Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown said this morning that he and former President Bill Clinton had moved on from their often nasty 1992 presidential primary battle and that "Bill Clinton and I share very similar ideas on how to build up the California economy, how to treat working people fairly."
In his weekly call into San Francisco radio station KGO, Brown also estimated that 95 percent of rival Meg Whitman's recent ads were negative and said "she is so unpopular now that the only way she can win is to tear me down, not build her up. So you'll hear very little about the Whitman record going forward."
Host Jennifer Jones-Lee asked him about his recent mocking of Clinton, followed by his apology to the former president and Clinton's subsequent endorsement of Brown. Whitman is running a TV spot featuring a 1992 clip of Clinton citing a CNN report finding the average state tax burden was higher when Brown left as governor than when he started office.
The CNN reporter who filed the story, Brooks Jackson, and the state Department of Finance have both said that elements of the report were incorrect, but Whitman has continued to heavily run the ad.
About the Clinton endorsement, Brown said, "Maybe a little luck, fortune is smiling on me. An unfortunate comment ... He symbolizes America when it was more prosperous and I'm very glad that he endorsed me and he's refuting what's now an ad that from our estimates is running 80 percent of the time by Meg Whitman. It's not true."
About their old rivalry, Brown said, "That's way overblown. We had a campaign. We had a campaign in 1992. It was very vigorous. That was 18 years ago. We've all moved on."
Brown was also asked about Whitman threatening to sue TV stations for running a California Teachers Association spot that accuses Whitman of wanting to cut $7 billion in school funding and lay off 100,000 teachers. Cable carrier Comcast had taken the ad off the air but is today rebroadcasting a slightly edited version of it.
When asked why he didn't threaten to sue Whitman over the Clinton ad, he said federal laws allow corporations, unions or other groups to be held liable for untruths in advertising but make it harder to hold candidates to the same standard.
"Be on your guard when you're hearing from any candidate," Brown concluded.
UPDATE: Whitman spokeswoman Andrea Jones Rivera said, "Today even Jerry Brown declined to defend CTA's ads of shameless lies that are propping up his campaign. Again, at their second bite of the apple, the CTA gets an F for accuracy. The ad run by Jerry Brown's union allies continues to be false."
Brown, in fact, had said about the CTA spot that Whitman's plan to eliminate the state capital gains tax would hurt schools.
"Since half of the money from our general fund in the state of California goes to schools, you could I think very fairly say that her tax plan will take billions from the school kids of California. I think that is absolutely true."
Photo: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown addresses a Labor Day picnic organized by the California Labor Federation on Sept. 7, 2010, in Sacramento. (Photo: Bryan Patrick/Sacramento Bee)
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