Who Was Jerry Brown?
By Robert Cruickshank
In early March, one of the state’s most iconic politicians, Attorney General Jerry Brown, announced his campaign for governor in 2010. If successful, it would be Brown’s second trip to the office since he held the position from 1975 to 1983. It is also likely to be the final chapter in a tumultuous political career. Undaunted by the prospect of facing a wealthy Republican opponent in the November election, and willing to assume leadership of a state in its worst economic and political crisis in decades, Brown seems confident that he can thrive in the face of adversity. Perhaps it’s because he believes he’s done it before.
Brown’s first tenure as governor of California represented a turning point for the Golden State. He presided over an economic crisis that threatened to end the “California Dream,” one that had become a reality in the 1950s and ’60s. The dream included a middle-class mélange of affordable homeownership, low-cost but high-quality education, and a broad social safety net that ensured the basic needs of most Californians were met. In the 1970s, rising inflation and persistent unemployment began to threaten this, calling into question government’s ability to provide continuing access to the wide array of benefits. The right and left became increasingly polarized over how to spark an economic recovery, and for the first time pundits began asking if California’s best years were behind it.
Jerry Brown did not solve the problem. Rather, he cobbled together a package of quick fixes that held together for thirty years before finally collapsing during the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The effort seemed to exhaust him, and a weary electorate chose Republican Pete Wilson over Brown to fill an open U.S. Senate seat in the 1982 election. Sixteen years passed before Brown was elected to public office again.
As Jerry Brown is about to ask California to send him back to the governor’s office to face many of the same problems he dealt with three decades ago, examining how he addressed the challenges of the 1970s can help determine what kind of politician—and what kind of man—Jerry Brown really is.
Edmund G. “Pat” Brown
Since 1900, only four Democrats have been elected governor of California. Two of them served just four years; the other two, father and son, are both named Edmund G. Brown. The elder Brown, known by his nickname, “Pat,” was responsible for building the government services and infrastructure that made the California Dream a reality. In his term as governor between 1959 and 1967, he directed large amounts of funding toward upgrading California’s freeway system and massively expanded its colleges and universities while pledging that no Californian need ever pay tuition to attend them. He also built the California Aqueduct, enabling Southern California to continue to grow by moving large amounts of water down from the north.
Pat Brown was a popular governor; he defeated Richard Nixon to win a second term in 1962. But by 1966, he found himself on the wrong side of a backlash against the Civil Rights Movement, which he had strongly supported. The backlash was stoked by actor Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican who ran against Brown in hopes of derailing the Democrat’s attempt for a third term. Reagan equated Brown’s liberalism with an acceptance of rebellious behavior, neatly laying responsibility for the Watts Riots and rampant student protests directly at Brown’s feet. The gambit convinced many white working-class voters, who had begun to fear the pace of social change taking place in 1960s California, and robbed Pat Brown of one of his core constituencies.
Brown was unprepared for the strength of Reagan’s campaign, which was heavily funded by some of the state’s largest corporations and included a well-oiled organizing arm based in the new conservative grassroots. Despite his providing eight years of scandal-free service and presiding over a period of widespread prosperity, voters weary of unrest chose to deny Brown a third term, and Reagan rode the backlash against liberalism to victory in November of 1966.
While Governor Reagan espoused a conservative line, he was, in practice, a pragmatist. He worked with moderate Republicans and Democrats on a range of legislation that would today be viewed as deeply liberal. Though he promised a tax cut on the campaign trail, Reagan passed what was at the time the largest tax increase in state history in his first year in office. He went on to sign a bill legalizing abortion, and several more promoting environmental protections across the state. Nevertheless, he maintained strong support amongst his base, and in 1974 he opted to focus on his presidential campaign rather than run for a second term as governor. The move created an opportunity for a new face to lead California’s government.
Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr.
Pat Brown’s son, “Jerry” Brown, seized the moment. Raised in a deeply political family, Jerry Brown had soaked up the conversations his father and his father’s advisers held at the family home during the late 1940s and ’50s, as Pat Brown was charting his rise in California politics. Yet politics were not the younger Brown’s first vocation. Until the early 1960s he had studied to be a Jesuit priest. When Brown began gravitating toward the political world in which he had grown up, he was released from his vows by Pope John XXIII.
After graduating from Yale Law School, he spent time as a grassroots organizer of farmworkers and antiwar activists before running for his first elected office in 1969. That same year, Jerry Brown won his first campaign, earning a seat on the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees. He didn’t stay there long; exhibiting the driving ambition that remains one of his hallmarks, Brown ran for secretary of state the next year. Promising to bring an outsider’s approach to state government and pledging to root out corruption, he won that election, though some pundits claimed his victory was partly attributable to name recognition.
