A second paradox in Jerry Brown is that, along with the intellectualism and idealism, he has a great understanding of California’s unique, stainless-steel political system coupled with an unmatched ability to recognize and seize opportunities. When no one else did, ambitious Jerry realized the political possibilities in an obscure state office and made full use of them to catapult himself into the governor’s office. When aspiring Jerry ran for governor in 1974, he realized more than any of his contemporaries and rivals did that California voters were suspicious of Sacramento after eight years of antigovernment rhetoric from Ronald Reagan. Californians feared their heritage was being eroded by secretive deals in Sacramento. Brown campaigned, therefore, on a platform of bringing honesty and transparency to the Capitol. Four years later, again sensing the public mood better than anyone, he campaigned on a platform of limiting the malevolent influence of lobbyists. In 2010, Brown divined that even during a national tide of revulsion against incumbents, Californians wanted an experienced hand in the governor’s office, not another “run government like a business” type. Voters rewarded him with the governorship each time.
Whether from conviction, or his keen political antennae, or both, Brown as governor cannily manipulated symbols designed to show voters that he was not going to live luxuriously on the taxpayers’ dime. He loudly refused to live in the new governor’s mansion; he eschewed the gubernatorial limousine. Early on he realized that the Golden State, its romance frustrated by what many regarded as Sacramento’s insider politics, was made to order for his own designer-brand mix of populism and idealism. In a media-soaked state of more than thirty-seven million people, a few limited, large brushstrokes work best, and Brown has made use of them better than anyone.
To my knowledge, it has been nearly thirty years since a biography of Jerry Brown has been published, and millions of Californians know relatively little about the man who has become their thirty-ninth governor. His story is alternately heartening and discouraging, but it is always a California story. Trailblazer will discuss the changes that have occurred within Brown himself over his forty-plus years in the political arena, from a thirty-six-year-old governor to the seventy-two-year-old Comeback Curmudgeon. The following chapters chronicle the biography of this larger-than-life politician against the template of this larger-than-life nation-state.
The son of a governor, Jerry Brown grew up in an intensely political household and began absorbing politics with all its splendor and heartbreak while still in his high chair. While growing up, this offspring of Protestant and Catholic immigrants from Germany and Ireland became more and more interested and involved in religion, specifically the teachings of the Jesuits. In addition to tracing his background and youthful development, chapter 1 will describe the election of Jerry’s father, Pat Brown, as a result of William Knowland’s bullheaded ambition, the idealist Jerry’s conflict with his father over the Caryl Chessman case, and the Pat Brown–Ronald Reagan gubernatorial election of 1966, with its continuing ramifications for California politics and its effect on Jerry Brown.
Some might describe him as altruistic, while others might call him flaky, but Jerry Brown is one of the most ambitious, canny, and opportunistic politicians around. He made a very well-calculated entry into elective politics, using his famous name to win a spot in 1969 on the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees, and quickly established a reputation as a social liberal and fiscal conservative. Jerry’s decision to go statewide by insightfully running for secretary of state, his hunt for headlines on the fringes of Watergate, and his preparations for a gubernatorial campaign are the themes of chapter 2.
The campaign that followed came amid a crowded and rancorous field of seventeen candidates, but Brown easily won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1974. He went on to be elected to the governorship over the Republican Houston Flournoy in the general election. Jerry’s deft use of voter-pleasing symbolism and his political idealism in the governor’s office make up the themes covered in chapter 3, along with his romance with Linda Ronstadt, his first run for president, and his paradoxical liberal/conservative “canoe politics.”
Four years later, despite being distracted temporarily by his presidential ambitions, California’s popular young governor won a landslide victory and a second term over the Republican attorney general Evelle Younger. The campaign’s high point—of a sort—included the advice of the Republican gubernatorial hopeful Ed Davis on handling airplane hijackers: “Hang ’em at the airport!” Also making up chapter 4 are descriptions of the governmental malpractice that resulted in Proposition 13, the “Governor Moonbeam” nickname, Brown’s 1980 bid for the presidency, his unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate, the nosedive in his popularity, and his Proposition 13 and Medfly flip-flops.
Out of statewide office after twelve years, Brown turned to spiritual matters—temporarily. He spent years studying Zen in Japan, working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and hosting the We the People talk show from his Oakland loft residence on the left-leaning radio station KPFA. I examine the concurrent and contradictory spiritual/political course of his years in Oakland and his friendship with Catholic philosopher-priest Ivan Illich in chapter 5, as well as the beginnings of his political comeback, serving as chairman of the California Democratic Party.
The former governor evolved from California’s philosopher-prince to a pothole-filling mayor interested in downtown development and education during his eight years as mayor of gritty Oakland. He also got married at age sixty-seven to his longtime companion Anne Gust, a high-powered woman who was to influence him greatly both personally and politically. Brown reentered the statewide political scene by becoming California attorney general in a bitter election that ended in an overwhelming win for him. All that is described in chapter 6, along with his actions as attorney general, including the high-stakes Countrywide financial settlement and his controversial refusal to defend Proposition 8.
Continuing his lifelong tactic of using one office as a springboard to another, higher, one, Brown sought to return to the governor’s office in what became one of the more remarkable political campaigns in recent American political history—how, with a small paid staff and relatively meager budget, Attorney General Brown defeated the Republican candidate Meg Whitman, who brought a mostly self-funded $180-million war chest to bear. Some strategists argue that the bitter Republican primary, and even the oceans of cash available to the Whitman campaign, may have ultimately been fatal to her hopes. Chapter 7 puts that campaign in its historical context, describing the invention of modern campaign techniques in California, a defense of the Whitman campaign from none other than Brown’s campaign manager, and what it all augers for the future of California politics.
California’s morale at the time of Brown’s third inaugural was at a low point, with polls showing a large majority of citizens saying the state was headed in the wrong direction and, as we’ve seen, some pundits pronouncing the state as ungovernable. What might a man of Brown’s background and temperament bring to bear on California’s multiple and daunting challenges in governance, education, and infrastructure, along with a host of others? Can Jerry Brown make the planet’s most diverse society work in an era of severe budget restrictions at all levels of government and in the face of a pallid economy? Can the onetime apostle of frugality and lowered expectations be an effective state cheerleader, restoring to an enormously changed state the robust “can do” spirit that motivated California fifty years ago? Has he even wanted to be an effective cheerleader? With comments from allies and adversaries, chapter 8 addresses those vital questions.
Barring the unexpected, Brown will continue to write additional chapters in California’s history. The wide assortment of problems he faced in the first year of his third term would in all likelihood