Jerry Brown: sights on CA Attorney General

OAKLAND - Jerry Brown has a resume that won't stop.


In his first nine public lives, California's serial candidate has been a college trustee, a secretary of state, a governor, a Senate candidate, a presidential hopeful, a spiritual scholar, a Democratic party official, a populist radio host and an urban mayor.

Now he wants to be state attorney general.

It may seem like the latest leap in a hopscotch career. But Brown, who got his law degree in 1964 and whose father, former Gov. Pat Brown, served two terms as attorney general, sees it more as completing a circle.

"I've had a unique experience as mayor and governor, seen laws made and had to live under them 25 years later," he says. "Probably there's no one running for this office has read as many laws or arguments for and against those laws."

Brown, politics and the law go way back. He was a boy when his father won election as San Francisco District Attorney. He became governor in 1974 and won re-election by a landslide. But 1982 found him losing to Republican Pete Wilson in the race for U.S. Senate and saddled with the derisive nickname "Governor Moonbeam."

No doubt about it, Brown was an unconventional governor. He shunned an official car for a Plymouth and eschewed a mansion in favor of a mattress and box spring on the floor of an apartment across the street from the Capitol.

On a more substantive level, he was criticized for flip-flopping on big issues, such as his initial opposition and subsequent wholehearted embrace of property tax-cutting Proposition 13.

But Brown also appointed scores of women and minorities to judgeships and other government posts and his ideas on things like small government are now mainstream. Mike Royko, the late Chicago humor columnist who came up with the Moonbeam tag, would later apologize and attempt to retract it.

Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, theorizes that part of voters' disenchantment with Brown stemmed from the times. He ran for office in the early '70s, when liberalism flourished; he exited the governor's office two years into the presidency of conservative Ronald Reagan.

"Jerry had the misfortune, I suppose, of being governor at a time when public attitudes were shifting," says Cain. "I think that's why his career has constantly been one of adjustments."

One of the biggest adjustments came in 1998 when he was elected mayor of Oakland. Political observers couldn't believe that someone who once ruled Sacramento would take on the job of mayor, particularly of Oakland, perennial stepsister to glamorous San Francisco, and a place that has struggled with a sluggish economy and thriving crime rate.

Brown had moved to Oakland a few years before the election. He hosted a radio talk show and founded the think tank "We the People" in a warehouse-like building near the waterfront development of Jack London Square, where he lived with some staffers and friends in an urban commune.

He was elected mayor with 59 percent of the vote in a field of 10 other candidates.

After five years in office, Brown is in charge of a city whose once-forlorn downtown has been spruced up considerably. One of his proudest achievements is the Oakland Military Institute, a charter school he established over the objections of the school board.

He has also pushed for more housing downtown and is practicing his preaching, moving with longtime girlfriend Anne Gust to an apartment in a far-from-gentrified section of town. "I closed two crack houses within 200 yards of where I sleep," he says. "I'm in the nitty gritty of the urban experience and because I'm mayor, I'm accountable and involved in many of the decisions that affect the quality of life."

As mayor, Brown says, he's become keenly attuned to problems in the criminal justice system and has worked for more job training and a night curfew for parolees. "The system has broken down," he says.

Oakland school board member Dan Siegel, who crossed swords with Brown over the merit of charter schools, sees strategy in Brown's emergence as crimefighting mayor.

"Jerry is a guy who wants to be in political office and is going to do what he needs to do to get there. He wanted to be mayor of Oakland so he campaigned by being on (progressive FM radio station) KPFA for a couple of years and getting everyone to see him as this progressive, out-of-the-box thinker," Siegel said.

"A couple years ago, he got the idea he's going to be attorney general, so he's positioning himself as somewhere to the right of (current AG) Bill Lockyer."

Lockyer can't run for re-election due to term limits. At least four other candidates have filed and Brown's chief primary election opponent is expected to be state Sen. Joe Dunn of Santa Ana, a veteran trial lawyer who led Senate investigations into energy price manipulations.

Brown has not yet formally launched his campaign to run for AG in 2006. But he has taken out papers and begun fund-raising, raising close to $1 million as of June.

The contributors list is interesting, including members of the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame, oil heir Gordon Getty, designer Diane Von Furstenberg and Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner.

Cain thinks Brown has a chance.

"He's an experienced fund-raiser, he's an experienced candidate and many of the issues that bothered people in the '80s when he was running for the Senate and then the presidency are not quiet as salient any more."

One issue sure to emerge is Brown's views on capital punishment. As governor, he appointed Supreme Court Judge Rose Bird, who was ousted by voters in 1986 for her anti-death penalty rulings.

But Cain thinks the death penalty is fading as a make-or-break issue for voters. "There's no poll in America that indicates that's the No. 1 issue on American's minds."

Brown says he'd have no problems enforcing California's death penalty laws and he expects voters to understand that. "The people have voted for the death penalty and I'm going to enforce it."

Some, including Cain, wonder whether Brown, a vigorous 66, has his eye on offices beyond that of attorney general, perhaps a Senate seat if one becomes open.

Brown says his motivation for running is "to bring accountability to government and common sense to the administration of law."