How Jerry Brown Beat Meg Whitman in California

CBS News: This is a very good night for Jerry Brown. In spite of Republican Meg Whitman spending more than $140 million of her own money to try and become the first female governor in California, the voters decided that experience was more important than touting being an outsider. It was a brutal campaign on both sides and when both candidates were asked if they would forego negative advertising, Whitman declined, which turned voters off. In addition, her campaign hit a road bump when her housekeeper was discovered to be an illegal immigrant. Whitman denied that she knew she was undocumented, but when she found out, she let her go immediately. However, it was shown that Whitman did know years before about her housekeeper's status, but only let her go when she began running for governor. This rankled the Latino community -while she was feverishly courting them with Spanish language billboards and ads on Spanish TV. Whitman said she would need to get at least 35 to 36 percent of the Latino vote in order to win the election. But this incident did not help. About 22 percent of the electorate is Latino and she almost reached her goal. In preliminary results, the CBS News exit poll shows that she got roughly three out of 10 Latino votes. Whites, as in the Senate race, support the Republican candidate, giving Whitman a 52 percent to Brown's 45 percent lead. Blacks make up about one in 10 voters and they overwhelmingly support Brown by 77 percent. Almost two-thirds of Latinos backed Brown.