The Many Lives of Jerry Brown

"What we need," Jerry Brown liked to say when he was young, "is a flexible plan for an ever-changing world."

Flexible he is. In fact, the former California governor who is now doggedly nipping at the heels of Bill Clinton, frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been called downright elastic.

These days, Brown is the outsider--pitching himself as the vessel of the next great populist movement. He moralizes on the evils of monied interest and accepts no donation larger than $100.

And in his effort to stay close to the people, Brown repeatedly urges calls to his toll-free information number.

800-426-1112, Jerry Brown practically has it tattooed on his forehead.

But Brown hasn't always been a populist. Ever obedient to his creed of flexibility, he has at times defined himself as heir to his father's political throne, as dreamer, environmentalist, rock 'n' roller, pragmatist and technocrat.

In fact, those who know Brown best say the former governor has reinvented himself more times than any Californian politician since Richard Nixon.

THE BROWN PRINCE

Although his father, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, had been governor of California from 1959 to 1967, Edmund G. Brown Jr. had little inclination towards politics when he was young.

When he grew up, the young Brown wanted to be a Jesuit priest.

The religion thing at the Sacred Heart Novitiate, though, only lasted three years. At that point, Brown quit the seminary and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley.

There, he kept a low profile for three semesters. But the budding politician still had a sense of who he was.

Asked by a good friend how he was able to enroll in Berkeley so quickly, Brown answered, "Are you kidding? My father owns the university."

After graduating from college in 1961 and then Yale Law School three years later. Brown lived the life of a liberal activist. he traveled around the South observing the civil rights movement and helped organize the coalition of Vietnam doves that backed former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy in the 1968 presidential election.

But when he decided to run for public office, the idealistic Brown did not hesitate to trade on his father's established political name.

THE GUV

Known to everyone as Jerry, Brown went on the 1970 California ballot as "Edmund G. Brown Jr."

Many voters did not care about the "Jr.", and Brown took the race for secretary of state even as Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan swept to a decisive re-election victory.

Ironically, Brown's ambitions then led him away from Pat Brown's old style politics.

Running for governor in 1974, he cast himself in the role of the outsider, rejecting state lobbyists and special interest that were essential to his father's administration.

Only 36 when he was elected, Brown quickly charmed Californians, cultivating a reputation as an energetic but easygoing leader--with a record 87 percent approval rating.

But behind the scenes, Brown was anything but easygoing. His style of micromanagement put Jimmy Carter to shame.

The long hours that Brown required of his staffers also took their toll. Carl Werthman, a special assistant to Brown, had a heart attack. Tom Hickey, who had been Pat Brown's travel secretary for two years, developed pneumonia and hepatitis after less than six months as an aide to the younger Brown. David Jensen, a press aide, developed an ulcer.

All three men, according to Robert Pack's biography of Brown, were in their 30s and in good health before they went to work for the governor.

Brown was firm in his public position on corruption. Like any politician he said he opposed it. But unlike most, he took dramatic steps.

Brown's office would not accept gifts. And, foreshadowing the populist impulse that defines Brown in 1992, he refused to live in the governor's mansion built by Reagan, instead opting to sleep on a mattress on the floor of a state-owned apartment.

"We find a dramatic difference in that living in the apartment costs $22,000 a year," Brown said in 1976. "Living in the new mansion will cost $391,000 a year--for a grand total of $1,476,000, which will save enough money to build a new mansion if the next governor would care to have two off them."

With this virtually unblemished reputation, Brown decided to take his flexible persona to the big show. Against the advice of friends and advisers, he made a bid for the presidency in 1976.

The 1976 Democratic race was not unlike the 1992 version. Jimmy Carter, a southern governor with only lukewarm support in the North, was winning votes but not much loyalty.

Eschewing his gubernatorial record and instead running on a platform of environmentalism and space exploration (hence the nickname "Moonbeam"), Brown presented himself as the alternative to Carter and won five late primaries--Maryland, New Jersey, Nevada, Rhode Island and California.

Brown embarrassed Carter in the California race, trouncing him by 39 percentage points, but left the party convention empty handed.

THE ROCK 'N' ROLL YEARS

Despite his family's wealth and power, Brown was unfamiliar with the high life that he was confronted with upon returning home with status near a Hollywood celebrity.

The would-be Jesuit priest was now all the rage. He dated Linda Ronstadt (his only public romance so far) and began a life-long custom of throwing big-name parties.

In his '92 race, in fact, Brown has racked up endorsements from stars like Graham Nash, David Crosby, Tim Nash and Carol O'Connor and has appeared on stage with the B-52's.

But the wheels soon came off the bandwagon.

