Jerry Brown | Interview 4 | March 19, 2019

SHAFER: It's Tuesday, March 19, [2019]. We're at the ranch in Colusa County with Governor Jerry Brown and Todd Holmes. I'm Scott Shafer here with Guy Marzorati, Dan Newman, Queena Kim, and this is what--session four. So, we got through the 1960s, pretty much, yesterday. And so we want to pick up with your decision to run for secretary of state. And it sounded like that's something you'd thought about for a while, but tell us about the thinking that went into that.

BROWN: I don't know exactly when I thought about that. Probably, well, a few 00:01:00years before--I can't tell you exactly when. I think I said it yesterday--that there was a long-time incumbent that wasn't going to be there for a long time, that might be vulnerable--or might not, as the case may be. That seemed to be an office that would have less competition, and therefore would be easier to win, and yet would still be a statewide office, and one in which I thought I could do good work in.

And I was very interested, particularly in the campaign disclosures, which I first came into contact with when I began to file my report after the junior 00:02:00college board election, and I noticed that the reporting requirements were very lax, that you could use abbreviations. And as I looked at other committee filings or at names, like Good Government Committee, with no addresses, it was totally obscure and certainly not transparent. So that gave me the idea: I read parts of the Code of California, and I noticed the secretary of state had the responsibility to take all these reports. And certainly, I presumed that that meant that he should make sure that they're accurate. So that idea became part of the interest and what I intended to do.

So, and also at that point, Frank Jordan died. And Reagan did not appoint a 00:03:00popular assemblyman by the name of George [W.] Milias. Instead, [he] elevated the deputy, [Henry Patrick] "Pat" Sullivan, and he wasn't running. So there was a field. I didn't know that before I started running, because I started before that. I wanted to get into statewide office, and that was the pathway.

SHAFER: I'm curious. Did you look at other offices, like did you evaluate all the other statewide offices?

BROWN: No, no--you talk in terms of brand testing and evaluation, and that's not the way I experience political decisions. I mean you look at them, and things seem obvious or not, and then you make decisions based on what your objectives are, what your desires are. So I don't think it's as formulaic or as structured 00:04:00as your question might imply.

SHAFER: Well, I'm just thinking about your strategic thinking.

BROWN: Well, I don't know. I didn't even have the word strategic thinking back in 1969 or 1970. It's about running for office and winning, and doing whatever you said you were going to do.

SHAFER: You mentioned, Governor, that you were reading the election code, and of course sort of, you started digging into--

BROWN: Yes, I did.

SHAFER: Yeah, so tell us more--where did you do that? How did you do that?

BROWN: I just picked up--I was at a law firm, just picked up--go to the shelf. You go to the codes of California, and there's probably two volumes on election 00:05:00code. You take out the index, and you look through it, as any lawyer would do. So I looked up all the sections that dealt with campaign reporting. And I did further research as I went along and found out that California first adopted its Purity of Election[s] Law back in the 1870s. It was modeled on an English law. So I knew about that. I don't know when I came to know about it. I brought a lawsuit--a [California] Supreme Court case, Brown v. Superior Court. I brought it in the superior court, I lost, I took it on appeal to the supreme court. I argued it myself, and I won in a unanimous decision, that held that the campaign disclosure laws required the reporting, by name, of donors to a ballot-measure 00:06:00campaign. Now, this was in November of 1970, so I've skipped ahead to the election, so maybe I'm a little ahead of myself there.

SHAFER: So you argued that after you got elected?

BROWN: Yes, I brought the lawsuit--maybe, probably after I was elected. But in terms of the campaign, which was interesting. It was a pretty simple campaign. But I did go around the state. Tom Quinn helped me. I met him during the junior college campaign, and so did Richard Maullin, and there wasn't a lot of attention. I think John Tunney was running for the senate. That was the more glamorous race--by far. And so this was a quiet undertaking, and the only thing 00:07:00really of interest was that the son of the former governor was running for secretary of state. So other than that, it was pretty mundane stuff. People had not run for these offices, like controller and treasurer, in the normal political way. They weren't the actions they became later--people wanted to be controller and then run for governor. The only office that was a stepping stone was attorney general--and maybe lieutenant governor.

SHAFER: And of course there was no term limits, so that was part of it too.

BROWN: There were no term limits. People would get those jobs, and they'd keep them a long time.

SHAFER: Yeah. Do you remember, when you sat down with Tom and Richard, what did they talk to you about, in terms of--as you thought out that race?

BROWN: I can't remember. Basically, you have to make as much news as you can that's favorable, in as many media markets, as often as you can. And you raise 00:08:00as much money as you can, which is rather modest. It's pretty simple business. I know today people complexify it with a lot of consultants, but at the end of the day, it's very simple. You have a candidate, you have an electorate, and you communicate by whatever means you can afford.

SHAFER: Easier when your name is Edmund G. Brown, Jr.?

BROWN: Obviously. Or if your name's Tunney, or if you're a movie star--all that's helpful. Or if your father was president. All these things help, this is from Adams, whose grandson was president. I think the Harrisons--didn't we have two Harrisons as presidents? So, yeah, this is an old story.

SHAFER: You said you tried to make news, you went out and you made news. How did you do that? Do you remember?

BROWN: Well, I'm going to do it by writing--by press releases, which Tom Quinn 00:09:00was very adept at. And I think those might be in the archives of the secretary of state. But we put out a lot of press releases, and would write them by fixing on a lead of some kind that would be catchy, and Tom and I'd work that out. Even while I was secretary of state we released more press releases, that I still have available. And he and I would do that, talk on the telephone, and work out ideas.

And where do you get the ideas? You get the ideas from the news. Tom had a news service, City News, and it came over in rolls. And the AP or the UPI would roll out. And so you'd read the right thing, and you'd clip out stories. And then, 00:10:00even though the story might not relate to something that I wanted to talk about, it would be the form of what could be a story. Senator So-and-So called for something. Well, then I could take that out and say, "I call for something, or Brown called for something." So the news, which I didn't understand then as much as I do now, is a predictable process, and the news people are tightly constrained. Most of them don't realize it, but they're somewhat robotic in their slavish adherence to the news of the day. So that if you want to make news, you have to ride on the news of today, or today we might say the tweet of the day. There, things were a little more primitive. We weren't as 00:11:00sophisticated, but that would be the idea.

