What can Brown do for you?
IN California politics, we like our iconoclasts. You need look no further than our current governor to see that successful leaders in the Golden State are not always buttoned-down.
They can live large, think big, admit they've made mistakes and immediately take a change in course.
In their outsized public personalities, in the fact that on the surface they are flashy but at heart they are practical and moderate, former Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov. Schwarzenegger have quite a bit in common.
The current and quite successful mayor of Oakland, Jerry Brown is one of the most experienced politicians in California - a community college board member, secretary of state, two-term governor. Some even call him a career politician, but we would differ. When they use the phrase, most people mean fellows who thrive in the air of the (formerly) smoke-filled room, who live for the back-slapping and the baby-kissing and the enriching of themselves and their friends at the public trough.
That occasionally all-too-real cliche is the opposite of Jerry Brown. A Jesuit intellectual as a youth, a person still filled with strong moral conviction, in reality he's straightforward, honest, sensible, down-to-earth.
And
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now he's running for California attorney general, and we think he's the best candidate for the job, a position to which he will bring high energy and a passion for the law and crime fighting.
Brown's opponent in the race for attorney general, state Sen. Chuck Poochigian, R-Fresno, is a decent man who has run an indecent campaign, rife with attack ads blasting Brown for his liberal past. But it's a cheap shot, given his real record - especially his tough-minded crackdown on repeat offenders in the downtown Oakland in which he lives.
Brown has moved to the solid middle over the course of his political career. In 2004, for example, he successfully fought Proposition 66, which would have watered down the state's "three strikes, you're out" law. Today he is a prominent supporter of Proposition 83, Jessica's Law.
And while there are some laws on the books that Brown no doubt opposes, the same is equally true for Poochigian. What matters is not whether the attorney general supports every law in the state, but whether he has the integrity to enforce even the ones he doesn't.
Despite a flap this week over a paperwork technicality involving Brown's former inactive status with the State Bar, no one seriously disputes Brown's integrity.
He has demonstrated it over the course of his political career. That integrity and leadership make him the best candidate on Nov. 7 for California attorney general.
