New pro-Jerry Brown ad hits the airwaves

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. This basic rule of the the preschool playground does not appear to apply to the California governor’s race, which has been marked by an onslaught of negative ads since Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner began their air wars in the Republican primary. It hasn’t changed much now that we’re in the early days of the general election campaign.

Whitman is on the air with a 60-second attack ad on Jerry Brown’s record, while a consortium of labor and other groups have been airing two separate ads attacking Whitman’s corporate past. Finally, it appears, those groups have something nice to say about Brown -- sort of.

While the new ad from California Working Families 2010 is drafted as a response to what they call Whitman’s “misleading” ad, it is in fact the first spirited commercial defense of Brown we’ve seen in this campaign. “As governor, Jerry Brown cut taxes,” the ad states. “As mayor of Oakland, Brown didn’t raise taxes, 70% of the voters did.” Of course, the ad begins by calling Whitman a liar, but hey, it can’t be all positive, right?

[Updated: 2:24 p.m.] Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei responded to the ad. “During his career, Brown has championed Sacramento’s philosophy of raising taxes to the tune of billions of dollars, including personally signing into law a $2 billion-plus gas tax increase before he left the state reeling with a deficit and, as the media described it, ‘on the brink of bankruptcy’,” she said in a statement Friday.

The ad marks a return to the airwaves for Working Families, which has served as the de facto Brown paid media campaign over the last month. A spokesman for the group, Roger Salazar, said the group has not run any ads over the last several days, but this new spot marks a return to the airwaves that it anticipates will last through the summer. The groups’ first two ads attacked Whitman’s spotty voting record and her entanglement in a stock-selling scandal while at EBay. You can watch the spot below.

-- Anthony York in Sacramento