Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected secretary of state of California in 1970; Brown later served as mayor of Oakland from 1999 to 2007 and attorney general of California from 2007 to 2011. He was both the oldest and sixth-youngest governor of California due to the 28-year gap between his second and third terms. Upon completing his fourth term in office, Brown became the fourth-longest-serving governor in U.S. history, serving 16 years and 5 days in office.
Born in San Francisco, he is the son of Bernice Layne Brown and Pat Brown, who was the 32nd governor of California. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley and Yale Law School, he practiced law and began his political career as a member of the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees. He was elected to serve as the 23rd secretary of state of California from 1971 to 1975. At 36, Brown was elected to his first term as governor in 1974, making him the youngest California governor in 111 years. In 1978, he won his second term. During his governorship, Brown ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 and 1980. He declined to pursue a third term as governor in 1982, instead making an unsuccessful run for the United States Senate that same year, losing to San Diego mayor and future governor Pete Wilson.
After traveling abroad, Brown returned to California and served as the sixth Chairman of the California Democratic Party, attempting to run for U.S. president once more in 1992 but losing the Democratic primary to Bill Clinton. He then moved to Oakland, where he hosted a talk radio show; Brown soon returned to public life, serving as mayor of Oakland and attorney general of California. He ran for his third and fourth terms as governor in 2010 and 2014, his eligibility to do so having stemmed from California's constitutional grandfather clause. On October 7, 2013, he became the longest-serving governor in the history of California, surpassing Earl Warren.
Early life, education, and private career
Brown was born in San Francisco, California, the only son of four children born to district attorney of San Francisco and later governor of California, Edmund Gerald "Pat" Brown Sr., and his wife, Bernice Layne. Brown's father was of half-Irish and half-German descent. His great-grandfather August Schuckman, a German immigrant, settled in California in 1852 during the California Gold Rush.Brown was a member of the California Cadet Corps at St. Ignatius High School, where he graduated in 1955. In 1955, Brown entered Santa Clara University for a year and left to attend Sacred Heart Novitiate, a Jesuit novice house in Los Gatos, intent on becoming a Catholic priest. Brown resided at the novitiate from August 1956 to January 1960 before enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in classics in 1961. With his tuition paid for by the Louis Lurie Foundation, including a $675 scholarship in 1963, Brown went on to Yale Law School and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1964. After law school, Brown worked as a law clerk for California Supreme Court justice Mathew Tobriner.
An opponent of the death penalty, 1960 Brown lobbied his father to spare the life of Caryl Chessman and reportedly won a 60-day stay for him.
Returning to California, Brown took the state bar exam and passed on his second attempt. He then settled in Los Angeles and joined the law firm of Tuttle & Taylor. In 1969, Brown ran for the newly created Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees, which oversaw community colleges in the city; he placed first in a field of 124 and served until 1971.
California secretary of state (1971–1975)
In 1970, Brown was elected California secretary of state. Brown argued before the California Supreme Court and won cases against Standard Oil of California, International Telephone and Telegraph, Gulf Oil, and Mobil for election law violations. In addition, he forced legislators to comply with campaign disclosure laws. Brown also drafted and helped to pass the California Political Reform Act of 1974, Proposition 9, passed by 70% of California's voters in June 1974. Among other provisions, it established the California Fair Political Practices Commission.34th governor of California (1975–1983)
First term
In 1974, Brown ran in a highly contested Democratic primary for Governor of California against speaker of the California Assembly Bob Moretti, San Francisco mayor Joseph L. Alioto, Representative Jerome R. Waldie, and others. Brown won the primary with the name recognition of his father, Pat Brown, whom many people admired for his progressive administration. In the General Election on November 5, 1974, Brown was elected Governor of California over California state controller Houston I. Flournoy; Republicans ascribed the loss to anti-Republican feelings from Watergate, the election being held only ninety days after President Richard Nixon resigned from office. Brown succeeded Republican governor Ronald Reagan, who retired after two terms.After taking office, Brown gained a reputation as a fiscal conservative. The American Conservative later noted he was "much more of a fiscal conservative than Governor Reagan". His fiscal restraint resulted in one of the biggest budget surpluses in state history, roughly $5 billion. For his personal life, Brown refused many of the privileges and perks of the office, forgoing the newly constructed 20,000 square-foot governor's residence in the suburb of Carmichael and instead renting a $275-per-month apartment at 1228 N Street, adjacent to Capitol Park in downtown Sacramento. Rather than riding as a passenger in a chauffeured limousine as previous governors had done, Brown walked to work and drove in a Plymouth Satellite sedan. When Gray Davis, who was chief of staff to Governor Brown, suggested that a hole in the rug in the governor's office be fixed, Brown responded: "That hole will save the state at least $500 million, because legislators cannot come down and pound on my desk demanding lots of money for their pet programs while looking at a hole in my rug!"
