The Browns of California

by Miriam Pawel

  Like his father, he declined to move to Sacramento, commuting when necessary and working primarily from the Bay Area. The Browns remained in Oakland, though they moved out of the loft into a glass-and-wood-filled home in the Oakland Hills. The Skyline House, inspired by Japanese design, embodied qualities they both prized: beauty, serenity, and privacy.

  Only the garage was visible from the road; secluded between city-owned tree-filled lots, the house spilled down the hillside in five levels, with unobstructed views of San Francisco Bay. The builder, Sallie Lang, had apprenticed under a Zen priest turned builder whose Oakland company had spent seven years constructing an elaborate compound for Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Lang incorporated design elements and techniques she learned from that experience. With shoji sliding doors, local elm slabs over the mantelpiece, and handmade iridescent tiles on the bathroom floor, Lang combined Japanese warmth and detail with American sturdiness.

  Anne saw the house online and insisted they take a look, despite Jerry’s skepticism about moving out of the loft. “My husband fell in love with it as soon as he walked down the steps into the ‘great room’ with its panoramic view8 of the bay,” she said.

  What both father and son liked about the attorney general job was its independence and breadth. The general did not have to negotiate with a legislature. He had room to creatively defend or interpret California laws and initiate litigation on behalf of the state’s residents. Because of California’s size, cases often set precedent and affected other states. In his first email to the staff, Jerry singled out the priority with which he would become closely identified: “to implement—in a practical and effective way—California’s global warming legislation.”9 Soon after he took office, Jerry had a new partner. Governor Schwarzenegger tapped Mary Nichols to head the Air Resources Board, the same post she had held under Jerry Brown in the 1970s. When Nichols arrived in Sacramento to start work, one of the first calls came from her former boss. The state’s top lawyer wanted to come talk about strategies to combat climate change.

  After a rocky start, Schwarzenegger turned to Sacramento veterans like Nichols, mainly Democrats, to further his agenda. The whirlwind nature of the recall had meant he took office with little preparation, facing the same crises that had helped drive his predecessor out of office. The internationally famous Terminator lived up to his Hollywood persona: he installed a cigar tent outside the governor’s office, called Democratic legislators “girlie men,” and vowed to “blow up the boxes.” Yet the Californian whose philosophy the Austrian immigrant governor took to heart was Kevin Starr, the erudite, bow-tie-clad historian who served as state librarian.

  In a Los Angeles Times op-ed that ran after the recall, Starr urged a return to the “Party of California,” arguing the greatest California governors had transcended partisan politics. “The core principle of the Party of California10 is that the state—its history and heritage, its environment, its economy and, above all, the well-being of its people—is worth imagining, worth struggling for; California represents a collective ideal connected to individual and social fulfillment,” Starr wrote. “Everyone belongs to the Party of California. Everyone is welcome.” Schwarzenegger circulated the essay among his senior staff as a road map for the administration.

  In many areas, such consensus proved elusive. Schwarzenegger was stymied on fiscal issues by Democrats, who controlled the legislature, and out of sync on social issues with an increasingly conservative Republican Party. Budgets, which required a two-thirds vote and thus needed bipartisan support, degenerated into bitter fights, and the governor failed to address structural problems that plagued the state’s finances and drove boom-and-bust spending. He called a special election in November 2005 and placed four initiatives on the ballot—to impose certain spending caps, amend teacher tenure, restrict the use of union dues for political campaigns, and create a redistricting commission. He spent $8 million of his own money and lost all four. The election set a new record for spending on ballot initiatives, more than $313 million.

  By contrast, the environment proved an area of common ground where California again forged national policy. Three months after former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth set box office records, the California legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, championed by Democrat leaders and Schwarzenegger. California became the first state to enact a long-range plan to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases, so named because their release traps heat from the sun to create a greenhouselike effect that hastens a dangerous rise in temperatures. The law directed the Air Resources Board to enact a plan that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020, about 15 percent less than would otherwise be expected. The goal was to wean the state from coal and oil in favor of nonpolluting, sustainable energy sources.

  The plan adopted by the board strengthened the 1970s-era car emission standards, provided incentives for electric vehicles, and required the state to generate one third of its power from cleaner fuels by 2020. The mechanism at the heart of the program was “cap and trade,” which placed limits, or caps, on overall emissions, required businesses to obtain permits for carbon emissions, and set up a market for companies to buy and trade permits. The market built in financial incentives to reduce emissions, gave businesses flexibility, and generated revenue that the state could apply to other projects to combat global warming. Cap and trade would become a model for other states and countries.

  Jerry called global warming “the biggest problem facing the state … a totally unique threat11 because it’s somewhat subtle, and it’s building up year by year.” The attorney general defended the law against several challenges and teamed up with the governor on other environmental initiatives. They sued the Bush administration when federal officials stalled in granting California a waiver so the state could require stricter emission standards for cars.

