Rasmussen polls always skew a bit to the right. As long as you know to take that grain of salt, they retain some meaning. And so while you’d toss a few points towards Jerry Brown, this is still a discomforting poll:

With nearly a year until the general election, a new Rasmussen Reports poll puts GOP gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman and still-undeclared Democratic contender Jerry Brown locked in a tie with41 percent support a piece.

The results show Whitman gaining traction since a September Rasmussen survey, in which Brown outpolled Whitman 44 percent to 35 percent.(SacBee)

Putting aside any substantive issues that any of us may have wit Brown, the dithering in announcing his candidacy is hurting the Democratic hopes of recapturing the governor’s seat. Whitman and Poizner are now dictating the conversation of this election, and whether Brown wants to admit that he’s a candidate or not, he is the Democratic standard bearer. And right now, there is no Democrat articulating the values and ideas that the party stands for.

Whatever else you can say about Gavin Newsom, at least he bothered to notify the press that he was running for governor. With his exit from the race, the press simply defines the story on Republican terms.

Enough of this dithering from Brown already. If he wants to run for governor, great, fantastic, let’s do it. But Brown needs to realize that he just can’t skate through without bothering to announce that he’s running.

It is a rare day that every major candidate for the California governor’s race is from Northern California, but that’s they way it is today. And specifically, all three Republicans are from the Silicon Valley.  It’s generally a Democratic leaning area, as it is hard to find a Republican in the Bay Area at all.  But in the Valley, Republicans tend to be the less dogmatic type than you’d find in the Central Valley.  They’ll focus less on social issues and more on their own pocket books. They want a generally functional government, but would like to get it on the cheap.

And that’s why despite the fact that all three candidates are from the area, Tom Campbell’s wonky campaign carries some sway.  In a poll by San Jose State’s Survey & Public Research Institute (PDF, Campbell was shown with a pretty hefty lead in Silicon Valley. While the poll was quite small and the margin of error was huge (6.9%), the size of the lead means there is something to this data. Campbell is at 39%, Whitman 11%, Poizner 7, and the famous “Undecided” at 41.

Campbell is a wonk and a bit of a nerd. And perhaps that is what is playing so well down there. Or perhaps it is the fact that he has represented much of the region when he was in Congress. But for whatever reason, Silicon Valley Republicans are leaning hard for Campbell. The question with Campbell in this race is always the money question. Can he come up with enough cash to really compete with Whitman and Poizner. He can’t self finance, and he’ll need to spend a hefty chunk of change to really make any headway with the right-wing base of the party.

However, if Campbell does manage to squeak out, he probably makes for a very tough campaign for the Democratic nominee, whether it be Jerry Brown or some other late announcing candidate. While his “solutions” tend to be pretty much the same as his former boss, Arnold Schwarzenegger, he is still able to talk the moderate talk.

Former AG spokesman Scott Gerber’s secret recording of 6 phone calls is still haunting AG Jerry Brown.  Over the last week, various Republican elected officials, candidates, and organizations have called on Brown to appoint an independent investigator.  Most recently, the California Republican Lawyer’s Association asked the San Francisco and Alameda District Attorneys to look into the matter.  A large chunk of the AG’s offices are in fact in those two counties.

Today, Brown asked the Alameda DA’s office to review the matter.  Gerber had been working out of the AG’s Oakland office, so it seems to make the most sense.

In an apparent attempt to head off Republican criticism of its internal inquiry into a secret audio taping controversy, Attorney General Jerry Brown has asked the Alameda County District Attorney’s office to look into the matter.

“They’ve invited our office to review it, so that’s what we’re doing,” said Kevin Dunleavy, chief assistant district attorney at the Alameda County office. “It will be assigned to somebody in the office who will review the circumstances.”

The Attorney General’s office made the request on Friday, two days after the California Republican Lawyers Association asked the district attorney’s offices in Alameda and San Francisco counties for an independent investigation into the secret recording conducted by Brown’s former communication director, Scott Gerber. (CoCo Times 11/16/09)

Of course, there is another side of this story that brings the right-wing boogyman, ACORN.  The “filmmakers” who secretly recorded the ACORN incidents down in Southern California are, of course, subject to the same laws. Joe Garofoli in today’s chronicle highlights the perilous position that Brown is now in because of these two situations occurring at the same time.

If he charges the filmmakers, he’ll be accused of hypocrisy because he chose not to bring charges against his own spokesman, who has admitted secretly recording journalists. If he doesn’t bring charges against the filmmakers, he faces criticism from grassroots liberals and supporters of ACORN, which Republicans have also accused of voter fraud. (SF Cronicle)

As of right now, the right has made much of the Gerber situation, while the Left hasn’t really pressured Brown too far on the ACORN issue. How long that remains the case likely depends on how long the ACORN probe lingers and what we get in results.

In the article, Steve Maviglio, questions whether now might be the time for Brown to consider actually building an actual campaign instead of the one man Steve Glazer operation. Whatever he elects to do, it is clear that Brown is now in the right-wing cross hairs.

At the (CYD Caucus) CDP poolside shindig last night, the big news was that I missed the tamales on the buffet. I was enraged! I was more enraged by the fact that Jerry Brown took the last one.  

