Before audiences representing one of the Democratic party’s most dependable constituencies, members of the party’s statewide ticket campaigned at a smattering of African American churches in Southern California on Sunday to appeal for votes Nov. 2.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown infused a gibe at Republican Meg Whitman’s voting history with a reference to the sacrifices made by African Americans to ensure their right to vote.

“A lot of people struggled a lot. People died to vote, so that’s why it’s so important to go out there and do it,” he told the audience at Greater Zion church in Compton.

“You’ve probably heard that the person I’m running against didn’t vote most of the time,” Brown added. “But I’m not going to talk about that because you already know it.”

There and at several other churches, Brown used biblical references to draw murmurs of assent from the crowd.

“With your help and God’s blessings, we’ll make it work for everyone, not just the powerful, not just the people who seek out fame,” Brown told hundreds at First A.M.E. Church in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles before a reference to Luke: “The children of darkness in their own way are pretty smart, but this is the time for the children of light.”

Democratic attorney general nominee Kamala Harris told the Greater Zion audience that the criminal justice system needed to “incorporate that age-old concept of redemption.”

“There are those who would call this perspective radical, as my opponent has called me. But I would suggest, yes, I am radical in my belief in what we can do to improve the system. How we can change without being caught up and burdened with just a blind adherence to tradition, how we can be smart on crime and not just talk about ‘Are you soft, are you tough’ -- are we smart?”

Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, is running against her Los Angeles counterpart, Steve Cooley.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman had no public events Sunday. But on Saturday she made appearances before three Asian American groups, seeking advantage with that voting segment. She also attacked Brown for his handling of the city of Oakland during his tenure as mayor and said voters needed to side with a respected businesswoman over a 40-year politician.

-- Cathleen Decker

Democrat Jerry Brown has opened up a wide lead over his Republican challenger, Meg Whitman, with just eight days left before Election Day, a new LA Times/USC poll has found. Brown's lead over Whitman has jumped to 13 percentage points. Of the voters surveyed, 52% said they would vote for Brown while just 39% said they planned to vote for Whitman. The poll also found Sen. Barbara Boxer with an 8-point lead over Republican Carly Fiorina. Read the story here. --Anthony York in Sacramento

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Saturday he has no plans to return $13,000 in contributions to his attorney general campaign from an oil company, received while his office was prosecuting the firm for violating state environmental laws. But his campaign staff is reviewing the matter, says Times writer Phil Willon. Read more here. 

The leading candidates for lieutenant governor traded searing online attack ads this week. And they got personal. 

On Tuesday, one day after he made a surprise appearance at the Los Angeles campaign rally of his Democratic opponent, Gavin Newsom, Republican Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado released a YouTube video questioning the temperament of the San Francisco mayor.

“Can we trust Gavin Newsom?” a scrolling text asks, as a thumping heartbeat sounds. Then excerpts of quotes from several former Newsom campaign staffers flash on the screen.

“He’s probably the worst mayor in modern history,” says one from Jack Davis, a strategist who worked on Newsom’s 2003 mayoral campaign. “If lightning should strike and [Gavin] . . .  becomes governor amidst the problems that the state has . . . he’d have a nervous breakdown.”

The quotes were culled from a 2009 San Francisco Weekly article about Newsom’s struggling gubernatorial campaign. According to current Newsom staffers, the views represented in that story, and in the ad, are those of a few people with personal grudges against the mayor. 

"I don’t have to look any further from myself to know how distorted those quotes are," said Newsom spokesman Francisco Castillo, who has worked on several Newsom campaigns. "Throughout his career, Mayor Newsom has developed a reputation of high integrity."

On Thursday, meanwhile, the Newsom campaign released its own YouTube ad accusing Maldonado of putting workers in danger at his Santa Maria family farm.

The video cites an Oct. 15 Los Angeles Times article about safety violations at Maldonado’s Agro-Jal farm operation. It features footage of workers sprinting through fields, carrying large flats of strawberries. It also shows Maldonado's response to an interview about the death of a farmhand who was crushed beneath a tractor in 2007.

“There's accidents that are going to happen,” Maldonado says in the clip.  

According to government records, Maldonado's farm has accumulated dozens of violations from California's Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1990, including multiple citations for exposing workers to toxic pesticides and skirting clean-water regulations. Four of the violations were for running tractors across the fields with no driver at the wheel and no means of steering or stopping the machines.