I may be mixing up my governor's campaigns. Yeah, probably the secretary of state's campaign. But we could go to San Diego, and the same day you could go from San Diego to Los Angeles--maybe even to San Francisco. And you could take the same story, and the term was relead it. So you'd take something from four paragraphs down, and you move it up to the top paragraph. But you keep a similar story, and then you wait till maybe a different guy is on the desk. [laughing] And so then you get that story out, and it runs again. Now, how often those things ran, and whether I'm accurately stating--well, I am actually stating what happened, but as to what the actual impact is, that would take a deeper analysis 00:12:00which nobody has made, and I doubt if they ever will. But that was the general idea, to try to make news in different media markets. That's the way people looked at the counties. And you go into the small ones--Fresno had media, as did Santa Paula, Santa Barbara, as did Monterey. Rarely did we go to Imperial County.

SHAFER: How did you get around between cities?

BROWN: Drive or fly. Take an airplane. They had more planes in those days. I think you had regular service to Fresno. You still do, but I think there were more planes in those days. I went to Lone Pine once. I think that was in the governor's race. A guy flew me in his plane. That's the only time I've been to Lone Pine.

SHAFER: You looked at the codes, and you realized that this had been a sleepy office for a long time. What did you see when you looked at those--?

BROWN: Well, I also saw that my father had written an opinion. Well, there was a case against my father as attorney general, and the case held that you didn't have to report things accurately. And then there was an opinion that my father wrote, which basically made that point. And in fact, that was prior to the case--I think, Warden v. Brown. It came out of Oakland, a court of appeals case. And then there was this prior attorney general's opinion, which doesn't have my father's name on it, but it was during his tenure. So I asked him about it. I said, "What's this about?" And my father said, "Well, I talked to Governor Warren about how we report things, and Governor Warren said this is how we do it in California."

SHAFER: And that was that?

BROWN: That was that. And so now we have voluminous regulations and fines. But 00:14:00if you'd ask me, is it more honest? I'd want to reflect long and hard on that question.

SHAFER: We'll come back to that.

HOLMES: Governor, what was your father's reaction to your plan to run for secretary of state? Because as we were just talking about, the office itself was sleepy. It was largely looked at by many as a paper-pushing backwater or, kind of the state clerk --

BROWN: Well, I don't think that's accurate. It was not looked upon by many--very few people looked upon it. In fact, I'm probably one of the few people, but not the only one. There was a guy who was a lawyer. I'm trying to remember his name--Schlei, [Norbert A.] Norb Schlei who--a blessed memory. Norb Schlei ran 00:15:00for secretary of state during the time my father was running against Reagan, and he had the same idea--or he had the idea first: to run for secretary of state and be the only guy elected. And he got more votes than my father, but it didn't work. It was a sweep. So only [Thomas C.] "Tom" Lynch was left. But Norb Schlei was a big corporate lawyer, a serious man from a law firm in Los Angeles, and so that validated the idea as well. No one probably remembers that--not even Dan Newman remembers it. Norb Schlei was the pathfinder because he talked about it in a bigger way.

Well, first of all, the last guy to run, in 1958--a guy named [Enrique] Henry 00:16:00["Hank"] López won, and he was the only one that lost. So everybody won, except Henry López, and people always felt there was certain discrimination about that. And then in '62, Frank Jordan won again. So the memory does not go back far enough to remember when the secretary of state was some kind of a controversial or well-known office and people didn't particularly think about it, because it was just essentially corporate filings, maintain the trademark--it was more like a county clerk, and elections were handled by a registrar of voters or county clerks.

SHAFER: And so as you thought about it and looked at the code again, what possibilities did you see?

BROWN: Well, I saw the possibilities of enforcing the campaign law, and that already was a breakthrough thought. Because the secretary of state was often 00:17:00sued, so there were cases against Jordan that you can see in the casebooks. But he's always a defendant, somebody suing on a law to invalidate an initiative or something like that. In fact, that's mostly what it is. And I'd read some of those cases. At Yale Law School, I read all the ballot-measure cases, I believe--all the cases that challenged ballot-measure elections. And I would come across the name Jordan, a case called Epperson v. Jordan--I remember that case. There were many others.

So now, what I proposed to do was to have the secretary of state as the plaintiff, if necessary, and making candidates report their contributions. And 00:18:00when I sued, I sued as Edmund G. Brown, Jr. But it wasn't clear whether I suing in my personal capacity, or as secretary of state? And the reason I did that, I wasn't sure that the secretary of state had the authority to bring lawsuits. And the general rule was in order to have that authority, you have to have a duty under law, and the only duty under law was receiving campaign documents. But the question that was not determined: did the secretary of state have a right to reject, or demand in some way, that the campaign filings be of a certain quality 00:19:00and completeness? That question had never been raised since the beginning of the law, as far as I know. And I looked at a lot of cases, because it was part of my Brown v. Superior Court. And a fellow that looked at it, [Daniel Hays] "Dan" Lowenstein, was the lawyer. We wrote the brief. He wrote the brief, principally. But so then the Supreme Court ruled that I did, in a footnote, that I had the capacity to bring a lawsuit, and that was the first time that was ever stated. I was already secretary of state by then.

SHAFER: So you really envisioned changing the office from like a passive office to a more proactive one.

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: Yeah. Essentially, you made the secretary of state's office a combatant with politicians.

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: So how did that go over?

BROWN: [laughing] Well, it didn't go over well with politicians. It left a lingering distaste among many incumbents, and there was always this tension 00:20:00between diplomacy and news. In order to make news, you need something more strident. To be diplomatic and work with your colleagues, you need things that are more respectful and accommodating--and so that was always the tension that I experienced.

SHAFER: How did you resolve that tension?

BROWN: In different ways at different times, but we definitely made news. [laughing] And when you tell people, particularly when I was secretary of state, and say you have to report all this. I developed a rule book on how a campaign report should be filed. The assembly and the legislature took away my office, but I already had a downtown--I just moved from Beverly Hills to downtown, so 00:21:00that wasn't a problem.

SHAFER: They took it away as punishment?