Ok, Ok, I kid. The real big news was the converstaion between Brown and CDP Chair John Burton.  As Brown and Burton were engaged in small talk, Calitics reader lindasutton came up and brought up the question of single payer.

Brown responded by saying it was never going to happen. That it wasn’t going to happen at the federal level, and that he wasn’t sure about it at the state level.  Burton then interjected saying that it would, and should, happen.  After Brown hemmed and hawed for a while, saying that it wouldn’t happen, Burton responded with this remark: “I thought you were supposed to reach beyond the stars.”

I’m not quite sure what Brown’s response was, as it was a bit mumbled. I think it was something to the effect of it’s not going to happen.  A remarkable evening, all in all.

UPDATE by Robert: I too was standing there, tamale-less, watching this fascinating exchange between two of the leading California politicians of the 1960s and 1970s. It was an interesting contrast in basic political approaches. Burton emphasizes progressive principles – his older brother Phil created the Medi-Cal program in the early 1960s and he believes that single-payer is the right solution to the health care crisis. Brown emphasizes a pragmatic approach, one that will never embrace a progressive solution on its merits unless it is already popular with voters.

Interestingly, Brown’s statement on single-payer – “it’ll never happen” – is the same position President Barack Obama has. The difference of course is that Obama was able to create a campaign based on a clear message of hope and change that was able to generate high levels of enthusiasm among progressives to help him win. Brown, on the other hand, hasn’t yet offered any larger vision for progressives to embrace, so his dismissal of single-payer is going to be more of an obstacle.

Marcy Winograd, who is again challenging Jane Harman for the Democratic nomination in CA-36, suggested an interesting approach to this: progressives should tell Brown if/when he wins that “we celebrate your victory and look forward to you singing the single-payer bill.”

Jerry Brown’s in the middle of an interesting news cycle. First, the transcripts of secretly recorded conversations were released under California’s sunshine regulations. And well, That’s Our Jerry!

George Skelton went through and picked out some gems from the transcripts of the interviews.

* Responding to the snide digs of Republican gubernatorial contender Steve Poizner about his being a career politician: “A certain amount of wisdom and maturity is needed in this toxic, partisan environment that the state has become. It’s funny that he would think that ignor- ance has now become a virtue.”

*** *** ***

* Being Jerry the Jerk as Goldmacher interviews him about raising millions from special interests for his pet project, two charter schools he founded as Oakland mayor: “This is the Lord’s work. . . . You have kind of a picky little thing here. . . . That’s the luxury you have! I can tell you’re a nice middle-class kid, you’re not in the ghetto. Do you know they have murders in the state? . . . This is life and death!”  (LA Times)

On the latter quote, I wonder if Brown would react the same way if somebody else had asked the question.  Say somebody like Skelton. While I don’t denigrate his experience, it is also a little bit troubling that Brown lambasts Goldmacher for nothing other than the fact that he is young and/or white.

Also in today’s news cycle, Brown has an interview with Legal Newsline, a conservative website that is curiously anti-lawyer.  In the interview, Brown questions the value of regulation.

“The whole framework of law is crucial for the operations of business enterprises,” Brown said. “But when over prescriptive, it creates a huge and growing amount of overhead and it does seem that we’re reaching the point of counter-productivity.”

As progressives, we must be careful about how we discuss these topics.  While there might be some areas where regulations are outdated and need to be reformed, but when we discuss “regulation” generally, it is clearly a net benefit. And I think this is what Jerry Brown is getting at. When you attack regulation, you attack the requirement that doctors are licensed. When you attack regulation generally, you imply that business should hold the advantage over consumers.  It may not be said, but regulation enables consumers to deal fairly with business. It blocks bait and switch and other swarthy business “techniques.”

So, I’ll choose to highlight the first part of that quote, while Legal Newsline chose the latter part.

The whole framework of law is crucial for the operations of business enterprises.

Meg Whitman is a woman of the people. And by that, I mean she’s flexible, always willing to go with the flow.

Take AB 32. Meg Whitman is on record as wanting to suspend the landmark greenhous gas legislation. Well, it turns out that almost all of her foundation gave money to one of the big supporters of the legislation, the Environmental Defense Fund:

The Griffith R. Harsh IV and Margaret C. Whitman Charitable Foundation in 2007 contributed $100,000 to the Environmental Defense Fund, which is now at odds with Whitman over water policy. The foundation also invested $3 million in hedge funds based in the Cayman Islands – a Caribbean tax haven that’s been the subject of political controversy. (SJ Merc 11/6/09)

Meanwhile, the task that AB 32 seeks out to accomplish, reduce carbon levels to 1990 levels by 2020, is not impossible. In fact, San Francisco will achieve that goal by 2012, and is on track to beat that mark considerably. Mayor Newsom says that that the City will likely reduce total carbon emissions by 20 over the ten year period of 2002-2012. Sure, there are differences between SF and the rest of the state, the main one being the relatively stagnant population in our 7×7 mile corner of the Peninsula. However, going green is not nearly as challenging as Whitman makes it out to be.

And heck, she just ask some of her foundation recpients about that. As Robert pointed out, this is your Republican front-runner. W00t!