In a statement Friday, Maldonado said, "We work every day to improve the safety of our employees." And then he turned the tables, raising questions about the safety record at a San Francisco restaurant owned by Plump Jack Group, the restaurant, winery and resort company Newsom used to head.

According to documents sent to reporters by Maldonado campaign staff, the Balboa Cafe was cited for 21 violations by CAL/OSHA in 2001.

Two of the violations, related to the storage of compressed-gas cylinders, were deemed serious. The other violations ranged from electrical infractions to inadequate ladder maintenance.

Castillo, Newsom's campaign spokesman, said comparing the violations at Balboa Cafe to those at Maldonado's farm "is like comparing a parking ticket to a hit-and-run.” 

"Unlike Abel Maldonado, Mayor Newsom took responsibility and fixed them," Castillo said. "The bottom line is all of them were recognized, settled and corrected in a timely manner."

Neither video has had a very large audience. As of Saturday morning, Maldonado’s video had 453 views, and Newsom’s had just 282.

-- Kate Linthicum  in Los Angeles   

With a little more than a week to go in her close race against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, Carly Fiorina made a swing through her old turf in Silicon Valley on Saturday to buck up women supporters who were making calls on her behalf at a Republican Party headquarters in San Jose.

“Things are bad in California: 12.4% unemployment, 20 counties with unemployment above 15% ... and yet people are not hopeless, they are not helpless,” the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive told more than two dozen women who crowded around her during a break from their phone bank lists. “We have the power of our vote. And this time the power of everyone’s vote is going to cause the whole nation to look to California and say ‘Wow’ … the voters of California decided that 28 years of Barbara Boxer was enough.”

“But it won’t happen if we take a single day or a single vote or a single dollar for granted. So we have to work really hard now, every single hour of every single day for the next 10 days. Trust me I will be.”

Touching on the grueling pace of her travels up and down the state in recent days, Fiorina said she’d been reminded of a Johnny Cash song: “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

“That’s kind of how I feel. I open the drapes in a hotel room and I don’t really know where I am actually, but I know what we have to do that day, which is to go out and talk to people about the issues that matter to them,” she said, before promising to tackle job creation, “out of control” spending and an “unaccountable” government in Washington. 

Fiorina has presented herself as a proud conservative Republican since the earliest phase of the race -- espousing views on social issues such as abortion and offshore oil drilling that are at odds with the opinions of most Californians -- but she has sought to broaden her appeal in the final stretch with television ads in which she promises to cross her party if it’s in Californians' interests. 

That message is strikingly different from her cutting tone on the campaign trail, where she has pounded the rate of government spending under the Obama administration, bashing the stimulus program and the healthcare bill as a waste of taxpayer money.

Asked to name any pending Obama administration proposal or Democratic bill that she would back against the will of her party, Fiorina mentioned several votes that had already come and gone -- including one this summer to extend unemployment benefits, which she said she would have supported.

“I would have voted against the bailouts -- those happened in a Republican administration,” she added.
The former business executive also said she stands behind President Obama’s $4.35-billion Race to the Top Initiative: “I think it is a wise move to connect the spending of federal dollars to performance in the classroom.”

States compete for Race to the Top funding, which was set aside in the federal stimulus package that Fiorina opposes.

-- Maeve Reston in San Jose

Sen.  Barbara Boxer, in the toughest reelection battle she has faced in decades, on Saturday painted her Republican opponent Carly Fiorina as an extremist on environmental issues who supports new offshore oil drilling.

“It has always been one of my goals, ever since I was a county supervisor, to make sure we protect the gifts like these that I consider a gift from God,” Boxer said, standing on a makeshift platform on the beach in Santa Monica as waves crashed and cyclists and runners passed in the background. “Anyone who says they are ready, willing and able to destroy this coastline does not understand really what our work is as human beings: to protect this God-given legacy, number one, and to protect the 400,000 jobs” tied to the California coast.

Boxer, who is narrowly leading Fiorina in the polls, has been highlighting policy distinctions about issues such as oil drilling, abortion and guns in an effort to increase her support. According to a May poll by the Los Angeles Times and USC, about 50% of surveyed Californians oppose new drilling, while 43% support it.

In addition to such issues, Boxer emphasized Fiorina’s ties to conservative icons such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The former GOP vice presidential candidate played a critical role in Fiorina’s primary victory, blunting opponents by endorsing the former Hewlett-Packard chief, but is deeply unpopular with the independent voters who could decide the race.

