Jerry Brown | Interview 6 | May 6, 2019

SHAFER: This is interview session six, and it's May 6, 2019. We're with Governor Jerry Brown, and Scott Shafer from KQED, along with Martin Meeker and Todd Holmes from The Bancroft Library. So Governor, we left off last time--you'd gotten elected governor the first time.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And so it's January of 1975 or so; you're about to take office. What do you, what's your sense of--when you were taking office, what were you--what was the mood in Sacramento? It was a very different administration that you were following. You know, what was--?

BROWN: What was the mood? You know, that's a very subjective question.

SHAFER: I mean what were you--did you have goals?

BROWN: I don't know if there was a mood in Sacramento. Gerald Ford was the president. We didn't have an impeachment, but we had Nixon resigning. So we had Watergate. We had the winding down of the Vietnam War. A lot of the aftermath of 00:01:00that. So, we thought, I think there was a recession in '73 -'74, so there was still a sense of the recession, even though a recovery had already started. So it wasn't an exuberant spending mood. So, it's hard to say. I mean we've had eight years of Reagan, so he was a noticeable person, and so that sets the stage for something different. And that's basically what I was doing, trying to be something other than Reagan, what I call the new spirit, which was a sense of revitalization, of making government more responsive, because there was the same 00:02:00discontent there is today. There is always discontent. I meant the whole election system is based on trying to arouse, or find, discontent, and then after having done that and being elected on the basis of it, you then have to respond. Now, you were discontent, and now I'm going to show you how you don't have to be discontent anymore. So you want to lower taxes, or at least not raise them, and make things happen.

If you read my inaugural speech, it's pretty simple--brief. And I guess that was the mood--I mean that was my mood, kind of trying to make government a little more immediate, more real, not as cliché ridden, of overstated--kind of the 00:03:00certain emptiness of political rhetoric. So I was trying to purify that and get it to be more down to earth and more real. Now, of course, when you're there, the normal process takes over and things continue, even if slightly different.

SHAFER: And the phrase new spirit, because that's one that you used a lot, did that mean something to you in terms of, not just outward symbolic things, but the kinds of people that you wanted to bring?

BROWN: Well, Reagan followed a Republican line, and so that opened up the possibility of bringing non-Republicans into government, which I did. He was more of the traditional majority white view of things, so that opened up the possibility that I could bring in minorities. Also working to help the farm 00:04:00workers, give working people some rights, and not letting government get out of control. That was basically what I was up to.

SHAFER: One of the first decisions you made was where to live, and you decided--?

BROWN: So basically, I'm not exactly satisfied with that mood story, because mood is--you know, it's like mood music. It doesn't tell you a lot. So I don't know if that's a very good question, and I think that's why my answer is not what I would think is all that important.

SHAFER: Well, I guess what I was getting at with the question is like what was the zeitgeist?

BROWN: You'd have to go back and see some contemporary--you could watch old films or--I don't know how you'd find that out. How many years ago is that? 00:05:00Yeah, but that's a distortion, because you can't possibly remember. Well, who was thinking about what when? In 1975? There was the legislators. There were Republicans, there were Democrats, there's old ones, there's young ones. So I think the most significant part is the Vietnam War was winding down. There was not a great sense of deference to institutions, and the military had suffered a lot of loss of credibility, and it was having its own institutional, internal problems, so I don't know that I can add anything to that. I think that's something people could look at for themselves.

SHAFER: So one of your first decisions, again, was where to live.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And you considered living in the Governor's Mansion, where--

BROWN: No, I didn't consider that, because it was ridiculous. I hadn't really 00:06:00thought about the old mansion. The old mansion was perfectly fine--at least it was in 1966. I didn't go over and look at it, so I don't know how it was in--but they'd pretty well neglected it, so that probably wasn't a viable option. It was a park, and I was by myself, so it would be a little awkward. The new mansion was even more awkward, because it was in the suburbs. I don't know whether it was twenty minutes away or twenty-five minutes away.

SHAFER: In Carmichael, I think.

BROWN: Yeah, so it had to be furnished, and to furnish it and operate it over four years would be millions of dollars, so that wasn't within the spirit of things. So there was really no choice. An apartment made sense. Now, when I came back the second time we had an apartment over P.F. Chang's. We had a one-room 00:07:00apartment. So there's nothing unusual about that--and by the way, that's what people do--it's called condos. And that's where most housing is being built in the city. Now, if I had a family, that would have been a different story.

SHAFER: So you ended up choosing to live in an apartment building near the capitol. Right across from the capitol.

BROWN: A state-owned building right next to the capitol. And then when I later went back and stayed at the mansion, it makes a lot of sense. That's probably why they bought that mansion, because the governor can be present in the capitol, can invite people over, and it's not a big trip to go to the residence, so that's why--although I didn't entertain in the apartment. So that's an interesting thing. My father said, "You have to be able to entertain." I said, "Well, I'm not going to do that this time."

SHAFER: Because--?

BROWN: Well, how do you entertain--how do I do that? You have to have an 00:08:00entertainment assistant, or something. It just didn't fit in. So if you're in the mansion, and you have a maid and a cook and a gardener. Okay, then you have staff and you make things happen. Well, if you don't have any of that--of course Reagan didn't, he dismantled all that--then you have to recreate it. If you recreate it, then people start writing about that, and that becomes the dominant theme, and that was totally contrary to what I was trying to communicate. So I'd say it was all pretty well determined, once I laid out my campaign, and just being a single person, as I was, then everything else had to fall into place.

HOLMES: Speaking of new spirits in Sacramento, were you also trying to strike a difference from your predecessor Ronald Reagan in regards to a more frugal lifestyle?

