Now that Jerry Brown is a real candidate, perhaps it is time to look back at his first two terms.  While Whitman paints Brown as a wild-eyed hippy wanting to spend like crazy, let’s take a look back into time.  1974 to be exact.  Check out the footage, the relevant clip begins at 1:03.

People always say money. Give us more resources, give us more planning, more experts. Well, I would only say, the Viet Nam War. The other side had less resources, less planning, less experts, less PhDs, and they won.

Now, I think most historians would point out that the North Vietnamese had more local experts, more knowledge of the situation on the ground, but well, they did have less PhDs.

But the point remains.  In 1974, Governor Jerry Brown argued for exactly what candidate Meg Whitman is arguing for today.  If all she has to offer are statements that Jerry Brown has been making for 35 years, then why exactly should we go with the unknown.

The fact is that Whitman is entirely unprepared for the job.  When she gets a tough question from a reporter, she runs away. She says she wants to “run the state like a corporation.” But what does that mean? That Meg Whitman wants to eliminate labor laws? Or maybe that we all should be putting millions of $$ into our avocations.

Perhaps Meg should get some ideas of her own some time, and this time perhaps she could actually have a clue as to what the ideas mean.

I don’t normally post vague, unsourced rumors, but I think this is a general sense of those around the Capitol. Specifically, the rumors of Dianne Feinstein entering the governor’s race are heating up once again.

It’s hard to keep genuine interest, especially from somebody as noticeable as DiFi quiet very long. However, as Robert noticed, DiFi does seem to want people to keep noticing her. I’m not sure all that much has changed since Robert wrote that post back in November, but it seems her attention to the governor gig has increased over the past few months.

So, how’s that for some blind rumors on a Friday morning?

Jerry Brown sent out a very bland email yesterday trumpeting his financial success to spam boxes across the state.  Not that it isn’t big news or anything, he’s got a fairly large chunk of cash. Apparently, Google’s spam filter thought the message was just too boring.  The numbers themselves say something quite clearly.

 * 4.9 million raised since July 1, 2009

 * $8.3 million raised for all 2009

 * $12.1 million cash on hand

This says a few things. First, that Brown’s burn rate is remarkably low. He’s spent just over a third of a million dollars in this campaign.  Dude is seriously cheap.  You could say that is a good thing, but as Robert pointed out yesterday, Brown needs to start reaching out to younger voters.  He can traffic on his fame from the 1970s for only so long. At some point he needs to spend a bit of cash to, you know, let the state know that he’s running for something.

These would be very impressive numbers, in any other year. However, given that whichever Republican wins what is looking like a bloody primary will still have plenty of cash.  In the likely event of a Whitman victory, she has said that she intends on spending $150 million of her own money to buy the race.  Ordinarily, Brown’s numbers would be a pretty solid pace.

But this year isn’t your ordinary year, and Whitman isn’t your ordinary Republican.  But, don’t worry, Jerry Brown will run an aggressive campaign…for whatever office he’s running for.

“Jerry Brown has a broad network of supporters all across the state of California,” said Brown Campaign Manager Steve Glazer. “We expect to have the resources to mount an aggressive campaign in 2010.”

If you believe “them”, Jerry Brown is preparing a populist campaign for governor. By them, I mean the consultants in Sacramento that aren’t connected to the “campaign”, but do have a history in almost winning gubernatorial campaigns. Darry Sragow, who ran Al Checchi’s primary campaign, thinks that Brown will use Whitman’s wealth and spending on the campaign against her.  

“It’s building a trap that allows you to ultimately say, ‘There she goes again,’ ” Sragow said. “If you can say early on you are going to see nothing but Meg Whitman on TV because she thinks she can buy the office, you can say, ‘See, here she is again.’ It’s a smart tactic. He’s attempting to take one of her strengths to use it against her.” (CCT)

And Bill Carrick, who ran media for Phil Angelides in 2006, agrees 150%:

“Whitman and Poizner will both have to deal with the problem of money,” Carrick said. “Can a wealthy person be in touch with the reality of California and the economic anxieties Californians are going through? If Brown’s smart, he’ll be able to stoke some of that.”

But the bigger question is where he will be on the issues:

Brown has a history of riding the wave of popular sentiment, from falling in behind the anti-tax mood of Proposition 13 (after initially opposing it) as governor to embracing the state’s anti-crime atmosphere during his mayoral stint in Oakland by opposing an effort to weaken California’s Three Strikes Law.

As attorney general, Brown has taken on “the big, bad players – the big banks, the Wall Street executives – with a sharp, angry tone, and it resonates well,” said Ben Tulchin, a San Francisco-based Democratic political consultant. “If he can build on that and start going after Whitman, it would be very effective and he’d be a credible messenger.”

Taking on Whitman so early also “helps fire up the base” and serves to motivate potential donors, Tulchin said.

