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Top state Democrats acknowledged Wednesday that they'll face an uphill climb to turn out voters next month given the sour national mood and a massive Republican get-out-the-vote operation financed by billionaire GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. California Labor Federation head Art Pulaski said the GOP's turnout advantage could give Republican candidates an extra percentage point or two of voter support on Election Day. Steve Glazer, campaign manager for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, cited polls projecting only a six-point Democratic turnout advantage over Republicans on Election Day. That's less than half the Democratic margin over Republicans among all registered voters....

SFChron political reporter Joe Garafoli reports that at Willie Brown's annual pre-election breakfast he criticized the CA democrats' GOTV effort. Brown said, "I do not believe that Jerry Brown has a ground operation." Brown "also wonders if it is a good idea for the Dems to rely so heavily on labor for their ground operation." And dem political consultant Garry South "told the gathering that unless Jerry Brown has a lead of 7 or 8 points going into election day, 'we're in serious trouble.'" Video of Brown's remarks are embedded on the SFChro web site.

Democrats Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer hold single-digit leads over their Republican opponents, according to the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll. The survey, which was conducted between Oct. 10-17, polled 1,067 likely California voters. The poll shows Brown's lead expanding over Republican Meg Whitman in their gubernatorial contest, while in the U.S. Senate race, Republican Carly Fiorina seems to be slowly closing the gap between her and incumbent Boxer. Brown holds a 44%-36% lead over Whitman. Boxer's lead over Fiorina is 43%-38%. In the last PPIC survey, Whitman and Brown were in a statistical dead heat, with Whitman...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Democrat Jerry Brown has broken open the dead-heat contest for California governor, leading Republican Meg Whitman by 8 points going into the final two weeks of the campaign after massing robust backing from Latinos and eclipsing her support in the crucial Central Valley, a new Public Policy Institute of California poll shows. In the first major nonpartisan survey since a series of statewide televised debates and revelations of Whitman's hiring and firing of an undocumented Mexican immigrant maid, Brown has 44 percent of likely voters to 36 percent for Whitman, with 16 percent undecided and other candidates...

Democrat Jerry Brown has broken open the dead-heat contest for California governor, leading Republican Meg Whitman by 8 points going into the final two weeks of the campaign after massing robust backing from Latinos and eclipsing her support in the crucial Central Valley, a new Public Policy Institute of California poll shows. In the first major nonpartisan survey since a series of statewide televised debates and revelations of Whitman's hiring and firing of an undocumented Mexican immigrant maid, Brown has 44 percent of likely voters to 36 percent for Whitman, with 16 percent undecided and other candidates drawing 4 percent,...

Early today, I expressed reservations about a new Wilson Research Strategies poll showing Carly Fiorina leading Barbara Boxer by three points and Meg Whitman leading Jerry Brown by one. The methodology seemed unusual, and without crosstabs to analyze, the poll looked more like an outlier. After I posted that this morning, Wilson contacted me, providing me with the raw poll data (which they have also posted at their site), and asked me to take a second look.Just to refresh everyone’s memory, these are the toplines of the survey: Carly Fiorina currently leads by three points against Barbara Boxer in the...

The California gubernatorial candidate's spokeswoman, Sarah Pompei, sent a link to an endorsement from the Deputy Sheriffs' Association of San Diego County. Or so she thought. Her tweet had read: "SD Cnty Sheriff Assoc says @Whitman2010 4 gov! RT: @Murphy4MegNews: CA Cops get it: Jerry Brown is too soft on crime." The tweet also included a link: http://bit.ly/bNCAV. Instead, the link directed traffic to a YouTube video of a man in a pink tutu, playing a guitar. The link was apparently missing a very critical letter "r." When contacted about the mistake, Pompei reportedly responded with a laugh and simply...

Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown have found a new way to win voters' hearts: compare the other to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the embattled incumbent whose popularity is in the tank. Brown, the Democratic nominee for governor, started airing a TV ad Tuesday sampling video clips of Schwarzenegger and Whitman, years apart, making sometimes-verbatim appeals about their qualifications and ideas. It suggests the Republican governor failed in office and Whitman would too. Whitman's campaign returned fire within hours, saying Brown, on certain environmental and tax policies, is the candidate more like Schwarzenegger. It was a lot of dumping for one day...

With some of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's former top advisers on her payroll, it isn't surprising that Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman espouses many of the same policies he has - from tax cuts to stimulate the economy to promises to run California more like a business. Those similarities are why one prominent California politician said electing Whitman would be the equivalent of another Schwarzenegger term. The politician who said that was Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove (Sacramento County), a Tea Party favorite who backed Whitman's primary rival, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.Shortly after taking office in 2004, Schwarzenegger...

