*dusts off "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Jerry Brown" bumpersticker*

If I were in California I'd vote Newsom in a heartbeat-- and I supported Brown for pres in 1992. Not only is Brown generally out of touch with how campaigns are run, he's turned into a drug warrior, wanting to keep drug offenders in prison and opposing decriminalization. This while a budget shortfall is going to force the release of sex offenders.

Newsom may be the harder one to elect, but he won't sell liberal values down the river for the sake of convenience.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Newsom fired his long time guru and best buddy Eric Jaye. Hired Garry South and was out last week with a campaign to raise $$$ off of Meg Whitman's announcement

Stop Meg Whitman

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman wants to suspend AB32, California’s landmark legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, on her first day as governor. This is backwards thinking. Help us stop it.

http://www.gavinnewsom.com/actions/petition

And

The Sacramento Bee discovered that ole Meg hadn't bothered to even register to vote until 2002....

Dan Balz picked that up over the weekend

Yes WaPo Dan Balz!!

On her campaign Web site, she declares that "we all love California too much to let it fail." But for unexplained reasons, she took a pass from participating in two of the most important elections that have shaped California's politics this decade.

In 2003, she skipped the recall election that ousted Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and installed Schwarzenegger. Few elections in the state's history have attracted as much attention, with about 9 million people voting. Not Whitman.

She also did not vote in the 2005 special election in which Schwarzenegger was badly defeated in his attempt to win approval for initiatives designed to reform the political and governing process, including one that would have given the governor more power to constrain state spending.

Though she did not bother to participate in that election, she has said that, if elected, she would actively use the initiative process to try to fix a state that has become almost ungovernable. What did she learn from Schwarzenegger's experience with the initiative process?