  “This lawsuit today is not about politics; it’s about science, it’s about human welfare and it’s about innovation,” Jerry said. He pointed to previous waivers the state had been granted, going all the way back to President Reagan’s administration. The waiver was eventually granted by the Obama administration, and the standards took effect for 2009 model cars. California again forced automakers to produce more environmentally friendly cars for the entire country.

  The Schwarzenegger administration initiated several significant policies that would over time change how the state dealt with juvenile offenders, water management, and political boundaries. But the governor’s accomplishments were largely overshadowed by his ongoing failure to deal with mounting budget crises. In part, the failure stemmed from inexperience, in part from the convoluted, patchwork nature of California government, and in part from the recession that began soon after Schwarzenegger began his first full term in January 2007. As with the downturn in the early 1990s, the Great Recession after the financial crisis hit California harder than the rest of the country and lasted long past its official June 2009 end. The recession affected every facet of life in the Golden State, causing record unemployment, a collapsed housing market, and multi-billion-dollar budget shortfalls. Because a spectacular real estate boom had preceded the crash, the impact was particularly severe in construction and related industries, including financial services. California lost 1.37 million jobs, a drop of 9 percent. In parts of the state, entire subdivisions were abandoned as families could not pay the mortgages that never should have been approved. The economic collapse would hasten the hollowing out of the middle class and exacerbate income inequality that had been building for decades.

  For Jerry Brown, the Great Recession presented both short- and long-term opportunities. As attorney general, he took legal action against scammers who preyed on homeowners facing foreclosure. He sued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for blocking an energy efficiency program. He prompted the U.S. Justice Department to successfully sue Standard & Poor’s, which had issued high credit ratings to bonds backed
by risky subprime mortgages. In a high-profile case overseen by Anne Gust Brown, California sued Los Angeles–based Countrywide Financial Corporation, one of the largest subprime mortgage lenders, for deceptive practices that led homeowners to take out risky loans the company then resold in secondary markets at huge profit. California took the lead in a multistate settlement with Countrywide that provided billions of dollars in relief to homeowners facing foreclosure.

  The longer-term opportunity that the recession posed for Jerry would come in 2010, when angry, disillusioned voters would seek a candidate who held out the promise of restoring faith in government—an echo of the 1974 post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era that had launched his political career.

  The recession devastated a California budget heavily dependent on personal income tax, and plummeting revenues exacerbated partisan gridlock. In 2008, after missing the deadline by several months, the state adopted a budget balanced by accounting maneuvers and internal borrowing that worsened the deficit. By the end of 2008, Schwarzenegger ordered mandatory furloughs for state workers. State offices closed two Fridays a month. The comptroller issued $2.6 billion worth of IOUs to prevent the state from running out of cash. Billions of dollars of tax refunds and payments to local service providers and contractors were delayed. By the summer of 2009, the state had cut about $30 billion over two years, affecting schools, healthcare, prisons, and recreation. The University of California instituted layoffs and furloughs, delayed hiring, and raised tuition 32 percent.

  In September 2009, a Public Policy Institute of California poll showed record levels of distrust in state government. Although the recession was technically over and the housing market had stabilized, the state’s unemployment rate hit 12.2 percent, the highest point in seventy years. Like everything about California, the crisis assumed mythic proportions. Commentators compared California to Greece, a “failed state.” California was ungovernable. Schwarzenegger talked about “fiscal Armageddon” as his popularity reached new lows. Only 30 percent of the people viewed him favorably, and the legislature rated even worse. Kevin Starr compared the state to France in 1958 when General Charles de Gaulle came out of retirement to unite a fractured country and founded the Fifth Republic. Starr knew California’s retired governor in waiting. They had gone to the same high school.

  Jerry Brown had mapped out a potential path back to power years earlier, and rumors about a gubernatorial bid began almost as soon as he became attorney general. “The thought has certainly crossed my mind,12 but I haven’t really come to any conclusion,” he said in an interview, less than eight months after taking office. By 2009, he had mused about the idea for months to friends. As he had urged his father to do in 1958, he spent several days meditating. He returned to the Abbey of New Clairvaux, the Trappist monastery in the small Northern California town of Vina where he had gone after winning the gubernatorial primary in 1974. Jerry came home with a clearly articulated rationale for his decision: I am a son of California, this is what I was meant to do. I have the experience. I know how to make things happen. Everything I’ve done in my life has been building to this.

  “I have a sense of the historic character13 of California,” he said in the spring of 2009. “My family came here as pioneers. We came during the gold rush. We still have the land that my great grandfather farmed.” He had recently taken his ninety-seven-year-old aunt Connie to visit the Mountain House and her mother’s nearby grave. “I want to summon Californians to a renewed, shared commitment to the state’s real greatness and that’s not about one party or the other … the most successful governors—Hiram Johnson, who led the reform era, and Earl Warren, who was there during World War II and was put on the U.S. Supreme Court, I would also say my father. These were the people who built the state, who were innovators and who were not ideologues or people who were pigeonholed into one partisan box.”