BROWN: Well, I did sell his jet--I did not sell his jet. He rented a jet, which at that time was a rather large sum, $600 an hour, and I thought that was excessive. Particularly, I thought it was excessive because having lived in Los Angeles--and I lived there, and I traveled to the capital because I was secretary of state, and I would take PSA, which is now replaced by Southwest. It was perfectly fine. You just have a ticket, you didn't have all that preliminary stuff. You just walk on, get there in less than an hour and walk off. Why in the world would you ever need a private jet? Now, if you're going to go to Modoc, yeah, it'd be nice to have--but then the jet's too big. So it seemed to me there was no basis for a private plane. Now, my father had a plane called The Grizzly, but that was a DC-3, and I probably might have used it if that was the 00:10:00tradition. But Reagan had a Lear jet, I think, that he flew around on, and I thought that was a little excessive for the time.

SHAFER: A lot was made of the fact that you lived in an apartment. I mean, I think the reports at the time seemed to suggest that you were sleeping, I think, on a mattress or on a futon?

BROWN: I wasn't sleeping on the floor. I was sleeping on a mattress, which I presume you do too. And I still do.

SHAFER: [laughing] Was it on the floor?

BROWN: No, there was some kind of a frame.

SHAFER: But there was a big contrast between the previous two administrations.

BROWN: Well, if you read about Nancy Reagan, her bed was taken by Air Force One, when they traveled to foreign countries, so there was a more elaborate situation.

SHAFER: But how--I mean obviously, between that and the car you chose to drive, the blue Plymouth instead of the limousine that the--

BROWN: Yeah, I did the limousine because the credibility of government was low, and I didn't want to project the arrogance of power. And a big limousine with 00:11:00one guy in the back seems excessive to me, and just the iconography of that is not good. From a political point of view, or from a human point of view, it's not needed. So if form follows function, I said just take whatever car. I didn't know it was going to be blue. I didn't pick the blue car, Gray Davis--or he didn't either, just pick whatever car is in the car pool. So I tried to keep a more ordinary--whatever they call it, the arrogance of power, the elevated status of the politician, because the politicians are servants of the people. And I remember someone gave me some descriptions of prior inaugurations, and I 00:12:00think Jefferson walked in the mud, or something, to his speech. I think we've forgotten how simple things were. They say that Harry Truman--I don't know if it's true--drove back to Independence, Missouri. So people didn't have these big book contracts, or flying around in private jets, or living in mansions and having all this other stuff. There was a simpler view.

In that sense, I'd say that the governor's mansion is a nice place, three stories, pretty nice. Swimming pool, nice yards and trees and plants, but it had the legitimacy that previous governors had conducted their business that way. So Reagan said no, that won't work, and they got their friends to buy them a private home, so Reagan lived in the fabulous forties. Nice house, nothing 00:13:00spectacular. But that Victorian house seems to bother certain people. Now, if you're coming from San Francisco, well, these are great! A lot of people look to find a restored Victorian house, for whatever reason. That's how it got abandoned, so that was left for me to have the apartment.

And I was very aware of the skepticism and disdain for politicians, and I didn't want to feed that. I think it does get fed by certain kinds of behavior that are pleasurable, but the average guy who is not doing so well--and we had, the first year we got to 10 percent unemployment, and people were marching. The AFL-CIO had a march on Sacramento I think, in the first six months. So I think at that point, you don't want to have ostentatious kinds of indulgence. And basically, I 00:14:00came up pretty simply. My parents had a nice house, but simple. And being in the seminary was even simpler yet, so the accoutrements of power, if taken very far, became distasteful to me, and I think distasteful to the people as--witness the popularity that I enjoyed.

SHAFER: So to what extent was it just that's you, that's who you were, versus being--it sounds like you were somewhat aware. I mean you couldn't not be aware.

BROWN: What do you mean unaware? I've been running for governor four times, I'm unaware of the consequences of political gestures and moves? To state that proposition is to refute it.

SHAFER: No, I said you were--I was going to say you weren't unaware. It was a double negative.

BROWN: Well, but you're implying that this was unusual, to be aware, that most 00:15:00politicians run around totally unaware of the consequences and what people are thinking, right? Wrong. Maybe in your business you're not aware, but I doubt that. So I think that's a silly question. I have to push back on it, because you can't take it seriously. Do you know how much money politicians spend on calculating how they're coming over? I mean there's a lot of investment here. There's consultants, people whose whole career is just spent doing that. So, I didn't do much of that. What are you going to--how much is just naïve, what do you call it, artless moving around, and how much is conscious, right? Is that, I think--

SHAFER: That's your phrasing, not mine.

BROWN: What's that? Well, I'm just trying to put in clearer English what you're trying to say.

MEEKER: Well, think about Reagan and the jet and the limousines. There may be a certain part of--

BROWN: Well, Reagan liked that.

MEEKER: Well, maybe there's a certain part of the population that likes to see their elected officials have those trappings of power.

BROWN: There are, there are. And that's why it's hard to govern in this state, because there are some that like it, and some don't like it at all, and they yell epithets at you as you go by in your limousine. So those are all true. That's right. I mean there's not a one unitary interpretation of this.

[Side conversation deleted]

BROWN: I wanted to make the point that Ronald Reagan said, once, that he couldn't imagine a person running for president had they not been an actor. So that was the point, right? To be an actor is to be coached. Reagan said that he couldn't imagine running for president by anyone who had not first been an actor, and I think that speaks to the issue of being able to communicate to a broad audience.

SHAFER: So politics is part performance?

BROWN: Part performance? So is journalism, so is being a professor. Performance is built into existence.

HOLMES: On that point, Governor, you were just making the point that for you it 00:17:00was almost natural to see these moves of living in the apartment, you know, form and function--

BROWN: Yeah, well, I could go spend a million dollars, furnish a house, and I'm not, who--I'm going to go to the stores? Or am I going to have my secretary do that? How am I going to do that? How would you go about furnishing a huge house like the mansion?

SHAFER: Politicians do it all the time.

BROWN: Do they? Well, they have wives, and they have staffs of one kind or another, which I didn't have. Yeah, if you're Rockefeller or Reagan, you can do all that. And by the way, that wasn't really the mood, in the post Vietnam/post Watergate, spending a million dollars on furniture, I think it would be not a smart move.

HOLMES: And from what you recall, was that your decision? Or was that a 00:18:00discussion among you and your key advisors, coming into office in 1975?

BROWN: I don't know, who would be my advisors? They sat down and they told me that these were the things you should do? No, there's no advisors.

HOLMES: It was you then?

BROWN: I don't know--I'm sure I talked about it. I can't, first of all, we're all part of a--influences. And I talk to people--I'm talking to you, so I wouldn't say it's solely--what are you trying to get at? That we have a 9:00 meeting to discuss where the governor should live?

HOLMES: No, I was just trying to have you discuss how those decisions were made.

BROWN: Oh, how you'd make the decision? I can't exactly--I'm sure I talked about it.

I brought a lawsuit, as you know, against the construction of the new mansion, that it was on an Indian burial ground--or adjacent to a burial ground, a Maidu 00:19:00burial ground--so that'd be the second reason not to live there. So that sounds like it's a no-brainer, as they say, in the political world. Even though it was unusual, because it was contrary to the Reagan regal way of operating.

SHAFER: And you were fine with that, obviously.

BROWN: Well, I did it. But by the way, for Reagan--it worked for Reagan. He got to be president but he was a Republican in a different time.

SHAFER: So let's talk about the inauguration. How did you plan for it? And what did you see as being--like what did you want to--?

BROWN: The inauguration.

SHAFER: January of '75.

BROWN: I don't think we had an inaugural ball. I don't know if there was a big plan.

SHAFER: Well, the ball, I think, was canceled.

BROWN: Well, no, it wasn't canceled--it wasn't planned. Balls just don't happen. You have to have a committee, you have to raise money, you have to get a band, you have to book an auditorium. [tapping table] So yeah, if you don't do anything, it didn't happen. So I just showed up, and it was very exciting by 00:20:00appointing people. And by the way, who was I going to take to the inaugural ball? Or was I just going to go by myself? Who would have the first dance? So yeah, I think not having a ball was much simpler, and I definitely could think that one through. And again, the ball was in a time, sometimes it's not a time for that, and it was a little bit of that mood. There are certain times when you have to be more somber or more serious, so that's why things were more simple.

HOLMES: Which again is a big contrast to Reagan, who had four inaugural balls.

BROWN: Right, so yeah, but each governor likes to do it differently than the one before him--but also, the times change. That's why they go from Pat Brown to Ronald Reagan. Times change. They went from Reagan to Brown; they went from 00:21:00Brown to Deukmejian. So these are just the swing of--the mood as you call it--the pendulum, and politicians respond to that.

SHAFER: So you were sworn in at the capitol.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And you gave a relatively concise speech--eight minutes I think it was?

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: How did you think about that? What did you want to convey in that speech?

BROWN: I conveyed all that I had to say.

SHAFER: What did you want to say?

BROWN: Well, what I said. Read it. I thought about it, I wrote it, and after I--that's about all I can put together. And I think the brevity was--there weren't a lot of great programming, there wasn't--first of all, the whole thing of programs. You know, Reagan and my father, they used to have a general session every other year, and they had a budget session--they'd alternate, okay. So when 00:22:00you have your general, when you have a budget session--I think even in the main one, they'd kind of list the governor's programs. I remember my father would always have a list, and he'd say, "Well, I got 70 percent of that." But, and I thought to myself, if you tell them what the programs are, then the legislature can hold you up and start giving you a little bargaining, so it's better not to put everything on the table, and then work it out as you go along. So that really did shape the way I thought. But there wasn't a lot to be said. If you go back and look at what were the issues right then--there was the issue of taxes, in which I said no. And there's the issue of a deficit--and what was there? What were the issues? That was a good question.

SHAFER: Well, I think you called for the repeal of the oil depletion allowance.

BROWN: Yeah, that was a tax break that people had talked about in Washington, 00:23:00but if you remember the other side, what did they talk about? Banning harvest-time strikes. Well, I'm not going to do that. That's what Flournoy said. Banning strikes for public-sector workers--well, I'm not going to announce that. So then what other things are there? Well, there was the Planning and Conservation League, I believe, or the Sierra Club, wanted comprehensive statewide land-use planning. I made some gesture, some hint of that, I think. And there was the idea of protecting our agricultural land, and so I made mention of those things. But there was not a long list. And there's always little things, because the legislature will pass anywhere from a thousand to 00:24:00fifteen hundred bills, but every bill is not worthy of a topic at a state of the union or inaugural speech, so it was limited. But that was what I think was appropriate. Instead of just talking, talking, talking.

I think I'm probably the only one, among all the governors, that has gone back and read governors' inaugural speeches, and I have them all, going back to Governor [Peter Hardeman] Burnett, who I quoted, the first governor of California. So I read them, and I found a lot of them wordy. And I've read the ones since I was governor the first time, before I started doing it the second time, and I still find a lot of wordiness. So to get clear, persuasive, authentic language is challenging. And so sometimes being brief is more 00:25:00straightforward than just going on and on, which is not only formulaic, but it's--it's puffy. It's a lot of surplus. So that does not convey a lean, elegant government, which I wanted to do.