Of course, all that is predicated on Brown a) announcing at some point and b) actually going for the populist votes.  While Brown has actually done a great job of going after the banks in the last 18 months, he hasn’t announced what he would do as governor. And while the AG is a critical position, the issues you face in each position are not identical. So, will Brown run on progressive solutions? It’s an open question.

Meanwhile, as we pointed out in the Open Thread, there is one candidate running for governor that is taking both progressive and populist positions. He’s “Prince” Frederic van Anhalt, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s 9th husband. But you needn’t make those jokes that you are thinking about the sanctity of marriage, Prince Frederic supports marriage equality. According to his very Homer Simpson website, Prince Freddy wants to overturn Prop 8, believing it unconstitutional.  

Throw the Divorce Lawyers a Bone and quiet the Gays. I believe in marriage between men and women, but I am also a defender of the constitution which says equal rights for all. Let them be as miserable as the rest of us.

Aww…how sweet. But, the rest of his platform is really quite progressive. He wants to legalize and tax marijuana, add a ten cent tax on every booze-y drink sold in restaurants, and add a dollar to the taxes on liquor and cigarettes. He supports a oil severance tax, mandatory solar panels on all new buildings and a revised DMV fee structure that charges speeders and drunk drivers a lot more and reduces basic fees. All in all, a pretty populist system he has going on there.

Now, maybe Freddy and Jerry can get together for a cup of coffee or something, and connect the dots somehow.

Field Poll released its polling data on the governor’s race (PDF), and it is about what you would expect. Whitman leading Poizner, Brown leading both.  But the numbers themselves are worthy of note. First, with Campbell out of the race, Poizner’s made it out of the single digits!

Of course, he’s only made it out of single digits with the help of Tom Campbell’s exit. And Campbell’s support seems to have pretty evenly split between Whitman and Poizner. With or without Campbell in the race, Poizner has a long way to go to catch Whitman.

And that’s made tougher by the fact that Whitman just dropped another $20 million in the race, likely breaking the all-time record for self-funding. This brings her total to $39 million, but is only the beginning. She has said in the past that she could imagine spending $150 million in the race, much of that coming from her own bank account.

And while it has pretty much buried Poizner’s petty self-spending, there’s a long way to go to run Jerry Brown under.  Brown holds sizable leads over both Whitman (10%) and Poizner (17%).

However, both these figures are down markedly from the last poll in October, when Brown held a 21% lead over Whitman. Of course, this should be expected as Whitman is running media up and down the state, and you know, campaigning.

If you want to see something that should send a shiver up and down any progressive’s spine, watch this Whitman campaign video. It’s not remarkable so much for the content, I mean, campaigns frequently try to appeal to women. Rather, it is the overwhelming campaign organization that they tangentially discuss. They have paid field staff up and down the state. They have several communications staff. In short, they have an enviable campaign operation that is prepared to wage a campaign for the the 21st century.

This is what you can do when you know you have pretty much unlimited resources.  Jerry Brown is doing fine on the fundraising front. He’s raised a lot of cash, and his burn rate is stunningly low. Yet, when you are going against a candidate with no real spending restraints, how much money is enough? And when does the campaign begin?

In a new PPIC poll, Attorney General Jerry Brown narrowly leads Meg Whitman for the governor’s race.

Whitman dominates with 32 percent support among Republican voters, leading former South Bay Rep. Tom Campbell by 20 points and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner by 24 points, according to the Public Policy Institute of California’s first survey on the 2010 governor’s race.

*** *** ***

Brown, a former mayor of Oakland, leads Whitman, who has never run for public office, by just six points, 43 to 37 percent. He holds more robust leads over Campbell, the former state finance director and dean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, 46 to 34 percent, and wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur Poizner, 47 to 31 percent.(SF Chronicle)

The numbers are solidifying a bit, as the Republicans get to know their three candidates. The right-wing grassroots activists still aren’t all that excited with their candidates, but a consensus seems to be settling around Meg Whitman.

As for Jerry Brown, I still feel that despite Brown’s protestations, he should have announced his candidacy by now. I understand his desire to just do his job, but in the here and now of campaigning for such a high profile position, a robust campaign operation is nearly mandatory. I have faith that Brown can build a team to win as he starts spending money in the new year, but I would prefer to see a lot more groundwork being laid now. This race is a bit too close for comfort.

UPDATE by Robert: The crosstabs are even more damning about Brown’s weak standing with what should be his base. His favorability among Democrats is 52% favorable, 19% unfavorable, with 29% undecided. That’s actually pretty low for such a high-profile Dem. Among independents it’s much worse: 34-39, with 23% undecided.

Brown also has potentially big problems with younger voters. Voters under age 35 – who, ironically enough, were either born in the year Brown was first elected governor, 1974, or later – have a whopping 69% “no opinion” of the once and future governor.

This all proves the point I’ve been making often this fall, which is that unless Brown can excite progressives and younger voters, he is going to have an extremely difficult time winning this election. The canoe theory appears to have sprung a leak.