…Brown shows his values won’t let him give billionaires a $5 billion tax cut. “Those with the biggest belts, tuck ’em in first.”<\/p>\n
…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.<\/p>\n
…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.<\/p>\n
…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.”<\/p>\n
…shorter Whitman: Public workers should become like private sector workers – poor, overworked, and lacking benefits.<\/p>\n
…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.<\/p>\n
…Brown extols green jobs, Whitman touts better business climate in other states. So why didn’t she move eBay if CA was so bad?<\/p>\n
…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.<\/p>\n
…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.<\/p>\n
…Brown slams Whitman hard on wanting a big capital gains tax cut that would come at the expense of schools. Well done.<\/p>\n
…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.<\/p>\n
So the two candidates for governor – Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown – are about to debate at UC Davis. The debate kicks off at 6PM.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Liveblog updates will be at the top – and of course be sure to add your thoughts in the comments section!<\/p>\n