Can Jerry Brown Make One More Comeback?

How do you want us to tell the Jerry Brown story? As a comeback tale? A mystery? A quest? A love story? A little-guy-makes-good story?

By Karl Taro Greenfeld/Oakland Saturday, July 24, 2010
    • John McCoy / Los Angeles Daily News / Zumapress.com

    Jerry Brown, speaks to a small crowd at the Nokia Theater in June.

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    Brown, standing here alone in his converted garage, is unhappy with talk of generalities and will perk up only when he can get specific. Education? He puts down his almonds, goes back to the desk and returns with a thick binder outlining California's application for the national Race to the Top program, an initiative in which states demonstrating excellence qualify for additional federal education money. "Here, look," he says. "Here is an example of the problem, a specific example." He points to where California is proposing to "create an assessment item bank advisory board," what Brown calls "a whole new layer of bureaucracy," which will advise "the data systems steering committee" of this bank that aggregates test scores, teacher assessments and school performance. The layers of bureaucracy infuriate Brown. "Who are these people? These are people who advise people who collect data somewhere. We need more accountability, not less ... We need great teachers. We need fewer testing hours, with faster results. Kids now are taking state tests in April, May. They're getting the results six months later. Who does that help? It's just testing for the sake of testing." I ask him if this sort of impatience with the self-perpetuating nature of bureaucracy is something that he has developed since serving as mayor of Oakland and attorney general. "You're trying to fit me into this procrustean notion that you have of me. You're trying to say that I've changed. Well, yes, people change. I've changed, but the ideas have been consistent. But I've learned, O.K.? Does that make you happy? I've learned."

    He was never as eccentric as his governor Moonbeam reputation would suggest. He was a budget hawk before that term was fashionable: he rejected the governor's mansion to live in a Sacramento apartment, was chauffeured in a Plymouth Galaxy instead of a limousine and declined his own pay raises. Yet what he was as a callow 30-something governor, he will admit, was good-hearted, smart and earnest but naive. His ideas were the right ones, he believes, but he didn't know what he knows now about business and people and real lives, what it is like, for example, to try to renovate a building in Oakland—he did several—and deal with stringent environmental regulations that can delay a project for years. He can list dozens of experiences as mayor, from rushing downstairs from his apartment at 27th Street and Telegraph Avenue because a man had been shot to starting up his beloved charter schools. "Five hundred kids, raising millions of dollars, staffing, finding good people, all this while there are guys selling drugs on the corner. That's what I mean. This is real-world stuff. Concrete. Concrete!"

    His wife Anne Gust, a former corporate lawyer who now works on the campaign, says Brown's reputation as a bit spacey—the Dead Kennedys sang about him in 1979 as the governor whose "aura smiles and never frowns"—was undeserved and based more on lifestyle. He was shacking up back then with pop star Linda Ronstadt and practiced, as he still does, Zen meditation. "That was all a bit overstated. He was very focused on the environment, the budget. He knew that budget inside and out, to the point where it drove people crazy. And he never raised [income or property] taxes," Gust says. "But he's also someone who has learned from his mistakes. He's different than he was 30 years ago. Who isn't?"

    He still runs three miles every day and tries to make it to the gym every other day. He no longer meditates daily, however. "I should," he admits, "but I don't. But I do have a meditation room I built in my house." The biggest difference may be Gust. They met in 1990, when she was defending the California Democratic Party from a lawsuit. Brown was in his first postgubernatorial political job, as state party chairman. The two dated for 15 years before marrying in 2005, a union that Gust laughingly describes as "well, a bit exhausting ... He's a handful. That's a polite way of putting it. There's not a lot boring with him." She describes him as aggressively inquisitive. Remember his space-exploration promises during the '92 presidential campaign? A trip to the grocery store, Gust says, can turn into 20 minutes of Brown questioning a bewildered produce man about the history, origin and flavor of various strains of tomatoes. "I see the grocery store as a chore, and he sees it as a learning opportunity."

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