By Dan Walters
Sacramento Bee

When California Attorney General Jerry Brown issued a broadside Monday against Moody's Investors Service, accusing the Wall Street rating firm of refusing to give him information on the global banking meltdown, it fit neatly into Brown's emerging strategy to win the governorship.

Democrat Brown, seemingly taking his cue from the Obama White House's high-profile battle with the banking industry over new financial regulations, is beginning to paint his leading Republican rival, Meg Whitman, as the product of a morally bankrupt banking system.

Whitman, best known as the former boss at eBay, once served on the board of Goldman Sachs, which has become the poster child for marketing poor-quality, mortgage-backed securities to global investors. She also received shares in new stock offerings managed by the firm, a practice called ``spinning" that has since been banned.

Brown spent much of a weekend Democratic convention framing the battle over the governorship in populist terms, with himself as the champion of ordinary people against super-rich financial manipulators ― implicitly including Whitman.

Back to work Monday, he asked the courts to back his demands that Moody's, which he says gave high ratings to ``risky and toxic" mortgage securities, give him information on its role in the financial meltdown.

Brown has called it ``the biggest bank robbery in history." While he hasn't yet personally made the three-cushion political shot of Moody's-Goldman Sachs-Whitman, surrogates are doing it for him.

Last week, Level the Playing Field, a group that's attempting to raise money for pro-Brown ``independent expenditures," declared that Whitman's connection to Goldman Sachs placed her ``at the scene of the crime when the middle class got turned upside down."

Meanwhile, Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford told the Wall Street Journal, ``Over the course of this campaign, I think the voters are going to be fully aware of Meg Whitman's financial dealings at Goldman Sachs, and they hold her accountable for them."

Whitman, a billionaire who has said she's ready to spend $150 million on her campaign, is running neck-and-neck with Brown, a former two-term governor, and there's a sense of unease among Democrats about the potential impact of that spending.

Brown clearly hopes to turn her financial advantage on its head, portraying her as a corporate fat cat who's attempting to buy the governorship, implicitly with tainted money she received from rapacious Wall Street bankers, including campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs executives.

It's a potentially potent strategy, but Brown will have to tread lightly on demonizing Goldman Sachs. His sister, former state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, is a high-ranking Goldman Sachs executive, overseeing the firm's heavy involvement in state and local bond issues in California.

Dan Walters can be reached at dwalters@sacbee.com. For back columns, visit www.sacbee.com/walters. The above article was distributed by Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).