Democrat Jerry Brown is a stone cold juggernaut.

According to the results of a new USC/Los Angeles Times poll, Brown has a lock on California's governor's mansion unless he collapses under his own weight.

That's not exactly how the pollsters put it, but the fact that Brown scared off his chief Democratic rival and has yet to declare his candidacy should give the opposition pause. Hell, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom dropped out of the race on the very day we learned one of Brown's aides had surreptitiously taped phone conversations with reporters - a possible crime inside the Attorney General's office. But even the prospect of a mini-scandal couldn't keep Bill Clinton-backed Newsom in the race.

How did the man once ridiculed as "Governor Moonbeam" get so far ahead? To start with, Brown is a known quantity to California voters - which isn't to say he's predictable; just the opposite, but that's the way Californians like their governors these days. Voters, especially older ones who tend to be whiter, more conservative and more likely to vote, have lived with Brown for decades. From the Times write-up of the poll:

Asked whether Brown, has "the experience and knowledge to lead California" or, rather, is "a career politician whose ideas are old," a slight plurality of voters opted for experience. Even in inland California, the locale least friendly to Brown, almost 4 in 10 voters chose experience.

This electoral intimacy means Brown's opponents will find it near impossible to turn him into a bogeyman, nor are they likely to surprise us with details about his life, since he's lived much of it out in the open. Even the "Moonbeam" mantra has lost cachet, as many of the predictions Brown was criticized for in the 1960s and 70s turned out to be fairly sane. (Mike Royko dubbed him Moonbeam for saying he wanted to buy a satellite for emergency communications. Crazy, right?)

In addition, Brown has done a competent job as AG for the last three years. He used the office as a bully pulpit to push global warming regulations when that was all the rage, and he's released a steady trickle of cases against banks and lenders since Wall Street's collapse last year. Californians give Brown a 17-percent favorability rating, second only to President Obama.

Moreover, Brown's potential competition on the Republican side will be busy trying to out-conservative one another for the next 7 months, which isn't going to endear them to an electorate that doesn't know them well and is highly suspect of ideologues.

From the Times' story on the poll:

In the Republican race for governor, former EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman was leading former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell 35% to 27%, with 10% of Republican primary voters siding with state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. But, on a separate question, two-thirds of voters said they had no impression of Whitman or Campbell, and three-quarters said they knew little about Poizner.

Those are tough numbers for the GOP. And consider that hard-core Republicans (those who vote in primaries) are much more concerned about polarizing issues like illegal immigration than the electorate at large. None of the current candidates has the movie-star status Arnold Schwarzenegger had that will allow them to run outside the party box.

But the election is still 12 months away and as pundits say, anything can happen between now and then.