The moral of this story? Advertising works.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has built a massive edge over her GOP rival Steve Poizner while taking a narrow lead over likely Democratic nominee Jerry Brown, according to results released today by the nonpartisan Field Poll.
Her move is a major feat in a state where Democratic voters far outnumber Republicans.

Whitman won the support of 63 percent of likely Republican primary voters while Poizner was backed by only 14 percent, with Whitman’s lead growing by 21 percentage-points since the Field Poll last surveyed voters in January.

Whitman also overtook Brown in a possible general election matchup, winning the support of 46 percent of likely voters compared with Brown’s 43 percent, the poll found. Brown had led Whitman by 10 percentage points in the January poll and by 21 points in October.

The Field Poll is the most respected poll in California, incidentally.

This comes during a primary, where Whitman has positioned herself to the right and emphasized cutting 40,000 public employee positions.

You can chalk this up to the fact that, while Brown spent several months musing about the prospect of running for Governor, Whitman owned the airwaves, with content-free bio spots meant to burnish her image, complete with “testimonials” from former eBay colleagues who are actually being paid by her campaign. She has positioned herself as a non-politician, business-minded outsider who can take over the state’s fiscal management and improve it.

The actual policy book, which Whitman just released, contains mostly the same ideas that Arnold Schwarzenegger used to put California in the worst economic situation ever – worse than the Depression, if you look at the long-term structural deficit. She wants useless tax credits for homebuyers, a spending cap (rejected by the voters twice in the last five years) which would ratchet down state services permanently over time, and mass firings and furloughs.

None of this will ever show up in an ad. They will continue in the feel-good vein, and will run every half-hour, on every channel, everywhere.

Meanwhile, Jerry Brown will take no stance on a major issue, try to paddle “a little to the left and a little to the right,” and basically fail to inspire the core Democratic voter base. This is how you blow a 21-point lead when people are barely even paying attention to the election.