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Arriving in San Diego, Brown took his place at the head of a Columbus Day parade. With a red carnation nattily tucked in the lapel of a sober gray suit, he waved, shook hands and shouted, "How are ya?" or "Cómo estd?" Sitting in the reviewing stand, he showed a flash of anger when a reporter touched on one of those troubling matters of the gubernatorial style. He wanted to know if Brown had ever smoked marijuana. "I've answered that before," snapped the Governor, turning his head away. As the morning grew hotter, Brown doffed his jacket to give a brief speech in the 105° F. heat in Brawley, a town in the arid Imperial Valley. "Taxes are going down," he declared. "I didn't have much to do with Proposition 13. That was the other fella. But I did sign a $1 billion tax cut, the largest in the history of California. I have given you four years of prosperity, and now I'm asking you to let me consolidate, to give me four more years. I don't say everything is perfect. I'm a human being. I make mistakes. I change my mind. But I listen to you and I get things done." Later in the afternoon, Brown joined some black politicians at a meeting in a shopping center in Riverside. "Did you watch the game?" he asked as he shook hands. "The Dodgers won." Brown, in fact, had not watched the game, but he has mastered the knack of small talk. While his mostly black audience sipped cocktails and soft drinks and ate guacamole, Brown made his familiar pitch: "Campaigns are three things—taxes, jobs and crime. Taxes are going down, jobs are going up, and we have the most aggressive campaign against crime that we've had in a quarter-century."
Next stop: a bar in Riverside.
"Hey, what's happening?" barked Brown, as he strode in. "How about a beer for me? I've got money." Ten minutes later, Brown was gone. Winging back to Los Angeles (though the Governor remarked that he might prefer to head for the Santa Monica airport—presumably because it is closer to Malibu, home of his close companion, Singer Linda Ronstadt), Brown explained his attempt to blend liberal and conservative positions. "It's what I call mixing frugality with compassion. The people want fiscal responsibility and openness and experimental government. Anti-red lining, antismog regulations and farm labor laws—all these are compatible with a fairly hard fiscal policy. But just to fund everything in the public sector, I don't see that. The folks don't want it."
Some of the other races in which Democrats are trying to outpromise Republicans on the question of fiscal responsibility: