Pulitzer-winning writer Ed Humes calls Jerry Brown California’s most original political figure. Humes does so in his profile of Jerry in the latest California Lawyer Magazine.
And, yeah, Humes is pretty much right. (Well, can you name somebody else who could win that medal instead? Right. Neither can I.)
Here are fragments from the piece to give you the flavor. But just read it.
You’d think no politician would want to be depicted as two-faced, but that cover belonged to Thoughts, the slim volume that Brown himself authored. Janus, the ancient Roman god of gates, doors, and doorways, fits Brown’s image of himself as both a keeper of tradition and an agent of change who is able to transcend the apparent contradiction. “Tell me what’s the contradiction? I don’t see any,” he says. “My job is to be an agent, an actor in history, to create openings … in a calcified political system. To make things happen. To me, that’s being consistent.”
[SNIP]
His résumé includes two terms as governor (starting at age 36), three runs for the White House, one for the U.S. Senate, and two terms as mayor of Oakland before winning the office he now holds.
“He lives to run,” says Republican consultant Kevin Spillane, who in the 2006 attorney general race ran the opposition research against Brown, to no avail. Brown won that election by 18 percentage points. “His history is very clear,” Spillane adds. “He says what he has to say to get elected, then he loses interest and immediately takes aim at the next office.”
Now, as Spillane and so many others predicted, the oldest first-term attorney general in California history is laying the groundwork for yet another possible campaign: It seems he wants to be governor. Again.
At this point, as Hume rightly points out, the 2010 governor’s race is Brown’s to lose.
He won the 2006 election [for Attorney General] with the greatest margin of victory of any opposed candidate for statewide office. And as one measure of how times have changed, Brown now actually goes out of his way to remind people of his old “Governor Moonbeam” nickname, coined by Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko.
“I worked hard for that ‘Moonbeam,’ ” he declared in March at the state Democratic Convention, where he was greeted like a rock star. “I don’t do too much these days except sue people,” he added. “But someday maybe I’ll get around to doing a little more than that. And maybe you’ll help.”
Anyway, there’s lots more right here.
(Official state portrait of then Governor Jerry Brown by Don Barchardy)