SHAFER: To what extent did you feel like--and you've given eight state-of-the-state addresses--but did you feel like that was something you didn't even really--?

BROWN: I think I gave seven, as a matter of fact.

SHAFER: Was it seven?

BROWN: I combined the inaugural with one, so you might check that, just to be precise.

SHAFER: With the budget, that's right. To what extent was it something you just sort of like dreaded or didn't really want to do?

BROWN: Actually, I think there were eight the second time, seven the first time, but I'm not sure of that.

SHAFER: So what like--when you gave these speeches, or even the inaugural speech, was it something like uh--I mean what was your--?

BROWN: Yeah, uh. I mean you have to do it.

SHAFER: So you didn't see it as a vehicle to put your program out there as much as something--?

BROWN: Well, no, the inauguration, that's more of a celebratory idea. But if you 00:26:00go back and read the inaugural speeches of governors, much less the state-of-the-state speeches, they're not particularly inspiring. And so they try to make up, with words, for their lack of content or inspiration, so they're not as important as you think. And they're less important now. The newspaper--they used to be done, the stations would carry them, and that was--when I was governor, they still were carrying them. They don't do that. So I found them more of a discipline for myself, to think through what it is I was going to try to do that year. But does the legislature listen that much? Does the press really pick up that much? I don't think so. So it's a different world than the Lincoln-Douglas debate, where people stood for hours, and they went back and 00:27:00forth, or--I imagine what that must have been like.

HOLMES: In your address you pledged to cut government by 7 percent--

BROWN: No, the governor's office by 7 percent.

HOLMES: The governor's office?

BROWN: Is that what--are you sure?

HOLMES: Well, we could go with governor's office, but--

BROWN: Well, it is what it is. You're asking me to remember, what was that--forty-three years ago? That's a long time ago. I think it was my own office by 7 percent, but I'm not sure.

SHAFER: That makes sense, that makes sense, yeah.

HOLMES: But I wanted to ask, is when Reagan came in, he did the famous cut--

BROWN: Trim and squeeze.

HOLMES: Squeeze, yeah, by 10 percent. Your thoughts on--?

BROWN: But his budget grew 13 percent a year, for eight years, on average.

HOLMES: Which was the point I wanted you to discuss, in the sense that he never really cut, trimmed, or squeezed. It actually went up.

BROWN: Well, he did, he squeezed. But the California economy when I was first 00:28:00governor, I think the GDP--approximately, because we don't always measure gross domestic product--but it was like at $350 billion, thereabouts. Now it's $2.8 trillion, so the state budget is within that larger economic framework. So you can cut and trim and squeeze, but in a dynamic state like California, that is growing in population, in cars, in jobs, and in financial transactions, it is about growth. But we don't always know that.

HOLMES: So did you see Reagan as a fiscal conservative, by his record?

BROWN: Not particularly. I mean he cut welfare temporarily--he didn't really cut welfare, because it all grew. You're in a dynamic economy. This is not like a corner grocery store, where you can say, "We're not going to sell chocolate bars 00:29:00anymore; we're going to just sell potato chips." No, this is one of the major economies of the whole world, extraordinarily complex, and it's constantly in motion. And therefore, the state budget, which is a subset of this larger economic reality--yeah, you can work at things. But Reagan did get the idea over that government spending is a problem and it has to be contained. That was certainly one of the memes of that era, and I had to deal with that. You have to give proper obeisance to the pieties.

And there's a context. Like just this morning, I was in Wikipedia reading about 00:30:00structuralism, and its history, and its evolution into post-structuralism. But the notion of structuralism is that there's patterns, there's a structure--and that human beings show up in the structure, but the real explanation for what moves history and people and ideas are these larger structures. And I would say that, without embracing that view totally, that describes a lot of how you should try to understand California.

SHAFER: You came into the governor's office from being secretary of state.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And you ran for secretary of state sort of as an outsider, in the sense that you were critical of politicians--

BROWN: I ran for the second time [in 2010], for governor, as an outsider. It was 00:31:00an outsider's mind. Insider's--what did I have? Insider's knowledge/outsider's mind, something like that. We had a good slogan like that, for the same thing.

SHAFER: [laughing] That's a good trick, to run as an outsider after four years.

BROWN: I did. No, I mean after eight years.

SHAFER: After eight years. So to what extent did you take the themes of, that you had running for secretary of state--clean up government, more disclosure of campaign, sort of running, in a way, against the system.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: To what extent did you, once you got into the governor's office, especially in that first year, did you want to, with some of the symbolism and also things you were doing, want to follow up on that?

BROWN: Well, you always run against government. Who did Ronald Reagan run against? Pat Brown. Who was Pat Brown? He was the governor of California. So whatever was there before, then you see--we're not going to elect you unless you can do something different. If it's just perfect the way it is, then you keep 00:32:00what's there. So there is that, just built into the system. But of course there were differences. Reagan vetoed unemployment insurance for farm workers. He did certain things that were good, I think, as well.

So the trouble is that governors are conscious of trying to do good things. So then when someone wants to be governor, they've got to find out, well, what are the good things that haven't happened yet? And that's sometimes very difficult, because if something is good, and people think it's good, then anybody who is governor is going to do it, unless there's some ideological blockage. So basically my ideas, I think where the newness came, the political reform, the helping of farm workers, the attempt to lift up the lower paid, the not further advantaging the already well off. We did that with the oil depletion allowance 00:33:00and a few other things, and insurance, the home office exemption--we tried to create a more fairness. And that's certainly the story of the Democrats even today.

