Six years ago, California became a national punchline when it held a recall election to replace Gov. Gray Davis. The field of 135 candidates included a porn star, an adult magazine publisher and former TV child star Gary Coleman Another kind of star, Arnold Schwarzenegger , triumphed and we’ve had to endure bad Terminator jokes ever since.

Mercifully, for California voters, the 2010 gubernatorial race looks to be less of a circus. But that doesn’t mean it is going to be boring. After choosing Republican Pete Wilson over Democrat Dianne Feinstein in 1990, Californians will have another shot at electing their first female governor if Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, wins the Republican nomination.

Whitman’s career statistics are impressive: She increased eBay’s revenue from $4 million to almost $8 billion in a decade and eBay had 12 million users in California alone. And unlike Schwarzenegger, who has never let go of using “I’ll be back” in speeches, I doubt Whitman will force us to relive her past glories with a campaign slogan about the prize going to the highest bidder.

Of course, business acumen is no guarantor of political success: her friend Mitt Romney can tell her that.

Despite Whitman’s credibility with the Silicon Valley crowd, where eBay is based, so far her social networking effort is lackluster compared to Democratic hopeful Gavin Newsom. “Meg Whitman for Governor” has a scant 2,448 friends almost 20 times fewer than Newsom’s 47,799 friends. (Even one of my Facebook friends, PJ Kim, who is running to represent District 1 of the New York City Council, has 1,126 cyberfriends on his campaign page.)

Twitter looks even more dismal: Whitman has 1,288 followers compared with Newsom’s 389,344. Then again, Newsom seems determined to carve out the niche of most-tech savvy candidate; he announced that he was running for governor on Twitter.

Newsom became the youngest mayor of San Francisco in a century in 2004. But at least one former Democratic governor probably thinks Newsom could show a little more respect for his elders.

Jerry Brown, who served as California’s chief executive from 1975 to 1983, is expected to run again, though he has not formally announced his candidacy like Whitman and Newsom. Brown, currently California’s attorney general, seems determined to hold every level of state and local office in California — and not necessarily in any logical order.

Brown-Newsom family ties go back a way. Brown appointed Newsom’s father to the state appeals court and Brown’s father Pat Brown, himself a former governor of California was friends with Newsom’s grandfather.

Newsom tried to be polite last month at the state Democratic convention, but he still said: “We’re not a state of memories. We’re a state of dreams. We’re Californians. We’re not content to relive history.”

Too bad not everyone shows Brown the same deference. The state attorney general had two wheels stolen off his Toyota Camry hybrid while it was parked in Sacramento a couple weeks ago.

Whitman, Newsom and Brown aren’t the only names to watch. The GOP slate is likely to include state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, also a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former Rep. Tom Campbell, who served a stint as state finance director for Schwarzenegger.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, is also considering a run, which could lead to a fun North-South race between California’s most prominent cities and their respective chief executives.