California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown

3. The Chairs of Politics

39 3 THECHAIRSOFPOLITICS ONABLEAKSATURDAY in early January 1944, San Francisco’s new district attorney took the oath of office. For Brown, it was a grand day. At thirty-eight he had achieved in every way the respectability that had graced his father only fleetingly if at all. He lived in a nice house in a good neighborhood. He had a good marriage and three children. His law degree gave him public stature as well as marketable skills. Most of all, he was newly elected to one of the most important jobs in his hometown. Popular and dynamic, he was a man on the rise. Standing in the cavernous rotunda of City Hall for the swearing-in ceremony, he even looked natty, a gaily patterned necktie and a perfect triangle of white handkerchief setting off a double-breasted suit.1 In the speech that followed his swearing in, he promised a renewed sense of vigor among the city’s prosecutors. The district attorney could, he said, enjoy a tenure of “pleasant leisure” overseeing an agency “complacent or conveniently blind in the execution of its sworn duty.” These were obvious references to the defeated Brady, and Brown promised there would be no such sloth among his men. The new district attorney’s office would “move vigorously” to “seek the full penalty of the law against deliberate, malicious and unrepentant offenders.” The new era started with a change in personnel. Brown decided he would replace almost the entire staff of the district attorney’s office, retaining only four people from Brady’s operation. Already a good politician who knew 40 RISING how to gain the most profitable attention, he dribbled out the news of his appointments, earning several stories in the papers for what might otherwise have been a single day’s news. His first appointment was a Republican, Bert Levit, who was named chief deputy. Levit’s appointment set a pattern that would continue throughout Brown’s career. Both in this job and in those that followed, Levit functioned as a catalyst, stepping into government briefly whenever Brown assumed a new office, reshuffling personnel and procedures, then returning a few months later to private law practice. Energetic and bright— although more conservative politically than many of Brown’s followers— Levit added a dose of hustle to any new staff Brown was organizing. He was, Brown once said, a “real goer.”2 A week later Brown set another pattern, including among five new deputies a local San Francisco lawyer named William Jack Chow, whom Brown touted as the first deputy district attorney of Chinese descent anywhere in the country. It was the first of many such groundbreaking appointments for Brown, although in talking to the papers he insisted he was not catering to interest-group politics. “My selection of Chow is in no sense a recognition of the Chinese of San Francisco, because my office represents no particular class or group,” he told reporters. “It is our duty to function on behalf of all the people, but I am sure that a deputy with an Oriental background will prove of great value because of his specialized experience.”3 But in the long run the most significant of Brown’s early appointments was Thomas Connor Lynch, a tall, lanky federal prosecutor with a nononsense bearing. The son of an immigrant Irishman, Lynch had been orphaned as a child, gone to sea, then, like Brown, worked his way through law school without an undergraduate degree. They had known each other for years. Lynch was among the young lawyers who had gone along on the hiking and girl-hunting trips to Yosemite back when Brown was attending law school. For a decade, Lynch had been a deputy U.S. attorney in San Francisco, but now Brown prevailed on his old friend to move to the district attorney’s office. Six months later, when Levit jumped back to private practice, Lynch was made the chief deputy. His personality complemented Brown’s—he was less affable, more intellectual—and in time he would become one of Brown’s closest and most important confidants, handling delicate political matters or helping out when crisis struck the governor’s of- fice. Other hiring decisions were less noble. Given money to hire three investigators , Brown used two of the slots for unqualified cronies. One was a THECHAIRSOFPOLITICS 41 chauffer with good political connections, the other...