And then the environment was important. Earth Day was, I think, 1970. The Stockholm environmental global conference was 1972 [United Nations Conference on the Human Environment]--which I didn't even know about at the time, but these were ideas. Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring--so these were ideas that were circulating, and that would be part of a more, of a, I don't know if I want to call it a reform agenda, but words like reform, innovation, new spirit, change. That's what I was working on, and also hiring, bringing in women, minorities, public interest lawyers, and all the rest.

SHAFER: And it seems like you also came in with a fairly healthy skepticism 00:34:00about government, and government programs, like the Great Society, for example.

BROWN: Well, that was the mood, if I could use your "mood" word. There were a lot of writings--there was something written in the early seventies about prisons, and the title was, "Nothing Works," and if you go look that up in Google, you can see that, "Nothing Works." People wrote about education, raising questions about does education really achieve the goal of equality? In fact, there's a book that I'm reviewing right now called The Meritocracy Trap, which says meritocracy is a sham. So it goes. So there's always, in the American intellectual tradition, a lot of skepticism, which I think is warranted, because certainly if you're in the Vietnam War, and more than two million people are 00:35:00killed in a far-away country, who don't even understand, on issues we're not very clear about, that's serious stuff. And yet, that's what happened.

So that became a word that someone coined, groupthink--they're all thinking about this. And I remember hearing Dean Rusk in Los Angeles talk, during the Lyndon Johnson administration--in fact, it was at Lew Wasserman's house, at a place where he showed his films. I remember the former secretary said, "We've got to get our message," somebody said, "You're not getting your message out." So people were interpreting the problem with the Vietnam War is that Johnson wasn't getting his message out. Well, of course, I thought, "Well, wait a minute, the whole idea of war--this is wrong. It's a mistake." So if you have a whole country going in one direction, and then you say wait a minute, that's the 00:36:00wrong direction. Well, if you see that enough, then you have to be somewhat--you have to have your eyes open, and that's what I'd call it.

So you're being skeptical. See, I don't like the word skeptic, but you have to be discerning and inquiring, and not gullible, or the word I would say--credulous. There's a lot of credulity. People say I heard that, and then they say it. Well, I was trained differently. Both the Jesuits, by my education, both at law school, both in the court--so I had a fairly vigorous training in questioning and probing. In fact, the whole casebook method in law school is to try to understand cases, not from what's apparent, but dig into it.

It's also, at the time, you know, when Freudianism was predominant, and 00:37:00Marxism--and what are those two about? Freud talks about latent, you have these latent, the unconscious, so you think you're doing one thing on the surface, but there's something behind. And then Marxism, we have the superstructure, but then you have the underlying means of production. So there were a lot of intellectual ideas that said whatever--the appearance, but then there's the reality. So that, being aware of that and being trained in that, and then in the things that I've read and learned, the teachers I had--so obviously, when somebody says something, I don't take it necessarily at face value.

And then when you're in politics, where there's so much exaggeration and distortion and outright mendacity, then to be credulous, you know, like you're going for your Eagle Scout Court of Honor, that would be very naïve and silly. 00:38:00So I did bring a certain amount of inquiry, and I would say that has only grown over the years. It hasn't diminished. Because I haven't gotten more reason to take things at face value.

But you see, the reason I hesitate to use skeptic, I'm also a person who's promoting ideas, you know. Let's give the farm workers the right to control their destiny. So that's all. Whether it's criminal justice reform, environment, high-speed rail, solar energy, space exploration development--I'm looking, I'm in some way driven by ideas and visions. Not visions, that sounds too grandiose, 00:39:00but there are things I want to do, and I go to a lot of effort to accomplishing them. On the other hand, and maybe--yeah, but along with that is a questioning of what is. That's just like some people say, "Oh, what we need to do is to get a comprehensive report on the behavior of every child, and put it into a computer and track them for twenty years." Okay, as soon as I hear--totalitarianism, I hear then. Other people hear progress, and we're going to ameliorate the class differences and disparities, and everything's going to be fine because we'll have all this data. Well, number one, people aren't going to look at the data very much, and number two, what's it going to be used for? And who is [it] going to be used by?

When I see things, I do see things differently than a lot of people do, because 00:40:00that was just in my background, my education, the fact that I'd seen--my father was a governor. I was in a four-hundred-year-old religious order that was all over the world, that dealt with government officials and kings and potentates, or whatever. And just reading history, just being a lawyer, and so you have to kind of see beneath the surface of things.

HOLMES: Governor, how did you strike a balance between wanting to bring in your own ideas, but also balancing that with your own skepticism of government programs? I mean, were there certain government programs that, when coming in as governor, that were already in place--both maybe nationally and the state level, that you were very questionable of?

BROWN: Well, there's a whole skepticism about did the War on Poverty work? Didn't work because we didn't do enough? Or did it fail because we didn't do 00:41:00enough, or did it fail because it was wrongly conceived--or did it, in fact, work? Those are three possibilities, and we're not going to go discuss which one I think is most plausible.

MEEKER: Why not?

BROWN: Well, because you could spend an hour doing that, and even then you would still--to some degree, the poverty program worked. It trained a whole cadre of people who had been on the margins of society, and they got political and civic skills, and they advanced, and ideas advanced. And things got better. On the other hand, we have more poverty than ever. So it didn't work in that sense. Was the design wrong? Was there not enough into it? All of the above.

MEEKER: There was a fascinating interview you did with William F. Buckley.

