Washed It!

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown argued Thursday that his experience makes him the only candidate who can right California, and he slashed at Republican rival Meg Whitman by calling her a neophyte who has run an ugly and inaccurate campaign against him.

“Everything I’ve done in my life has prepared me for this moment in time, to do what I can to protect the state I love,” said Brown, the former two-term governor and current attorney general, standing in front of a vat of sulfuric acid after touring New Leaf Biofuel in San Diego.

“I’m confident at the end of the day, though it’s going to be a close race, people are going to vote for change, they’re going to vote for integrity, and they’re going to reject the negativity and the carpet-bombing of deceptive commercials we’ve been facing these last two months.”

More than 100 miles north, at a rivet manufacturer in the City of Industry, Whitman argued that the state would be ill-served if it elected a career politician who “has not delivered” in the past. Faced with a query from a worker about whether she could be any more effective than another political novice, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Whitman said the business skills she developed as EBay’s chief executive would ease her path in Sacramento.

Schwarzenegger “did a number of good things … but he had not run and managed and led large organizations” as she has, Whitman told an audience gathered on the factory floor of Allfast Fastening Systems. The next governor, she said, “has to be very tough-minded.”

“We cannot afford a third term of Jerry Brown,” Whitman said. “And I am going to give Jerry Brown the toughest fight he has had in his 40-year political career.”

The events marked a rare moment in the general election campaign so far — one in which the two gubernatorial candidates were actually campaigning at the same time.

Although Whitman has kept a brisk pace traveling around the state, airing ads and reaching out to voters since she won the GOP primary in June, Brown, who lacks his rival’s deep pockets, has spent much of his time raising money while juggling his duties as the state’s attorney general.

Organized labor has propped up his campaign with television ads over the summer, but until Wednesday it had been nearly a month since the candidate held a campaign event. Brown has said he was biding his time and would spend $25 million to $30 million in the fall, when voters would be paying attention.

“There are two things that are unprecedented in American political history,” he said Thursday. “One, the $100 million plus that Whitman has paid on her campaign, most of it from her own pocketbook, and two, the virtually no effect it’s had. This is basically a tie race.”

Brown, who picked up the endorsement of Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America on Thursday, appeared to be gearing up for the start of the general election battle. He headlined a rally in front of 800 people in Santa Rosa on Wednesday night, followed by the Thursday morning tour and news conference.

Those events offered Brown the chance to respond to several attacks Whitman has launched against him in recent weeks, including questions about his recent use of a state plane after he bragged about eliminating such luxuries during his prior time as governor. Brown dismissed a query as a “Whitman-fed” question.

“I fly it so little, really, compared to commercial flights,” he told reporters in Santa Rosa. “By the way, sometimes funerals are very important to go to, for fallen officers.”

Whitman’s newest television ad, unveiled Thursday, charged Brown with hypocrisy for touting his frugality even though he used a state plane 10 times since he assumed the attorney general post in 2007. The ad says that Brown used a Beechcraft King Air turboprop for trips to a conference at the La Costa Resort and Spa and a reception in Pebble Beach. “It’s your money — not his,” the announcer says.

Whitman, who received the endorsement of the National Federation of Independent Business on Thursday, was fending off her own attacks from the state’s nurses‘ union and the Courage Campaign, which used the anniversary of women’s suffrage vote to protest the candidate and her spotty voting record at a Sacramento rally.

More than 1,000 people gathered on the west steps of the Capitol, ostensibly to honor the 90th anniversary of suffrage. Labor leaders, led by the California Nurses Assn., hammered Whitman for her poor voting record and painted her as a corporate elitist who plans to cut 40,000 state jobs, slash pension benefits and curtail the political influence of unions.

“She may not have voted,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurses’ union, “but we will.”

Whitman countered that the protest appeared to be driven by “union bosses trying to distract from the fact that I will go to Sacramento and I will change Sacramento.” But she once again apologized for her past voting record: “I have said I should have been more engaged and I was not. But I am all in now.”

seema.mehta@latimes.com

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Times staff writer Michael Mishak contributed to this report from Sacramento.
Brown and Whitman spar in sync

Revamping teacher evaluations with the goal of helping instructors improve has become an urgent priority in the nation’s second-largest school district, Ramon C. Cortines, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said in an address to administrators Wednesday.

