her meltdown on the John and Ken show indicated.
Whitman was always in a precarious position on this issue, partly through her own doing, partly because of the nature of today’s California Republican Party. That party has become not only virulently anti-immigrant, but anti-Latino. They see themselves as a white people’s party, defending the state against “Mexifornia.”
Whitman could not hope to win the nomination or keep her base engaged for the general election without appeasing this anti-immigrant base. Yet Whitman also cannot hope to win the general election without getting Latino votes. Whitman has tried to reach out to Latinos, but that effort is always compromised by Whitman’s need to keep her base happy, a base that doesn’t like her appeals to Latinos – John and Ken criticized her for having Spanish-language ads.
This isn’t to let Whitman off the hook, of course. But her experience shows that the California Republican Party has decide it is better to be unelectable than it is to be open to the fact that California is – and has always been – home to a significant Spanish-speaking population who deserve the same rights and prosperity as the rest of us.
Instead of confronting this squarely, the right-wing is now trying to say “Dems do it too,” lamely pointing to someone who worked for Assemblymember Hector de la Torre and who was later deported and trying to pin this on Jerry Brown – as if he personally knows the immigration status of every single person in the state of California.
It’s a pathetic attempt to deflect attention from the fact that this scandal has exposed Whitman as a liar and shown that she really can’t have it both ways on immigration – either she sides with justice and fairness, or she sides with the immigrant-hating base in her own party. So far she’s chosen the latter, and now she’s reaping what she sowed.
The Whitman housekeeper saga has now become a major problem for the Republican candidate for governor, as Brian just mentioned. Still, there is an important aspect of this that deserves focus: did Meg Whitman lie to the media this morning when she said she didn’t know about Nicky Diaz Santillan’s immigration status prior to June 2009, and that she and her husband didn’t know about the 2003 Social Security letter alerting them to the possible issue?
At a hastily-arranged news conference in Santa Monica this morning, Whitman said the following, according to the LA Times:
Whitman said neither she nor her husband had seen a letter from the Social Security Administration that said the housekeeper’s name and Social Security number did not match. Shortly after Whitman’s news conference concluded, attorney Gloria Allred held her own news conference, where she unveiled the 2003 document, with handwriting on it that she said was Harsh’s.
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.
Let’s pause for a moment to consider what just happened. Whitman said one thing this morning. Gloria Allred then proved Whitman wrong. Now Whitman’s campaign is saying something totally different as a result of Allred producing the smoking gun.
The campaign’s new defense, which we might as well call the Sgt. Schulz defense, is not remotely credible. Either we’re supposed to believe that Whitman and her husband never talk about important things, or that Whitman was kept out of the loop of an extremely important matter. Neither of these make much sense, but if they are true, they show Whitman to be an incompetent manager of her own household. (But then we already knew that.)
Whitman clearly thought she could lie to the media and they’d just take it. But she didn’t count on Gloria Allred, who has been putting on a clinic in how to maximize media attention. Whitman has now lost an entire week to this scandal, while serious questions are being asked about her competency, her honesty, and her hypocrisy.
The Whitman campaign’s other line of defense is to claim that somehow Allred has coordinated this with Jerry Brown. Allred, who is very much her own woman (as anyone that’s spent any amount of time in Southern California would know), explained at yesterday’s news conference that she attacked Brown pretty strongly in a book she’d written. Additionally, Allred has tangled with Brown in the past, including this anecdote from the late 1970s or early 1980s:
She once held a press conference in the office of California governor Jerry Brown to cast media attention on his threat to veto a bill authorizing payroll deductions for child support payments. When the news media arrived, Allred and a group of women and children had hung diapers across the governor’s office. Brown reversed his position and signed the bill.
It’s just not credible that Allred, who has no reason to play along with the Brown campaign, would be representing Santillan just because she wants to deny Whitman the governor’s office. Allred’s entire career has been built around a very media-savvy and deeply feminist defense of women who have been abused and exploited by people in positions of power (like Santillan) or by violent men (like the family of Nicole Brown Simpson, or Amber Frey). So it just doesn’t make sense that Allred is doing this for Brown.