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: That you actually seemed to enjoy. [laughing]

BROWN: Well, I even enjoy talking to you people. [laughter]

MEEKER: Despite some political differences--

BROWN: When you say political--despite, but that kind of--the assumption in your question is that political differences are really big.

MEEKER: Okay.

BROWN: In somebody's mind. But there's religious differences, there's emotional differences, there's biological differences, there's ethnic differences. You know, there are so many different things that fill out your mind and your life, so the fact that somebody's a Republican and somebody's a Democrat, that's only one little piece of the total configuration that describes a possible relationship. So I don't think you should be surprised that one would enjoy talking to William Buckley. He's educated; he played the harpsichord; he was an interesting raconteur. He wrote a book called God and Man at Yale. It was pretty interesting for a young undergraduate. So he was an interesting person, as 00:43:00opposed to being a dull person or an uneducated person, or a person full of clichés, so that's why I think it would be odd not to enjoy an interview with William Buckley.

MEEKER: Where it seems like we're sort of retribalizing as a society, and that there is an expectation that two people of different political leanings would not want to speak with one another?

BROWN: That's only in your limited journalistic world.

MEEKER: I'm not a journalist.

BROWN: Okay, well, your limited academic world. I think we're highly partisan right now. With Trump it's gotten more partisan. But we had other periods that are partisan. People always--you fight for one thing, you collaborate on another. So, but your question was did I find it surprising, it looked like I was enjoying it--as if maybe I should have suffered more during the interview? 00:44:00I'm trying to understand the question, so I can respond to it.

MEEKER: No, I actually agree with you. I think that frankly, I would much rather have an interview with William F. Buckley, than somebody who maybe is closer to me but not as interesting. I think that his questions were--you guys seemed to be having fun.

BROWN: Well, it is a fun--it's a show. It is a show, and he was a showman. So that's part of what it is. That's why Ronald Reagan said he can't imagine running for president if you hadn't first been in the movies. What did he mean? He had training as an actor, that you're adept at make-believe, and you have a sense of fantasy and imagination and play, and are very flexible. So that's what all those things mean. And so Buckley was a showman--his gestures and his pomposity, just the whole way he carried himself off, he was one of a kind--and 00:45:00maybe very much an important part of his success.

MEEKER: He also seemed to be very interested in you, and what you had been saying about the era of limits, and perhaps being a new kind of Democrat, a new kind of politician. In particular, for instance, the conversation started out about busing, and then it continued to Great Society programs, for instance.

BROWN: Right.

MEEKER: In which you said that the manpower programs were great providing jobs to people who were training. But they weren't necessarily creating new jobs.

BROWN: Well, yeah, right. Well, they weren't thought through that much. Manpower training--that started way back in 1959. And it's a good idea to train people, 00:46:00but I was skeptical of that. But it wasn't just a nihilistic turning away from the need to train people. I emphasized apprenticeship. Apprenticeship, when I was governor, grew to be very extensive. In fact, we even introduced it, for the first time, with hospital assistants, lower paid, lower-skilled people, to create a track by which they could become nurses--on the job. So instead of having to pay money to go to college, they could actually be employed as a lower-paid hospital worker, but then in a joint apprenticeship program with the hospital and the Service Employees International Union, they could be part of a training program. Okay, so that's training. That's not a different--and manpower 00:47:00training did do some good things, but you had to tie it into work.

So I created something called CWETA: California Worksite Education and Training Act. And what that did was to give money to business, to hire people that they wouldn't otherwise hire, because they weren't skilled, and bring up--and help them get the skills or to increase their skills. And not only that, one of the last things I did was to create the online university. And the first program of the online university is a coding program for low-skilled hospital workers, so they can develop a new skill and get their certificate and get paid more money. So yeah, I don't look at manpower training and say well, hey, there's a problem here, leaf-raking, or something. CETA [Comprehensive Employment and Training 00:48:00Act], that was another one. No, I did something about it. And I'm still, right up from 1975 all the way to 2018, still working on the same program. So a lot of these ideas I started before I was governor, I've continued--and even working on today, after being governor.

So if you try to look at a problem, like a scientist looks at a problem, and he doesn't get a solution necessarily with just--he has to have something, he has to come up with something different. So he experiments, he tries, and that's how we make progress. That's how you get new medicines. That's how you do things--how people win games; they learn new plays. So it's kind of obvious. If you take what is, you never create what isn't. So that's why they say leadership 00:49:00is putting the ball where it isn't. It's not just managing the obvious.

So skepticism is part of that, but I think it's more not taking the world as you--no, taking the world as it is, but then trying to go beyond that. And besides that, all these problems always persist because the human beings are the same. So it's a combination of, I like to say, you want change, but you want continuity. We're here at the Mountain House III, and we now have lithium ion batteries and photovoltaic cells that are providing your electricity. My great-grandfather didn't have that. So it's continuity, but it's change. So they both go together. The discerning the errors, and the getting through the surface 00:50:00to break through and to get new ideas, new ways of doing things, but on the other hand respecting tradition and what has been, because that's also important.

SHAFER: And that's a great transition into your appointments and how you decided to staff your administration.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Which from the outside looked more like change than continuity, but how did you think about that?

BROWN: Yeah, that's what--it was more change than continuity. That's true. First of all, what was my thinking? That's like there's a lot of thinking going on. I mean there are problems, and you respond to problems. So you've got to fill positions.

SHAFER: But you didn't have your staff, say--bring me fifty very suitable people for--?

