Los Angeles Times
June 7, 2006

POLITICS : CALIFORNIA
CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS

Brown Easily Defeats Delgadillo

Oakland mayor is aided by name recognition in the Democratic race for
attorney general.

By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
June 7, OAKLAND

2006 Jerry Brown, California’s iconoclastic ex-governor turned big
city mayor, won the Democratic attorney general primary Tuesday in a
bid to return to statewide office after a two-decade absence.

Brown, 68, held a commanding lead against Rocky Delgadillo, the Los
Angeles city attorney who ran a spirited but uphill fight against a
foe who remains a household name in California political circles.

“I confident feel yes I do!” declared Brown, Oakland’s mayor, as he
disembarked from a black Lincoln Continental at his campaign
celebration with his wife, Anne, and the family pet, a chubby black
Labrador named Dharma.

Later he appeared on stage at the Oakland Police Officers
Assn. headquarters with his wife by his side to declare victory,
invoking the name of his late father, former California attorney
general and governor Pat Brown.

“As my father always said, I accept the nomination,” Brown proclaimed,
before quipping, “but he’d say that anytime a crowd gathered.”

Brown told the gathering of police and political supporters, including
current Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, that if elected California’s top cop
he would give law enforcement’s rank and file “the tools you need to
protect California from criminals and terrorists. I’m going to be
there for ya. I got your back.”

Trailing badly from the beginning, Delgadillo, 45, conceded with about
a third of the statewide vote in.

“We knew this was going to be a tough race when we got into it and we
gave it our all, but we’ve come up just a bit short,” Delgadillo said.

He said he had tried to call Jerry Brown, who was busy at the time,
but would call again.

“Now, as Democrats, we need to stand together for this fight in
November,” Delgadillo said. “I’m going to work as hard as I can to
make sure we have a Democrat in the AG’s office to protect our
Democratic principles.”

Brown is headed for a general election showdown with the GOP nominee,
state Sen. Chuck Poochigian of Fresno, who has little statewide
recognition name just 9% in one poll recent but solid conservative
credentials and a reputation as a statehouse consensus builder.

Poochigian goes into the race with more than $3 million in his
campaign coffers, far more than any other GOP candidate not named
Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Poochigian can expect solid support among conservative voters who
remember Brown’s gubernatorial stint between 1974 and 1982, when he
was christened “Gov. Moonbeam” by wags. In his two terms as Oakland
mayor, Brown tried to refashion his image as a more pragmatic
politician intent on crime fighting and urban blight.

Poochigian’s strategists said they would hit Brown for his opposition
to the death penalty as well as a history of persistent attempts to
reach higher office, most notably three unsuccessful runs for
president.

“Jerry Brown is a man always more interested in the job he’s seeking
than the job he’s holding,” said Kevin Spillane, a Poochigian
spokesman. “At his core he’s the same Jerry old opportunistic,
insincere, calculating, overly ambitious.”

Ace Smith, Brown’s campaign strategist, said Poochigian is shackled by
“an extreme record” as an opponent of stem cell research and assault
weapon bans. He said Poochigian “carried the legislative water” for
the pesticide and pharmaceutical industries as a lawmaker.

The joke is that AG “really should stand for aspiring governor,” Smith
said. “And the only candidate who fits that description is Chuck
Poochigian. Jerry Brown simply wants to be the best attorney general
in history.”

Delgadillo attempted early on in the Democratic primary fight to raise
questions about Brown’s stand on the death penalty and his allegiance
to supporters of abortion rights.

But in the final weeks of the campaign, Delgadillo shifted the focus,
contrasting his efforts against gang crime in Los Angeles against a
recent surge in homicides and other felonies in Oakland.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Delgadillo invested more than $2.5
million on TV ads, outspending Brown by more than 6 to 1.

Brown, with a big lead in the polls, didn’t mount a TV
counterattack. His campaign spent less than $400,000 on a few upbeat
biographical commercials played on cable channels.

Instead he relied on the Oakland Police Officers Assn. to come to his
defense.

The association demanded that Delgadillo pull the crime ads, arguing
the spots exaggerated the rise in crime. Brown’s campaign also accused
Delgadillo, a Harvard graduate, of inflating his athletic
credentials. He referred to himself as an All-American in football
when in reality he received honorable-mention scholastic All-American
honors.

While those attacks received scant attention amid the well-publicized
mud-slinging of the Democratic gubernatorial primary, Brown’s ability
to run a frugal campaign against Delgadillo leaves him with a bigger
kitty campaign more than million $4 than his Republican rival heading
into November’s general election.