“So when my opponent says, ‘Drill baby drill,’ yes, it won her the endorsement of Sarah Palin, but I have something to say very clearly today: Sarah Palin does not speak for California,” Boxer said, standing alongside actors Dennis Haysbert, Hector Elizondo and Valerie Harper.

She highlighted Fiorina’s support of a November ballot measure that would halt the state’s landmark global-warming law to say that the GOP Senate candidate is out of step with voters.

“You’re known by the people you walk with, right? My opponent walks with Karl Rove,” she said, and the dozens of supporters gathered outside Perry’s Beach Cafe booed. “I thought you’d say that. My opponent walks with the far right, and with big oil and dirty coal. And my opponent is the only major statewide candidate to endorse Prop. 23. We will defeat Prop. 23 and we will keep California marching forward.”

Boxer discounted polls and political analysts who say the three-term senator is in jeopardy of losing her seat, and that Republicans are likely to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.

“I don’t buy into any of this. The pundits have decided the Democrats are all going to lose all over the country and I just don’t believe it. I think if the people vote and they realize what the choice is in each of their states, we’ll win a lot more seats than people say,” she told reporters after the news conference. “I don’t buy into any of these predictions. Talk to me the day after Election Day.”

But moments earlier, she exhorted supporters to volunteer for her, saying their actions could decide whether she is reelected.

“This is what I need you to do. If you can give another five bucks, do it. Right now I need you to volunteer,” she said. “If you put in 30 minutes a day calling, getting people to the polls, we have the list, it’s going to make the difference.”

[Updated at 2:10 p.m.: A Fiorina spokeswoman said the GOP Senate hopeful believes decisions about new offshore drilling should be left up to Californians, and threw in a dig about the Democrat’s past investment in an oil company.

“As Barbara Boxer attempts to change the subject away from jobs and out-of-control government spending -- the issues voters are focused on -- the career politician shows just how out of touch she is and reaches a new height of hypocrisy, even for her, as she invested as much as $150,000 of her family’s money in Diamond Offshore Drilling,” said Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Fiorina.]

-- Seema Mehta in Santa Monica

Here's a bookkeeping blunder one candidate was lucky enough to stumble across before the media did.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen says the taxpayers initially footed the bill when she went to the Democratic National Convention in Denver two years ago to see Barack Obama accept the party's nomination as president. Taxpayers also paid to fly her to the state Democratic convention in Los Angeles in April.

Bowen, who is seeking reelection, says she had mistakenly put those and other travel expenses involving her political activities on a state credit card instead of a credit card for her campaign account. She said she just recently discovered the bookkeeping error.

And with no time to spare. Reporters love snooping around travel records during campaign season.

Bowen reports that she has reimbursed the state for $1,595 from her campaign account to make taxpayers whole.

"Secretary Bowen realized the wrong credit card was used in these cases and she wanted to reimburse the state as soon as she learned of this mistake,'' spokeswoman Shannan Velayas said Friday.

Bowen had billed the state for $235 in lodging at the Sheraton Denver Hotel in August 2008 to attend the Democratic National Convention, and $591 for airfare on United Airlines in November 2007 to attend a fund-raising meeting in Chicago, according to her campaign finance reports for the three-months period ending Sept. 30.

Bowen also reimbursed the state for a $353 Southwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles in July "to attend [a] campaign event," a $227 flight to L.A. on the same airline for the same purpose in November 2009, and a $189 flight in April to Burbank to attend the state Democratic convention, according to an amended campaign report made public Thursday.

Asked about the campaign payments to her state office, Bowen said in an interview, "We separate state business and campaign business.''

-- Patrick McGreevy in Sacramento

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, a Republican, holds a narrow lead over Democratic opponent Kamala Harris in the contentious race for California attorney general, aided greatly by voter support on his usually Democratic home turf, a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll has found.

The survey showed that Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, has thus far failed to captivate the Democratic stronghold of Los Angeles County, home to one out of every four registered voters in California and a near must-win for any Democrat running statewide.

Cooley, a veteran prosecutor seen largely as a moderate Republican, has won three D.A. elections in Los Angeles County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans almost two to one.

In the survey, Cooley held a 42%-33% advantage over Harris among likely voters in the county. Statewide, he had a 40%-35% edge among likely voters, according to the survey.