For some Californians, Proposition 13, a landmark tax-cutting initiative, destroyed the perception that Brown was a man of his word. Brown opposed the measure vigorously, but when it passed overwhelmingly in June 1978, the governor did an about-face.

"He was personally opposed to Prop 13, but the day after it passed he got on the national news, saying how great it was, how he would enforce it," says Mark J. DiCamillo '75, a California polling executive.

Brown was re-elected in 1978, but many Californians had lost confidence in the governor. In 1981, the Mediterranean fruit fly invaded the state's Central Valley, threatening to wreak havoc on California's huge agricultural industry.

Despite farmers' concerns, Brown waffled for months before finally deciding to use the pesticide Malathion to fight the fly.

But workers in the California Conservation Corps (CCC), many of whom were assigned the task of stripping trees of fruit as Malathion-carrying helicopters circled overhead, refused what they thought was hazardous duty.

Rebuked by his own volunteers, Brown dispatched chief of staff B.T. Collins to restore order in the CCC. Collins saved the organization, but not without several dramatic confrontations that were embarrassing to the governor. At one meeting that has since become legend, a frustrated Collins responded to CCC worker complaints by downing a glass full of the pesticide.

Still, the damage was done. Brown failed to carry a single state primary in his 1980 presidential bid and, meanwhile, faced threats of an insurgency by his Republican lieutenant governor.

Brown ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 1982 against little known San Diego mayor Pete Wilson, now the state's governor. The election, however, quickly became a referendum on brown the governor--a referendum he lost.

"The election was all about Jerry Brown," says DiCamillo. "It was a giant thumbs down on Jerry Brown."

BROWNING OUT

After the 1982 Senate defeat, Brown dropped out of politics, having learned the lesson that being the consummate political insider could be career-damaging.

He travelled though Mexico, He helped Mother Theresa tend to the sick and poor in Calcutta, India and spent time in Japan studying Buddhism.

After seven years in the jungle, Brown caught the political bug one again. In 1989 he reappeared, bearded, in California, offering his skills as a technocrat to the state Democratic Party.

He was the insider again. The party made him chair, although they soon regretted it when Brown proved poor at getting out the vote--a weakness that may have cost the party several key elections.

Although Brown had said repeatedly he would not run for office again, he openly flirted with the idea of running for one of California's two open Senate seats before finally opting for a presidential bid last September.

"He was ahead in the Democratic party poll in the senate races," said DiCamillo. "I thought [the decision] was more personal--his interests were more on a national level."

BACK IN THE RACE

Jerry Brown's colorful career before he arrived on the presidential trail in 1992 speaks for itself. Besides the time off, he had spent nearly his entire adult life in the political arena--at times the upstart, at times the entrenched incumbent, but always a politician.

So when Brown came on the scene with his "outsider" persona and a message that politicians can't be trusted, many long-time Brown Followers were cynical.

"His current incarnation is the most political of calculations," John B. Emerson, Los Angeles Brown counsel in the 1982 Senate race, told The New York Times.

"He believes the way he is campaigning is the only way Jerry Brown can resurrect himself politically," Emerson said.

Besides capitalizing on the strong anti-incumbent trends in 90s U.S. politics, Brown has also tried to recapture his former aura of hipness.

Endorsed by Rolling Stone and appearing regularly on MTV, Brown went hard after the young vote.

"I don't think there's any other candidate out there who could talk about Chuck D and Public Enemy and what his music means," says Tabitha Soren, political reporter for MTV.

Still, Brown was not seen as a serious contender. Though he won points for his down-to-earth image, other Democratic candidates seemed annoyed at the air-time consumed by repeated pitches for his 800 number.

But Brown is nothing if not tenacious. When the field narrowed to him, Clinton and Paul E. Tsongas, Brown began to build momentum. And, face to face with Clinton after Tsongas bowed out, Brown captured Connecticut and Vermont.

New York was billed as a high pitched battle with Brown as the underdog. But, in that race, the man of many faces was slapped with the reality of his past.

There were extensive reports on his ever changing persona. The Los Angeles Times charged that Brown had given key judicial appointments to large campaign contributors while he was governor.

And even the name Edmund G. Brown Jr., which had served him so well on ballots in the past, confused Empire State voters who had come to know him as Jerry. He finished a disappointing third.

Brown has sounded tired and defeated on the campaign trial in recent weeks, and aides say he has not decided what to do next. He has talked on occasion about starting a permanent campaign for political reform like Ralph Nader's, but some wonder if Brown will want to labor politically when the media spotlight is off.

What persona Brown will take on next is anybody's guess. But almost assuredly he'll be back.

He's flexible.