California Watch

Though it may have been unique in size, the controversial $1 million campaign contribution made this summer by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to the Republican Governors Association should come as no surprise here in the Golden State: The company best known for running the right-leaning Fox News channel has spent even more on California politics over the last decade.

Fox Group, a division of News Corp.'s U.S. subsidiary, has donated more than $1.2 million to California candidates and causes since 2001, state campaign finance records show, and unlike the RGA bonanza reported last week, many of those contributions have gone toward Democrats.

This election cycle, for example, the company has given $25,000 to the central committee run by the state's Democratic Party but only $20,000 to the committee run by the Republicans – though it has also backed GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman but not her Democratic opponent, Jerry Brown.

Not that showering money upon both sides of the aisle is unprecedented, even at News Corp. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, the company has actually favored Democrats in Congressional races over the years, despite frequent accusations that it cheerleads for the right.

Gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman have both repudiated partisan politics and attacks made against their campaigns.

But despite their concern about partisan attacks, Politics Verbatim has documented hundreds of attacks the two candidates have made since the beginning of the campaign.

In a recent interview with Time magazine, Brown concluded that personal attacks may be the determining factor in deciding the next California governor.

He said:

But you know what decides it? Who f_____ up. Who says the wrong thing. Who insults someone. That will be the deciding factor … I'm not one to stay on message. Maybe not. But if I say something, you know I mean it. You know who it's coming from. That much hasn't changed.

After dissecting comments from more than 400 documents and multimedia articles since the two began their campaigns, Politics Verbatim has found a total of 353 “candidate attacks.” Candidate attacks include any statement in which either the Brown or Whitman campaign takes a shot at each other or another political target. Politics Verbatim is a new site created by California Watch that tracks the statements of Brown and Whitman.

Where did the candidates for California's most high-profile elected offices – Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina – get their education? 

None graduated from a public high school in California. San Francisco-born Attorney General Jerry Brown came the closest, attending St. Ignatius College Prep, the prestigious parochial school in his home town, and graduating from there in 1955. (The school, affectionately referred to as "SI," was founded exactly a hundred years earlier).

In fact, Brown has the purest California education pedigree of all four candidates. After graduating from St. Ignatius, he went to the University of Santa Clara, and then the Sacred Heart Novitiate Jesuit Seminary in Los Gatos in 1956. Four years later, he enrolled in UC Berkeley, where got a bachelor's degree in classics.

His opponent in the gubernatorial race was educated further afield. GOP candidate Meg Whitman graduated from Cold Spring Harbor High in Long Island, N.Y. in 1973. (Other notable former students include Lindsay Lohan, whose recent travails have not brought luster to her alma mater). Whitman went on to Princeton, where she got a degree in economics.

So that’s what a $114 million governor’s primary looks like.

Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO-turned-Republican-warhorse, spent an astonishing $76 per vote to wrest the nomination from state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a California Watch analysis shows.

Poizner, beaten two to one, spent $63 per vote to come in second.

Meanwhile, the lone Democrat, Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, faced only token opposition, and got the nomination on the cheap. Brown spent less than 50 cents per vote. He actually got more votes than Whitman, and spent only a penny for every dollar she pumped into the race.

Who made out from that long, bitter, expensive GOP campaign?

Perhaps California voters were better informed as a result of the barrage of information fired at them in TV spots, many of them extraordinarily hard-edged.

But there’s no doubt the campaign was a bonanza for the state’s TV stations and for the battalions of campaign consultants, direct mail firms, pollsters and fundraisers.

Below is a combined look at spending from the primary – the top cateories that the candidates spent their money on. It’s compiled from secretary of state data, from the beginning of the campaign through May 22, the last pre-election reporting date: