Brown in California

California's Governor Edmund G. (Pat) Brown has served his cataclysmic state for eight years with enough success to merit re-election. Under his Master Plan for Higher Education, new, experimental public and private colleges have sprung up throughout the state. Faced with the difficulty of handling thousands of incoming residents, Brown has built the nation's largest toll-free highway system. He has kept the Southern California economic boom from coming to a rasping, bone-dry halt by forcing construction of a reservoir and water-pipe system rivalling the Tennessee Valley Authority in size and expense.

As everyone knows, Brown has his failings. He has shown no foresight in dealing with the Negro slums of Watts in Los Angeles and McAllister-Hunter's Point in San Francisco. His once firm support of open housing laws has faded to a hoarse whisper in the face of massive voter antagonism. In moments of crisis, particularly during the Berkeley demonstrations two years ago, he has vacillated and yielded to irrational pressures.

Yet no governor today has an untarnished record on civil rights and liberties. It is unfair to demand that Brown, the governor of one of the most politically divided states in the country, be an exception. Despite his past mistakes in dealing with Berkeley, Brown has courageously supported the university administration's concessions to student activists even while polls show that thosuands of Californians -- disturbed by incidents at Berkeley -- intend to vote against the governor precisely on that issue.

Brown's Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, has clearly benefitted from the anti-Berkeley vote and all the other fear issues--race riots, open-housing, and welfare abuses. A few of Reagan's solutions to these problems are reasonable, most are not, but it is doubtful he could put them in effect even if elected. Reagan would face a heavily Democratic legislature and a state administration full of men dreaming about their elevation to the governorship in 1970. There would be few with the incentive to help Reagan produce any legislation -- constructive or otherwise -- in the next four years.

With Reagan as governor, all of the state pressure groups would be forced to continue their unresolved struggles indefinitely. Grape workers and growers, slum residents and police, conservation clubs and developers, students and administration -- all would find themselves frustrated by a governor unable to provide the legislative direction necessary to resolve any conflict.

If Brown is re-elected, he will encounter these same problems, but Democrats eager to inherit his seat will want to place their party -- which to voters means Brown -- in the best possible light. If Reagan is elected, Californians will simply have to do without state government for four years.