Finally, SEIU is poised to plunge the knife into Whitman’s back with this ad at right, titled “9 años,” a Spanish-language ad mentioning the scandal while also reminding its Latino audience that Pete Wilson is playing a major role on Whitman’s campaign. The ad buy is said to be in the $2 million range.
What we see here is the hubris that is typical of corporate power. Whitman exploited a worker, believing she had every right to do exactly that. When she couldn’t exploit her any more, she brutally cut her off. When this was exposed, she first lied about it, hoping the media would cover for her. Then she started changing her story, again hoping the media would play along.
All in order to continue to appease her right-wing base with anti-immigrant politics.
I am not yet convinced this will be the end of Whitman’s hopes for becoming governor. There’s still 4 weeks left, and she has a LOT of money left to spend. But this shows us the real Meg Whitman, and it confirms all the concerns and worries that voters already have had, that had earned Whitman a 50% disapproval rating even before anyone heard of Nicky Diaz Santillan.
Note: I’m the Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign
Meg Whitman isn’t having a very good week. But if she gets her way and imposes her vision on California with her budget cuts, we’ll look back and think losing a debate and defending against charges you exploited your housekeeper was a walk in the park compared to closed schools, closed libraries, and closed lives.
When it comes to solving the budget crisis, Whitman proposes to continue of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s slash-and-burn cuts in order to deliver a huge tax cut to her and her wealthy friends. But you wouldn’t know that from Whitman’s ads. She doesn’t make reference to her refusal to embrace new revenues to save popular and vital services, even though the public supports doing so. Instead she offers vague pleasantries that mask her true intentions to destroy what remains of the California Dream.
That needs to change. The Courage Campaign is taking the initiative by relaunching our TV ad showing what will happen if Whitman’s proposed cuts become reality. It’s called “Meg’s California” and we’re going to air it on TV screens across the state – with your help. If you pitch in and donate to air the ad, we can finally get some progressive narratives out there challenging Whitman’s emphasis on cuts.
You may recall that we launched this ad back in February, and with your help we succeeded in getting it on the air. As Californians continue to debate budget solutions, including those Whitman proposes, this seemed like the perfect time to put this bit of progressive messaging back up on the air. And there’s more where this came from – we have other videos in the pipeline over the next few weeks to tell a progressive story about California’s future.
Below the fold I take a closer look at Whitman’s budget plans, and how they will lead to the outcomes depicted in the ad.
California currently faces about a $19 billion budget deficit for the 2010-11 budget year. Worse, the Legislative Analyst’s Office projects an annual $20 billion deficit for years to come. So let’s say that starting in 2011, California has to deal with an annual $20 billion shortfall, largely owing to the structural revenue shortfall – the fact that we have artificially low tax levels designed to make it impossible to fund our ongoing core services.
How will Whitman deal with it? She has not yet offered a comprehensive budget package, preferring instead to try and keep skating by with vague promises of “fixing California” and “solving problems” – but as we’ve seen, California’s budget crisis needs genuine solutions.
Whitman’s website emphasizes “spending” as her budget category, showing that she continues the right-wing framing of our budget problem being a spending problem. Whitman has also called for unaffordable tax cuts that will widen further the existing budget gap.
So it’s clear that Whitman rejects tax increases as a solution. That leaves her with budget cuts and cuts alone as the solution to the state’s crisis.
Whitman’s has not specified exactly what she would cut, though she believes we should cut welfare to help fund higher ed. But there is no way she can offer a cuts-only budget without hammering hard schools, parks, libraries, health care services, and the other services the Courage Campaign ad defends.
Specifically, Whitman wants to fire 40,000 state workers, apparently out of the belief that higher unemployment is good for the state. The average base pay for California state employees in 2008 was $63,815. Multiply that by 40,000 and you get $2,552,600,000. Just $2.5 billion, which would leave Whitman with another whopping $17.5 billion left to cut out of the budget.