BROWN: No, it doesn't work that way. Who worked in the campaign? Who do we know? Who are people we want to have more diversity? Who do we know who are African 00:51:00American? Who do we know that--Mexican American. What women do we know. So there is a campaign. You know, it doesn't start on day one. And so through the campaign, you meet people. Josh Groban volunteered for my campaign--for nothing, and eventually became a judge on the supreme court. Rose Bird drove me in my campaign. She became chief justice. So the lesson is volunteer in the campaign if you want to get into government. [laughing] But we looked up things. First of all, the governor appoints a few people, and then the rest of it is done by other people, to a great extent.

SHAFER: But it seems like you weren't looking for conventional appointments.

BROWN: No, but I took from the people I knew. Gray Davis worked in my campaign. Richard Maullin I appointed to the Energy Commission. Tom Quinn I put as kind of the embryonic EPA--it didn't exist at that time, situated |at the air board. 00:52:00Tony Kline I had known at Yale, so he became my legal affairs secretary. And then I met new people through Tony Kline and others. You know, so--and I was a young man, thirty-six, so most of these people were younger than I was--that's a different thing than when you're elected governor at seventy-six, so you have different friends, and you've met a hell of a lot more people.

I think that's one of the problems of so young: there are a lot of things you don't know--and you don't know you don't know them. So there were some ideas that people presented to me, which I rejected. Not friends of mine, but there were some people that put together some names, and some of these names might have been pretty good. But I was looking, I was looking. I always have a sense that government needed to be charged up. It needed more creativity, more 00:53:00openness, more freshness of thinking, so that's why I was looking for that.

HOLMES: Governor, and again, to go back to Reagan. Reagan's administration, and certainly his appointments, were known to be affiliated with the Kitchen Cabinet.

BROWN: Yeah.

HOLMES: Meaning his group of business advisors. And in that process, most of those appointments, from what I understand from the oral histories of those who worked in the administration, that many of them did not even meet Ronald Reagan until they were sworn in. It was largely a group of business leaders who selected that administration. How would you compare to the process of your selection, as well as the choices?

BROWN: Well, Ronald Reagan was buoyed up by the Kitchen Cabinet, by the conservative mood, by the high councils of capitalism, if we can call it that. I 00:54:00think that's more grandiose--Henry Salvatori and Vernon Orr, these other people. They pushed Ronald Reagan. But I had no such counterpart. The Democratic Party is much more fragmented and much more individualistic, so I had to find the people who I could find.

SHAFER: But that gives you more freedom too, doesn't it?

BROWN: It gives you more freedom. And Reagan didn't get that personally engaged anyway. He delegated a lot, and so the businessmen--and yeah, he was not in it. It was very different than what I did. And his way was effective, because he had a structure. They agreed. There was a common outlook, and so that worked. In mine, it was more of a creative, experimental--a lot of differences, a lot of different thinking, which creates more tension, and it's more difficult. That's 00:55:00why the conservative base is where the country starts from, and then sometimes you can get a little more liberal deviation, but it tends to want to go back to the conservative base.

HOLMES: Your administration, when it was selected, was also known as one that there was not much business representation, and that it also dovetailed with your efforts, as secretary of state, against what they called the third house, against special interests and money.

BROWN: The lobbyists. Well, business and lobbyists are different. The businesses who have lobbyists are a certain kind of business, and then there are just normal businesspeople. Now today, of course, there's more engagement with government. More people have lobbyists than probably did forty-five years ago. But yeah, we wanted to--the idea to make it a better government--clean, I do not like the word clean government, but to get away from special interests. That's always an ideal. Earl Warren talked about that. He said, "Send your 00:56:00lobbyists--don't hire lobbyists. Just come up here and tell us what you think is right or what you need."

So there was definitely, as a young person I wanted this new spirit. We don't want to have all the entanglements of the past. That was the spirit. Of course when you do things, people have to know what they're doing. So if you have an insurance commissioner, who I appointed at that time, you wanted somebody who knew about insurance. Sometimes I appointed people who didn't necessarily know, and that didn't always work out.

SHAFER: Did you do that to shake things up?

BROWN: Well, to try to create some--there was a lot of discontent with government. Half the people didn't vote--well, they still don't vote. How do we restore public enthusiasm and confidence for government? That was what the effort was.

SHAFER: Yeah, and Reagan was kind of a nine-to-five kind of a governor.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: You were more of a five to nine.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: The meetings went later, and things kind of revved up as the day went on. Can you talk about that, the cycle of a day in your administration?

BROWN: Not really. I can't remember that. The only thing I can say is I don't like a lot of meetings, because I think they're formulaic. And I think the overscheduling of leaders, of CEOs, is a modern business phenomenon. And if the leader wants to be able to understand where things are going, then he has to be able to have time to think about it and inquire, discover, get into the depth of things. And so, if you're going from meeting to meeting, it becomes very superficial, so I didn't do that.

And I was learning though, too, learning about these things. It was complicated, you know. You think about water--there are a lot of things about water that I 00:58:00don't fully understand at the level I'd like to. They're very complicated. In fact, I remember signing a bill on education. We were going to do more money here, we were going to do this--and I would say, "Well, how do I know? What is that really going to do?" And I had no basis, because this is going to affect people that are far away. That's the trouble with state government. You're making rules that are affecting people from the Mexican border to the Oregon border. And what is the reality? You don't know that.

And of course the people have been at it--you know, when you become governor, it's like coming into a movie halfway through. There are staffers in the legislature, there's people in the various departments, and there's journalists who have been following all this stuff. And most people aren't following it--even candidates for governor. You just hit the issues that you had in your 00:59:00campaign. So I had to learn a lot of these things--it was an opportunity to do something. So in order to do something, we had to have people who knew what they were doing, but we had to have--we want to do something different. And one of the things I always want to know--what can we get by the fact that I'm governor? If I wasn't governor, and things would happen anyway--okay, that'll be done anyway, so they don't need me. What I need to do is what wouldn't happen, but for me? So I was always looking at what I could add. What am I adding here? So that required something different.

