Since August, California Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has 
eclipsed rival Jerry Brown in most polls.  As Real Clear Politics 
averages Whitman’s lead at 5 percent, Brown has just begun to get his 
campaign started.  All this while Whitman confirms that she has spent 
$119 million dollars so far on her campaign, the largest amount of 
personal wealth ever invested in a political campaign.
Brown has decided to compete with Whitman’s juggernaut by holding the 
bulk of his funds until Labor Day, which at one time was considered to 
be the start of the campaign season.  television advertisements funded by 
the Whitman campaign, and for the most part directly from Whitman 
herself, have flooded California radio and television waves since the 
spring.  Thus far, the only ads on behalf of Jerry Brown have been 
funded by California Working Families, a coalition of Democratic 
constituencies including teacher and labor unions.
If Jerry Brown is going to win this election and enter his third term 
as governor, it looks like he’s going to have to kick things into 
overdrive.  Whitman has relentlessly attacked his record when he 
previously served as governor from 1975 to 1983 and mayor of Oakland 
from 1999 to 2007.  One of Whitman’s key points of contention is that 
Brown raised taxes during his tenure as Governor.  She has even 
enlisted the help of former President Bill Clinton via a televised 
debate in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary when he asserted 
that Brown had lied about lowering taxes and taking credit for the 
passing of Prop 13 which limited real estate taxes.
Recently the Brown campaign has fought back, claiming that these claims were false.  In an article written on FactCheck.org, 
Books Jackson, whose 1992 CNN report was cited by Clinton as proof 
that Brown had raised taxes, wrote, “Brown is right; I made a mistake 
in my 1992 report.”
In fact, the California Department of Finance has 
reported that taxes were actually lowered when Brown was governor.
In the first round of television ads launched last week directly from his campaign, Brown states that he cut taxes by $4
billion dollars as governor. The Whitman campaign maintains that 
taxes did rise from the time Brown took office to the time he left 
it.
Nothing that has happened thus far has appeared to stop the increasing momentum of the Whitman campaign or its core message that Brown has consistently failed the state of California and that he had “no plan 
then, no plan now.”
The polls are showing that Whitman’s ads and image as a business-minded outsider are resonating with California voters. Jerry Brown’s 
staff must be hoping the strategy of holding off until the last minute 
does not prove as disastrous as it did for former New York Mayor Rudy Guliani who waited until the Florida primary in the 2008 Republican 
presidential race to truly begin campaigning and was summarily destroyed in the competition. Whatever happens, Governor “Moonbeam” 
as Brown was called, is going to need to rely on some good vibes to 
win this political battle.