That’s about the total amount the state spends on higher education and on prisons. Medi-Cal, IHSS, Cal-WORKS, and other important human services take up billions themselves. If Whitman wants to close the budget deficit with no new taxes – and even wants new tax cuts – she’s going to have to make massive cuts to the kinds of services we featured in our ad.
In short, she’s going to hang “closed” signs on public services and buildings and parks across California.
We expect Whitman to respond to this ad by saying she’s not actually proposing to cut schools, parks, libraries, health services, etc, as she claimed in response to the recent CTA ad. As I just demonstrated above, such a response is simply not credible given the size of the deficits California faces, and given her own refusal to countenance new revenues.
This is just the start of the Courage Campaign’s efforts to hold Meg Whitman accountable. Her bad math and flawed budgeting stands completely opposed to the priorities of the people of California. With your help, we’re going to show that to the people of this state. Click here to get “Meg’s California” on the air.
The NRSC may be abandoning Carly Fiorina, but the US Chamber of Commerce isn’t. As they blanket the state with their ads attacking Barbara Boxer’s economic record, the folks at EMILY’s List thought it was time to set the record straight, reminding Californians of Carly Fiorina’s record of mass firings of American workers and offshoring tens of thousands of jobs:
EMILY’s List has more at their Women for Boxer website. It’s great to see this progressive convergence around the Senate race, especially in support of such a strong defender of California values like Barbara Boxer.
This isn’t Meg Whitman’s week. Fresh off a poor debate performance, her campaign was rocked by the story of Nicky Diaz Santillan, Whitman’s longtime housekeeper who held a riveting press conference today to explain her mistreatment at the hands of Whitman. The most explosive allegation is that Whitman knew about Santillan’s immigration status but did nothing about it, even after reportedly being notified by the Social Security Administration that Santillan’s SSN did not match the records.
As others have noted, if true this makes Whitman a massive hypocrite – just last night she called for tougher enforcement of immigration laws. And Carly Fiorina, in the video clip at right, has said on two recent occasions that anyone who knowingly employs an undocumented worker should be jailed.
This scandal has the potential to do big damage to Whitman on at least two levels. First, it shows her right-wing immigrant-hating base that she is no different than the other corporate hacks who hire undocumented workers instead of “real Americans.” True, I don’t personally see any difference between the two – undocumented workers ARE Americans – but we know that the right-wing base does see a distinction. They’ve already been upset with Whitman on immigration, and this has the potential to widen that divide.
Second, and more ominously for Whitman, this could crush any remaining hopes she had of winning significant portions of Latino votes. Most Latino Californians don’t share the work experience of Santillan, but they are quite familiar with the kind of exploitation that many Latinos – documented or not – constantly face in the workplace. Latinos were already trending away from Whitman in the polls, but now they are seeing Whitman as a bad boss who mistreats Latinos. She’s going to have a very difficult time overcoming that, even if it’s premature to conclude that, as a Daily Kos diarist did, that “Housekeeper makes Brown Governor.”
Whitman has pushed back, blaming Santillan for providing false documents. As anyone who has filled out an I-9 form knows, there are federal criminal penalties for any employer who hires an undocumented worker. Whitman is also disputing the report that the SSA notified her of the problem in 2003 – which can be easily resolved if Whitman were to call on the SSA to release such a letter.
Still, there’s more to the story than the immigration issue. Santillan also told of her exploitation at the hands of Whitman, including overworking her, engaging in “emotional and financial abuse,” and even denying Santillan family leave when she was pregnant. The term “pregnancy discrimination” was used by Santillan’s attorney, Gloria Allred, which is itself pretty damning if proven.