BROWN: Yeah. And they tried to stop me. They had a big meeting--Willie Brown, and they all came in, and they were quite exercised about the whole thing.

SHAFER: Yeah. How did you feel about that?

BROWN: Well, it's unpleasant. It's always unpleasant. It was unpleasant when I vetoed the state budget and had to go into the Democratic caucus and listen to the emotional outrage of the people. It's not just a disagreement, I guess in today's lingo you might even call it a microaggression. And I would call it that because the people who work on the budget, they identify with that, their product--that's them. So when I reject it, I reject them, and they feel 00:22:00aggrieved at that. But they got over it. And I worked at the diplomacy. I don't know that I ever quite got over the first eight years, because (a), I came in aggressively in this political reformism, which is not congenial to the long-term incumbents, and (b) I was so much younger than everybody else. And they knew a lot, and they knew the ways of the legislature--ways that I had not been part of or familiar with.

SHAFER: You're talking about when you were governor.

BROWN: Yeah. Or secretary of state. I once went to a guy--Senator [Alfred H.] "Al" Song--and I was looking for more things to do, and there's a statute on consumer protection. It's a very powerful statute, that allows the attorney general, and any local city attorney or district attorney, to bring an action 00:23:00under [California] Civil Code § 17200. And I thought, "Well, I think the secretary of state ought to be included in the list of people that can bring those lawsuits." So I went to Al Song, and he was not too excited about that, but we put it into a bill. It only got a couple of votes. And now I could see how powerful this is--and it's an instrument that is abused, and I saw that as attorney general. Where zealous people go out and sue businesses, and they get funding for their office. So they collect tens of millions of dollars--in aggregate, well over a hundred million in fines, from the enforcement of laws that aren't always that clear. And I never could make up my mind: was the attorney general abusing this law? Or were the companies not doing everything 00:24:00they should do, and was the punishment appropriate? And I still have that question.

HOLMES: Governor, you announce your candidacy for secretary of state in March of 1970.

BROWN: And there's a column in the LA Times on that. Did you read that?

HOLMES: Yes.

BROWN: It's by Carl Greenberg, I think.

SHAFER: Yeah, we have it in the pile of stuff here.

BROWN: Yeah, I think that's Carl. That was the guy whose retirement I went to.

HOLMES: And in that candidacy you threatened to refuse to certify any election of a candidate who fails to fully report campaign donations, as we were just discussing.

BROWN: Right. That's what I would say is a lead.

HOLMES: I was curious, because in some respects you're somewhat playing right into that theme that we saw Ronald Reagan make during his governorship, like the citizen-politician fighting against the career politicians.

BROWN: Well, that seems to be an effective strategy.

HOLMES: Did that come into your calculation?

BROWN: What? The comparison with Reagan, or just the citizen-politician?

HOLMES: The citizen-politician.

BROWN: Well, that was his term. That's a Reagan term. And he was using that, obviously, to contrast with my father, who was the professional politician, and he kept saying Reagan's an amateur, and that underscored what Reagan wanted to portray himself as. And you're asking me what?

HOLMES: Did that factor into your--?

BROWN: What factored in?

HOLMES: Did the citizen-politician, the combating the career politicians, factor into your strategy?

BROWN: I mean, it's pretty obvious to me you're using language that doesn't quite tally. Obviously, if you have an office that nobody even knows what they do, and you're running for it--so there has to be some reason. And if they're not reporting, and you have a lot of examples of completely vague and not amply 00:26:00disclosed contributions, and then if you say, it's my job to collect it. And, "Okay, what's the enforcement?" "Well, I'm not going to certify your election." Now, that's an arguable position--but that's a position.

You could run to say what a nice fellow I am, and these are my two dogs, and what have you--and some people do that. And I remember talking to my friend Peter Finnegan, he was running for supervisor. And I looked at his brochure, and it had his wife and two kids. And I said, "Peter, that's not going to cut it. You're going to have to have a position here. What do you have to say about Mayor [Joseph L.] Alioto? What do you want to say about city hall? But just you, your wife, and your two kids? That's not a theme that is going to touch the voters."

So this was a more succinct way of saying I would be serious about enforcing the law. Now, how that would have worked out, obviously I would have said to the people, "Fill out your campaign report." And we did send out a letter to 134 candidates, most of whom were not incumbents, [instructing them] to file reports. A lot of the losing candidates never bother to file. But yeah, that was a strong statement. You'd have to read whatever happened to that in the follow-up--I don't know. But I did write the collaboration with Common Cause and the People's Lobby--Proposition 9, the Political Reform Act of 1974 [ed: this created the Fair Political Practices Commission]. So a lot of that was followed through. And that was a bold assertion.

HOLMES: I guess what I was also getting at is that Reagan made a statement in his political career, that he was going to combat, if you want to use that colloquial term "the old boys' network," the way things were done in Sacramento.

BROWN: Yeah, but look--when you're an out, the game plan is to get the ins out, and to get the outs in, however you want to state it. And Reagan put it one way. Thus it ever is. If you look at my father's kind of campaign poster that I have, running for DA--I think it was 1939--it says, "new and competent." It's new--shiny new object. That's very important, whether it's president or dog catcher. Even though, I would say, that experience can be very, very important.

SHAFER: Maybe a different way, and I don't know if this is--?

BROWN: Well, I think I answered that, didn't I? Sure, I mean you're either on 00:29:00the side [or the other]. Now, think of it as a football game. You've got USC on one side, and Notre Dame on the other side. They've got different flags, they cheer for different plays. That's the way it is. So obviously, when you run, you don't say everything's wonderful. You say, "Time for a change!" And then you have to establish--what do you mean, time for a change? Well, you can attack the old-boy network. And when I ran in '92 for president, I was a lot more aggressive than that--too aggressive, I would say. So that's the dilemma. You have to be within the tradition, within the framework, which Reagan did, in a way much more than Trump. So Reagan was the establishment, but he was able to identify my father as part of the problem--and it isn't just government. 00:30:00Government becomes part of the [problem]--these become metaphors. Just like the Republicans--Obamacare became, it's a metaphor, because oh, this was this problem, and the Republicans got all riled up about it. But was it really Obamacare, Affordable Care Act? Or was it just the propaganda, feelings about Obama, feelings about the world, feelings about social change, and you have to speak in more concrete terms. This is not theoretical physics here. This is concrete--this is a human undertaking and stories are what it's about.

