by Miriam Pawel
With a rare smile, thirty-six-year-old Jerry Brown talks with reporters before claiming victory on November 6, 1974, the first of four times he would be elected governor. RICK MEYER/LOS ANGELES TIMES PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE, DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, CHARLES E. YOUNG RESEARCH LIBRARY, UCLA
Tom Hayden, activist and writer, had spent weeks trailing Jerry during the campaign for an in-depth profile commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine. On Jerry’s first day in office, Hayden traveled with the governor as he delivered speeches around the state. Jerry shunned the state plane and always flew commercial. CENTER FOR SACRAMENTO HISTORY, SACRAMENTO BEE COLLECTION
After barely more than a year in office, Jerry jumped into the 1976 presidential campaign. He won several primaries, but started too late to catch Jimmy Carter. As his parents looked on, Jerry voted the California delegation for Carter at the Democratic National Convention in New York. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jerry Brown met Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist whose thinking would become a major influence on the young governor, in a late-night conversation in June 1975. “The new comes out of the random” was a Bateson saying that Jerry often repeated. He appointed Bateson to the Regents and named the first sustainable state office building after him. COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Governor Jerry Brown celebrates the reelection victory of Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley in April 1977, the second of what would be five terms. LOS ANGELES TIMES PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE, DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, CHARLES E. YOUNG RESEARCH LIBRARY, UCLA
Jerry and Linda Ronstadt at an event at the Jonathan Club on the beach in Santa Monica in the summer of 1978. They had met years earlier at Lucy’s El Adobe restaurant in Los Angeles, when both their careers were just starting to take off. She became a major star as he was elected governor. They both valued privacy, and despite their very public lives and competing demands, they maintained a relationship through Jerry’s eight years as governor. COURTESY OF JODIE EVANS
Jerry celebrated his forty-first birthday at the start of an African trip with Linda Ronstadt, a private vacation that ended up landing them on the cover of several magazines. On April 11, 1979, they visited a United Nations program on sustainable land management in northern Kenya. ASSOCIATED PRESS/MARK FOLEY
Jerry had forged an unusual friendship with Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers union. When a union activist was shot and killed during a bitter lettuce strike in 1979, Jerry attended the funeral in Calexico, seated next to Chavez. PHOTOGRAPH © DON BARTLETTI, 1979
During an early 1980 campaign swing as he prepared to run for president a second time, Jerry rode the subway to Brooklyn for a town meeting. His campaign slogan was “Serve the people. Protect the earth. Explore the universe.” COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
His attempt to challenge President Carter for the nomination never gained much strength, and he often said later that he should have quit the race when Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy jumped in. COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
In September 1982, a few months before he left office, Jerry returned to St. Brendan, his old elementary school in San Francisco, to sign laws that encouraged use of computers in the classroom. He predicted personal computers would one day be as ubiquitous for students as pens. FANG FAMILY SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER PHOTOGRAPH ARCHIVE, BANC PIC 2006.029-PIC, BOX 025 © THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, THE BANCROFT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALFIORNIA, BERKELEY
Pat Brown had long wanted some piece of the State Water Project named after him. In his last month in office, Jerry acquiesced and joined in the dedication of the Edmund G. Brown Aqueduct. Lauded as the man who had made the project possible, Pat said it was a lot nicer to hear the encomiums rather than have people make speeches when he was dead. CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES
On his way back from six months in Japan, where he studied and practiced Zen Buddhism, Jerry spent several weeks as a volunteer for Mother Teresa, an experience that made a great impression on the former seminarian. COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
At a March 1990 event to launch her campaign for state treasurer, Kathleen Brown gives her father a kiss. COURTESY OF BROWN FAMILY
In his third run for president Jerry denounced the role of money in campaigns as corrupting, and accepted contributions no larger than one hundred dollars, raising millions of dollars largely through a toll-free phone number. Always looking for free publicity, the campaign staged a “Run for Jerry” on the Santa Monica beach, where the candidate and supporters sported shirts emblazoned with the 1-800 number. LAURENCE KEANE, COURTESY OF ELVIRA LOUNT
With his political career apparently over after the 1992 presidential campaign, Jerry moved to Oakland, where he assembled a small commune in a warehouse. In the spring of 1996, he worked on the organic rooftop garden, with the modernist loft building in the background. SIBYLLA HERBRICH/SEASONAL CHEF
Jerry Brown poses with students at the Oakland Military Institute, one of two charter schools he founded while he was mayor of Oakland. Even as governor, he remained closely involved in the military academy college prep school, which he modeled on his high school, St. Ignatius. Jerry considered OMI and the Oakland School for the Arts two of his greatest and most lasting achievements. COURTESY OF OAKLAND MILITARY INSTITUTE
On November 7, 2006, as Jerry Brown celebrated his election as California attorney general, he held up a poster from his father’s successful campaign for the same office more than fifty years earlier. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein joined in the victory celebration. ZUMA PRESS, INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Jerry and Anne Gust Brown, and Colusa, at the Mountain House ranch in December 2017. Behind them are photos of the original inn and Jerry’s great-grandfather August Schuckman feeding his sheep. MATTHEW MORNICK/ COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Jerry Brown on the Colusa ranch that has been in the family for four generations. One hundred forty years after his great-grandfather bought the property, Jerry constructed a solar-powered house and prepared to move back to his ancestral home. COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Acknowledgments
This is a family story, and I’m grateful to all the members of the extended Brown family, from Colusa to Los Angeles, who shared memories, documents, and pictures. They set aside many hours amid busy schedules, unconditionally, without really knowing, as the governor put it, where exactly I was going with this.
