Jerry Brown wraps a 5-decade history in California politics
SACRAMENTO - It was a matter of life and death in 2015 when California Gov. Jerry Brown pondered an assisted suicide bill granting terminally ill people the right to choose when they die.
After much speculation, Brown signed the measure, a victory for “death with dignity” advocates and a blow to the Catholic Church, which vigorously opposed it. Brown, who once considered becoming a priest, added to his signature a five-paragraph statement outlining how he made his decision: He sought contradicting perspectives from the church, families of the terminally ill, his friends and doctors. And he pondered his own existence.
“I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill,” Brown wrote. “And I wouldn’t deny that right to others.”
Brown, who leaves office Jan. 7, has signed thousands of bills, but this one stands out to Dana Williamson, Brown’s cabinet secretary at the time.
“His ability to articulate his deliberations and why he landed the way he did - to me that’s quintessential Jerry Brown,” she said.
Brown has honed that decision-making style over five decades in public life, including a record 16 years as California’s governor, first from 1975 to 1983 and again since 2011.
He used the spotlight that comes with governing the nation’s largest state to mount three unsuccessful bids for president and urge swifter action on climate change - something he’ll continue when he leaves office - and he’s credited with pulling California out of a financial sinkhole that had observers deeming the state ungovernable when he returned to Sacramento in 2011.
The son of Gov. Pat Brown, Jerry Brown became governor at 36 and built a reputation as an idealist who eschewed traditional trappings of wealth and power. During his first term, he earned the condescending nickname “Gov. Moonbeam” after proposing a state communications satellite.
Now 80, he’s still an idealist but one who during the last eight years championed fiscal moderation, a position that sometimes put him at odds with fellow Democrats who wanted more social program spending. Yet Brown’s popularity surged as he took the state from a deep budget deficit when he entered office to a surplus and $14.5 billion socked away in a rainy day fund.
He never gave up on the satellite idea. Last fall, at the end of a global conference on climate change that he organized, he announced California would launch its “own damn satellite” to track pollutants.
“Jerry is an original and always has been,” said his sister Kathleen Brown, the former state treasurer who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1994.
Jerry Brown was 20 when his father was elected to the first of two terms in 1958. Politics wasn’t his plan - he chose to attend a Jesuit seminary. There he learned the Latin motto: “Age quod agis,” or “Do what you are doing.” He chafes when asked to reflect on his accomplishments or legacy.
“Taking pride is not something that I have been trained to pursue,” Brown said recently at a Sacramento Press Club appearance.
But the priesthood ultimately wasn’t for Brown; he instead got a law degree at Yale and a job at a Los Angeles firm before embarking on his political career by winning a spot on a community college district board of trustees.
Brown leaves the governorship with an unmatchable history in California politics. He was elected secretary of state in 1971 on a platform of transparency and reform, and then governor in 1974. Two years later, Brown was running for president. He lost, but his star continued to rise, powered in part by his relationship with popular singer Linda Ronstadt. The two appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine under the headline “The Pop Politics of Jerry Brown.”
Brown again ran unsuccessfully for president in 1980, with a slogan that reflected the same sensitivities he has today: “Protect the Earth, serve the people, explore the universe.”
After losing a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1982, he traveled abroad, re-entering politics as California Democratic Party chairman and, in 1992, seeking the presidency for a third time and losing to Bill Clinton. He returned to elected office six years later as Oakland mayor then became state attorney general. In 2011, he won the governorship, and his political comeback was complete.
He prefers the second two terms to the first.
“I was more experienced, the people who work with me were more skilled, I had a wonderful wife who was my partner and companion in all this,” he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. Brown’s wife, Anne Gust Brown, is a former Gap executive who friends and advisers say helps Brown execute his ambitious ideas.
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