SHAFER: I wonder, you know, your dad, of course, lost in 1966. And there's been a lot said about his desire to maybe try it again, to take Reagan on. Can you 00:31:00tell us about the family discussions around that, versus you running--?

BROWN: Okay. So first of all, you've heard these politicians say, "I have to talk it over with my family." I have no experience of that. I never heard my father talking to my mother--should I run?

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: You said talking it over with your family, you had no experience of that.

BROWN: I didn't. I mean, maybe my father and mother when they were alone with the door closed talked about running for things. But I have a feeling that my mother appreciated my father's work and role, and that's what he did. He ran for office and held office. I don't ever remember him talking to me about it, or talking to my sisters. You know, "Should I run, girls?" But I do remember him, 00:32:00not talking about it. First of all, these kind of in-depth conversations weren't the kind of things we had--this wasn't a political science course. So yeah, I think he questioned secretary of state. I think he, at one point, if I remember correctly, said, "Why don't you run for the state senate if you want to run for an office?"

SHAFER: From an oral history that your mother did with Bancroft, she was talking about this, maybe the conversation she was having with your father, she says, "If you think that two Browns can be elected on the same ticket, you're crazy."

BROWN: Oh, that's about him running for governor?

SHAFER: Yes.

BROWN: Yeah, I don't know. He didn't seem that serious. I think he mentioned it, but it was more in a non-serious way, to me. He didn't say, "You know, I'm really thinking about this." It's more--he was in a business, he was starting to make a little money and he didn't have a lot of money. He was beaten pretty 00:33:00solidly, so I don't know, maybe he was more serious. And also, I think you maybe tell different things to different people. Maybe you imagine, you know, you could run or something. People say to me, "Why don't you run for president?" They say, "Oh, you've got to run!" [laughing] I go, "Yeah, it's probably a good idea." I mean you might just say that--and I don't know, so that's my mother telling it, or maybe he said something to her. That's possible. But it wasn't like a big competition--it's me or you. As far as I know, that never occurred.

SHAFER: Yeah, do--so you were talking about--you looked at the codes. You saw the potential for the office, the disclosure was a big part of that, and I'm just wondering--?

BROWN: I saw that after I saw my father's campaign treasurer fill out my campaign report for junior college board. And instead of using names, he 00:34:00scrambled them all and used initials, like Jay Smith, and he scribbled--in fact, some of it was just write them like names in a circle. I can't remember exactly. But that struck me. I said, "How do you do this?" He said, "That's the way we do it." And so I thought, well, that doesn't seem right to me. That's when I started investigating it, and that's how I got onto that question.

SHAFER: When you say it didn't seem right to you, what do you mean?

BROWN: Well, I mean you read the code! It says report the name of the donor and the amount, and it was pretty clear that you had to do both, and they somehow separated. So he'd put a total amount at the bottom, but he wouldn't put the amount next to the donor.

SHAFER: So it was useless to the public really.

BROWN: Well, the whole thing is a bit use[less]--I mean, it's all written for the newspapers to write stories, and they always write the same stories like they found it out. But all they did was read the campaign reports. And it does 00:35:00deter people from doing crazy things.

SHAFER: So, I'm just wondering the extent to which that idea, of forcing politicians to fill out their disclosure forms in detail, and properly, and all that--how much of that was your own personal conviction? And how much of it was like--I don't want to say political expedience, but you saw that as--versus seeing that as a good issue. And it could be--they could both be true.

BROWN: No, I thought it was a good issue, because people were concerned about it. It seemed like an obvious violation of the law. It couldn't, to me, be any clearer. It says, "report the donation." But they didn't report the donation in any sense of the word that made sense. I thought it was important, the role of secret money in politics. This is a legitimate point, that I really thought was 00:36:00important and did corrupt the process. So yeah, I was onto that. And then, I got into this idea before Watergate. Because Watergate was what, '73?

SHAFER: Reagan was '72, I think.

BROWN: Yeah, okay, I'm running in '70--I was elected in November of '70, and I guess I spoke about it before then. So I thought it was very important, and then Watergate made it even more important, at least temporarily, till other things came along.

HOLMES: Governor, if we're looking at l970, and on this same topic, you have Jess Unruh, who changed his name for the election. I think he dropped the e [from Jesse], but was also known as Big Daddy, who was notorious for these very kind of campaign donations and the funneling of money into the political system 00:37:00that you were discussing. And then, on the other hand you also have Reagan, who was better known, and particularly at this time, for what they called the kitchen cabinet, his business advisors, who funneled a lot of money into his campaigns and played a large role in his administration. Did that also factor in as well?

BROWN: Also the Fox Ranch, that Reagan got some kind of deal on that. At least that's what I thought. I mean money is a big thing. Money talks, and it influences elections in a way that is contrary to the textbook idea of what a democracy is supposed to be about. So obviously, it was an issue that not a lot of people were talking about. In 1970, I don't think anybody was talking about it. The guy from Shasta County, back in the 1870s, that passed the campaign 00:38:00disclosure law that--it kind of, it went away. No, the role of money and the size of the money, I think, it's changed over time. It's not a topic that's been of great interest.

There's a federal judge [John T. Noonan], who wrote a book called, Bribes: The Intellectual History of a Moral Idea. Now, that's an interesting book. So he points out all the practices that happen. But it's something that's always been condemned, and corruption now, in parts of the world, is very severe--Mexico, parts of Europe. It's pretty intractable and corruption often accompanies the 00:39:00decline and fall of governments. So it is a real cancer. On the other hand, absolute purity is, in a capitalist system, where money's the currency of the realm. Money, it's about money. People really think about it--how much money can I make? What does he want to get paid? It's very important. So in our capital economy, it's an ever-present tension, but it's real.

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: So, where were we? Oh, disclosure. At some point, either after the election or during, were there politicians who said, "Jerry, can't you just lay off?"

BROWN: Well, I think in the campaign, as I recall, we sent out video. We were 00:40:00going to send it out, and we were going to name a couple senators. And we showed it to my father, and he absolutely blew a gasket. He said, "You can't do that." So we pulled it back, and we toned it down.