It was during his four years as secretary of state that Brown honed his approach to government. He combined an intense work ethic with a deeply populist approach to public service, holding the powerful and the wealthy—particularly large corporations—accountable to the public by whatever means were at his disposal. The secretary of state had previously been an inactive caretaker, but Brown used the office’s power to bring lawsuits against some of the state’s largest corporations, including Standard Oil. He also used the office’s role as the overseer of state elections to push for campaign finance reforms, helping write and pass the landmark Political Reform Act of 1974. The Act created the Fair Political Practices Commission, which enforced new rules requiring public officials to disclose campaign contributions and possible conflicts of interest.
With these accomplishments behind him, a thirty-six year-old Brown jumped into the wide-open gubernatorial field in 1974. He had two other important advantages: name recognition and strong support from liberals. The two were related, since many liberals were still smarting from Reagan’s defeat of Pat Brown in 1966 and longed to return a liberal governor to office. Jerry Brown gladly promised to satisfy those desires, pledging a “New Spirit” for California. Brown’s campaign emphasized his experience as a political reformer and corruption fighter, precisely the credentials the electorate sought just months after President Richard Nixon had resigned as a result of the Watergate scandal. Brown ran a disciplined campaign that reached out to liberals and moderates alike, resulting in a close victory over Republican State Controller Houston Flournoy. He was inaugurated in January of 1975.
“It’s not because I’m conservative. It’s because I’m cheap.”
When Brown took office in 1975, he inherited a state facing a growing economic crisis as well as a looming—if poorly understood—political crisis. His reaction to both would shape the state for the next thirty years.
The widespread prosperity that had characterized Pat Brown’s governorship began to fade by the time Ronald Reagan left office, when the state was hit hard by interrelated national and global economic trends. During the 1960s, spending on the Vietnam War drove the cost of materials up, fueling wayward inflation. This inflation was greatly exacerbated in 1973 when Arab oil-producing nations announced an embargo on oil supplies.1 As oil prices soared, the resulting energy crisis sparked the worst recession in thirty years. Economic activity slowed as consumers spent less and employers cut costs by laying off workers. Between November 1974 and March 1975, California lost over 140,000 jobs, a hefty sum at the time. Those who kept their positions saw their living expenses rise, as commuting between jobs in the cities and homes in the suburbs became more costly.
Inflation meant the cost of California’s robust public services was rising faster than the state could pay for it—either services would have to be cut, or taxes would have to rise. Few supported the latter, as rising taxes, alongside unemployment and expensive gasoline, were viewed as serious threats to the affordability of the California Dream. And while inflation
may have increased home values, it also increased property taxes. By 1975, widespread calls for property tax reform could be heard across the political spectrum. Conservatives felt that the growing property tax revenues supported welfare programs for the undeserving, while liberals worried that low-income homeowners would lose their houses to tax bills they couldn’t afford.
Voters began to choose sides in the ensuing fight over how to solve the state’s economic crisis, resulting in a polarization of left and right. Conservatives argued for smaller government and less taxes, even at the cost of undermining the upkeep of roads, schools, and other public services that had fueled the prosperity of the Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan years. Liberals, for their part, wanted to increase public spending to deal with the economic crisis, and to address the persistent poverty that Civil Rights activists had been working to solve for decades.
As governor, Jerry Brown moved quickly to deal with the state’s budget problems by seeking a middle ground between left and right. Brown claimed that California needed a new ethos for the troubled 1970s economy. “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” he said in early 1975. “This is an era of limits and we had all better get used to it.” Brown refused calls from the left to increase spending at universities, but also refused to placate the right by cutting taxes. He also curtailed spending by cutting back certain programs supported by liberals, including human services programs like welfare. These cuts both alienated some of his liberal supporters and failed to appease frustrated conservatives, who charged he wasn’t moving quickly enough to ease their tax burden.
Brown’s personal style reflected his austerity with the budget. He refused to live in the new multi-million-dollar governor’s mansion that was under construction when he took office, instead taking a simple apartment near the Capitol, where he was said to sleep on a mattress laid out on the floor. Instead of being driven to work in a limousine, he rode in a 1974 Plymouth
Satellite, a rather frumpy and forgettable sedan that symbolized Brown’s commitment to scaling back spending.
Responding to criticism from liberals about his fiscal conservatism, Brown told an audience in 1976, “It’s not because I’m a conservative, it’s because I’m cheap.” He later espoused what became known as the “canoe theory” of politics—that by paddling a little on the left and a little on the right, he could remain in the center and, therefore, popular.
