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Brown says he’s a ‘little stressed’ by Whitman’s campaign spending

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Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown admitted Wednesday that he is anxious about the funding disparity between his campaign and that of his Republican rival, Meg Whitman.

“We’re being outspent like 100 to 1. We get a little stressed,” Brown said in an interview on the KTLA morning news. “But the fact is I was brought up to treat my money carefully, my campaign money, the same way I treat the people’s money. Meg has a different philosophy. She flies around on a private jet. She paid herself $120 million her last year at EBay, then they had to lay off 10% of the workforce. Wow. So just a difference of philosophy.”

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The race is a dead heat. Earlier this week, financial disclosures revealed that Whitman, a billionaire, is spending more per day than Brown has spent this entire year.

The brief interview touched on the topics of the day: same-sex marriage and the pay and pension fiasco that has unfolded in Bell.

Hours before a federal court is supposed to rule on whether gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry, Brown reiterated his support for same-sex marriage.

And as documents have emerged showing that California’s state pension fund did nothing to stop exorbitant pay raises being handed out to Bell officials when it learned about them four years ago, Brown suggested his existing inquiry into the matter as the state attorney general will be expanded to encompass CalPERS.

“I think there’s some problem there. We definitely have to look at what our state pension board is doing,” he said. “They need oversight. It’s abusive.”

Brown called the unheard-of salaries in Bell “casino giveaways.”

-- Seema Mehta in Los Angeles

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