Brown, Poochigian still lashing out
Despite an uneven race, the rivals for attorney general trade barbs
in L.A. news conferences.
By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
November 1, 2006
SACRAMENTO — One is the son of a Fresno County farmer, the other
the progeny of a dynastic political family.
Dissimilarities etch the lives and policy positions of Republican
state Sen. Chuck Poochigian and his Democratic opponent in the campaign
for state attorney general, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, the mercurial
former California governor and frequent presidential aspirant.
The pair has waged this election season’s most clamorous battle.
They’ve accused each other of flip-flops befitting a big-time
wrestling match. Crime-fighting chops and character questions have
become central themes in the contest to command the 1,100 attorneys
in the state’s Department of Justice.
In the homestretch, the 68-year-old Brown has ridden his status as
a venerable political celebrity to a healthy lead – 15 points among
likely voters in the most recent public polls.
But in Poochigian the GOP has a campaigner who vows to stay on the
attack until election day, Tuesday, despite dwindling funds for
advertising and a reputation as a nice guy reluctant to throw mud.
"I remain convinced I’m going to win," the Fresno Republican says.
Brown has spent his two mayoral terms attempting to recast his image
as a crime fighter more interested in fixing public infrastructure
than tilting at political windmills. Now he vows to be a "practical"
and "common sense" attorney general.
"I love the law," he said. "And I think the law is being undermined.
We need to strengthen our Western legal tradition, emphasize the
norms that give our society identity, structure."
On Tuesday, Brown and Poochigian brought their campaigns to Los
Angeles for dueling news conferences almost within earshot of one
another.
Brown appeared with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief
William J. Bratton, adding the two high-profile leaders to his list of
endorsements His experience as a former governor and Oakland mayor,
Villaraigosa said, makes Brown "somebody who knows the needs of city
police departments."
Minutes later, Poochigian held an impromptu news conference on a
nearby street corner, repeating his criticism of Brown’s credentials
for attorney general amid a sharp rise in Oakland’s murder rate.
Poochigian highlighted his own endorsements from the California Peace
Officers Assn. and the California State Sheriff’s Assn., among others
For months, Poochigian has hit Brown with accusations new and three
decades old. He portrays Brown as a flaky extremist, a man long
opposed to the death penalty who has watched over a stratospheric
murder spike this year in Oakland.
In turn, Brown has characterized Poochigian as a hard-right fanatic
who opposed a ban on high-powered sniper rifles and fought the
state’s successful 2004 ballot measure to publicly fund stem cell
research, frequently sides against environmental interests and
opposes abortion rights.
But around the Capitol, Poochigian is better known for collegiality
than ideology. Friends say he’s as consistent as his favorite
breakfast cereal: oatmeal
His grandparents fled the Armenian genocide and the family eventually
settled amid the grape fields of Fresno County. Poochigian, 57, grew
up in Lone Star, a speck of a farm community along the railroad
tracks southeast of Fresno.
After attending Cal State Fresno and law school, Poochigian became
a business lawyer He broke into politics in 1978, volunteering for
George Deukmejian’s successful attorney general campaign, then became
a gubernatorial aide to the conservative Deukmejian and later to Gov.
Pete Wilson.
In private life, Poochigian has survived a few rough patches.
Around the time he first ventured into politics, he lost more than
$100,000 in a failed business deal in Gusher Oil Co., a firm that
drilled mostly in Texas. He and his partners were sued for nonpayment
of a loan. It was "a bad investment," he says today, that cost him more
than his share to settle debts owed by a few investors who walked away.
Among his partners in Gusher Oil was attorney Richard Wyrick.
Poochigian rented his first office from the older man. When a Wyrick
agricultural partnership was sued in 1983 in a dispute over $150,000
in rent on a farm, Poochigian represented him, settling the lawsuit.
Wyrick later ran afoul of the law and is serving a six-year sentence
in Soledad state prison for pilfering clients’ trust funds.
"I haven’t talked to or seen that guy in 20 years," Poochigian said.
"I didn’t even know he was in prison."
After years as a respected gubernatorial staffer, Poochigian ran for
the Assembly in 1994 and won easily. He moved to the Senate in 1998,
earning plaudits as a straight shooter who rarely strayed from the
conservative cause.
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.
Throughout his career, Poochigian got rock-bottom scores from
environmental groups but was tops with the California Chamber of
Commerce and the state Farm Bureau. Answering attacks from Brown over
his opposition to the stem cell ballot measure, Poochigian says it
was on fiscal grounds.