That’s not a typical pattern of treatment for housekeepers. I have relatives who worked as live-in housekeepers for a very well-known TV star and mogul in Malibu for 15 years. They were treated extremely well by these employers (who made sure to check their immigration status when he hired them in 1987), both in terms of pay and overall working conditions. Although these relatives retired and moved to Washington State several years ago, they still maintain close contact with the employer and his family. By all accounts it was a model of how to treat workers (that are too often degraded and underpaid) with dignity, respect, and the good wages they deserved.
The contrast to what Santillan described at the Whitman home in Atherton could not have been greater. Whitman clearly viewed the housekeeper as an easy target for exploitation, and proceeded to exploit her to the hilt. When a problem arose, Whitman fired her as quickly as she could and told her to “deny ever knowing me.”
The immigration status issue is certainly what will dominate the next few news cycles on this. But it is worth pointing out how thoroughly exploitative Whitman is, and how deeply she believes that the only people who deserve to be treated well are the wealthy class – everyone else are just serfs.
The first debate between the two gubernatorial candidates was held tonight at UC Davis, and the clear winner – acknowledged even by right-winger Debra J. Saunders – was Jerry Brown. Brown was honest and direct with the people of California while Meg Whitman robotically stuck to her right-wing talking points that, bizarrely, suggested she was actually running for governor of Texas and not California.
Whitman spent the night attacking Brown as a tool of the labor unions. In a rather stunning quote that may come to define Whitman’s night, she claimed that putting Brown in charge of the state budget “is like putting Count Dracula in charge of the blood bank.” Whitman said that to further her basic claim that Brown is a tool of the labor unions that want to destroy California.
Yet Brown very effectively dodged that line of attack – without giving in to the too-frequent temptation among Democrats to engage in a game of “punch a worker” to prove they’re not a union tool. Brown pointed out that he had fought public employee unions while governor in the 1970s and 1980s, vetoing bills that he thought paid state workers too generously – but added that public employees should be thanked and honored for choosing a lifetime of public service. He humanized public workers – instead of treating them like scapegoats and villains, he treated the issue of their pay like the budget and public policy issue that it actually is. I don’t agree with Brown’s “era of limits” budgeting philosophy, but he is at least able to articulate it without using right-wing frames.
Brown got some funny lines in, but the night was won through his devastating attacks on Whitman’s reckless capital gains tax cut that would blow a $5 billion hole in the budget and force massive cuts to schools and other key priorities. Brown compounded the attack by pointing out Whitman’s own “special interests” – the wealthy donors that have given tens of thousands to her campaign, totaling $25 million in donations. It was refreshing to see a Democrat frame the race as the workers vs. the wealthy.
Whitman’s approach was a mixture of right-wing talking points and strange appeals to how things are done in Texas. At times it seemed that Whitman was just lip-syncing to Pete Wilson, especially when she denounced immigrants and blamed welfare for the state’s financial problems and claimed she would be a “tough on crime” governor. Whitman even brought up Rose Bird, who I am guessing barely a third of the electorate even remembers (including those who were eligible to vote in the 1986 election that recalled her from her post as Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court).
As to Texas, Whitman kept talking about how California should emulate Texas on this or that issue. It was a nonsensical move – most Californians do not have a favorable view of Texas and pride themselves on not being anything like Texas. Whitman even name-dropped Rick Perry, which set up Brown to slam Whitman for “taking a page from George Bush’s playbook” in terms of economic policy.
One might ask Whitman why she didn’t move eBay to Texas if they had such a good business climate. I’d have settled for someone asking her why she persists in claiming California loses jobs to other states when the PPIC has clearly shown that California simply does not lose very many jobs at all to other states. Whitman prattled on about the “factory tax” without mentioning that train companies like Siemens and Alstom or solar panel companies have built or expanded their factories in California in recent years.
The Calbuzzers argued that the debate was “an exciting and entertaining event that will not change the dynamic of the race.” I agree, but only because I see the dynamic of this race as one of an electorate growing less and less willing to elect a right-wing Republican, particularly a wealthy CEO who never voted. Brown is really getting traction with his attacks on Whitman’s tax cuts for the rich and her lack of experience.
