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Candidate Meg Whitman concedes the governor's race to Jerry Brown during a campaign party Nov. 2, 2010 in Universal City, Calif.

Governor-elect Jerry Brown’s landslide victory on Tuesday was as much about his experience and his strong support from organized labor as it was about his opponent’s seemingly impenetrable veneer and an electorate that is heavily Democratic.

Even for those barely old enough to remember when he was first elected governor in 1974, Brown projected an erudite, genuine persona. Though on the surface he might easily have been portrayed as part of an old guard that needed to move on, his lifelong commitment to the state and to public service did much to counterbalance those concerns.

“It was a pro-Brown vote,” said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo. “I would suspect that Brown took a double-digit segment of independents, who make up 14 percent of California’s electorate.” In a race that was expected to be close, Brown captured 53.6 percent of the vote to Whitman’s 41.3 percent.

Whitman styled herself as a tough pragmatist whose tenure as chief executive of eBay was a warm-up for Sacramento. But her highly managed and scripted campaign — financed with a record-breaking $141 million of her own money — prevented a critical slice of voters from connecting with her.

Brown could not have competed with Whitman’s breakneck spending without organized labor. Firefighters, teachers and many workers contributed heavily to his campaign and spent $26.5 million in independent expenditures on his behalf.

Whitman assailed Brown for being “in the pocket of unions,” but the charge did not appear to stick, in part because voters saw labor as furthering their interests in a down economy. A nimble Brown responded by portraying Whitman’s wealth, reinforced by her ubiquitous television and radio advertisements, as a handicap that rendered her tone-deaf to pressing concerns of the unemployed, who represent 12.4 percent of the state’s workforce.

Cash from organized labor buoyed Brown’s campaign through Labor Day, when he unleashed his funds to capture voters just tuning in to the race.

“When you have such high unemployment, you have a deep economic concern in the most fundamental way. That means that unions aren’t considered part of the problem, they are perceived as part of the solution,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in labor issues. “It’s very good news for labor that Jerry Brown will be governor. But the tough financial context of the state means limited resources for everyone.”

Shortly after Brown’s final push began, Nicky Diaz Santillan crushed Whitman’s hopes of a strong showing among Latinos when she revealed that she worked for Whitman illegally for nine years. Whitman said she fired Diaz Santillan in 2009 after learning her papers were falsified.

Exit polls showed 64 percent of Latinos favored Brown versus 30 percent for Whitman.

The scandal may have hurt more broadly as well, since Whitman had adopted a tough-on-immigration stance and called for harsher sanctions for those who employ illegal immigrants — a position that looked hypocritical in the wake of Diaz Santillan’s revelations.

Whitman may also have pushed up against the ceiling of what money can accomplish, even in an age when TV advertising dominates big campaigns.

“There was a lot of saturation — perhaps Whitman’s message became less believable,” said Molly Milligan, senior fellow at the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. “It seemed people were reacting to the enormous amount of money she spent. They reacted to the fact that she didn’t vote often, and they reacted to this maid scandal.”