Democrats auditioning for governor of California stepped one by one onto a Northridge stage Sunday for an opening scene of the campaign to replace Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
There was Gavin Newsom, the hyper-caffeinated mayor of San Francisco, casting his City Hall record as a progressive model for California, if not the world.
There was John Garamendi, a perennial name on statewide ballots, ruminating over Robert Frost poetry that inspires him by the campfire on outings along the Tuolomne River.
There was Jerry Brown, the enigmatic former governor, launching into a frenetic recap of his high points from the '70s.
And there was Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, giving a low-key pitch for his reelection next month without so much as a nod to his potential rivals in the June 2010 primary for governor.
They have more than 16 months left to polish their acts, but at Cal State Northridge on Sunday, leading contenders for the nomination were already campaigning full bore at a gathering of the San Fernando Valley Democratic Party.
It was hardly representative of the whole campaign; each focused more on platitudes and buffing his own accomplishments than on forwarding specific solutions or reality checks on their opponents. Nor was there much talk about their GOP opponents -- at least two of whom will have tens of millions in personal money to make their case at the expense of the Democratic nominee.
Still, Newsom, Garamendi and Villaraigosa each made clear that they approve of the tax increases in the state budget that passed last week. Only Brown, in an interview, declined to say whether he would be open to higher taxes in a budget crunch.
"I don't want to say it, because Republicans use it in TV commercials and they exploit it with $100 million," he said. "Anything you say can be taken out of context."
Newsom, best known for his efforts to legalize same-sex marriage, let loose a blast of breathless superlatives to recount developments in San Francisco on his watch.
"You're going to say, 'this guy's exaggerating, this can't be true,' " Newsom said.
But San Francisco is the only city in the nation with universal healthcare, he said, and it has the nation's highest recycling rate, its "most aggressive solar program" and its "most aggressive local climate action plan." If all goes well, it will become "the epicenter of electric vehicles, not only in the state, but the entire country."
