Jerry vs. Meg: Mano a Mano

28 September 2010 |permalink | email article

Democrat Brown and Republican Whitman face off tonight in Sacramento, the first in a series of three gubernatorial debates before the November election. Their resumes could not be more different. He’s a veteran politician and a former two-governor who held his first elective office in 1969, and she’s a billionaire former eBay executive and driven wannabe politician making her first run for public office.

“It’s the first time voters have a chance to see them in the same place under the same conditions,” Gray Davis, who was Brown’s chief of staff during Brown’s previous term in the governor’s office, told the Associated Press, “Generally, people come away from a debate thinking one of the candidates did better.”

One highlight of the debate is certain to focus on Proposition 23, which is primarily funded by two Texas oil companies, and would delay the global warming law, known as AB32, until California’s unemployment law falls to 5.5 percent and stays there for a year.

Brown has argued that AB32 has helped create green-energy businesses and suspending it would harm California’s economy. Whitman has been under intense pressure from Republicans to back Proposition 23. Last week after much hedging she finally said she would vote against the initiative, but would suspend the global warming law for a year if she is elected. Brown called the idea for a one-year moratorium a “gimmick” while suggesting that “the bottom line is no one knows what her position really is.”

My two cents worth on Whitman is she’s still hedging on the assumption she can have it both ways.

Quotable

Last week Bill Maher showed a video from an appearance Christine O’Donnell made in 1998 on his old program, “Politically Incorrect, “ in which she called evolution a “myth” and backs up her claim with the question: if evolution is real, “why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” It is one in a series of embarrassing statements the long shot Tea Party favorite and Delaware Senate candidate has continued to make over the years.

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