Attorney General Moonbeam?
Weekly Standard: Jerry Brown Keeps On Running
cbsnews.com
October 17, 2006
While the rest of the nation lurches ahead to Election Day,
California remains stuck in a time warp.
Take the governor’s race between incumbent Arnold Schwarzenegger and
State Treasurer Phil Angelides. It started out as the 1984
presidential contest redux, with Arnold reprising the role of Ronald
Reagan (hopeless optimist) and Angelides that of Walter Mondale
(doomed the moment he called for higher taxes). That was before
Angelides set the way-back machine to the 1960s, channeling his inner
Tom Hayden and vowing to sue the Bush administration to return
California’s National Guard troops from Iraq. Unfortunately, for
Angelides, time isn’t on his side; the polls suggest he’s headed for
a double-digit drubbing.
Then there’s California’s other blast from the past: Jerry Brown,
who’s running for state attorney general. It marks the eighth time
that Brown, who succeeded Reagan as governor of California 32 years
ago this January, has sought statewide or national office That
includes presidential runs in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, but doesn’t
begin to cover two terms as Oakland mayor (his current job), a
two-year stint as chairman of the state Democratic party (he’d later
drop his party affiliation before returning to the fold prior to his
Oakland mayoral bid), plus some creative moonlighting as a talk-radio
host, a student of Zen Buddhism in Japan, and a buddy of Mother
Teresa in Calcutta.
It’s a race with dynastic overtones: Jerry Brown’s father, Pat,
served two terms as California’s attorney general and two terms as
governor during the ’50s and ’60s; his sister Kathleen served one
term as state treasurer before getting trounced in the 1994
governor’s race. Despite the lengthy resume, no one is suggesting
that Jerry Brown is geriatric – at 68, he’s five years younger than
California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein. Still, it seems
strange that the Brown torch hasn’t already been passed to a new
generation. In November 1982, while Brown was wrapping up his final
year as governor, Mario Cuomo was winning a first term as governor of
New York. Twenty-four years later, it’s Cuomo’s son, Andrew, who’s
running to be New York’s next attorney general – the same job Brown
covets in California.
Brown has attempted to portray his mayoral record as that of a
Giuliani-type city boss who’s tough on crime. But homicides in
Oakland are up nearly 100 percent since Brown first took office. And
that’s just the tip of the iceberg, says Brown’s opponent, state
senator Charles Poochigian, whose campaign eagerly counts the ways in
which Governor Brown was soft on crime: pardoning seven first-degree
murderers; supporting a prisoners’ bill of rights while opposing a
crime victims’ bill of rights; vetoing a bill reinstating the death
penalty (a veto the state legislature overrode); and opposing lethal
injection as California’s method of capital punishment.
Brown has responded that the pardoned murderers were elderly, and
that as attorney general, he would carry out laws allowing
executions. If so, he might want to explain the company he keeps.
Brown’s radio ads are voiced over by Peter Coyote, the actor and Bay
Area fixture who’s a regular at San Quentin death-penalty protests.
And yet Brown will not be easily defeated. He has a 15-point lead in
the polls, better name recognition than Poochigian, and a larger
campaign war chest. Poochigian hails from Fresno, which isn’t much of
a political stronghold (his family settled there to take up farming
after fleeing the Armenian genocide, and his mother still lives on
their original 20-acre plot). But he does have at least two factors
working for him: A Schwarzenegger landslide over Angelides could
sweep fellow Republican candidates into office; and Brown’s support
has not grown beyond 45 percent, suggesting a skeptical electorate.
It wasn’t skepticism but downright fatigue and frustration that led
to Brown’s defeat the last time he ran for statewide office, in the
1982 U.S. Senate race won by Republican Pete Wilson (who also
defeated Brown’s sister in the 1994 governor’s race). Brown had been
governor for the previous eight years – and had traded in the
governor’s mansion for a floor mattress in more Spartan digs, tooled
around town in a Plymouth instead of a state limo, escorted Linda
Ronstadt to Africa, elevated Rose Bird to the state’s high court, and
seemed powerless against infesting Medflies. After Brown proposed the
creation of a state space academy, Mike Royko nicknamed him Governor
Moonbeam. But will voters in this election – some of whom weren’t
alive in 1982, much less eligible to vote – remember those greatest
hits? Are they aware of Brown’s other oddball musings, such as
likening capital punishment to "Hitler’s Germany" and characterizing
corporate America as "an out-of-control Frankenstein"?
It’s that last quote that’s worth remembering. In California,
attorneys general hail from one of two parties, and in office they
pursue one of two paths: serving blue-collar, law-and-order justice,
or attacking white-collar crime. George Deukmejian, an attorney
general during the ’70s and early ’80s and Brown’s successor as
governor, made a name for himself as a death-penalty champion.
By contrast, the man Brown hopes to succeed as attorney general,
Democrat Bill Lockyer, seems obsessed with corporate malfeasance.
Lockyer has used his office to sue Enron, whom he accused of gouging
California during the state’s energy crisis. More recently, he filed
a lawsuit against a half-dozen automakers for allegedly contributing
to global warming, and indicted Hewlett-Packard executives for
corporate espionage.
Where would an Attorney General Brown take California? The post
allows for tremendous political latitude. In California, the attorney
general not only represents the state in civil and criminal court
proceedings, but also acts as a patron saint for consumers’ and
victims’ rights and environmental groups. The job is made-to-order
for any politician with higher aspirations and a fertile imagination.
And Brown seems still to have both. Because he served as governor
before term limits went into effect, he could seek the top job again
in 2010. "I have a bright future, into my late 70s," Brown has told
reporters.
At the very least it should be interesting. "I will be an unusual
attorney general. I will not be like the other ones," he said back in
April. Brown also tells reporters he wants to take a "common sense"
approach to the office, which means settling civil lawsuits,
protecting the environment, plus addressing city crime and corporate
abuses. Poochigian, on the other hand, would likely build on his
legislative record, which includes tougher penalties for sexual
predators, gun-toting felons, and identity thieves.
As California secretary of state in the early 1970s, Brown showed
what kind of attorney general he might turn out to be. During his one
term in that position, he brought suits against Standard Oil of
California, ITT, Gulf Oil, and Mobil for violating campaign finance
laws. For Democrats, three decades later, corporate-bashing is, if
anything, more in vogue In New York, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
is about to be elected governor after using his office’s crusades
against the securities, insurance, entertainment, and computer
industries to raise his profile. And for Brown, too, becoming
attorney general would be an opportunity to show off his timeless
knack for self-aggrandizement.
Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he
follows California and national politics.
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