First California Gov. Debate Held
The New York Times reports:
SAN FRANCISCO — With polls showing a tight race and a large block of undecided voters still in play, the two major party candidates for California governor met on Tuesday in the first of three debates, with the state’s economy and its deep financial problems dominating the discussion.
And while the candidates clashed, Jerry Brown, the Democratic nominee, and his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, both seemed to recognize that there were no simple fixes for a state with a $19 billion deficit and unemployment of more than 12 percent.
“This will not be easy,” said Ms. Whitman, the billionaire former chief executive of eBay. “The governor of California, I believe, has got to have a spine of steel.”
Mr. Brown, a former two-term governor who is now the state attorney general, said he had thought “long and hard about whether I should run for governor again.”
“I’ve been there; this is not an easy job,” Mr. Brown said. “And certainly I don’t think it’s a job that, because you know how to run a private business, you can run government.”
Neither candidate was shy about attacking the other, with Ms. Whitman describing Mr. Brown’s connections to labor, which has given him sizable campaign contributions, as an impossible barrier to his making tough decisions on issues like public pensions and budget cuts.
“If your campaign is funded by those public employee unions, its going to be extraordinary difficult to negotiate,” Ms. Whitman said. The unions, she said, would be there “to collect their i.o.u.’s” if Mr. Brown was elected.
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