Dozens of friends, classmates, and public officials past and present were similarly generous with both their time and trust. They helped me color in the lacunae in the documents and provided much-needed background and explanations. They schooled me in everything from local county history to realignment. My thanks to them all.
The book relies extensively on primary sources. A narrative that spanned more than a hundred fifty years required research that ran the gamut from rare manuscript archives to Twitter. I’m grateful to all the keepers of records, official and unofficial, from handwritten nineteenth-century ledgers in the Colusa County Recorder’s office to twenty-first century video clips, and to all those who hunted down old letters and photos in garages and basements. Big thanks, posthumously, to Pat Brown, for keeping almost every scrap that documented his life, from high school on.
The visual presentation owes a big debt to Karin Surber, who has preserved so much of the early Brown family photo archives. My deep appreciation to Wendy Vissar for all her guidance and expertise in selecting and assembling images for the book.
Among the many archivists who offered help, I’m particularly indebted to Susan Luftschein in Special Collections at the University of Southern California, Brother Dan Peterson at Santa Clara University, and Iris Donovan and Michael Lange at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
To wander the stacks of the Huntington Library was both an immense pleasure and an invaluable resource. There’s no better place to resear
ch the history of California, and no milieu more conducive to writing; it’s a privilege to be a reader. I’m deeply grateful to Bill Deverell for all the knowledge and wisdom he imparted on our walks in the Huntington gardens. Those conversations were an indispensable part of my education about California history.
The carefully researched, lengthy interviews conducted by the Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library are a remarkable resource. The voices captured in the extensive project documenting the Goodwin Knight and Edmund G. Brown eras were particularly valuable for my work. I’m grateful to all who participated in that project as interviewers and interviewees.
In writing about the more recent past, the reports of the Public Policy Institute of California provided reasoned, well-researched, cogent analyses on a wide range of issues that helped me understand and contextualize both demographic trends and governmental actions.
I’m indebted to all the journalists who documented California and its political life over the decades, starting with the era when four newspapers competed in San Francisco. In addition to the growing digital archives, the Newspapers & Microforms Library at UC Berkeley is an invaluable resource for that history. Thanks to my former Los Angeles Times colleagues Mark Z. Barabak, Dan Morain, and George Skelton for sharing their insights in person as well as in print, as they have done since I first moved to California and they helped me understand my new home.
Every week, more primary source material is digitized and available online. Thanks to all those who posted transcripts and videos of meeting, speeches, and events, and special thanks to the Internet Archive and all who contribute. It gives me hope for future historians, who will lose the ability to see and touch the past on paper; the trade-off of universal access balances that loss.
A few more assorted thanks: In addition to those listed as interviewees, Judy Gerrard, Janice Lauppe, Allen Schaad, and Walt Seaver provided information about the Schuckmans and facilitated my research in Colusa. Evan Westrup facilitated my work and found ways to accommodate me in an always crowded schedule. LeRoy Chatfield encouraged the project, made early connections that got it off the ground, and provided valuable advice throughout. My agent, Gloria Loomis, championed the idea from the start.
Writing is a solitary pursuit, but publishing a book is a team effort. I feel fortunate to be a Bloomsbury author, with the support and encouragement of everyone from Cindy Loh to Jessica Shohfi. Thanks to Patti Ratchford for the amazing cover, to Laura Phillips for her meticulous oversight of the production process (and her patience with all my changes), to Emily DeHuff for her careful copyediting, to Sara Mercurio, the most ardent publicist and advocate an author could want, and above all to Nancy Miller, whose thoughtful editing, sure hand, and great oversight made this a far better book.
Finally, I owe a great deal to several friends who read versions of the manuscript in progress and offered suggestions that sharpened everything from sentence structure to overarching themes. I’m very lucky to have such good friends willing to invest so much time, and even more fortunate that they are such gifted editors. Thanks to Sam Enriquez, Nick Goldberg, and Geoff Mohan. And above all, thanks to my husband, Michael Muskal, who lived with this project as long as I did, my first and last reader, a talented editor, and an exceptional best friend.
