Brown Happens - Even from Moonbeams

I remember two things that reflected poorly on Moonbeam when he was governor the first time. The first was his self-righteous attitude in how he wouldn't live in the new Governor's Mansion, so he "symbolically"lived in a small apartment, feigning his priest-like poverty style in Sacramento and he slept on a mattress, hippie-like. Of course he didn't mention he spent much of his time living it up in Hollywood, enjoying the meals at Lucy's El Adobe while Linda Ronstadt chased him on roller skates.
The second was his hard opposition to property tax relief through the Howard Jarvis' Ballot Initiative.Prop. 13. Then after it passed overwhelmingly, the next day he just bald faced lied and said he always supported it. What a putz. m/r

Brown Happens by Lloyd Billingsley - City Journal

A new biography overlooks key episodes in the California governor’s career.

23 May 2013

California governor Jerry Brown has been in the public eye for more than four decades, shifting with the tides of public opinion, beguiling his friends and outsmarting his foes at almost every turn. For many Americans, he’ll always be “Moonbeam.” But there is far more to Brown’s story than an old Mike Royko nickname. Trailblazer: A Biography of Jerry Brown, by longtime Associated Press writer Chuck McFadden, serves as an entertaining primer—even if the author ignores important aspects of the governor’s career.

Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, Jr. grew up in a five-bedroom house in the comfortable Forest Hills section of San Francisco, where he attended the best schools. The man who would one day refuse to live in the governor’s mansion went on to buy a house with a swimming pool in upscale Laurel Canyon and, years later, a $1.8 million “live-work loft” in Oakland. Brown’s Jesuit training, writes McFadden, “instilled in him a certain amount of intellectual arrogance, a liking for austerity, and a sense of righteousness that has manifested itself throughout his political career.” His father, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, became governor when Jerry was still a student, and the son made the most of it. Even before passing the bar, Brown “breezed into a clerkship” for a state supreme court judge.

Brown “internalized his father’s ferocious ambition” and tapped his extensive political network for campaign funding. Houston Flournoy, his Republican opponent in his first race for governor in 1974, told him, “If your name was Jerry Green you wouldn’t be here today.” McFadden credits the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga, which began that year, for “lessening coverage of the campaign and helping Brown with his built-in advantage of name recognition.” He beat Flournoy by 2.9 percentage points and got to work on collective bargaining for farmworkers and state employees.

California homeowners fared poorly during Brown’s first term.

-got o the rest of the review at the link-