SENATOR POOCHIGIAN TO TARGET JERRY BROWN’S ‘MOONBEAM’ PAST
By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times, CA
June 20 2006
The GOP candidate for attorney general plans to focus on his famous
foe’s record as governor, mayor and radio host.
SACRAMENTO – Never mind that nine of 10 Californians have not heard
of him.
Never mind that his opponent enjoys blanket name recognition throughout
the Golden State, more campaign cash and a double-digit lead in
the polls.
Chuck Poochigian – state senator from Fresno, a conservative Republican
with a tough record on crime and punishment – has a blueprint for
beating Jerry Brown in the race for California attorney general.
He wants to run against Gov. Moonbeam.
Poochigian plans to cite Brown’s progressive past as well as his
iconoclastic pronouncements during a 1990s stint on talk radio. He
wants to spotlight Brown’s record as mayor in crime-rattled Oakland. He
will rail against Brown’s personal distaste for the death penalty. He
hopes to reap campaign dollars from corporations fearful that Brown
would push a litigious, anti-business agenda.
"For me, the greatest challenge will be to overcome his high name
identification," said Poochigian, 57. "His greatest challenge is
to overcome his record. I can move my name ID up. He can’t change
his record."
So far, Brown is enjoying a splendid campaign season. Though
Poochigian got a free ride in the June 6 primary, running unopposed,
Brown crushed Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, 63% to 37%,
to earn the Democratic nomination.
Brown, 68, did it by portraying himself as a hard-knuckle, big-city
crime fighter – not the long-gone governor who jousted in the 1970s
with the Medfly, put death penalty antagonist Rose Bird on the
state Supreme Court, renounced the gubernatorial mansion for a floor
mattress, dated singer Linda Ronstadt and acquired the nickname of
Gov. Moonbeam.
"If they want to run this campaign by going back to 1974, they’re
welcome to," said Ace Smith, Brown’s political strategist. "But I
think their strategy is about 20 years stale."
Though one recent poll put Poochigian down by 25 percentage points
in a head-to-head contest with Brown, the Republican’s campaign team
remains confident that the race will become a tossup by election day.
Poochigian is counting on unified support among the GOP, which
embraced the popular Fresno Republican early on. Though an unabashed
conservative, he also hopes to win big among California’s growing
pack of independent voters, now more than 18% of the electorate.
Plus, "Poochigian is the anti-Jerry Brown," said Kevin Spillane,
a strategist for the GOP candidate.
Brown was born into the closest thing California has to political
royalty, the son of a popular governor, Pat Brown, who served through
most of the 1960s. Poochigian was raised on the farm, by parents who
never went to college.
He is a native of Lone Star, a no-pretense speck of a place along
the railroad tracks southeast of Fresno. His grandparents fled the
Armenian genocide, and the family eventually settled amid the grape
fields of Fresno County.
His mother still lives on the family’s original 20-acre
plot. Poochigian’s father died two years ago at 90. One brother
manages a farm. Poochigian owns farmland around Fresno County, and
sent his three children to the same public schools he attended.
Unlike Brown, who seemed fated for elected office, Poochigian came
to politics relatively late in life.
At Fresno State he was a buddy of Bill Jones, a budding campus
politician who in the 1990s was elected California secretary of
state. Poochigian later attended law school and became a business
lawyer. He got the political bug in 1978, volunteering for George
Deukmejian’s successful run for attorney general. Poochigian later
was appointed as a gubernatorial aide to the conservative Deukmejian
and Gov. Pete Wilson.
Brown won statewide office at 32, becoming secretary of state,
and launched the first of three presidential runs before he was
40. Poochigian didn’t run for anything until his mid-40s.
He won an Assembly seat in 1994 and moved to the Senate in 1998,
earning plaudits as a collegial straight-shooter, a law-and-order
conservative capable of the occasional bipartisan compromise.
During his tenure, he has backed tougher penalties for sexual
predators, gun-toting felons and identity thieves. He also has opposed
legislative efforts to roll back the state’s "three strikes" law.
Now he is following in the footsteps of his early mentor, Deukmejian, a
fellow Armenian American whose first statewide job was as California’s
so-called top cop.