Bibliography
Books
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Adams, Ansel, and Nancy Newhall. Fiat Lux. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
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Brown, Edmund G. Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor’s Education on Death Row. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989.
Brown, Edmund G. Jr. Dialogues. Berkeley: Berkeley Hill Books, 1998.
Cooper, Erwin. Aqueduct Empire: A Guide to Water in California. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1968.
Dallek, Matthew. The Right Moment. New York: Free Press, 2000.
Didion, Joan. Where I Was From. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.
Eaton, Herbert. The Overland Trail to California in 1852. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration. California in the 1930s: The WPA Guide. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Green, W. S. The History of Colusa County. San Francisco: Elliott & Moore, 1880.
HoSang, Daniel. Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
Hundley, Norris. The Great Thirst: Californians and Water. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Kerr, Clark. The Gold and the Blue: A Personal Memoir of the University of California, 1949–1967, vols. 1 and 2. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Leary, Mary Ellen. Phantom Politics: Campaigning in California. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1977.
Mathews, Joe, and Mark Paul. California Crack-up. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
McWilliams, Carey. California: The Great Exception. New York: Current Books, 1949.
________. Southern California: An Island on the Land. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946.
O’Mara, Margaret. Cities of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Pack, Robert. Jerry Brown: The Philosopher Prince. Briarcliff Manor, NY: Stein and Day, 1978.
Rapoport, Roger. California Dreaming: The Political Odyssey of Pat and Jerry Brown. Berkeley: Nolo Press, 1982.
Rarick, Ethan. California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Rogers, Justus. Colusa County: Its History. Orland, CA: 1891.
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Schrag, Peter. Paradise Lost. New York: New Press, 1998.
Self, Robert. American Babylon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California Dream, 1859–1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
________. Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
________. Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950–1963. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Walker, Franklin. San Francisco’s Literary Frontier. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939.
Walsh, James, ed. The San Francisco Irish, 1850–1976. San Francisco: Irish Literary and Historical Society, 1978.
Ware, Joseph. The Emigrants’ Guide to California. St. Louis: J. Halsall, 1849.
White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
Wolin, Sheldon, and John Scharr. The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond. New York: New York Review Books, 1970.
Interviews
John Baumann, June 10, 2016
Anne Gust Brown, April 12, 2018
Chris Brown, December 2, 2016
Geoffrey Brown, March 30, 2018
Jerry Brown, April 11, 2015, April 19, 2017, October 20, 2017, and December 27, 2017
Kathleen Brown, January 27, 2016, February 14, 2017, and February 13, 2018
Marion Burman, May 2, 2016
Donald Burns, January 13, 2016
John Burton, March 27, 2018
Barbara Brown Casey, February 22, 2016, and October 10, 2016
LeRoy Chatfield, January 9, 2017
Eli Chernow, October 22, 2016
John Coleman, February 24, 2016
Denis Collins, December 2, 2016
Diane Cummins, October 21, 2017
Frank Damrell, January 12, 2016, May 25, 2016, and November 2, 2017
Dan Dooley, October 5, 2016, and February 28, 2018
Diana Dooley, October 11, 2016, and November 3, 2017
Jodie Evans, December 20, 2016
Doug Faigin, May 16, 2017
Raymond Fisher, November 18, 201
6
Marshall Ganz, June 17, 2017
Nathan Gardels, June 10, 2017
John Geesman, February 28, 2018
Lucie Gikovich, April 12, 2018
Joyce Godon, May 13, 2015
Johnna Grell, March 27, 2018
Joseph Grodin, January 27, 2017
Hans Johnson, March 16, 2018
Mitchell Johnson, January 12, 2016
Joseph Kelly, June 2, 2016, and October 18, 2017
Kathleen Kelly, July 27, 2017, and October 18, 2017
Michael Kirst, July 20, 2017
Anthony Kline, February 24, 2016
Bart Lally, May 13, 2016, and June 24, 2016
Daniel Lowenstein, February 10, 2017
Gloria Lujan, February 4, 2017
Barbara Marcus, February 24, 2017
Ana Matosantos, January 12, 2017, and February 28, 2018
Richard Maullin, October 21, 2016, and June 13, 2017
Walter McGuire, January 26, 2017
John McInerny, June 24, 2016
Harold Meyerson, October 14, 2017
Marie Moretti, November 30, 2016
Martin Morgenstern, January 13, 2016, and October 27, 2016
Dowell Myers, July 5, 2017
Mary Nichols, September 26, 2016
June O’Sullivan, May 13, 2015
Michael Picker, January 13, 2017
Marc Poché, August 18, 2016
Bill Press, February 3, 2018
