Brown, Whitman Get Nasty in Final Debate

For a state teetering on the edge of collapse, the final debate in the battle for California governor was long on mud-slinging and short on solutions to the state's problems. Meg Whitman attacked Jerry Brown for an aide who apparently described her as a whore. The Democrat offered a halfhearted apology before going on the counterattack, bringing up what he called the "sorry tale" of Whitman's firing of her illegal maid, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Brown painted Whitman as a political novice seeking to make millionaires richer at the expense of schools, while the Republican painted her rival as an example of failed leadership. "Your business is politics. You've been doing this 40 years and you have been part of the war on jobs in this state for 40 years," she told him. For Californians, one thing is clear, the Washington Post notes: "These two people really don't like each other." (More Jerry Brown stories.)