Cortines said the district will develop and adopt a “value added” method that determines teachers’ and schools’ effectiveness based on student test scores. And he told a packed Hollywood High School auditorium that he’s committed to using these ratings for at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation. The plan would require the consent of the teachers union.

In a later interview, Cortines also said he was disappointed that California lost its bid Tuesday for $700 million in federal Race to the Top school improvement grants. L.A. Unified’s share would have been $153 million.

But the district also learned late Tuesday that it will receive $52 million in unrelated federal grants.

Overall, the veteran educator, who has led five school systems and plans to retire in 2011, used his 30-minute speech to celebrate progress at various schools, including Hollywood High, and challenge educators to do more.

Linking student test scores to individual teachers became an especially heated topic after The Times published a series of stories based on a value-added analysis of teachers and schools. The Times also plans to publish this month a database with the rankings of about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers.

“It is critical that we look at multiple measures to support our employees,” Cortines said, and “how value added fits into our overall strategy.”

The district plans to publish such data about schools “once this information has been validated,” but not the scores for individuals. “Supporting all employees is about creating a culture of collaboration and trust,” he said, echoing recent comments by his deputy, John Deasy.

Cortines talked later about being part of a five-member state delegation that met with federal evaluators for the Race to the Top funding bid.

“I was grilled, no doubt, on bringing the bargaining units along” on accepting test scores as part of evaluations, he said.

The winning state applications all scored at least 440 on a scale of 500; California fell 17 points short, and union buy-in could have put it over the top. But evaluators most consistently dinged the state for an out-of-date student data system. That problem alone cost it 14 points.

Rapidly and fully funding a better data system has long been a sticking point between state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wasn’t won over by O’Connell’s proposals to pay for such a system.

The state also consistently lost points for perceived shortcomings in developing and evaluating principals, and its plans for turning around persistently low-performing schools.

Cortines said some evaluators seemed to favor aggressive approaches, such as closing schools, that have a mixed record.

But L.A. Unified will receive another competitive federal grant, aimed at troubled schools, that was scored by state evaluators.

L.A. Unified was initially shut out because the state’s scoring system gave the district virtually no chance against smaller school systems. But the state Board of Education agreed to reconsider. This week, the board lowered some award amounts to others, and federal officials released funds previously held in reserve.

The biggest beneficiary will be five schools under the purview of L. A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. His nonprofit, which runs 15 schools within L.A. Unified, qualified for more than half of the $52 million; he personally lobbied the state board on the matter.

Five other district schools will split the balance.

Cortines had wanted some of this money for Fremont High, where he’d ordered all staff to reinterview for jobs, resulting in massive turnover. Fremont, however, won’t receive money because its test scores, although very low, have improved too much to qualify.

As he concluded his address, the superintendent lost his composure as he expressed thanks to those assembled for the opportunity to work with them. He stopped, unable to continue, and the audience responded with a 45-second standing ovation.

howard.blume@latimes.com
L.A. schools chief says district will adopt ‘value added’ approach

Shirley Sherrod, forced from her government post after becoming a target for unfounded complaints that she was a racist, rejected an offer Tuesday to return full-time to the Department of Agriculture.

At a joint news conference after meeting with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Sherrod, however, said she would work as a consultant with the agency on civil rights issues.

“I enjoyed my work at USDA,” said Sherrod in turning down the offer. “I just don’t think at this point I can stay full time with USDA.”

Sherrod was the Agriculture Department’s director of rural development in Georgia until she was forced to quit after a conservative blogger published edited portions of a speech in which she appeared to make remarks that could have been interpreted as racist.

Vilsack and others in the Obama administration condemned the comments which were later found to have been taken out of context. The NAACP also condemned Sherrod, a black woman.

When her remarks were published in context, both the Obama administration and the civil rights group apologized for their reaction and for Sherrod’s departure. On Tuesday, Sherrod told reporters she expected to file a lawsuit against the blogger.