The biggest remaining wild card in the race is a large pool of undecided voters; 17% of the likely voters still have not made up their minds, the poll found -- a common occurrence in the "down ballot" races. In the governor’s race, by comparison, only 4% of likely voters were undecided, according to the poll.

The survey has better news for another Bay Area Democrat: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom held a slight lead over Republican Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, a former state senator from Santa Maria appointed to the statewide office in April.

Newsom carries a 42%-37% advantage. In contrast to Harris, he crushes his Republican opponent in Los Angeles County by more than a two-to-one margin.

But Maldonado has made inroads among Latinos, chipping away a pool of voters that has traditionally backed Democrats. Newsom still has a 10% advantage among likely Latino voters, the survey found, but nearly a third of the Latinos polled backed Maldonado -- close to the level of support that political strategists say a Republican candidate needs to win statewide.

The poll was done for the Los Angeles Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences by two national polling firms, the Democratic firm Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. It was conducted by telephone Oct. 13-20 among a random sample of 1,501 California voters, including landline and cellphone respondents. There was an oversample of Latino respondents for a total of 460 Latino interviews. Results reported are based on 922 likely voters. Results for the full sample have a 2.5-point error margin, a 4.6-point error margin for Latino respondents and a 3.2-point error margin for likely voters.

-- Phil Willon

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood with Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman at a news conference Friday afternoon in San Jose, arguing that her background as chief executive of EBay and her massive personal investment in the campaign gives her the management skills and independence necessary to be California's next governor.

As a fellow billionaire who held the national record for personal political spending before Whitman surpassed him this year, Bloomberg said he faced similar criticism nine years ago over his lack of government experience.

"She is exactly what we need in these tough economic times," he said. "Back in 2001, when people said I didn't have the experience to run the biggest city in the country, because I had never worked in the public sector, they were really skeptical. But the reality is that a smart, talented manager who has thrived in the private sector can definitely succeed in government."

He added: "She is not a career politician. She is a career problem-solver. We don't need politicians today. We need problem-solvers."

The comments came after Bloomberg and Whitman toured the factory floor at Zazzle, a custom products company that manufactures T-shirts, hats and memorabilia.

For her part, Whitman thanked Bloomberg for his support and praised his accomplishments, including streamlining New York's government, making the city one of the safest in the country and expanding charter schools.

Bloomberg said Whitman's personal campaign spending -- $141.5 million -- allows her to enter office with no strings attached.

"What better commitment can you have?" he said. "She made her own money and she is willing to spend it to make the citizens of California and of the United States better. She's my kind of candidate."

The two are split, however, on California's landmark global-warming law. Whitman has proposed suspending the measure for a year, saying that its implementation would harm the state's sour economy and cost jobs. Bloomberg said the state should move ahead with the law.

"This is the time to make sure that we don't walk away from the air we breath today and the water we drink today and what our kids are going to eat, drink and breath tomorrow," Bloomberg said. "New York City made that mistake of walking away from the future back in the '70s. It took us decades to work our ways out of it. If California is going to have a future, they better show the world they have the courage to continue on and do what's right for themselves and their children."

As Democratic nominee Jerry Brown prepared to appear with President Obama at a Los Angeles rally, Whitman said the administration's efforts to revive the economy had been a failure.

"The progress has been terrible," she said. "Look at the unemployment rates we face in California and we face in the country. The very first priority for me as governor -- and should have been for the president of the United States -- is to get Americans back to work. If we don't jump-start this economy, there is no way out of this mess."

-- Michael J. Mishak in San Jose

Has the much-vaunted “enthusiasm gap” in the 2010 election begun to narrow? At least in California, that seems to be the case, according to the latest Los Angeles Times/USC poll.
 
The survey asked respondents to rate on a 10-point scale how enthusiastic they felt about voting this year. In September, when the poll asked that question, Republicans had a big advantage, with 42% of registered Republicans statewide rating their enthusiasm as a 10, compared with 27% of registered Democrats. In the latest survey, conducted statewide Oct. 13-20, that 15-point gap had nearly disappeared: 39% of registered Republicans rated their enthusiasm at 10, compared with 35% of registered Democrats.
 
A similar pattern shows up on ideology. In September, poll respondents who identified themselves as “conservative” were far more likely to rate their enthusiasm at 10 than those who said they were “liberal” -- 45% to 27%. In the October survey, the two were nearly at parity -- 40% of conservatives and 38% of liberals, a gap within the poll’s 2.5% margin of error.
 