Perhaps most importantly, voters seem to be warming to Brown’s odd, esoteric, even rambling approach to politics. Brown wasn’t scripted, and as a result he was honest and direct with voters. Whitman, who has already alienated voters with her constant TV ad barrage, came off as a robot programmed by Pete Wilson and Grover Norquist. Both in terms of style and substance, Whitman failed to match what Brown had to offer.
Only 33% of 1525 surveyed in CA watched or listened. 40% say Brown won, 37% say Whitman. 23% say no clear winner. 12% say they will switch vote from Whitman to Brown; 12% say they will switch from Brown to Whitman! And 67% say debate won’t change their vote at all: 41% will still vote for Brown, 26% for Whitman, making total Brown 53 Whitman 38.
Which would seem to confirm the diagnosis that Brown won the debate and that it didn’t really change anyone’s mind. Brown has the momentum right now, but there are still four weeks to go – maybe Whitman will be able to shake this race up. She won’t do with with her TV ad barrage or her lame attempts to turn California into Texas.
…Brown shows his values won’t let him give billionaires a $5 billion tax cut. “Those with the biggest belts, tuck ’em in first.”
…sorry, cut out there. Whitman giving her closing statement now, but not before saying putting Brown in charge of budgets would be “like putting Count Dracula in charge of the blood bank” for his links to unions.
…Brown did a good job showing he won’t do what unions want – said he vetoed two pay bills – but also in humanizing public workers and refusing to treat them as villains.
…Whitman apologizes again for failing to vote. Brown is asked whether he’d run for president as he had 3 times before – he jokes “if I were younger you know I would.”
…shorter Whitman: Public workers should become like private sector workers – poor, overworked, and lacking benefits.
…on pensions, Brown gets a lot of laughs when he jokes “if you elect me I won’t collect until I’m 76. I’m the best pension buy in California!” Brown calls for two-tier pension reforms. Whitman calls for a longer retirement age.
…Brown extols green jobs, Whitman touts better business climate in other states. So why didn’t she move eBay if CA was so bad?
…Whitman is claiming CA isn’t competitive to neighboring states, yet PPIC studies repeatedly show we don’t lose very many jobs at all to other states.
…Question about the death penalty. Brown says he doesn’t personally back it, but has faithfully supported the law since the legislature and voters approved it. Whitman pledges to be a “tough on crime” governor, hits Brown over Rose Bird (really? that was 25 years ago!). All Whitman has is talking points, no real policy statements.
…Brown slams Whitman hard on wanting a big capital gains tax cut that would come at the expense of schools. Well done.
…Whitman asked about how to fix the budget. She digresses by claiming we need economic recovery to produce balanced budget, and says she’ll get there by firing a lot of people and cutting services people need. When pressed by the moderator for a non-answer, she says we need to start on the budget earlier. Um, OK – we already start in early January. A majority vote budget would help this.
So the two candidates for governor – Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown – are about to debate at UC Davis. The debate kicks off at 6PM.
What’s going to happen tonight? I expect Whitman to try and do a couple of things – pass herself off as a candidate of change while spending most of her time attacking Jerry Brown’s record as mayor of Oakland (expect to hear a lot about crime but very little about Brown’s record of economic growth there) and as governor of California in the 1970s and 1980s (expect to hear a lot about how Brown raised taxes and caused a severe recession, even though he didn’t actually do those things).
As to Brown, he’s going to probably continue his plan of showing himself to be the broadly acceptable moderate alternative to Whitman while continuing the devastatingly effective attack on her plans to give the rich a huge tax cut while worsening the state budget deficit and unemployment. Brown will probably also hit Whitman for her opposition to AB 32 and green jobs.
Liveblog updates will be at the top – and of course be sure to add your thoughts in the comments section!
Click here for a live feed of the debate from UC Davis.
Most of the coverage of yesterday’s debate in Fresno between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown has focused on Whitman’s 
The first debate between the two gubernatorial candidates was held tonight at UC Davis, and the clear winner – acknowledged