Initially, his two-pronged approach of keeping taxes at existing levels while refusing to increase spending allowed the state to pile up a surplus, which by 1978 grew to $1 billion. This approach didn’t address the furor over rising property taxes, however, and rather than lauding Brown’s ability to save, many viewed the surplus as evidence that the state could afford a significant tax cut. Brown recognized the problem, declaring in 1977 that property tax relief was “number one on the agenda.” However, he was unable to get the legislature to agree on reform.
Despite widespread agreement that reform was needed, members of the legislature had diverging ideological priorities, making compromise difficult. Liberal Democrats preferred to pay for property tax relief by increasing the income tax on the rich and closing a capital gains tax loophole. Moderate Democrats preferred to use the budget surplus to pay for property tax relief, an approach the minority Republicans and Brown himself embraced. However, as the year went on, Republicans began to obstruct the process. Because 1978 was an election year, they believed that the legislature’s failure to provide property tax relief would give them a boost by making Democrats seem ineffectual, and could help them defeat Brown in his bid for reelection. Led by State Senate Majority Leader George Deukmejian (who succeeded Brown as governor in 1982), Republicans refused to vote for a property tax relief bill, and the 1977 legislative session ended without reform.
The failure of property tax reform revealed Brown’s inability to resolve intractable ideological divides, particularly when they involved a Republican minority who found political value in refusing to make a deal. In retrospect, 1977 was clearly a lost opportunity for Brown to head off what turned out to be an extremely destructive non-solution to the property tax problem—Proposition 13, a tax relief proposal right-wing activists put on the 1978 ballot while the legislature was floundering. Brown’s failure to muster enough popular support to break Republican resistance and castigate the party for its obstructionism would have major repercussions for the state.
“Born-again tax cutter”
Proposition 13 represented more than a property tax cut. Using the promise of rolling back property taxes to 1976 levels as a cover, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, the conservative activists who wrote the initiative, included provisions that made it virtually impossible for state government to ever raise taxes again. The measure required a two-thirds vote of the legislature or the voters to approve any tax increase. Property taxes were capped and only allowed to increase by one percent per year, no matter the increase in the property’s value or the rate of inflation. This ensured that local governments would lose nearly half their tax revenue if Proposition 13 passed. With the difficulty of meeting the two-thirds vote needed to find new revenue, school districts and cities would face significant layoffs.
Brown, along with most other California politicians from both parties, opposed Proposition 13. Yet Brown was unable to mobilize Californians against the new conservative anti-tax movement, a failure eerily reminiscent of his father’s inability to garner support against Reagan’s anti–Civil Rights movement. Although Brown warned voters of the crippling effects on local government if Proposition 13 passed, the billion-dollar surplus convinced Californians they could pass a large property tax cut without causing any lasting damage to the services they enjoyed. Brown had failed to deliver on his own solution to the property tax dilemma, and his unwillingness to support higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy meant that a progressive alternative to Proposition 13 was never offered. The measure passed by a landslide in June of 1978.
Jerry Brown’s response to the passage of Proposition 13 represented a major turning point in recent California history. The day after the election, Brown declared himself a “born-again tax cutter,” and pledged that he wouldn’t seek new taxes to replace the lost property tax revenues. Brown was facing what looked to be a tough re-election battle in November against Republican Attorney General Evelle Younger, and believed what was being called the “tax revolt” was a threat to a possible second term. Rather than fight it, Brown chose to embrace it. His strategy worked, with long-lasting effects—Brown cruised to an easy re-election victory, issuing in today’s era of mainstream Democrats believing they must oppose new taxes to win statewide office.2
Because he had taken taxes off the table, Brown needed another way to help avoid the collapse of local government. In 1979 he proposed using the surplus to backfill the lost revenue, and the Legislature approved his strategy. However, the surplus couldn’t maintain California’s high levels of public largesse. The deep recession that began in 1980 and lasted until 1983 forced major fee increases at UC and CSU campuses and led to a wave of cuts at public schools. State programs continued, though, albeit at reduced spending levels, and when the economy began to recover in the mid-1980s, the worst seemed to have passed.
Brown’s actions had centralized the funding of local government in Sacramento, and what began as a stopgap measure
became a permanent solution. Because local governments could no longer cover their costs with property-tax revenue as before, they became dependent on the state to fund local programs, from paving streets to operating schools. Over time, the legislature used this power of the purse to add more requirements on the operations of local government, often for legitimate purposes but to the increasing resentment of the cities and counties.