State of the Race in California The poll reveals narrow Republican advantages in both top statewide races. Key Findings Carly Fiorina currently leads by three points against Barbara Boxer in the race for United States Senate from California. U.S. Senate Ballot Total Fiorina 46% Total Boxer 43% Total Other Candidates 5% Undecided 6% Meg Whitman leads by one point in the race for Governor of California. Governor’s Ballot Total Whitman 45% Total Brown 44% Total Other Candidates 4% Undecided 7%

SAN JOSE -- California’s gubernatorial race is nip-and-tuck heading into the campaign’s final two weeks. Former Democratic Governor Jerry Brown wants his old job back, but former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a Republican, has other plans. A senior Whitman aide sat down with me and offered a frank state of the race assessment: Q: Why should non-Californians care about this race at all? A: Many Americans have a sense that what starts in California spreads to the rest of the country, for better or worse. We set a lot of trends out here, and that undeniably affects the rest of...

We're all whores on the hamster wheel of life. And I mean that in the most respectful sense.The w-word has taken a ride through the cultural wash/dry/spin cycles after someone in Jerry Brown's camp used it to describe rival Meg Whitman's alleged deal for police union support in a recorded conversation that was made public.People reacted as if we were still living in Puritan Massachusetts. It was "hate speech," said the National Organization for Women's president. "Women know exactly what's going on here," Whitman scolded at last week's gubernatorial debate. Yes, we all do: politics. The same as when Whitman's...

During an accidentally open telephone connection, someone on the staff of Jerry Brown, Democratic candidate for governor of California, called Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate, a “whore.” The sound quality was poor, but apparently it was not Brown himself. Reportedly it was his wife, the one person on his staff who could not be fired. How convenient. The liberal media treated the incident as a minor gaffe, if it was mentioned at all. NOW, the National Organization for Women, at first condemned the insult and called for the firing of the person who uttered it. But within a day, the...

“Our leadership in Washington is at war with American business,” former Alaska governor Sarah Palin said in a speech to Sacramento business leaders Friday. “We just need to turn this thing around,” she said. [...] Palin had both praise and criticism for California’s recently signed state budget. Pointing to her own record of scaling back pension benefits for new state workers in Alaska — and a switch from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution — she applauded pension reform in California that curtails benefits for new workers. “But how long can you all keep kicking the can down...

ANAHEIM, Calif. — There were 19 Republicans sitting on stage behind Sarah Palin when she rallied GOP activists here Saturday, but none was named Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina.And just as the Republican candidates for governor and Senate here were physically absent from the event, they were also missing from Palin’s speech.Not once during remarks that lasted just over 20 minutes did the former Alaska governor mention two of the national party’s most buzzed-about candidates running in the country’s largest state.It’s possible that Palin didn’t want to mention Whitman and Fiorina for fear of handing Democrats fodder

At first, it looked like a glimmer of hope for the beleaguered state of California. Meg Whitman, an accomplished business executive with the very consumer friendly “Ebay” name attached to her own, was leading slightly in the fight to be California’s next Governor. It was still a tight race, yes, but Democratic gubernatorial nominee (and the guy who was California Governor when I was in 5th grade) Jerry Brown, a perennial government employee, was struggling to find a compelling message amid the anti-Obama backlash. And then Ms. Whitman (and her entire family) got hit with a very ugly surprise. Nicky...

It's strange to be aware that Sarah Palin is in California and no one I know seems to care much about it. Sure, my crowd is mostly Democrats, but I'm also thinking about GOP senate candidate Carly Fiorina and our would-be governor Meg Whitman. Both said they had other engagements this weekend -- they're washing their hair? -- and that's particularly hurtful coming from Fiorina. Palin's May endorsement helped shore up the former HP CEO's standing with party right-wingers, since Fiorina was a McCain surrogate in the state, and a real Tea Party candidate, Chuck DeVore, was in the race....

Some of the biggest political names in the nation are in California for one final party push three weeks before the election. Senator John McCain was in San Diego Saturday, stumping for GOP Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina. "My friends, I know what a quality and outstanding individual this is," McCain said. "And this person will never wave the white flag of surrender the way Barbara Boxer has tried to do every single time we have been in a conflict." … Later this week, President Obama will continue his campaign support tour by backing Boxer during a trip to California. …...

You know the phrase "a disaster waiting to happen?" For over a decade now I've been waiting and watching, knowing that the National Organization for Women would inevitably have a very public nervous breakdown brought on by the pressures of using women's issues to further the misogynist leftist agenda. The only questions were when it would happen and how public the collapse would be. I now have my answer--October 2010. After years of slouching into obscurity, NOW finally got some attention last week, much like car wrecks do on the freeway. By now you all know the details--a week ago...

No, I'm not suggesting that Rep. Nancy Pelosi might inherit the office. That could only happen if President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were to die at about the same time before the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January. The Republican candidates in California for governor (Meg Whitman) and U.S. Senate (Carly Fiorina) are potential presidential candidates. Obviously, it is too late for either to run for the 2012 nomination, but they could seek the nomination in 2016 or 2020 if they can successfully make the transition for corporate CEO to the political arena....