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?

  • John McCoy / Los Angeles Daily News / Zumapress.com

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

    (3 of 3)

    It is a warm, sunny saturday in west Oakland, and families are sweltering on folding plastic chairs set up on an AstroTurf field at the Oakland Military Institute, a charter school of 600 students that Brown founded in 2001. He is this year's commencement speaker. In fact, he is every year's commencement speaker. He takes the microphone and almost shouts his praise and joy at the accomplishments of this class of low-income Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American kids, most of whom are headed for four-year colleges, a statistically unlikely outcome for this demographic from his community. "You know! You know how hard we all fought to be here." Brown raises a million dollars a year for this school, and later, after commencement, when we are sitting down in the school secretary's office, beneath bookcases with binders marked "incidents" and "medication," Brown laments the state of education in California. "No one has a quick fix for the education system. They throw charter around like it's a magic bullet." (Whitman has said more charter schools will be part of her education plan.) He explains that in some parts of Oakland, you don't have the parental engagement to support the school and you can't raise the additional funds that so often make charter schools in wealthier communities successful. Brown brought in some of his classmates from St. Ignatius High School (now St. Ignatius College Preparatory), class of 1955, to help him make Oakland Military a reality. "You need great, engaged people who are willing to take this on. Just calling a school a charter school doesn't magically transform it."

    Yet he is unwilling to make broad education proposals of his own. The Whitman campaign has been critical of Brown's vagueness on many of the issues, saying his policies are "the failed policies of the past." Rather than lay out some sweeping vision, he studies specific issues—like tomatoes—and can come up with surprisingly non-doctrinaire positions. He supports the death penalty, for example, and as attorney general sided against gun-control advocates and often against consumer advocates. His terms as mayor have made him more vocally pro-business, and as attorney general, he says he cut $228 million from the state budget and eliminated 750 jobs. "You need to bring money in to drive criminals out," he says. This has resulted in a candidate who sounds far less tolerant of regulation and red tape than the Whitman campaign will likely portray him. While her campaign can seem like a factory of policy statements and charts and graphs illustrating what is going wrong, Brown, because he didn't face a primary challenge, has been able to float above the fray and only now is having to answer broader questions about topics like education. With just $20 million in the bank— a huge war chest in any other state but a pittance in California if you're running against a self-funded billionaire—he may have no choice but to hang fire over the summer. His allies will make up some of that spending gap. California Working Families, a coalition of liberal groups, is among the Democratic organizations that have already been on the airwaves with ads comparing Whitman to George W. Bush.

    Brown walked into the Coffee Bean, where we are meeting alone, slipping on his jacket as he went, stopping for a moment at the glass display case before deciding he didn't want to order anything. The issue of billionaire candidates is one that angers Brown. "There is a pressure now to select superwealthy people as the people's representatives, and that is not a healthy development for democracy at all." (Later, as I was transcribing the recording of our meeting, there was a loud banging that made his words harder to hear. I couldn't figure out what it was until I remembered that Brown had been pounding the table as he spoke.)

    At one point, Brown shakes his head. "But you know what decides it? Who f____ up. Who says the wrong thing. Who insults someone. That will be the deciding factor ... I'm not one to stay on message. Maybe not. But if I say something, you know I mean it. You know who it's coming from. That much hasn't changed."

    He stands up. "O.K., O.K.? Is that enough?" He's got to run. He's got donors to see, money to raise and empty desks to fill.

    1. 1
    2. 2
    3. 3
    4. Next Page