How will all this affect the outcome of the races for U.S. Senate and governor? Full results of the poll will appear in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times and will be released Sunday morning on latimes.com.
 
In the meantime, what has changed to close the enthusiasm gap? Stanley Greenberg, one of the pollsters who conducted the survey for The Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, noted that in September, many Republicans were excited about the prospect of winning the race for governor and the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Barbara Boxer. Since then, the Republican candidate for governor, Meg Whitman, has endured a month of mostly bad news, including the public surfacing of her former housekeeper, an illegal immigrant, and a series of polls showing her trailing Democrat Jerry Brown. The same polls consistently have shown Republican Carly Fiorina trailing Boxer. All that may have dampened Republican enthusiasm, Greenberg suggested.
 
On the Democratic side, party activists have been working to get their voters charged up, in part by painting an ominous picture of what might happen if Republicans have widespread victories. That may have rallied Democratic voters who had earlier been apathetic.
 
Despite the shifts in enthusiasm, the Times/USC poll continues to project a voter turnout this year that will be significantly more Republican than has been typical in recent elections in the state. The survey projects a 58% overall turnout of registered voters -- roughly on par with the 1998 and 2006 midterm elections -- but with registered Republicans making up 40% of the electorate and registered Democrats 44%. That four-point gap between the parties is much smaller than the 13-point gap in party registration.
 
To be considered a likely voter for the survey, poll respondents must have voted in 2006 and 2008, said they were “almost certain” or “probably” going to vote in 2010 and rated their enthusiasm about voting as 5 or higher. Those who registered since the 2008 election are included if they meet the enthusiasm standard and say they are “almost certain” to vote this time around. And, of course, all those who already have voted by mail -- about 7% of the voters surveyed -- are included.
 
The poll was done for the Los Angeles Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences by two national polling firms, the Democratic firm Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. It was conducted by telephone, including landlines and cellphones, Oct. 13-20,  among a random sample of 1,501 California voters. There was an oversample of Latino respondents for a total of 460 Latino interviews. Results reported are based on 922 likely voters.  Results for the full sample have a 2.5-point error margin, 4.6-point error margin for Latino respondents and 3.2-point error margin for likely voters.

-- David Lauter

Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings, a former member of the state board of education, has opened up his wallet to help Larry Aceves in the race for state superintendent of public instruction.

Hastings contributed $400,000 to an independent committee to promote Aceves in the closing days of the campaign. The nonpartisan race features two Democrats -- Aceves, a former school superintendent, and Assemblyman Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch).

Torlakson's campaign has been buoyed by millions of dollars in contributions from teachers unions. Aceves was the top vote-getter in a primary that also features Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles).

Hastings backed Romero in the primary, but she finished third in a crowded field.

-- Anthony York in Sacramento

As President Obama arrived in Los Angeles to raise money for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and rally the party faithful on the USC campus, Boxer’s Republican opponent Carly Fiorina announced that she has loaned another $1 million of her own money to her campaign.

After outspending Fiorina 2-to-1 in the third quarter, Boxer has maintained a slender lead in the polls -- 43% to 38% among likely voters in a Public Policy Institute of California survey released this week. (In September’s PPIC poll, Boxer led Fiorina by seven points).

Before Fiorina's new donation, campaign finance reports covering the period between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13 showed Boxer with $2.27 million in cash on hand to Fiorina's $1.27 million.

Over that period, Fiorina raised $1.4 million to Boxer's $1.1 million. Overall, Boxer has raised $26.4 million for her reelection campaign to Fiorina's $17.9 million. (Before now, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive’s contributions to her own campaign were limited to a $5.5-million loan during the GOP primary, most of which she has since forgiven.)

But Boxer’s coffers will get a boost from Obama’s visit, which is part of a West Coast swing to help Democratic candidates. After the luncheon for Boxer and the Democratic National Committee rally, he will head to Nevada for a fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. First Lady Michelle Obama will host an event for Boxer with Jill Biden in Los Angeles next week.

The line to get into Obama’s rally at Alumni Park on the USC campus snaked for blocks Friday morning. Hundreds of students and supporters spread across the sun-soaked lawn, erupting into cheers about 11:45 a.m. when Marine One flew overhead -- signaling the arrival of the president on campus.

-- Maeve Reston in Los Angeles