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.

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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.

As we drift headlong into the 2010 Governor’s race, there are some very big issues facing the state.  One of these, is the prison crisis.  The legislature and the Governor were only able to come up with cuts that would reduce the population by somewhere in the 25,000 range, while the federal courts are looking more in the 44,000 range.

The Bee took a look at how the candidates are talking about this issue, and let’s just say that some of the positions are semi-reasonable, and others simply aren’t.  Now, for those of you who were wondering about the Michael Jackson “Black or White” Video, well, I give you Steve Poizner’s black or white take on the world:

Whitman and Poizner, on the other hand, have tried to out-tough each other, railing against legislation passed last month by the state Senate that would have let some inmates out earlier and appointed a commission to rework state sentencing laws. The ultimate version of the bill passed this month did not include the sentencing commission or a provision to release more than 6,000 inmates to home detention.

“You have to be a really bad person to get into state prison,” Poizner said. “So I’m opposed to releasing people who are dangerous, absolutely opposed. That’s no way to balance the budget.”

Whitman went even further, saying she opposed rewriting any prison and parole guidelines that would shorten prison terms for any inmate.(Sac Bee 9/23/09 emphasis mine)

Poizner simply takes the reactionary view, that is, that if you are in prison, you are a bad, bad, person.  Of course, this ignores the crazy, messed up world of parole violations that lead to people going to prison to serve out a term because they missed a meeting with their parole officer or some other technicality.  So, yes, you have to break the law to end up in prison, but painting all prisoners with such a wide brush serves neither the prison system, the prisoners, nor the state very well.

And then you look at eMeg‘s statement, and that seems all the more bizarre when you put it together with her statement from yesterday saying that she wants to can 40,000 state workers.  As the governor’s staff has pointed out, you can’t fire that many workers without firing a bunch of prison guards.  And if you plan on increasing the prison population as eMeg seems to be saying here, well forget about cutting state employee roles, you’ll end up hiring another 10,000 prison guards.  And that doesn’t even consider the overtime pay that the guards get in spades.

Jerry Brown, who mentioned that he would consider the position, and SF Mayor Gavin Newsom have stated fairly similar positions. Both want to reduce recidivism (good!) but haven’t stated whether they would support a sentencing commission or any serious reform (bad!).  

On the other hand, Republican Tom Campbell has actually been quite the reasonable guy on this front.  He supported the Senate bill (Good!) and has put out specific, pragmatic policies on this and some other issues, many of which are pretty vanilla milquetoast. Nonetheless, a candidate that is willing to talk about the issue from a logical viewpoint, rather than an emotional reactionary viewpoint, deserves some credit.

Campbell, on the other hand, is bucking the prevailing wisdom in his party. He backed both the Senate version and the final bill although both shorten prison terms of some inmates.

“We have an opportunity to direct a more effective prison system,” Campbell said. “I’d rather approach this pragmatically, through outsourcing of prisoners, developing a triage of parole violators and focusing on more violent offenders in prisons.”

Now, Arnold supported the Senate bill too, and that hardly makes him a great Governor, does it? But, unless our elected leaders are willing to deal with thhis issue out of a place of pragmatic, problem-solving leadership, rather than out of fear of an electoral backlash, we shouldn’t expect too much progress.  

Meg Whitman isn’t quite the punching bag of say, an iCarly. She’s dumped a bucket load of cash into her campaign, and has some actual support coming in as well.

But, she saw the red meat that Steve Poizner was dishing up to the base, and thought she better get in the action once again.  So, in a speech that she’s giving, oh, right about now, she puts a bunch of ground round on a platter and serves it up rare as can be. Joe Garofoli at the Chronicle just posted some choice excerpts from the speech:

As governor, I’ll cut taxes to create jobs. Specifically, I’ll cut taxes on job-creating businesses of every size and implement targeted tax relief to rebuild manufacturing in California. I’ll expand research and development tax credits. I’ll establish tax incentives and credits for companies that train and hire displaced workers. And I’ll establish a cabinet-level position in my administration dedicated to private sector job growth. (SF Gate)

So, R&D credits, huh? Well, her friends in Silicon Valley will love that. How about her friends in the Central Valley who are struggling to pay the health insurance bill and the mortgage? No word on that issue.  But don’t worry, because unlike Poizner, she’s got a plan on how we afford the tax cuts: Slash 40,000 government jobs.

As I committed to in February, if elected I will identify and implement at least $15 billion in permanent spending cuts from the state budget. I’ll eliminate redundant and underperforming government agencies and commissions. And I will reduce the state workforce by at least 40,000 employees. That’s a 17 percent reduction that would reset the workforce to 2004-2005 levels and save the state a projected $3.3 billion annually. (SF Gate)

Right, that’s the ticket.  I know Whitman is a business scholar, so I’ll leave this question to her: How does the state sustain an additional loss of 40,000 jobs without a consequential, and substantial, drop in consumer spending and thus private sector jobs.

The fact is that this plan is even more half-baked than Poizner’s merely ridiculous plan.  This one carries few specifics other than “we can improve IT efficiency.” Yes, that’s true, but the state government isn’t ebay, and you can’t simply apply feedback scores and tell everybody that they just have to trust reputation and then pretend everything is hunky-dory. And you can’t really outsource your labor to slave labor, as eMeg does. Nope, the state actually needs its workforce to accomplish some very important goals.  Things like fighting fires, protecting its citizens, you know, silly stuff.

I’m not even sure I need to attack this plan, as the Governor’s people have already done so. From back in June, here’s Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear criticizing the plan:

Former eBay CEO and Republican candidate Meg Whitman campaigns across California, advocating job cuts to net a 10 percent “head count” reduction in California’s 345,000-person state workforce.

But she got a brushback from Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear, who suggested such across-the-board cuts are all but impossible.

“The governor only has authority over contracts with 100,000 state employees paid through the general fund,” McLear said. “About two-thirds of those are in Corrections. So it’s unclear how you cut 30,000 positions without affecting public safety.”

Aaah, the battle royale between Whitman and Poizner, where nothing really makes sense, but you get style points just for dressing up your utility grade red-meat.