Biographical sketches
Brown's new ads are expected to be introductory, biographical sketches. While he has high name recognition among Baby Boomers who remember his terms as governor, about one-third of voters younger than 40 have no opinion of him, according to the Field Poll.
While Whitman spent an estimated $24 million this summer on advertisements portraying Brown's career as a "legacy of failure," Brown pressed a phone to his ear, dialing donors in the hope he would be able to raise enough cash to compete with Whitman's record-shattering spending.
She has spent more than $104 million of her own money on her campaign - and yet the race is a tie, according to an average of several major polls by the independent political website RealClearPolitics.com.
Brown's goal is to raise enough money to be competitive with her during what is expected to be a furious two-month sprint to election day on Nov. 2.
"We are in good shape," Brown campaign manager Steve Glazer said Thursday, estimating that Brown would spend a total of about $44 million - the same amount former Gov. Gray Davis did in his 2002 general election run.
Risky strategy
Brown strategists believed that lying low during the summer, even if risky, was their best option. Had Brown's campaign responded to each of Whitman's attack ads since June, the Brown strategists said, they would have been out of money by Labor Day, when voters traditionally start paying attention to campaigns.
Brown's camp thinks the strategy worked because the race is even.
Whitman's campaign feels that it's in good shape, too, given that Democrats have a 14 percent advantage over Republicans in statewide voter registration and Brown's name recognition is high after a 40-year career in politics.
"I'm as intrigued as anyone else to see what they'll do," Whitman spokesman Tucker Bounds said Thursday. He predicted that Brown's opening ads will lean on "nostalgia."
"He'll try to glorify the culture of California as opposed to saying what he's delivered for Californians - because he hasn't delivered anything," Bounds said.
Whitman is sparing no expense. She spent $65.29 per vote to beat state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the Republican primary - the second highest amount by a self-funded candidate in California in more than 30 years, according to a study released Thursday by the state's Fair Political Practices Commission.
Only 1998 Democratic gubernatorial primary candidate Al Checchi, who spent $70.21 per vote in an unsuccessful campaign, spent more.
Getting out of the way
With Brown's campaign kicking into a higher gear in the coming days, the union effort known as Working Families 2010 is going to "get out of the way" and let Brown be the lead voice, Grisolano said.
Brown's 9 a.m. appearance Thursday at Laney College - before only a couple dozen people - lasted just a few minutes. Billed as an event where the former Oakland mayor would appear with Latino leaders to push back against Whitman's outreach to Latinos, Brown mentioned the word "Latinos" just once.
Instead, speaking without notes, he talked generally about returning to the governor's office in Sacramento as someone who could bridge the partisan divide.
"At this point, I've got the energy, I've got the enthusiasm, and I have the will to transform this breakdown into a breakthrough," Brown said. "In fact, precisely because it is a breakdown we're going to have a breakthrough. We just have to pull together, and we have to get it done."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/03/MN721F7NRQ.DTL#ixzz0yUOqLeCb
