Casting the 2010 elections as a battle of wills between Wall Street corporations and Main Street families, California Democratic leaders - including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Barbara Boxer and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown - urged party activists Saturday to counter conservative Tea Party passion with ideas, advocacy and action on crucial issues like health care reform.

The annual three-day convention of the state Democratic Party, a gathering of 3,000 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, often took on a defiant mood as activists in the nation's most populous state gathered to hear their candidates kick off what analysts predict will be a challenging campaign year for the party that holds the White House.

"We will rein in the Wall Street barons and thieves who almost brought this country to its knees," shouted Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, to the full convention hall. "We're Democrats. We do not have to create a fake party organizing around fake issues."

In a state that is home to the largest swath of Democratic voters and Congressional representatives in the nation, speaker after speaker drew cheers by celebrating the Obama administration's passage of health care reform and economic stimulus spending. And they drew jeers by referring to the Tea Party's scornful treatment of President Obama and Pelosi, who received a rock star reception.

Election challenges

But leading Democrats frankly acknowledged the challenges in this election. Obama's approval numbers are falling, conservatives are energized, and an anti-incumbent mood is sweeping the nation.

"I need you to be excited - as excited as the Tea Party people are," Boxer implored a morning gathering of 1,000 Democrats. "Will you be with me?"

Boxer, a third-term senator, is expected to face her toughest re-election battle yet as three Republicans - former Rep. Tom Campbell, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Irvine - fight for the right to challenge her.

She framed the election as "a choice between who's going to help our working families, and who won't ... a choice between moving forward or going back to the policies that got us into this mess."

Brown, the state attorney general, also tried to fire up Democrats as he prepares to run against one of two wealthy Republican GOP candidates - billionaire Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who has said she will spend as much as $150 million on her first political campaign, or state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

Arguing that "these are not ordinary times," and that the state faces "an extraordinary crisis," Brown delighted and surprised the crowd by issuing a three-way debate challenge to the GOP contenders. Usually, debates take place after the party nominees are chosen, but Brown argued that Californians should watch all three candidates go "mano a mano."

"Let's hear the different ideas," said Brown, who has been criticized for falling behind in the polls as the two Republicans blanket state airwaves with TV spots. "The key here, is this a democracy?"

With a May 2 Comcast televised debate already planned for the GOP candidates, both Poizner and Brown welcomed the chance to meet in a three-way debate. But Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei rejected the idea, saying Brown must first debate his primary opponent, surfer-activist Richard Aguirre.

Brown called on Whitman to reconsider, saying "private corporations sometimes hide behind slick advertising campaigns, but it's wrong for a serious political candidate to do the same."

Gathering momentum

The question that Democrats will answer over the next few months: Did the 72-year-old Brown and 69-year-old Boxer infuse the faithful with a Tea Party-like energy?

"Democrats weren't going to dress up in silly costumes like Tea Party members," said Auros Harman, a 32-year-old delegate from Mountain View. "But Democrats in Silicon Valley will be doing the groundwork. People will show up."

Mark Gonzalez, a 25-year-old Los Angeles delegate, said that although he didn't get Brown's reference to black-and-white-TV-era comedian Jack Benny in the candidate's convention video, "what I do know is that he has a good reputation and he'll get results. ... He doesn't need on-the-job training."

While Boxer will run in part on her role in helping Obama pass health care reform, Alex Pader, a 24-year-old community college organizer from Sacramento, said that will be a harder sell on young people who don't follow politics closely.

"They haven't seen anything happen yet in their lives that is tangible, that is different from 2007," he said. "We're the 'buy now, pay later' generation. If it's not in our hands now, we don't see it."

Former state Controller Steve Westly, a Democrat who ran for governor in 2006, said the convention's broad themes underscore how Californians will see "the most important election in the country outside that of the president of the United States. This is not just another state - it's the seventh-largest economy in the world."

Challenging status quo

That's why, he said, voters here "will be looking for someone to challenge the status quo," and the iconoclast Brown may well fit that bill.

"Oddly enough, I don't believe that the two Republican corporate candidates for governor will be attractive to the Tea Party rank and file," he said.

Republicans, meanwhile, dismissed the Democrats' rhetoric, saying it was merely evidence of a weak agenda and fear of a fully engaged opposition.

"So the Democrats are going to counter the most organic grassroots political movement in modern American history with the same old manufactured labor-backed machine that they have used to control politics for the last four or five decades?" countered state GOP spokesman Mark Standriff. "I'll take those odds."