As governor, Brown took a strong interest in environmental issues. He appointed J. Baldwin to work in the newly created California Office of Appropriate Technology, Sim Van der Ryn as State Architect, Stewart Brand as Special Advisor, John Bryson as chairman of the California State Water Board. Brown also reorganized the California Arts Council, boosting its funding by 1300 percent and appointing artists to the council, and appointed more women and minorities to office than any other previous California governor. In 1977, he sponsored the "first-ever tax incentive for rooftop solar", among many environmental initiatives. In 1975, Brown obtained the repeal of the "depletion allowance", a tax break for the state's oil industry, despite the efforts of lobbyist Joseph C. Shell, a former intraparty rival to Nixon.
In 1975, Brown opposed Vietnamese immigration to California, saying that the state had enough poor people. He added, "There is something a little strange about saying 'Let's bring in 500,000 more people' when we can't take care of the 1 million out of work."
Brown strongly opposed the death penalty and vetoed it as governor, which the legislature overrode in 1977. He also appointed judges who opposed capital punishment. One of these appointments, Rose Bird as the chief justice of the California Supreme Court, was voted out in 1987 after a strong campaign financed by business interests upset by her "pro-labor" and "pro-free speech" rulings. The death penalty was only "a trumped-up excuse" to use against her, even though the Bird Court consistently upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Brown was both in favor of a Balanced Budget Amendment and initially opposed to Proposition 13, the latter of which would decrease property taxes and greatly reduce revenue to cities and counties. After Prop 13 passed in June 1978, he changed course and declared himself a "born-again tax cutter." He heavily cut state spending, and along with the Legislature, spent much of the $5 billion surplus to meet the proposition's requirements and help offset the revenue losses which made cities, counties, and schools more dependent on the state. His actions in response to the proposition earned him praise from Proposition 13 author Howard Jarvis who went as far as to make a television commercial for Brown just before his successful re-election bid in 1978. The controversial proposition immediately cut tax revenues and required a two-thirds supermajority to raise taxes. Max Neiman, a professor at the Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California, Berkeley, credited Brown for "bailing out local government and school districts", but felt it was harmful "because it made it easier for people to believe that Proposition 13 wasn't harmful". In an interview in 2014, Brown indicated that a "war chest" would have helped his campaign for an alternative to Proposition 13.
During his first term, Brown also signed into law various measures improving labor rights and social security. Amongst others, these included collective bargaining for school employees and teachers, the extension of unemployment benefits to farmworkers, prohibiting the employment of professional strikebreakers in labor disputes, and improved rights for farm labor.
1976 presidential election
Brown began his first campaign for the Democratic nomination for president on March 16, 1976, late in the primary season and over a year after some candidates had started campaigning. Brown declared: "The country is rich, but not so rich as we have been led to believe. The choice to do one thing may preclude another. In short, we are entering an era of limits."File:CarterandHumphrey.jpg|thumb|left|Brown looks on as Jimmy Carter and Hubert Humphrey celebrate on the last day of the 1976 DNC
Brown's name began appearing on primary ballots in May and he won in Maryland, Nevada, and his home state of California. He missed the deadline in Oregon, but he ran as a write-in candidate and finished in third behind Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and Senator Frank Church of Idaho. Brown is often credited with winning the New Jersey and Rhode Island primaries, but in reality, uncommitted slates of delegates that Brown advocated in those states finished first. With support from Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, Brown won a majority of delegates at the Louisiana delegate selection convention; thus, Louisiana was the only southern state to not support Southerners Carter or Alabama governor George Wallace. Despite this success, he was unable to stall Carter's momentum, and his rival was nominated on the first ballot at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Brown finished third with roughly 300 delegate votes, narrowly behind Congressman Morris Udall but significantly behind Carter.