  On September 29, 2009, Jerry filed papers to run for governor, which enabled him to raise money at a higher contribution limit than as a candidate for attorney general. He had long ago jettisoned the idea of a $100 contribution limit as impractical, and few of his supporters seemed troubled by the shift back to a more conventional politics. His likely opponent, eBay founder Meg Whitman, was the fourth-wealthiest woman in California, with a net worth of more than $1 billion and a willingness to spend a chunk of her personal fortune in a campaign to run the world’s sixth-largest economy.

  “The next governor must have the preparation and the knowledge and the know-how to get California working again,” Jerry said in his formal announcement, released by video on March 2, 2010. “At this stage in my life, I’m prepared to focus on nothing else but fixing the state I love.”

  The phrase “at this stage in my life” became his mantra, a sentiment that seemed to make voters comfortable in a year when they rejected professional politicians and looked to outsiders for solutions. He turned the potential negatives of his age and political pedigree into a plus, casting Whitman as another Schwarzenegger-like wealthy political neophyte incapable of governing effectively. At seventy-two, Jerry Brown had no focus beyond the state’s best interest, no national ambitions, and plenty of experience. “It’s a meat grinder,”14 he told a union convention. “And you need somebody who’s been trained in the arts of self-abnegation and mortification. That’s something I learned at the seminary; we were told that the good Jesuit novice seeks his greater abnegation and continuing mortification. Mortification is from the Latin word ‘death.’ You must die to yourself. That’s a good requisite if you’re running for governor. ’Cause when you get there, they’re not going to be too happy.”

  Often the first question was “Why do you want this job?” When Jerry visited Google a month after his announcement, CEO Eric Schmidt posed that query. Interviewing Jerry in an auditorium full of Google employees, Schmidt laid out the problems: the deficit, the boom-and-bust cycles, the pending battle over reapportionment, the requirement that budgets pass by a two-thirds majority. Why run? “I’m drawn to the task,15 perhaps as to the fire,” Jerry said. “I’ve studied this government for most of my life.” Studies had shown wisdom came with age, Jerry said, to which Schmidt quickly pointed out he was talking to a young crowd. “It’s something to look forward to,” the candidate quipped.

  The second question: How do you win, running against a moderate Republican with unlimited cash? “I run a very frugal operation,” Jerry said. “The plan to win is not to waste scarce campaign funds.” Schmidt vouched for the frugality, noting that Jerry picked up the phone himself when the Google executive called the campaign office. He had raised $15.5 million, Jerry said, and needed millions more for television spots that cost $100,000 each. The key voters would be the Decline to State, those not registered in either party. Since his first run for governor in 1974, the share of the electorate who registered as independents had gone from 3 to 20 percent of all voters. “They’re the ones who will ultimately decide who the next governor is,” Jerry said. “They are not reading journals; they’re watching TV.”

  Democrats had controlled the state legislature for decades. But in the history of the state, only four Democrats had been elected governor. One was recalled, and two were named Brown. While the large metropolitan areas and much of the coast generally voted Democratic, big swaths of the state inland and in the Central Valley tended to support Republicans.

  Addressing another young audience at GreenNet 2010, a San Francisco conference on the role of clean energy start-ups in Silicon Valley innovation, Jerry was direct in explaining his motive and vision. He wanted to be governor because

  only the executive can convene, can create the civic engagement.16 What kind of a California do we want? California has been in its history a place of dreams, a place of change, a place of immigration. Ultimately the future of this state is in the imagination, the creativity, the capital, that follows that in practical ways. I am optimistic. I’ve seen how people get depressed and frustrated when we’re at the bottom of a recession. And then very
quickly, we start to come back. It may take a little longer, but California will come back. It’s the continuity, it’s the foresight, and it’s the embrace of the tremendous diversity and innovation that is California.

  When Jerry became a candidate, he asked the Department of Finance for a courtesy briefing. The budget director was out of town and participated by phone, so his chief deputy, Ana Matosantos, sat in on the meeting. Jerry kept asking questions. Matosantos kept answering. They talked for hours. From then on, he would periodically call the thirty-three-year-old finance whiz, who had grown up in Puerto Rico and attended Stanford, turned off by Harvard on her first visit when students introduced themselves by citing their SAT scores. She had intended to become a lawyer, but a fellowship in Sacramento hooked her on public policy and municipal finance. Matosantos viewed the budget as a four-dimensional puzzle: math, policy, politics, and people. They all had to line up, like a Rubik’s cube. Like Jerry’s, her mind worked at a high rate of speed. She had a relentless determination, the kind of person who learned to fly as a teenager to overcome her fear of boarding an airplane.

  Jerry called with questions for Matosantos on Easter. And on Father’s Day. By then Matosantos had moved up to the top job, the youngest-ever California finance director. Jerry focused on education, the biggest chunk of the budget, and the financial relationships between the state and the counties, cities and local governments. He would need a plan that met his three clearly articulated campaign promises: No more gimmicks, no new taxes without voter approval, restore decision making to the local level wherever possible.