Thanks go also to Bill Boyarsky, author, editor, and astute political reporter, and Dale Maharidge, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, each of whom reviewed the manuscript and provided a number of suggestions that resulted in its great improvement. A third reviewer, who rescued me from what otherwise would have been two embarrassing mistakes, chose to remain anonymous. He or she has my gratitude.
I have been fortunate enough to know five photographers—Walt Zeboski, Eric Risberg, Sal Veder, and Rich Pedroncelli of The Associated Press and Dick Schmidt of the Sacramento Bee—who were not only leaders of the pack in covering breaking news but were also poets with cameras. Sal is a Pulitzer Prize winner; all of them should be. Dick made a series of terrific pictures from his private archive available. The wonderful Mary Lou Mangold engineered the connection that made the use of Dick’s photos possible.
Dace Taube, assistant head of special collections at the University of Southern California’s Doheny Memorial Library, rounded up sixteen boxes of material from the library’s Jerry Brown archives and was an immense help in paving the way for access to them, as was Gareth Lacy of the governor’s office. I am also grateful to the staff of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley for their help in researching additional material.
Despite my numerous attempts in person with staff members, e-mails, and telephone calls over a six-month period, Brown’s staff failed to make him available to provide his perspective on this biography. Brown himself, in a five-word exchange with me, indicated a willingness to sit down and be interviewed, but his staff was unresponsive, and I regret that.
With that exception, all of those mentioned above made Trailblazer a richer and more complete book. I am deeply indebted to them. Any errors or misinterpretations are of course my own.
INTRODUCTION
The Comeback Codger
I’ve been in office and I’ve been out of office. And if I were to choose, I’d rather be in office.
Jerry Brown to George Skelton in “Capitol Journal,” Los Angeles Times, January 19, 2004
Three thousand people crowded into Sacramento’s cavernous old Memorial Auditorium on the sunny morning of January 3, 2011, all eager to witness a century-and-a-half-old ceremony. Most of the state’s political establishment was there. The VIP list included Gray Davis, the cautious former governor who was recalled in 2003;1 seated next to him was Arnold Schwarzenegger, smiling broadly as he enjoyed his last few minutes as governor of California, although within six months he would face horrific personal scandal. Next to him was his glamorous wife, Maria Shriver. Nearby was Gavin Newsom, the handsome mayor of San Francisco who had been elected lieutenant governor. He had defeated Republican Abel Maldonado, the son of immigrant Mexican American farmworkers. In keeping with the bonhomie of the occasion, the two men hugged each other while waiting for the festivities to begin. House speaker Nancy Pelosi, soon to become House minority leader, was seated close to Dianne Feinstein, the U.S. senator and former San Francisco mayor who some polls showed was the most popular politician in the state. In row after row of seats were most of the 120 state legislators. The crowd was boisterous and happy. Everyone was in a good mood, including those with famous names.
But the spotlight was not on them. Instead, all eyes were on a bald, slim, seventy-two-year-old in a severe dark suit who raised his right hand shortly after eleven o’clock and was sworn in as the thirty-ninth governor of California. Nearly four decades after his first inauguration, in one of the strangest journeys in American politics, Jerry Brown had once again stepped into the spotlight of America’s most idiosyncratic, troubled, and glamorous state—a state that in many ways seemed ideally suited to a politician of Brown’s talents and personality.2
He stumbled slightly while reciting the oath of office. It called for him to say that he took on the office of governor “without any mental reservation.” Brown seemed to hesitate over the word mental, then smiled, turned to the audience, and said, “Really—no mental reservation.” The crowd roared with delight. It was vintage Jerry Brown—informal, quotable, doing the unexpected.
He might have thought about the mental reservation. When he recited the oath of office, California had the worst credit rating among the fifty states, a bitterly divided Legislature, and an unemployment rate of 12.4 percent. It was one of the five states with the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. Pundits and political elites had taken to asking, without irony, if California had become ungovernable. It was too big, too diverse, too ideologically divided. It was saddled with a patchwork of governance hopelessly out-of-date and unable to deal with the complexities of what its boosters liked to describe as a twenty-first-century nation-state. A widening sense of malaise had overtaken the state’s traditional buoyant optimism.
The pointed questions were put aside for the day, but they were on the minds of many in the 1927-vintage auditorium as well as those of California’s thirty-seven million residents. Would Jerry Brown be able to ease a series of state government fiscal crises? What about the drooping economy? The environment? And water? Most of all, would he be able to restore the fabled California spirit? The new/old governor had become the man of the hour in a state that had lost its way.
Jerry Brown, in his eighth decade a man of seemingly inexhaustible energy, was now charged with solving the twenty-first-century problems of the most populous and complex state of the union. Even with his gymnastic abilities in navigating the shoals of American politics, this was an intimidating mandate. Whether he could prevail was an open question. But Jerry Brown’s journey to this point had provided some clues that he would not be a victim of the formidable mix of economic travails and political gyrations that have permeated the twenty-first-century nation-state of California. One gleans, from his life story, both a flexibility and a resilience that have been central to his political survival for more than four decades.
Some additional light on Jerry Brown may come from a whimsical piece the decidedly unwhimsical Brown released during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign:
25 Random Things about Me
I’ve seen lists of “25 Random Things about Me” that people are sending around Facebook. I thought I would share my own list with you.
1 I got my first dog 13 years ago, a black Lab named Dharma.
2 At Yale, I took “Psychiatry and the Law” from Anna Freud, Sigmund’s daughter. I also studied Roman law.
3 In 1958, I took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Later, Pope John XXIII dispensed me from these obligations.
4 I took marriage vows for the first time 3 years ago.
5 I practiced Zen meditation under Yamada Roshi and Father Enomiya-Lassalle in Japan.
6 My official portrait as Governor was quite controversial and the legislature refused to hang it. My Father said if I didn’t get a new one, I could never run again. It is now hanging and I am still running.
7 I am not fond of Mediterranean fruit flies, or of Malathion. Both are bad.
8 I dislike shopping.
9 I started 2 charter schools in Oakland, the Oakland School for the Arts and the Oakland Military Institute.
10 When governor, I decided not to have an Inaugural ball and my inaugural speech was 7 ½ minutes. For the inaugural dinner, we went to Man Fook Lo, a Chinese restaurant in the produce district of Los Angeles. It was once a favorite of Mae West.
11 I am a part owner of a ranch in Colusa County. It belonged to my Great-grandfather.
12 I worked with Mother Teresa in India at the Home for the Dying.
13 I’ve been duck hunting with Chief Justice Warren, but not with Vice President Cheney.
14 I sued Richard Nixon’s lawyer for helping the President cheat on his income tax.
15 I like arugula and broccoli.
16 On my honeymoon, my wife and I canoed down the Russian