Undecided voters at stake heading into Brown, Whitman debate

Locked in a tight race for the governor’s office, Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown will face-off in their first debate Tuesday evening, hoping to move a legion of undecided voters into their column.

The event, which will take place on the campus of UC Davis and air live at 6 p.m. on various broadcast outlets, is the first of three matchups for the major candidates. The gubernatorial contest has been stuck in a dead heat for months, despite a summer-long advertising battle between Whitman and organized labor groups backing Brown, who launched his own ads this month.

The race has turned more on character than policy.

Whitman has touted her background as former chief executive of the online auction business EBay, saying the state needs to rein in spending and offer tax cuts to boost California’s sour economy and create jobs. She paints Brown, a former two-term governor and the state’s current attorney general, as a career politician controlled by powerful unions.

Brown doesn’t shrink from his political resume; he maintains that it gives him the knowledge and experience to break the Capitol’s legislative gridlock. At 72, in the twilight of his political career, he says he has the independence to take on special interests. He portrays Whitman, who has put $119 million of her own money into the race, as a billionaire trying to buy the governor’s office.

According to a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll, both candidates face steep challenges in convincing voters that they are best suited to oversee California’s recovery. Only 8% of likely voters said the state was headed in the right direction; 86% said it was on the wrong track.

And neither candidate is popular. Among likely voters, 45% felt favorably about Brown – the same percentage that felt unfavorably. Whitman fared worse: 37% favorable and 47% unfavorable.

“I think this will go down to the wire,” said Bruce Cain, a political scientist at UC Berkeley. “Voters are really uncertain and frustrated as to what to do. They don’t believe anything anymore. Nothing’s looking like it’s new and promising to people.”

Other experts said the economy would certainly color voters’ opinions.

“This is the angriest electorate we have seen in California or elsewhere in many, many years,” said Dan Schnur, a former Republican consultant and chairman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

But he noted that despite voters’ calls for revolution elsewhere, Californians remember the 2003 gubernatorial recall, and “people who might have been angry in 2003 are realizing that a revolution might not be an answer.”

He added: “A candidate who says, ‘Here’s what comes after the anger,’ really does have an important opportunity.”

michael.mishak@latimes.com