SHAFER: These were two incumbents?

BROWN: Yeah, incumbents.

SHAFER: Were they Democrats?

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And you--but you, if your dad hadn't--you were ready to go with it?

BROWN: We were ready to go with it, and as I said, there's always a tension. Tom Quinn wanted to make news. He was a news guy. I was a more political guy, so I always said, "Gee, I think we ought to tone this down." So I toned down a lot of things, because this is the tendency, even prescinding from politics, it's hard to have a sharp, incisive mind, and it's hard to have a sharp, incisive 00:41:00sentence. Relatively rare, I found out. In my entire life it's rare. So, to get through the clutter, even in 1970, you needed to call attention, in a very succinct, catchy, memorable way that touched a chord. That's what you had to do, and we did that. Not as much as Tom Quinn would have liked. [laughing] Because I had to tame him down all the time.

SHAFER: Do you remember what the slogan for the campaign was?

BROWN: No. I don't know if we had a slogan. Did we?

SHAFER: Time for a change? [laughing]

BROWN: No, I don't know, was there a slogan? You'd have to go look at the campaign. I don't think there was a campaign slogan. There was an ad I've seen that we put out. It was a print ad, but it was much calmer. That was a very mild ad.

SHAFER: I can imagine some people thinking Pat's son is really self-righteous with all this stuff.

BROWN: Well, you always think that, but corrupt people think that too. They don't like that. You have a continuum here, and people who were doing what they're not supposed to, would not like anybody who calls them to account. On the other hand, you can get on your high horse and be pretty obnoxious and overbearing. So, like everything else, wisdom is the middle path.

SHAFER: Do you think you ever crossed a line?

BROWN: I don't know if I did. You'd have to give me an example. Cross what line? I mean, we have many lines--what's the line? The legal line? The ethical line?

SHAFER: Well, it sounds like that video--you thought the video was over the line.

BROWN: My father did. I don't know that it was--I think it was accurate. No, we 00:43:00didn't do anything that wasn't accurate, but not everything that is accurate is prudent. Because it might create more backlash or more political opposition. So this is not about just truth and error, good and evil--it's also about being effective. And in politics, you do need allies, so you can only burn a certain number of bridges, and you have to build a far greater number of alliances. Which, by the way, to make news is not to build alliances. News is its own thing. It's based on shock, man bites dog--new, that's what it is. But not everything that is new is good. Or, certainly not everything that is new makes 00:44:00everything that is, and people that are, feel good.

SHAFER: Did you feel, because hypocrisy can be deadly for a politician--

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Did you feel, as you were running, and then when you became secretary of state, a certain obligation to make sure that you were sort of setting the bar in terms of disclosure, and that kind of thing?

BROWN: I think I disclosed everything. I did disclose everything. I didn't think of hypocrisy. I don't think that came up. I did think, when I became secretary of state, I noticed that in Frank Fat's [Restaurant], the lobbyists would often host the various elected officials. And the way they hosted them, they'd come by and say, "I'm your host tonight," and they'd put their business card on the table, and then that was paid for. So I barred that in Proposition 9, and I thought that was an abuse. You might call it the gravy train. On the other hand, 00:45:00you can go so far. I think in the White House, the president has to pay for his own meals, and then what's a personal meal and what's a presidential meal? I think they take it to a point that--I don't know. Who paid for Winston Churchill's brandy every day during World War II? [laughter] So I think to discern the proper path, I certainly did not understand, in 1970, what I understand in the twenty-first century, after having looked at--over decades--at various political actions and reactions.

SHAFER: You mentioned Willie Brown a couple of times yesterday, and I'm wondering if you can think back to a conversation you had with him, if there was 00:46:00one, where he said--because he came from a different point of view on this stuff, I would--

BROWN: Not originally. When he first went to the legislature, he proposed a bill that lobbyists would have to wear large badges that identified them as lobbyists.

SHAFER: That's what John Cox said.

BROWN: That's what Willie Brown said, and it's in the LA Times if you read the clips. Have you seen it?

MARZORATI: Yeah, yeah. It's also in the biography too, on Willie Brown.

HOLMES: And his oral history as well.

BROWN: So you're not reading Willie Brown's oral history, obviously.

SHAFER: Not yet--Basic BROWN: [My Life and Our Times], is that the one? But, so he changed at some point?

BROWN: Or evolves! Look, this is a situational world. The world is--the world of Eisenhower is not the world of Clinton. Things change over, certainly over decades, and they even change over years. The world of campaigning without 00:47:00television--the 1950 campaign didn't have television, '54. So that may have put a premium on making relationships with labor unions, with newspaper editors, with fraternal organizations like the Elk and the Moose and the Knights of Columbus. And so those are relationships, and you build relationships by having meals together, having a drink together, having a cigar together, going on a trip together, and the question is who pays for those?

So in the more rarified--and I say rarified if I can put quotations on that--environment today, then all that's illegal. And to some extent, you don't need to do those things, because you don't need the relationships as much. You 00:48:00need money, and you need media--and you communicate. Now, you do build your things, and you find work-arounds. Things just change. You can use words in 1950 that you can't use in 2000, so we're constrained by the flow of fashion and fad, and you ignore it at your peril.

SHAFER: So, you mentioned that your budget got cut. That was sort of like payback to you from the legislature.

BROWN: Yeah, but it didn't matter much because I had a very lean budget anyway. [laughter] I didn't need very much.

SHAFER: How did you found out they were cutting your budget?

BROWN: I don't know. They told me, or something. But it was a gesture, it didn't 00:49:00really have any impact. I mean, how do you cut the secretary of state? We have functions. You have to follow the corporate finance--all the financing documents. Security interest--if you want the equivalent of a mortgage in property or inventory, you've got to file a piece of paper of record, and that's with the secretary of state. So then we have a little bit of election--you've got to file the campaign reports. You can't take away the filing cabinets. And what do we have? We had a few lawyers. They didn't take those out, the election lawyers--only a couple. That time we had a couple. I only had two exempt positions. I think the secretary of state has many, many more now.

SHAFER: But I mean clearly, they were trying to send a message.

