Meg Whitman, Jerry Brown Trade Attack Ads, While Brown Claims Whitman Would Make $14.9 Million By Eliminating Capital Gains Tax

Ted Soqui

Jerry Brown appears at a Los Angeles elementary school

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Jerry Brown's campaign discovered today a new way of saying that Meg Whitman is rich: guessing wildly at her capital gains tax bill and then challenging her to give the real figure.

This plays off of Tuesday's debate, in which Brown asked Whitman how much she stood to gain from her plan to eliminate the state's capital gains tax.

She deflected the question by saying that she is an investor and a job creator, and that Brown has been engaged in a 40-year "war on jobs."

Today, Brown's campaign continued to press this line of attack.

Brown appeared outside Dorris Place School to claim that Whitman's plan to eliminate the capital gains tax will "blow a $5 billion hole in the state budget," which would be the equivalent of 33,000 teachers.

He also claimed that Whitman stands to make $14.9 million from her proposal, and challenged her to explain how she'll cut $15 billion out of the state budget without affecting schools.

"It sounds like some kind of voodoo economics that we've seen at the national level, that doesn't work," Brown said, making a reference that dates back to before half of Californians were born.

Meanwhile, Meg Whitman used the debate to set up her own attacks, specifically on Brown's record on crime and his appointment of Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court. Here's the ad she's rolling out today, which alleges that Brown is soft on crime.

One attack ad deserves another, so here's Brown arguing that Whitman needs to take a lie detector test.

Back to Whitman's capital gains tax bill for a second. There's some voodoo involved in this calculation as well. The Brown campaign figures that Whitman must have sold $141.5 million in stock to fund her campaign, and they calculated the state capital gains rate on that, using the top marginal rate. But if she already sold the stock, then she's already on on the hook for the capital gains tax at the current rate.

Responding to Whitman's charges about him being soft on crime, Brown brought up the Grim Sleeper case, and his role in allowing the use of "familial DNA," which led to the arrest of suspect Lonnie Franklin Jr.

He declined to revisit his decision to appoint Rose Bird to the Supreme Court, but noted again that California police chiefs are supporting him, as is the Peace Officers Research Association of California.