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The Contenders: Brown's classic rock back in fashion in 2010
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California Attorney General Jerry Brown, overlooks Oakland where he was mayor for two terms./ AP file.
Despite his 71 years, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has never been caught behind the times. Over a political career that has had out-survived even Morris the Cat, Brown has become the Rolling Stones of California politics, played on both the classic rock station, the oldies and Top 40 playlists alike.
His is one act -- no matter how many times folks have said it has grown stale -- that continues to pack the house come election day.
Despite something like 16 elections over the course of four decades in politics, nobody believes Brown is looking for a quiet ranch to retire to and write his memoirs. At least not yet.
He still has at least one more biggie up ahead, another California Tour that he hopes will return him to the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, the second time in his career he’ll follow a Hollywood actor turned state leader.
Though he hasn’t announced yet, it’s a foregone conclusion that Brown will run for governor in 2010, in the hopes of winning an unprecedented third time as California’s leader.
For Brown, the show always goes on.
A rock-star politician
When Brown burst onto the political scene in the 1970s as the boyish governor with shaggy hair and a rock-star girlfriend, he became the symbol of California’s liberal nation-state mentality.
The son of former governor Pat Brown, he followed Ronald Reagan as governor of California at the age of 34. He famously refused to move into the governor's mansion, choosing instead to sleep on a mattress on the floor of his rented apartment.
His populist message, open interest in philosophy and occasional relationship to rock-star Linda Ronstadt boosted his appeal with voters. He scooted around town in an economy car instead of a Lincoln Town Car. Even Brown’s modernistic governor’s portrait drew the wrath of his own father, former Gov. Pat Brown.
Chicago columnist Mike Royko tagged him “Governor Moonbeam” for advocating a space academy in California. Brown’s critics seized it as a derogatory label used to encompass his populist positions, trendsetting support for the environment and his long list of quirks.
Just as fads come and go, Brown looked to have had his moment in the sun following failed presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980. He left the office of governor in 1983 and faded from the political spotlight.
But an upstart, grassroots, dogged third campaign for president showed that Brown was more than youthful appeal and high-minded ideologies. He proved he was a bare-knuckle politician who could campaign circles around the powerful machines of others.
While Bill Clinton rode a wave of money and media attention to a sure victory, he could not shake Brown all the way to the Democratic convention. When Clinton refused to give Brown a speaking slot to promote his platform, Brown’s supporters protested the convention, mouths taped with signs saying, “Let him speak! Let him speak!”
In 1996, while living in a downtown loft in crime-ridden Oakland, Brown reinvented himself as the city’s mayor. He touted downtown renewal, a new Bay Bridge with a signature tower to become the symbol of the new Oakland, and pushed energy efficiency nearly a decade before it became in vogue.
He leaped from his Oakland success story to trounce all contenders for attorney general in 2006, forcing his way back into the state’s spotlight and vicariously again, the national political scene.
The ‘common-sense’ Brown
Times change. Every other politician claims to be “green” these days. Now, a grandmotherly Linda Ronstadt croons the oldies in a pant suit.
And Brown? Well, he’ll run as the self-avowed, “apostle of common sense,” a vegetable-loving health nut who recently called himself a “meat and potatoes” kind of candidate.
“I kind of think a guy who knows his way, is pretty down to Earth, no bells and whistles, just meat and potatoes. That’s kind of where I am,” he said.
Opponents, particularly Republicans who Brown has made a career of beating like a drum, go nuclear over such comments. They point to his never-ending campaign cycles, his liberal politics, his changing positions, calling him a chameleon only interested in the next office.
Often during his tenure as attorney general, critics have claimed he has abused the power of his office to advance his political career.
"They can say that about anything I do," Brown told me when asked about such claims. He's right, and they do, be it his opposition to regulations of Native American casinos, his lawsuits against city's to stop sprawl and reduce greenhouse emissions, or his recent opposition to raising taxes.
This criticism may be Brown's ace in the hole. There simply isn't anything new you can say about him that hasn't been said many times before. Brown can brush it away like switching channels from an old re-run.
Lately, Brown is enjoying telling people he hasn’t made up his mind as to whether he will run. But he’s out-raised every other candidate, adding millions to his campaign war chest since last spring. He’s openly courted backers and has been quoted with several teasing comments about the next race to come.
"Stay tuned," he told me in an interview back in 2008. It could be Brown's motto, because he's always on the verge of something, keeping us tuned in for decades.
Likewise, it was no slip of the tongue when Brown told a Washington Post political columnist during the inauguration of President Barack Obama, that he is running for governor because, “I’ve done it before.”
Republicans are focused on him as the leader in most polls, and the age-old nemesis they expect to face in the general election again in 2010. Democrats like San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom have targeted him as the man to beat.
Like a rapper trying to steal the thunder of his opponent in an on-stage battle, Brown jumped Newsom’s many attempts to portray him as the old-school insider during recent interviews.
Brown is quick to reject comparisons Hillary Clinton, the heavy favorite who lost to political newcomer, Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.
“Newsom is trying to make everyone think I’m Hillary and he’s Obama,” Brown said. “But those analogies just don’t work.”
Brown didn’t come up with that comparison on his own. First mentioned by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in his column for the San Francisco Chronicle, way back in July of 2008, Willie wrote that Jerry, no relation, called him to see how he sized up the governor’s race.
“I said Gavin sees it as a replay of Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama,” Willie Brown wrote. “Jerry said, ‘Hell, as long as I’m Obama, I’m fine.’”
Showing he can adjust to modern campaigning, Brown launched his own Facebook page, even posting from it during the state Supreme Court hearing on same-sex marriage.
As much as people enjoy targeting Brown with any number of strategies to make him seem quixotic, out-of-touch or over-the-hill, nobody discounts his relevance. He is classic rock, yes, but as pollsters and analysts admit, time and time again, his show is one that has not fallen out of favor.
“Jerry Brown is reasonably well positioned to be elected governor in 2010,” Mervin Field, author of the respected Field Poll, said.
Field notes that Brown “wears his age well… He certainly doesn’t appear to be an old codger trying to win back his old job.”
The 2010 Contenders:
- Democrat Gavin Newsom.
- Republican Meg Whitman.
- Republican Steve Poizner.
- Republican Tom Campbell.
- Next up: Attorney General Candidates.
See a slideshow of the governor candidates, click hereMore California News:
- Villaraigosa could open doors to new slate of candidates.
- Michelle Obama speaks in San Francisco on service.
- Governor vows to veto Dems proposed budget.
- Obama reaches out to gay and lesbian supporters.
- Office of AIDS on chopping block.
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