Relying on the state’s surplus also left fewer dollars available for other priorities. In the years following Jerry Brown’s governorship, Sacramento spent more and more to backfill lost local government revenue, causing higher education, public transit, and state health care services to suffer. Over time, the network of public services formerly enjoyed by Californians began to decay and disappear, while the state government lacked the ability to address the crisis as a result of strictures imposed by Proposition 13. By choosing to accommodate the tax revolt instead of undoing it, Brown had locked into place an unwieldy and flawed method of paying for vital state services. With a nearly impossible two-thirds vote of the legislature or the public required to raise taxes to fund those services, few politicians have been willing to seek new revenues for fear of failure and the stigma such a failure would bring. Memories of the “tax revolt” are also still fresh in the minds of many of today’s legislators, causing them to steer clear of any new taxes. Brown continues to share his fellow politicians’ phobia of taxation, pledging in his 2010 campaign kickoff announcement that he will not support new taxes unless the voters approve them.
A Third Term for Brown?
Jerry Brown is not an ideologue now, nor was he in the 1970s. He is, fundamentally, a pragmatist who believes that more can be done with less, and that such an approach will resonate with voters. For a time in the late 1970s, his frugal political approach worked just well enough to earn Brown a second term as governor. But it did not help boost Brown’s personal political ambitions, as he failed to defeat Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980 and lost a U.S. Senate race to Republican Pete Wilson in 1982. Brown’s pragmatism did not endear him to liberals, who preferred either Ted Kennedy or the incumbent President Carter in the 1980 primaries. Nor did it earn enough support from centrists to help him in 1982, when he earned fewer votes than the liberal Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley.
In 2010, Jerry Brown plans to bring many of the same values to the campaign for governor that he espoused when dealing with the state’s economic crisis of the 1970s. In campaign literature, he argues for the same brand of fiscal conservatism that guided him thirty years ago, and cites his reduction of both state employees and the tax rate during his previous stint as governor as past proof that he can make tough decisions when necessary. He continues to decry what he calls poisonous partisanship, while maintaining support for labor and the environment. It’s not clear, however, whether his canoe theory of government will serve him in today’s political climate.
Californians are increasingly split into two camps regarding their state government and how it should spend its money. The deep recession and major cuts to public services have convinced many Californians, particularly progressive activists and labor unions such as the California Federation of Teachers, that the state cannot survive without finding new revenue to fund core programs. On the other hand, conservatives, including the Tea Party activists, are demanding further tax and spending cuts. These views cannot be reconciled, and there is not much room for compromise.
This divide is clearly apparent in Sacramento. Brown has pledged to bring together Republicans and Democrats in the legislature, though this will likely prove even more difficult to accomplish today than it was during the fateful 1977 legislative session. Republican legislators stand determined to dramatically reduce the size of state government and eliminate many public programs, including state-provided health care. Democrats are not willing to acquiesce, but lack a two-thirds majority in either house, so Republicans can refuse budget deals unless conservative anti-tax demands are met. In order to deliver on his promises of reconciliation, Brown would need to find a way to deal with an obstructionist Republican Party without giving in to so many of their demands that he alienates fellow Democrats.
It also remains unclear whether he can count on a strong turnout on Election Day from his Democratic base. Brown’s natural inclination is to avoid embracing progressive policies and activists, yet it will be difficult for him to win the election without the strong support of liberals willing to volunteer for his campaign. Given Brown’s likely funding disadvantage, a strong ground campaign made up of committed volunteers will be an essential component to defeating a wealthy Republican opponent. It is even more difficult to see how he can govern without mobilizing around a coherent alternative to the conservatives’ vision for the state. Brown alienated many progressives while serving as mayor of Oakland from 1998 to 2006, often over development issues. He will need to offer some concrete policy pledges in order to convince activists on the left to donate to his campaign and knock on the doors of potential voters.
So far, Brown has avoided offering specifics on his policies, hoping instead to find electoral success in selling Californians on his personality and general approach to government. He is banking on a belief that his pragmatic populism, which helped him decades ago, will be enough to get him elected to a third term in 2010. At a time when California voters are deeply invested in ideological debates over how to solve major issues—including the state budget, immigration, and political reform—Brown’s refusal to be drawn into those discussions is likely to generate frustration from an electorate who wants to know where he stands. What California needs is a policy-oriented governor willing to offer specific legislative solutions and structural reforms, or a passionate one willing to fight for his party’s beliefs with a fury equal to his opposition’s. It is unclear whether Brown can provide either.
Notes:
- The embargo came in response to America’s support of Israel against a surprise attack from its Arab neighbors, an attack that touched off the Yom Kippur War.
- This belief hasn’t produced great results for the party. Since Brown’s reelection, only one Democrat has won the governor’s office twice, and that was the ultimately recalled Gray Davis.