California governor candidates a study in contrasts

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - She's chartered jet, he's Southwest. Her mentor was Mitt Romney; he worked for Mother Teresa. She pays her chief campaign consultant $90,000-a-month; his worked for free most of last year.

Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown are fighting for the same job, but that's where the similarities end for the two candidates running for California governor.

Come November, voters in the financially troubled state will have two stark choices: the billionaire former eBay chief executive who has never before run for office and rarely voted, or the heir of a political dynasty who is famous for his frugality and once studied Zen Buddhism.

The deep differences in their lives and personalities will do more than ensure a lively election season. They also will give both sides material for attacks.

Brown already is trying to undercut Whitman's message by assaulting her Wall Street connections and lavish campaign spending, including "white glove service" on private jets and fancy fundraisers in Beverly Hills.

On primary night, he likened Whitman to the current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like Whitman, he campaigned as an outsider with business savvy, yet he has failed to deliver the budget and tax reforms he promised.

Whitman's campaign is trying to offer California a "new beginning," in a not-so-subtle jab at Brown's four-decade-long political career. She has characterized her 72-year-old rival as a man without fresh ideas who will serve the interests of organized labor and other entrenched interests in Sacramento.

Whitman, 53, the Republican, grew up in an upper-middle class household on Long Island and graduated from Cold Spring Harbor High School before attending Princeton and Harvard and working at Proctor & Gamble, Disney and Hasbro. She joined eBay in 1998 and helped the online auction site mature into a multibillion-dollar company. The company made her a billionaire.

Brown has assailed Whitman, saying she lacked significant interest in community service until deciding to run for governor.

By contrast, Brown has a deep political pedigree. He is the son of a former California governor, Edmund "Pat" Brown and he himself served two terms as governor starting in 1975.