BROWN: Oh, they were sending a message, yeah. I guess in today's jargon it's signaling.

SHAFER: [laughing] And did you get the signal?

BROWN: Well, not particularly. No. It may have been for internal 00:50:00consumption--who knows what the message is. Maybe the message is the speaker showing he's protecting his members. But maybe he's constrained. I don't know what Bob Moretti was thinking. He's not alive today. But he might have been thinking I can't do too much--it'll look bad. But I have to do something for my reputation and for my house, as they call it. So I don't know. We rented a place, a building--it was a private building. The rent was not any higher. In fact, it was a little lower, but of course it was to an outside party. Then we just went down to the old Sierra Building, and that was fine.

SHAFER: So there were other things on the ballot that November. John Tunney beat George Murphy. Reagan got reelected. How would you describe the political 00:51:00environment that year?

BROWN: The political environment in '70? I think violence. Is that the Weathermen by 1970? Campus unrest. A group of students blew up a computer in Fresno. There was other violence. So disorder was out there, definitely. That was still part of the landscape.

SHAFER: How do you think that affected what voters were looking for?

BROWN: Certainly, you do not want to be a soft on crime, wishy-washy character. So that was the environment then.

HOLMES: In the race between Reagan and Unruh, what do you recall about your view 00:52:00of that race, meaning did you think that Unruh had a chance to beat Reagan?

BROWN: No, no--in fact, when he came within 500,000 votes, that was considered pretty good. The only thing I remember from that campaign is that Reagan marched up the driveway of Henry Salvatori, and called out Henry Salvatori in some way.

HOLMES: Unruh did?

BROWN: Unruh did, to Reagan. But it was tough. Reagan was a star, and there was this mood. In 1970, Nixon's still popular probably--yeah, he certainly was popular against [George S.] McGovern two years later. It was hard for a Democrat, I think, even though the Democratic registration was very high.

HOLMES: When you were, in that general election, I think one of only two or three Democrats that were elected?

BROWN: To what?

HOLMES: In 1972 statewide office.

BROWN: I think the only--oh, Tunney was elected. And maybe Tom Lynch, as attorney general?

HOLMES: Wilson [C.] Riles, I think.

BROWN: Wilson Riles was an independent, and who was the attorney general? Oh, I think [J.] Arthur Younger was elected. Yeah, Tom Lynch did not run. So yeah, the only statewide elected was myself, except for Wilson Riles--that's a nonpartisan office [state superintendent of public instruction].

HOLMES: A final question on Unruh: when we look at this campaign, he's trying to wage a populist campaign against Reagan. And he's trying to shed, I think, many years of rumors--or at least speculation about his behavior when it comes to lobbyists and the inner workings of Sacramento. Do you think, or did he ever speak to you, about your campaign against campaign finances?

BROWN: I can't remember. I didn't have much contact with him. I had a little contact with the Tunney campaign. That was in LA. But I don't remember much contact with Unruh and Reagan. I had very little.

SHAFER: How did John Tunney strike you?

BROWN: Well, he was a friend of Teddy Kennedy. Very upbeat. He was very attractive to the folks, particularly in Hollywood. He had a lot of support there. So he was a more glamorous candidate.

SHAFER: Did he seem substantive?

BROWN: I couldn't tell. I mean he was sufficiently glamorous that that was the overwhelming impression. But vigorous, dynamic. He was a good candidate.

SHAFER: So you win, and you get sworn in on January 4, 1971, and Earl Warren 00:55:00swears you in. How did you come to that--how did you decide to have him do it?

BROWN: Well, I knew who he was. I thought that would be quite historic, memorable. My father knew Warren. They had become friends. So why wouldn't he? If you could have Earl Warren swear you in, why would you say, "I would rather have the clerk of Sacramento County." Or who would you say? A judge?

SHAFER: Your father.

BROWN: Well, I didn't even think of that. See, normally you had judges swear you in. A judge swore in my father, Chief Justice [Phil S.] Gibson swore him in as attorney general. I think we have a picture of that. So it seemed to me that you 00:56:00have a judge. Well, if you have a judge, you could have the chief justice--why not have the chief justice of the United States? So that was my thought. But it wasn't a big show. It was a very modest. By today's productions, it was pretty simple. I think it was in one of the rooms in the capitol. There weren't a lot of people there, I don't think. But certainly, there was--maybe a hundred, a couple hundred.

SHAFER: Was there press there?

BROWN: Yeah, there must have been press. But I don't know if you read the next day in the [Sacramento] Bee, I don't know if you see anything. There must have been. Because the swearing in is usually the governor. So yeah, I'm sworn in on the same day, I was sworn in. So the governor is the story, is the news.

SHAFER: Do you remember your first conversation with Governor Reagan as secretary of state, or that early relationship, like what was that?

BROWN: No, I just called him--I think I went in and talked to him about my budget. I wanted to expand it to include a few election lawyers or 00:57:00something--something like that. I think I only talked to him once.

SHAFER: The whole four years?

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Really?

BROWN: Well, that's more than governors normally talk to secretaries of state.

SHAFER: [laughing] And then, of course, Watergate happens. And I don't know if we want to jump ahead or not, to Proposition 9?

BROWN: Oh yeah, that was '74. That's four years later. There were a lot of lawsuits we brought. Brought a lawsuit against Nixon's notary public, [Frank] DeMarco [Jr.], for falsifying his income tax returns. And we had a hearing, and took away his notary public. In fact, he did falsify the returns. He did sort of take advantage of a tax exemption that had expired. Very crude violation of the tax law. Tom Quinn uncovered that--I never verified it, but Tom Quinn claims 00:58:00that somehow he was able to find the typeface of the typewriter, and that typewriter was not made in the time when the tax law was operative. Now, that's what he said--whatever it was, they figured it out somehow. So that was a lawsuit.

I also filed a claim with the Federal Communications Commission, to ask them to provide free time--five minutes each night, on all stations--for major candidates. And I also asked the postal service to provide a certain number of free universal mailings. Those filings, for all I know, are still there in the archives. They've never been acted upon, but they were good ideas at the time. 00:59:00That was before social media.

SHAFER: You were basically sort of flexing, using the office in a way that it hadn't been used before.

