The Career "Anti Politician" Politician

Peter Schrag has been an institution for the Sacramento Bee for a long time. In this morning's paper he wrote a curious piece on Jerry Brown who he calls "The Career Anti Politician" Brown has made a career of being sophomoric. At one point he commented "It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians." - That just about sums up his political philosophy. For the most part when he has held office he has demonstrated the most limited attention span of any political figure in the state. When he was Governor he reveled in being different. But if you look at his record, especially in appointments, he produced arguably some of the worst appointments in history - one need only look at his Supreme Court appointments (recalled) and his support for a transportation secretary whose goal was not to run her department but to frustrate California drivers. Part of the transportation problems now facing the state began under his watch. At the end of his second term in Sacramento -even the democrats were frustrated. His about face on Proposition 13, where he opposed it until the voters adopted it, is legendary and gave him one of his many sobriquets - "Jerry Jarvis." Mike Royko called him Governor Moonbeam - and that nickname seems to have stuck best. But for the 400th time Schrag writes an ode to him and he wacky politics. Schrag comments "Brown, who doesn't have strong opposition in the primary, says that the attorney general is the perfect job for him." But that may not be the case. Who knows why people vote for a candidate for Attorney General but there are a lot of minuses with Brown's record.

Brown lacks the intellectual capacity to think an issue through so he flits from policy notion to policy notion. He is so hip he has a blog, but like most of what he does the thing lasted for a couple of months and then he dropped it (last post October 2005) although it is now posted over to his site for Attorney General. For much of his career he has conscientiously worked in symbols. Yet, Schrag in a mostly complimentary piece suggests that Californians should be fooled again.

Brown started with a trip to the seminary but he soon dropped out of that. His educational record is spotty. He graduated from Berkeley and then Yale Law School but had trouble passing the bar. Delgadillo grew up in real poverty and attended Harvard and Columbia Law School. And throughout Brown's career he seems to have moved around a lot. He ran for President several times - mostly without any real hope of winning. He is a master of pulling at the current intellectual fashion. He seems to have lighted on this race because his dad did the job and because there was not something else in his view. But as Schrag points out his record as governor included an appointment that came about because he heard someone talking loud in a restaurant. Brown has "regrets" about some of his appointments but he has moved on from that.

The most curious part of the the piece is his offhand comment that Brown has no significant opposition in the primary. In the last political filing. Rocky Delgadillo, who is the former LA City Attorney and who had a lot of press in Southern California, had about $2.6 million on hand while Brown had $4.2 million. The endorsements for each are interesting the California Labor Federation endorsed Delgadillo but several of its members endorsed Brown (California Faculty Association). Surprisingly while a lot of the liberal elites of the Bay Area endorsed Brown, most of the Oakland labor organizations endorsed Delgadillo. The CTA has also endorsed Delgadillo. The LA liberal elites seem to have been pretty consistent for Delgadillo (although some like Marta Escutia endorsed Brown). So when you look at the race it looks pretty even. While Brown could be expected to have statewide name recognition a lot of that is negative. Delgadillo has gotten a lot of press in LA and thus should be pretty well known where the votes are.

I am not sure why Schrag wrote the piece that he did. Was this one last shot in favor of the mild system of entertainment that Brown has provided the state (most often at our expense) over the last 30+ years? Who knows. But his commentary on this one seems a bit off.

In the end whoever wins the primary needs to face State Senator Chuck Poochigian who has had a distinguished legislative career- a good deal of his career (as opposed to Brown) has been to work on the tough issues in the state with some noticable positive results. He also has a record of working across party lines effectively. Poochigian had about $2.7 million in the bank at the last filing date and will not spend any significant amount in the primary.