California's dead-heat governor's race delivered plenty of crosstalk Monday about sex, lies and videotape - including an apology to a former president and a nonpartisan fact-checker's admission that he got his facts wrong 18 years ago.

The coast-to-coast fracas began Thursday when GOP candidate Meg Whitman aired a 30-second TV ad featuring video footage from a 1992 face-to-face TV debate between then-Democratic presidential primary rivals Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton.

In the debate, Clinton says of Brown: "CNN. Not me, CNN says his assertion about his tax record was, quote, just plain wrong. He raised taxes as governor of California. ... He doesn't tell people the truth." Brown's campaign disputed the tax numbers in the ad and asked Whitman's campaign to take it down. Whitman's campaign refused.

At an impromptu campaign stop in Los Angeles on Sunday, Brown told supporters: "Meg Whitman. She stops at nothing. She's even got Clinton lying about me. That's right. No, did you see that? Where he said I raised taxes. It's a lie. ... But they'll say anything, and that's why we have to have our own truth squad to get the word out. OK?"

Sensing he was on a roll, Brown - who rarely speaks from notes - kept riffing. And, as is the case these days at nearly every campaign event, someone was capturing it on video.

"I mean, Clinton's a nice guy but who ever said he always told the truth?" Brown said. "You remember, right? There's that whole story there about did he or didn't he," Brown said, referring to Clinton's affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Then, recalling Clinton's infamous news conference where he said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," Brown said Sunday: "OK, I did ... I did not have taxes with this state."

The line got a laugh in the room Sunday. But not on Monday - after video of Brown's gaffe circulated virally online.

Brown called Clinton, who lives in New York, to apologize. Then he called a news conference Monday at his Oakland headquarters to announce he had apologized.

"Bill Clinton was an excellent president," Brown said, with no mention of the several confrontations the two have had over the past 20 years. "It was wrong for me to joke about an incident from many years ago, and I'm sorry. I've made my share of mistakes and my inappropriate joke about President Clinton is one of them. But from me you'll always get the truth."

Didn't speak to Clinton

Brown said he had not spoken to Clinton, but to one of his top aides. Brown said he expects Clinton - who is very popular among Democrats in California and made dozens of visits to the state as president - to come to California in the coming weeks and be "helpful."

Last fall, Clinton endorsed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in the Democratic gubernatorial race. Newsom dropped out shortly after that, lacking campaign money, and is running for lieutenant governor.

Clinton has had a testy relationship with Brown since their presidential primary battle, when Brown called out Clinton for ethical lapses and Clinton ripped on Brown's "family money." Still, the former president is expected to campaign in California for the entire Democratic ticket, with Brown at the top of it.

Brown said Monday he has not heard from any major donors upset with his remarks about Clinton on Sunday. Campaign insiders say it is too soon to tell if the Whitman ad - or Brown's gaffe - have moved the polls at all.

But there's a twist to all this inside-the-Democratic Party drama.

The CNN reporter whose story Clinton was referring to in the 1992 debate is Brooks Jackson, who now heads the respected nonpartisan Factcheck.org, which sifts the falsehoods out of statements politicians make.

On Saturday, Jackson vetted himself. He wrote on Factcheck.org: "Brown is right. I made a mistake in my 1992 report. Most of what I said back in 1992 remains true. But I was wrong when I said that 'state taxes were still higher' during his last year than when he began. In fact, they were a bit lower."

Wrong fiscal year

Jackson had examined state taxes in the wrong fiscal year - 1973-74, the year before Brown was inaugurated. He should have picked the following year. Jackson said the rest of his report stands, including the part on how Brown opposed Proposition 13 until voters approved it, when he became an overnight convert.

A nonpartisan review of the data by the state Department of Finance showed that taxes per $100 of income declined in California from $6.89 to $6.56 during Brown's tenure in office.

Still, Whitman's campaign refused to remove its ad Monday. "We stand by the ad and everything in it," Whitman spokesperson Andrea Jones Rivera said.

Jab at Whitman

After apologizing Monday for his comments about Clinton, Brown called out Whitman, the billionaire former eBay CEO, for spending millions of dollars "disseminating lies" across California.

While union-funded independent expenditure groups spent several million dollars over the summer attacking Whitman, Brown said "there will be some counters coming very soon" from his campaign.