Jerry Brown, the “Whore” Remark, and Campaign Theater

As you may or may not have heard by now, a voice mail recording was released Thursday afternoon by the Los Angeles Times, which allows us to eavesdrop on what was intended to be a private conversation between Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown, and what one assumes is a room full of campaign staffers.

(For the audio, click here.)

The recording was made by accident after Brown tried to phone Scott Rate, an official of the LAPPL, the Los Angeles police union, to talk about endorsements. Brown did not reach Rate–who is in charge of the union’s political endorsements—so left a message. Then, believing he’d hung up the receiver, Brown went on talking to staffers. And Rate’s voice mail kept on recording—meaning a not-intended-for-prime-time conversation between Brown and a cluster of staff members was preserved for posterity.

The conversation in question was about the fact that it had just been reported that Brown’s opponent, Meg Whitman, had received the endorsement of another law enforcement union, the California Statewide Law Enforcement Assn. almost solely because she had guaranteed that, if she of was elected—law enforcement agencies and firefighters would be exempt from any pension reforms—budget crisis or no budget crisis. Brown, who wanted the LAPPL’s endorsement but, by then, was figuring he wasn’t going to get it, opined that they too would go with Whitman because she had been willing to guarantee some kind of quid pro quo arrangement, whereas he was not.

At some point in the multi-voice conversation that followed ––and which the voice mail dutifully recorded—a staffer (or an associate, or someone in the room, but we presume some kind of young-ish sounding campaign staffer)—called Whitman a “whore,” for her guarantee not to take any whacks at the cops’ pensions, despite the fact that pension reform was one of her biggest campaign planks.

Here’s a clip from the LA Times article that has thus far resulted:

The comment came after Brown called the Los Angeles Police Protective League in early September to ask for its endorsement. He left a voicemail message for Scott Rate, a union official. Brown apparently believed he had hung up the phone, but the connection remained intact and the voice mail machine captured an ensuing conversation between Brown and his aides.

With evident frustration, Brown discussed the pressure he was under to refuse to reduce public safety pensions or lose law enforcement endorsements to Whitman. Months earlier, Whitman had agreed to exempt public safety officials from key parts of her pension reform plan.

But here’s the interesting part.

“Do we want to put an ad out? … That I have been warned if I crack down on pensions, I will be – that they’ll go to Whitman, and that’s where they’ll go because they know Whitman will give ‘em, will cut them a deal, but I won’t,” Brown said.

At that point, what appears to be a second voice interjects: “What about saying she’s a whore?”

Okay, but here’s the interesting part:

The recording was made…. when would you guess? Thursday? Monday? Last week?

No, it was made in early September—just a day or two before the LAPPL endorsed Whitman. (The union issued their endorsement on September 16.)

Yet, although they’ve had the thing for over a month, it was just on Thursday that the LAPPL suddenly felt honor-bound to fork over the recording to the Times. (Freedom of information! Gotta do one’s civic duty, doncha know!)

In truth, the recording isn’t terribly important. Listen to it and you’ll find a nice little piece of theater, a small but genuine peek into a single moment of a high stakes political campaign. Aside from the comment in question (which is not exactly fall-on-the-floor shocking in nature), the overlapping dialogue, in which candidate and staffers, overrun each others’ sentences in a hyperventilated interweave, is like something that Robert Altman might have written, were he alive and scripting a film about this race.

No, what is important in all this is the timing of the release. It is difficult to find another explanation for the union’s sudden compulsion to get the recording off its collective chest that does not relate to an attempt at politically-timed mud-lobbing for their candidate of choice.

After watching Whitman continue to reel from the Allred/Nicky narrative, did the LAPL hope to create a counter-narrative of their own?

Well, maybe, maybe not. Perhaps in the past couple of rainy days the union folks were just using the down time to clean out their closets when—Sacre bleu!—what did they find?! A bootleg recording! Whoaa! Cool!

Yep, maybe that’s it.

Happy Friday.

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NOTE: As I was getting ready to post, the Brown campaign has apologized for any offense their “salty” language might have caused Ms. Whitman.

And Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei has expressed her shock, SHOCK, I tell you! at the incident to the LA Times. To wit: “The use of the term ‘whore’ is an insult to both Meg Whitman and to the women of California. This is an appalling and unforgivable smear against Meg Whitman. At the very least Mr. Brown tacitly approved this despicable slur and he himself may have used the term at least once on this recording.”