Jerry Brown and Me: A Progressive's Lament

OAKLAND, California -- Jerry Brown has been part of the political landscape in my home state longer than I've been alive; by the time I was born, in 1985, he had already served two terms as governor, made two unsuccessful bids for the presidency, and one for the U.S. Senate. While I was growing up, he was California's state Democratic Party chairman, served two terms as the mayor of Oakland, where I live, and was elected attorney general, a position he still holds.

So when Brown, who's 72, announced earlier this month that he is running for the 2010 Democratic nomination to get his old job as governor back, the collective response inside the state and beyond seemed to be, "Yeah...and?"

Still, I wanted to be fair to Brown, and give him a chance as a candidate. After all, I hadn't followed politics avidly until after high school, and to review his entire career, there was a lot of territory to cover. As the LA Times' Michael Rothfeld put it, "For Brown, a Democrat who has spent almost his entire adulthood in public life, 40 years of quotes, speeches, televised interviews and debates are both a blessing and a curse as he seeks to recapture the job he first held in 1975."

With no shortage of material, I did what every Californian who plans on voting this fall should do: my homework. I read about Brown's policies and positions throughout the years.

Perhaps the most personally troublesome political relic of Brown's past to emerge from my self-assigned study project was his association with the infamous Prop 13, one of the most intractable issues in California to this day. Prop 13, which was passed when he was governor in 1978, was a referendum that capped local property taxes at one percent and instituted a requirement of a two-thirds legislative majority to raise statewide taxes. Brown was vehemently opposed to the measure, but when voters with 65 percent of the vote approved it, he quickly announced, "We have our marching orders from the people," and was soon labeling himself a "born-again tax cutter."

(The referendum was written by the anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis, who was so pleased with Brown's political turn-about that he ran TV ad's endorsing Brown's re-election bid. Brown even took on the nickname "Jerry Jarvis" for his eagerness to implement Prop 13, and an L.A. Times poll found that most Californian's believed Brown had always supported the measure.)

It is adroit calculations such as this that has ensured and maintained Brown's political relevancy. As George Skelton of the LA Times put it, "Brown is a political Darwinist with an acute ability to adapt and survive."

Perhaps in another economic climate, in another era, in some alternate reality, Brown's candidacy as the lone Democrat on the ticket would thus be enough. But with the daunting -- and potentially even catastrophic -- challenges facing our state, I see him as a completely uninspiring and unexciting career politician who owes his political longevity mostly to his instinct for self-preservation.

As a progressive, I wanted to maintain a sense of optimism about this coming November. I don't know that there's a state where residents have more reason to be distrusting and disappointed in their current government than we in Californian. Many of my peers and I believed that if there were ever a time when Californians would be open to fundamental, structural change within Sacramento, it would be now. After all, California is facing not only an economic crisis but also a crisis of confidence, and real change -- repealing Prop 13 would be a great start -- is clearly required.

But Brown has made it just as clear that he is not interested in running on a platform dedicated to such change. In the video he used to announce his candidacy, he pledged to raise no taxes unless such a change was voter-approved. He told SF Gate that he "can live with the current two-thirds majority needed to pass new taxes and state budgets, and that he does not believe changes are needed in the Proposition 13 tax initiative." He told the L.A. Times " "I'm not going to advocate messing with 13. That's a big fat loser." "

That Brown recognizes what is and is not politically popular, and runs his campaign based on the former, is not surprising. One silver lining in the race for governor is that because the stakes are so enormous for California, this is entirely an issues-based election. But because Brown is running unopposed by any other Democrat, there is no one (but the voters) to call him out on tough issues.

I won't be staying home in November, and continue to hope Brown somehow rises to the occasion and recognizes that this election is his chance to break with his political chameleon past. But from everything I've seen so far, Jerry Brown is just not that guy.