Helping crime victims and upholding the death penalty are his top
priorities.
A recent morning found Poochigian on the steps of the Capitol,
surrounded by leaders of the victims rights movement. Harriet
Salarno, president of Crime Victims United, applauded Poochigian’s
"unwavering record of support" and railed against Brown, who as
governor signed a bill expanding the rights of prisoners but opposed
a bill of rights for crime victims.
"Victims of crime have been a primary inspiration driving my
candidacy," Poochigian said. "My opponent has consistently fallen on
the wrong side of the fence."
Brown was born into California political royalty. Pat Brown, his
father, was attorney general and governor during the 1950s and ’60s,
and his sister, Kathleen, served as state treasurer and ran for
governor.
After a stint in seminary school, Brown attended Yale Law School. He
won statewide office at 32, becoming secretary of state. He was
governor at 36 and launched the first of three presidential runs
before he was 40.
As governor, Brown jousted with the medfly put death penalty
antagonist Rose Bird on the state Supreme Court and saw his veto of a
capital punishment bill overridden by the Legislature. But he
presided at a time when criminal recidivism was a fraction of its
current level.
His quirky style attracted as much attention as his policies. Brown
renounced the governor’s mansion for a floor mattress in a rented
apartment, dated singer Linda Ronstadt and acquired the nickname Gov.
Moonbeam.
After a last failed presidential bid in 1992, Brown had his own Bay
Area talk radio program. Executions by lethal injection, he
proclaimed to his listeners, put the state at risk of seeming akin to
Hitler’s Germany. He called corporate America "an out-of-control
Frankenstein."
During two terms at Oakland City Hall, Brown again has proved his
consistent inconsistency. He embraced capitalism and served as head
cheerleader for an urban housing boom in downtown Oakland. He pushed
for more cops and lobbied for curfews on parolees and probationers.
Felonies in the city of 412,000 fell from an annual average of about
40,000 in previous decades to about 28,000 on Brown’s watch.
Poochigian supporters say that’s spin. After an initial dip, crime
has jumped during Brown’s second term, peaking this year. So far in
2006, Oakland has been hit by 124 homicides, more than double the
mayor’s first year in office.
Foes in Oakland say Brown’s redevelopment agenda priced poor people
out of housing. Meanwhile, the city’s deficit-stricken school
district succumbed to a state takeover despite Brown’s intervention.
And his relationship with some black leaders was icy from the start.
He was embraced by the real estate sector, which gave him roughly 20%
of the more than $6 million he has raised for the attorney general
race. Topping Brown’s donor list are developers who won city approval
for big construction projects, sometimes weeks after giving to his
campaign.
Brown insists he feels no obligation to his donors. As for the poor,
Brown said, 2,400 affordable housing units were built or planned on
his watch, a 30% increase over the 1990s. The rise in crime this
year, he notes, mirrors a trend in neighboring Richmond and even San
Francisco, across the bay.
The proof of his potency as a crime fighter, Brown said, is that
"police in my city endorse me, and police in his city don’t endorse
him. In fact, they endorse me"
But to Poochigian and his supporters, Brown is a "fictional crime
fighter" and a flip-flopper.
"At the core, Jerry Brown has no fixed principals," charged Ken
Khachigian, Poochigian’s campaign strategist.
In the 1992 presidential race, Brown was criticized for having served
as a $20,000-a-year board director for the firm of Milan Panic, a
wealthy biomedical executive and longtime contributor. Panic’s firm
had agreed to pay a $400,000 government penalty for falsely promoting
an AIDS drug. Brown also acknowledged that he telephoned Rep. Henry
A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) in a bid to help resolve Panic’s dispute
with the government over the drug.
Brown downplays the episode and calls Panic "an outstanding
individual and friend of mine."
Poochigian’s campaign team also cites Brown’s three-decade
relationship with Jacques Barzaghi, a tattooed former French soldier
and the Democrat’s political factotum since statehouse days.
After a female co-worker accused Barzaghi of sexual harassment, the
Oakland city manager suspended him for three weeks without pay. Brown
questioned the credibility of Barzaghi’s accuser, a mother of three.
It was three more years before Brown fired his trusted advisor after
Barzaghi’s 30-year-old wife told police he had tried to push her down
the stairs during a domestic dispute.
"I handled that fine," Brown said. "Would I do anything different?
Nothing that comes to mind."
Times staff writer Duke Helfand contributed to this report.
s/cal/la-me-attygen1nov01,0,4359106
.story?coll=la -center-politics-cal