Whitman TV Ad Misrepresents Brown On Death Penalty
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman began airing a campaign ad Thursday that attacks rival Jerry Brown's opposition to the death penalty, but it misleads voters because of what it omits.
The 15-second television ad reflects only part of the Democratic candidate's record on capital punishment.
Brown has long opposed the death penalty on a personal level, and he vetoed death penalty legislation when he was first governor, from 1975 to 1983. But he has pledged to uphold California's capital punishment law.
At the candidates' second gubernatorial debate earlier this month, Brown noted that he had defended hundreds and hundreds of death penalty cases as California's top law enforcement officer.
"Having been attorney general, having been governor, I pledge to the people of this state I will faithfully carry out our law on executions, and I'll do it with compassion, but I'll do it with great fidelity to the rule of law," Brown said at the Oct. 2 debate in Fresno.
He reiterated that position Thursday to reporters in Los Angeles when asked about Whitman's ad.
Whitman deputy campaign manager Tucker Bounds defended the ad, saying "there is no political figure that is associated more with opposing the death penalty" in the country than Brown.
Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, has sought to portray Brown as soft on crime, touting her endorsement from a law enforcement group that has received most of its funding from the Los Angeles Police Protective League. She also has said voters can't trust Brown to uphold state laws because he refused to defend Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative that banned gay marriage in California.
Whitman's statewide ad features police officers saying Brown opposes the death penalty, even for those who kill law enforcement officers. It also notes his 1977 appointment to the California Supreme Court of Rose Bird, who routinely voted to overturn death penalty cases.
Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said Brown, during his first tenure as governor, appointed more than 800 judges "who ruled all kinds of ways on different issues, as is the nature of judges."
Brown has been endorsed by several influential law enforcement groups, in part because of his defense of the death penalty and support of the state's three strikes law. He also has defended at least 500 death penalty cases since he became attorney general in 2007, said state Department of Justice spokeswoman Christine Gasparac.
He also has sought to resume California's death penalty executions, which were halted in 2006 when a federal judge ordered prison officials to overhaul the state's lethal injection process.
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