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: And to what you told us yesterday, that you decided when you were listening to your father and Jess Unruh talk, that you decided you wanted to be governor?

BROWN: I think that's when I decided. You know, it was a long time [ago], so the mists of time are getting denser. But that's what I believe.

SHAFER: I mean at some point, I imagine that you and Tom were thinking okay, how are we going to parlay this--no, you don't like that word, it sounds like a poker game. But how are you going to use this office--

BROWN: Parlay, I think that--isn't that a racing term?

SHAFER: Parlay--I don't know. I thought yesterday you objected to it.

BROWN: No, I didn't. You didn't use the word parlay yesterday.

SHAFER: [laughing] Oh, I didn't?

BROWN: No, you didn't. Did you remember hearing him say--?

MARZORATI: Parlay, yeah.

BROWN: What?

SHAFER: Yeah, I did.

MARZORATI: You have to pick a couple winners in a row to win. [laughter]

BROWN: Yeah, whatever. I don't know what parlay means.

SHAFER: [laughing] We'll get the transcript.

BROWN: That's why I don't know what it means. [laughter] I think it means racing. No, we knew about my running for governor before I was sworn in as secretary of state. So, yeah, our whole orientation was make sure that was the path I was on.

SHAFER: Say more about that. How did you have that--what did you talk about?

BROWN: I mean I can't recount a conversation from more than forty years ago. But we did, in the office, that which the office had a legal obligation and right to do. And in so doing, we certainly got a lot of attention. And we traveled around, and that's where we put out press releases. And as I remember, I'd deliver a release myself. I'd go to the LA Times, drop it off, go up to UPI, go 01:01:00up some backstairs and drop off the release. That's how you had to drop things off, you just didn't send them out electronically. So we did that, and you'd have to look at the number of releases. But my impression was that we had the eighteen-year-old vote. I think I filed an amicus brief on that--might have filed an amicus brief on the Spanish ballot. We did a number of things. And we went to political meetings, went to county clerk meetings, talked with the county clerks.

SHAFER: Did you feel like you were building bridges to, you know, constituencies at that point, like labor?

BROWN: Yeah, I would think so, to African Americans. The guy who owned the black 01:02:00paper in LA [Los Angeles Sentinel]--[Leon] Washington [Jr.], Mr. Washington. He and his wife [Ruth] had that paper. I would go down and visit them. Yeah, we went to different newspapers around the state.

SHAFER: So with some of these lawsuits that you filed, did you write--?

BROWN: There was more of a media program--old fashioned. Go to the different counties, because the media was--became more and more important. In the old days, you'd have to go to all these places and even in 1970, you still had to go to a local media market. But you were going to the media. You weren't going to the county clerk. Whereas my father had said his whole idea was you go visit the editor and the judge and the county clerk, of each county. But of course each of these counties was so small that it's a different perspective today.

SHAFER: How you decide which cases to, you know, file an amicus brief or to file a lawsuit?

BROWN: Yeah, because they were related to the secretary of state. They were germane to the job. I didn't just pull something out of the air. It had to be related to what we were doing.

SHAFER: And one that you could get in the news with, I assume?

BROWN: Well, if it was noteworthy, it was newsworthy. I mean it's difficult to do something important in a totally obscure way. That would be kind of a form of political mortification that I think is inconsistent with the calling.

SHAFER: I wonder, in the '72 election--you weren't on the ballot of course. But there were a number of issues, including Prop. 22, which was an anti-UFW initiative. It would have banned boycotts.

BROWN: Oh yeah, we worked on that. I helped explore--there was some fraudulent signature gathering, and I held a press conference and exposed that and the farm 01:04:00workers were very happy about that.

SHAFER: And had--did they come to you and suggest that, or how--?

BROWN: Yes, yes. I think at some point in time I'd gone to La Paz and visited Chávez.

SHAFER: Yeah, what was he like?

BROWN: I thought very impressive. I saw him first in my father's house on Muirfield in the '66 campaign. He just walked through the room. He had a plaid shirt on. At La Paz, it was one of these places with a lot of fervor--nuns and young people and everyone very much in the cause. So it has that spirit of 01:05:00common endeavor, kind of a kibbutz/novitiate kind of feeling, which I am drawn to, so I liked that. I remember sitting around on the rug drinking herb tea with him and a number of his associates. He just had a way--there was a charisma there. Undoubtedly. A lot of people just don't have charisma. I don't want to compare him to Mother Teresa, but Mother Teresa had charisma too. Simple of dress, simple of manner, very direct. Now, César, I can't tell you all the different--he had had a soft voice. But the fact that he was--the Madonna, the flag, the huelga [strike], the whole movement--it was a movement. And so that 01:06:00was very attractive, because I thought they were doing something. You have the most oppressed workers, and they were lifting them up, and they were doing it not in a bread and butter trade union way, but in a movement way. So, yeah, I was very impressed by that.

HOLMES: When was the first time that you met César Chávez?

BROWN: I guess when I went to La Paz, when I was probably seeking their endorsement for secretary of state.

SHAFER: Oh, and what was La Paz?

BROWN: La Paz is where the farm workers had their headquarters. Outside of Bakersfield.

HOLMES: It's a town.

BROWN: That's where César is buried.

SHAFER: I thought he was buried in Delano. Maybe not.

BROWN: No, Delano is where they started, but they went off to this former sanitarium and established a whole operation.

HOLMES: It's up in the Tehachapis.

SHAFER: To what extent did you see him, and that movement, as kind of an 01:07:00emerging political force in California?

BROWN: Well, he had a lot of followers--he had people all over the world. They had people boycotting in Canada and London, the longshoremen refusing to unload California produce. He had this march--I don't know if I, I don't think I met him on the march, but I was there. And Tunney, I think, came to that march--and Mondale, down to Calexico. It was a crowd. I don't know, five hundred, a thousand people? I don't know, maybe five hundred, but it seemed like a long line of people, walking several miles along the road, you know, carrying banners. Well, that's not something I encountered before. So yeah, I found it 01:08:00interesting. No, more than interesting--it was moving. He was somebody of conviction, moral purpose, with all the ritual and emotion and feeling that is far different than just working on legislation in Sacramento or going to your political rally. This had more of a religious feel to it.