Vilsack repeated his apology Tuesday and took full blame during the televised news conference.

“This was my responsibility and I will continue to take responsibility tor it as long as I live,” Vilsack said. “I know that I disappointed the president. I disappointed this administration. I disappointed the country. I disappointed Shirley. I have to live with that. I accept that responsibility.”

Vilsack said he hoped that the incident would be a spotlight on efforts to deal with civil rights issues. He also said the department has changed its internal procedures to avoid the type of rush to judgment that was involved in the Sherrod case.

“The secretary did push really, really hard for me to stay and work from the inside,” Sherrod said. But “look at what happened. I know he apologizes and I have accepted that. I know a new process is in place but I don’t want to be the one to test it.”
Agriculture official, ousted in racial controversy, rejects new job offer at USDA

Three bomb blasts killed 34 people Monday in northwest Pakistan, authorities said. Though no one claimed responsibility for the attacks, they came at a time when government officials have been warning that Islamic militants might try to exploit the strain that this summer’s catastrophic floods have put on the country’s military and government by unleashing a new wave of violence.

One of the attacks occurred in South Waziristan, a tribal area along the Afghan border long regarded as a stronghold for the Pakistani Taliban. A teenage suicide bomber appeared at a mosque in the town of Wana where 200 worshippers were praying and detonated explosives strapped to his body, witnesses said. The blast killed 25 people and injured 36 others, hospital officials said.

Among the dead was Maulana Noor Muhammad, a former lawmaker and head of the Islamic school where the mosque was located. He had just finished translating verses from the Koran when the blast occurred. Muhammad was a member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rehman) party, which historically has been sympathetic to the Taliban movement.

“I saw a teenager who shook hands with Maulana Noor Muhammad before detonating the explosives,” said Ayub Wazir, a worshipper who survived the blast.

The motive of the attack was unclear. At times, violence in the tribal areas occurs between rival tribal and militant factions.

A second attack occurred in the Kurram tribal district when a remote-controlled bomb exploded in a school where tribal elders had been meeting. The blast, which occurred in the village of Parachamkani, killed six people and injured seven others, authorities said.

The third attack occurred early in the evening on the outskirts of northwest Pakistan’s largest city, Peshawar. A bomb planted in a push cart exploded in the town of Mattani, killing three people and injuring six others, police said. Dilawar Khan, head of a local anti-Taliban militia, said his militia was the target of the attack. Two of the dead belonged to the militia.

In both South Waziristan and Kurram, Pakistani troops have launched offensives over the last year to flush out Taliban militants and reestablish governmental control over the regions. Despite the offensives, pockets of militants remain active in many parts of the tribal areas.

Last week, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for northwest Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, warned that militants had been regrouping in the tribal areas to take advantage of a time when the state has had to deploy thousands of Pakistani soldiers and police to cope with the ongoing flood crisis, which has killed more than 1,600 people and submerged vast swathes of the country.

In the tribal district of North Waziristan, two U.S. drone missile strikes killed 12 people and injured 15 others, intelligence sources said.

One of the missiles targeted Dandy Darpakhel, an area known as a stronghold of the Haqqani network, a wing of the Afghan Taliban. Among the seven killed were four women, the sources said. The other strike killed five people in the village of Derga Mandai, sources said.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

Special correspondent Ali reported from Peshawar and staff writer Rodriguez from Islamabad.
34 killed in Pakistan; bombings occur in Taliban stronghold areas

There’s no doubt in Christian Vazquez’s mind why he was beaten up as he headed home from work late one night, and it wasn’t for the $10 the attackers stole from him.

“They were after me because I was a Mexican,” the 18-year-old said, his left eye still swollen shut from the assault July 31 while he was walking through Staten Island’s Port Richmond neighborhood. As his attackers punched him, they yelled, “Go home!” and anti-Mexican slurs, according to the police report, which had a familiar ring.

That’s because Vazquez was the 10th Mexican victim of a suspected hate crime in the neighborhood since April. “Why this is happening? If you ask 10 different people, you might get 10 different answers,” said Ed Josey, president of the Staten Island branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, during a march Aug. 6 led by religious and civic leaders to condemn the violence.