California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown

16. Tired Old Governor

341 16 TIREDOLDGOVERNOR ONLY DAYS BEFORE WATTS EXPLODED, Pat Brown summoned his top lieutenants to a little-noticed meeting at the Governor’s Mansion. It was a powerful and well-connected group. Perhaps closest to the governor was Tom Lynch, his old friend and confidant from youthful romps at Yosemite, later his deputy in the district attorney’s office, now the attorney general of the state of California . Among others, there was also Hale Champion, Brown’s top aide as governor; Don Bradley, the architect of the victory over Richard Nixon; Gene Wyman, a Los Angeles lawyer with a Midas touch at fund-raising; Alan Cranston, the politically ambitious state controller and a favorite of the left; and Warren Christopher, the brilliant and self-disciplined jack-ofall -trades helper to the administration. They were some of the men who had helped Brown through his first two terms as governor. Now they hoped to devise a strategy for winning a third.1 That he intended to run again was a foregone conclusion. Like all performers , politicians fear the day the cheering stops, and Brown was no exception . Being governor, he said once, was “like being married to a beautiful shrew.” It could be unpleasant during the day—“You take all the shit,” is the way he phrased it—“but then you go out at night and everybody just stands up and looks at what you’ve got on your arm and thinks you’re the greatest guy in the world. And you feel as if you are.”2 He could not be forced to relinquish such adulation, for California had 342 FALLING no limit on the service of its chief executives. Earl Warren had been elected three times, a record Brown yearned to equal, and in any event another turn as governor would keep his career alive. Reelected, he might someday be appointed attorney general of the United States or a Supreme Court justice. If the stars aligned just right, perhaps he could even run for president. So almost from the day he came up the loser in the competition to be Lyndon Johnson’s running mate, Brown turned his attention toward a third term. Denied promotion to a national job, he would seek to keep his state one. Two days after Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, the president and Brown talked on the phone, and the governor mentioned nonchalantly that he would run again.3 The serious planning did not start, however, until the hot August Monday when Brown met with Lynch and the others. Optimism prevailed in one sense. Less than a year had passed since Johnson routed Goldwater by portraying the Republican as a dangerous extremist, and the strategy now seemed as replicable for Brown as it had been effective for Johnson. California was home to some of the most conservative Republicans in the country —the crusading editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press had won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the local strength of the John Birch Society— and thus the state offered tempting targets for Democratic moderates warning of right-wing kooks. But worries abounded too. Debating fundamental strategy, the Brown team differed as to whether, after eight years in office, the governor should run on his record or offer a new agenda, should boast of what he had done or what he would do. No resolution could be reached. They were deeply concerned about the feud between Brown and his fellow Democrat, assembly speaker Jess Unruh, although ultimately other Democratic rifts would prove more debilitating in the months to come. There was even a sense around the table that Brown needed to shore up support among poor, urban white voters, which was worrisome simply because it was a group that should already have been firmly in the governor’s grasp.4 By chance, another meeting in Sacramento that day offered a different kind of insight into the upcoming governor’s race. At the Hotel El Dorado a thousand people packed the ballroom, and hundreds more were turned away. They were there to hear a talk about politics, but the speaker had never held office, never even run for anything. Ronald Reagan, an aging actor transformed into a conservative star by a famous speech for Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign, was on a statewide tour to gauge the public mood and see if he should seek the governorship the following year. [18.220.154.41] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 05:19 GMT...