SHAFER: A cause.

BROWN: It was a cause, and there weren't a lot of causes. There's the civil rights movement. There was the farm worker movement, which--I saw the two as similar.

HOLMES: Governor, they marched to Sacramento in 1966.

BROWN: Yeah.

HOLMES: When your father was running. I think your father was down in Los Angeles, spending Easter Sunday with the family.

BROWN: Actually in Palm Springs.

HOLMES: Yes, Palm Springs, you're right.

BROWN: At Frank Sinatra's house. I guess that would be a reportable transaction under Proposition 9. [laughter]

HOLMES: He was not there to meet with them on Sunday, and Chávez made news about that, and we were just talking about news. Was there a lesson for you learned in seeing that? Because Democrats were very slow to support the movement until probably 1968.

BROWN: Well, first of all, it wasn't too popular in a number of places where there were farmers. Chávez was not a force that was welcomed by the farming community, so you had to choose--and politicians don't like to choose. They like to add, not subtract. So I assume my father was hesitant to be in that divisive role. And he was someone, through the water plan, who had a lot of farmers who 01:10:00liked him. I don't know how many that would be by today's calculations. It might have been smaller than he thought, but he did have a constituency. And so he just said Easter was a time to spend with the family. That's what he told me--and he said that, and we talked about it. I thought that he should have been there. I thought that then. Now, I'm not sure.

SHAFER: Why the different--?

BROWN: Well, I'm just thinking from his political point of view. Now, he probably could have embraced the movement, because the movement was growing, it was part of the Democratic Party, but it was very antagonistic to the growers. It was labor and capital. The Mexican farm worker versus the non-Mexican grower. 01:11:00And that's very divisive. On the other hand, the farm workers didn't have any rights. They had the short-handled hoe. They didn't have unemployment insurance. So--it was a cause. I mean I can see why he would conclude that, from a political point of view. I mean you are in politics, and you try not to do things--you try to avoid things that lose you votes. I mean, that is a fact. This is a game of numbers. If you get fewer votes than your opponent, then you lose. So you can never ignore any action that would move votes against your position. And I don't think any real politician ever does, no matter what they say.

SHAFER: I'm wondering, you know, looking back--it sounds like now you can see why your father did what he did at the time. And I'm wondering--?

BROWN: Yeah, it seemed like that was the cause, and he should have been with that. And I don't think I experienced how people felt about the farm workers. When I became governor, no legislator in the valley would be seen with me. And that was actually the [California] Agricultural [Labor] Relations Act, but they did not want to be--when I wanted to come into town, they avoided me. So this was a polarized--that's what they said, and that's what they did. And I don't know whether it was the same in '66, but it wasn't quite that bad, and I probably didn't even appreciate that. But it was a drawing of a line.

SHAFER: I guess what I'm getting at is you were--when you were in college and when you're in the seminary--

BROWN: Yeah, yeah.

SHAFER: And when you're studying for the bar--you were pretty idealistic, I think, and maybe you feel you still are. Like you tried to get your father to 01:13:00stop--you tried to stop an execution. And I'm just wondering, looking--are there a lot of issues where you look back now and you say--you understand better what he did than you did at the time?

BROWN: Well, let's say understand--how much can you understand if you're sitting in an isolated mountain top talking to no one except fellow Jesuits, and reading nothing except the Bible and Jesuit biographies, and talking about a life of perfection? How much does that equip you to deal with labor relations or workers' compensation or pensions or highways or racial matters? I mean it did give you some moral guidelines. But the world of politics--there is a prudential issue here. I mean, if you are right and the other guy is wrong, and then 01:14:00ultimately you go to war. And when you go to war, you have to kill people. So that's not good either.

But it would be very difficult--I think about that. How would World War I have been prevented? Could Russia have looked at the ally Serbia, and it was being invaded by the Hapsburgs, Austria. They said, "We've got to come to their aid because they're our orthodox brothers." I suppose that was a moral issue. That was the right thing to do. And then the French--oh, we've got an alliance. That's the right thing to do. And the Germans say we're allied with Austria--and I'm sure they thought it was the right thing to do. Well, fifteen or twenty million people were killed after that. And George [H.W.] Bush thought it was right to bomb Baghdad. That was a morally correct position. But we didn't have 01:15:00ISIS before that. So you have to beware of the consequences of your actions, whatever labels you affix to them.

SHAFER: We'll maybe take a little break in a second, but I want to--maybe just one other thing about--because it became important on the ballot, Prop. 20, which was the coastal commission act [California Coastal Zone Conservation Act of 1972], yeah.

BROWN: Right.

SHAFER: What do you recall about that? What was your position on it? Did you think it was a good idea? How did you--?

BROWN: Yeah, it sounded like a good idea. I didn't get actively involved in that. There was a lot of opposition from business. I remember a guy named Alan [G.] Sieroty, I think, who was active in it. So yeah, I didn't know exactly what it was, but I knew they were protecting the coast. But I came to understand the 01:16:00Coastal Commission in greater detail years later. So I tried to focus on what I was doing. And my job was, in 1972, well, I was getting ready to run for governor. I met a guy named, he was the senator from Siskiyou County, way up there in, I think, Yreka. Senator Collier, Randolph [E.] Collier. The Silver Fox. And so I would be popping off on one issue after another, and he came up to me and he said, "You're talking," I can't remember the exact words, but the effect, the sum and substance--"You talk about a lot of issues. Let me tell you 01:17:00something. Every time you take a position, you're going to lose votes. So think about it, and don't take a position on everything." [laughing] I don't know when he told me that, but I would have to say those are wise words.

Now, if you take no positions, then you're nothing. If you take nothing but positions, you're all over the place. So you are creating an impression, and the impression is made up of your actions and your words, and so you have to be conscious about that. You can't be just--oh, "I'm here, and I'm doing"--just thinking about the first level. You do have to see it in the larger picture. I think most politicians instinctively have a sense. In fact, most of them are too cautious, I would say--they're very cautious.

SHAFER: Risk averse.

BROWN: I'd say they're very risk averse, on things like the gas tax and the 01:18:00cap-and-trade bill--they weren't jumping on--in fact, most of these bills that we passed, it was hard--hard pulling.