Seven months ago, California had four Democrats running for Governor.
Now, we only have one – who has yet to formally declare. John
Garamendi’s ego dropped out to run for Congress in the wrong district (which he won anyway),
Antonio Villaraigosa stepped aside to focus on his day job as Mayor of
Los Angeles, and Gavin Newsom appears to have withdrawn from both the
Governor’s race and his day job.
Unless someone jumps in (or back into) the race, June 2010 will be the
coronation of Jerry Brown – a 72-year-old ex-Governor who quit the
Democratic Party 11 years ago, and whose record after quietly
re-joining has been a nightmare for progressives. Faced with only
Republican opponents next year, Brown is moving further to the right –
and will be pressured to do so down the road. Even though the Golden
State, where the G.O.P. is in deep trouble, deserves a lot better.
As Beyond Chron has written on a number of occasions
this year, California has led the progressive charge on the national
level – but our state is in dire need of that kind of energy to fix
Sacramento. And yet, progressives have failed to recruit a candidate of
their own to be California’s next Barack Obama – leaving Jerry Brown as
the only viable Democratic candidate to lead the largest state in the
union.
How bad is Jerry Brown? Consider his recent campaign stop in Orange County – where he articulated his stance
on several issues. Brown refused to endorse any changes to Prop 13,
saying he did not think it was “needed” and that “we’ve got to downsize
government to the maximum degree.” He also voiced support for the
three-strikes law, and would not take a stance on a “public option” for
health care. He did support scrapping the “two-thirds” rule for passing
a state budget (but not taxes), and endorsed a path to legalization for
undocumented immigrants – but with no candidate running to his left,
this was the best that progressives can hope from Jerry Brown.
Given California’s mammoth problems that need immediate attention,
that’s depressing. The only Democratic candidate for Governor wants to
lock more people into our prison-industrial complex – the #1 growth
factor in our state budget. Meanwhile, he does not want to make it
easier to raise revenue – while we try to pass a budget with the most
right-wing Republicans in the country,
hell-bent on abusing their power to shrink the size of government and
drown it in a bathtub. Basic fiscal math tells you that in a Brown
Administration, we’ll see even more budget cuts in health care and
education.
Not to mention Jerry Brown’s anti-tenant
record. As Mayor of Oakland, he strongly opposed “just cause” for
evictions – and vetoed an inclusionary housing ordinance. At a time
when the affordable housing agenda has been stalled for years by a
hostile Schwarzenegger Administration – no Ellis Act reform, a repealed renters’ tax credit – we need a Governor who will sign good legislation. And the awful Palmer decision that just came down on inclusionary zoning makes it even more urgent.
It’s not like Jerry Brown didn’t have a progressive past, which makes
his positions today that much more baffling. In 1992, he ran for
President in the Democratic primaries – waging a Naderite campaign
against Bill Clinton, where he railed against the role of money in
politics. After losing, he launched a radio talk show in Oakland on
KPFA – where he hung out with guests Barbara Ehrenreich and Noam
Chomsky. In a June 1996 interview Brown lamented Democrats and Republicans as the “evil of two lessers.” In March 1998, he quit the Democratic Party in disgust – as he prepared to run for Mayor of Oakland.
But something strange happened the moment he became Mayor of Oakland –
morphing him into the kind of moderate Democrat he once railed against.
Any trace of the Jerry Brown who sounded like Dennis Kucinich when he
ran for President is gone. At this weekend’s California Democratic
Party E-Board meeting, Brown got into an argument
with Party Chair John Burton about single-payer health care. Brown
insisted single payer “will not happen” – even though the state
legislature passed it twice, only to have Arnold Schwarzenegger veto
it. The only thing stopping single payer in California from happening
is a Republican Governor – yet the only Democratic candidate left in
the race has insisted that it will not happen.
Today, Brown subscribes to a canoe theory
of government: “you paddle a little bit on the left, then you paddle a
little bit on the right and you keep going straight down the middle.”
That’s the Bill Clinton theory of triangulation that worked so well in
the 1990’s to alienate progressives and keep Republican control of
Congress. Brown spoke out against that ten years ago, when it was in
vogue. Today, when even Clinton has acknowledged that we’re in a progressive era and it’s time for bolder ideas – Jerry’s living in the past.
In 2006, the San Francisco Bay Guardian endorsed Brown for
Attorney General in the Democratic primary – because his opponent was a
more explicit “law-and-order” candidate. But it wasn’t very
enthusiastic. “Brown is constantly reinventing himself,” they wrote,
“and endorsing him for anything is always a gamble … But given [Rocky]
Delgadillo’s drawbacks, we'll hold our noses, pray for mercy, and roll
the dice on Jerry Brown.” Given Attorney General Brown’s record – where
he worked with the prison guard to defeat Prop 5 and refuses to settle any death row appeals – it was a bad gamble for progressives.
Now, with no other Democratic alternative for Governor, progressives
are left with two choices: (a) recruit a candidate to face nearly
insurmountable odds to defeat Brown, or (b) organize on issues to the
point that Jerry somehow feels compelled to respond. The former isn’t
likely to happen, because the only Democrats with the stature to run a
viable campaign are in Congress – and who would want to risk a safe
seat when your party is in power in Washington? The latter is
practically our only choice, and it remains to be seen how much Brown
will bend in to public pressure. If 2010 is a wake-up call to
California progressives that we need to focus more on state issues, it
may be a good thing long-term.
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