Reagan had confidence that his business people could make it all work, and his Republican people--so it was a more steady government. But when you look at that, it turns out to look not that much different than the Pat Brown government, because that's just the way bureaucracies work.

SHAFER: What do you mean it was a pretty steady government? You mean compared 01:00:00to, that yours was more kind of like avant-garde? Or what do you mean?

BROWN: Well, that's a good question. It was pretty predictable. I think he had his principles, and the thing runs--it's a machine. So a government just runs. The legislature has bills, and the governor is looking--were they too expensive? If they are, they veto them or cut them down. There are problems, the federal government passes bills, then you've got to respond to that. Medi-Cal is all part state, part federal. So you just have--there's a bunch of stuff that's just in government, and different people deal with it. If you're Medi-Cal; you do 01:01:00Medi-Cal. Fish and game; you're doing fish and game. National Guard; DMV; highways. So they just go, and it's all run by professionals. And then you have people who temporarily come by, and they are the spokesmen, and they can push things, nudge things a little this way, a little that way.

So I wanted to nudge things a little more. But in order to nudge things a little more, you have to know what that little more should be. That's not evident. You don't just get that by reading the newspaper. So you've got to explore. So you bring in new ideas, you bring in people, and they talk. And people you bring in from the outside, they're not connected to government themselves, so it isn't all that immediately applicable. So that becomes--translation. Some people say boy, this is the way you ought to run the welfare--and we see that a lot. Audit reports--"let's change this." But government only moves within narrow grooves, unless there's a crisis.

And so Reagan presided, and he showed up. And I say it was steady--it was, pretty much ran itself. And there were a few things that he liked to talk about, and that's what he would do. I had a desire to do more things and make more changes. Now, at the end of the day, there's not as many big changes as I might have thought, but that was my orientation as I started out--and it still is my orientation.

HOLMES: Governor, you mentioned that before you gave your inaugural address, that you read the previous addresses, and which is--

BROWN: Not all of them, but a lot of them, yeah. In a little packet; they were all copied. Yeah.

HOLMES: And you're known for doing your homework, more times than not, when you're coming into a position or addressing an issue. Coming in as governor, 01:03:00you've mentioned Earl Warren. Your father was also governor. Were there certain models or lessons that you looked to certain governors or administrations on what not to do, or something you wanted to try to emulate?

BROWN: Well, you always look at things. My father's campaign manager, Fred Dutton, always said, "Pat, you govern from the center. It's the Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, Pat Brown tradition." That was the way he sized it up. So what I noticed--I did think Warren, because he was elected when I was old enough to think about politics--I thought he looked the role of governor. He was very dignified. I was impressed by that. Earl Warren had real gravitas, in today's terms, so that was important. But Reagan also had that capacity, in a different 01:04:00way, but he presented himself well. So that's pretty important, to be on a steady course and present yourself well, and not get buffeted by the news of the day, and the reporters' questions, and the interest-group demands. So on the one hand, you have to respond to the cacophony of claims and demands and alarms. On the other hand, you have to be steady and engender confidence. So yes, looking back, I'd say Warren had that aura and sensibility that I perceived--and Reagan did, to some degree, as well.

SHAFER: Did you feel like you, compared to them, didn't have gravitas because you were younger? Or did you, was that--?

BROWN: No, no--well, I was looking to that. You asked what I looked to. They certainly were ones, but you look to Kennedy and Roosevelt. You look to the 01:05:00people who are the more towering figures in the political world.

SHAFER: Was there anybody that you felt like you were modeling?

BROWN: No, I don't--this modeling stuff. That's an academic kind of--modeling. Sociologists talk about that, or the business people say, "I have a business model." People don't have a political model. They have a political personality, and they have a political shtick, or whatever you want to call it. I wouldn't dignify it--no I wouldn't even distort it by the term model, because that's so vague anyway. I think when I say model, I think of model airplanes.

SHAFER: So what would you say--?

BROWN: Did you ever make model airplanes?

SHAFER: I did, yeah.

BROWN: Yeah, well that's what I think of as a model. [Shafer laughs] You open the damn thing up, and you've got to rub it, you know, with the sandpaper. [making rubbing sounds] So that's what I know about modeling.

SHAFER: Well, to use your phrase then, what was your--what is or was--?

BROWN: My what?

SHAFER: What is or was your political personality then?

BROWN: It's not that plastic. You show up as you are, and deal with the world as you find it. It's not that conscious. You don't sit back and--that's the way consultants talk.

SHAFER: That's what Reagan did though. You talk to consultants, it was about imagery.

BROWN: No, but Reagan did a lot of that himself. Reagan was playing Reagan. He was a sportscaster. He did that ad for Arrow shirts, and his shirts always looked good. [laughing] I always noticed that about Reagan. I liked--his shirts were always--I liked the collar. That's because he was an Arrow shirt model. So he was a model, in that sense. So, but politicians--strong politicians--are not puppets. They're driving their own destiny, to a great extent. And I think the 01:07:00profession of consultants gets a lot of attention, because you can talk to them, and they sound off on all the things they're doing, but a lot of it's self-serving.

[side conversation deleted]

HOLMES: One of the major pieces of legislation that was passed during your first year was the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act.

BROWN: Yeah.

HOLMES: How did you strategize about that, in regards to your relationship with Cesar Chávez--you had known Chávez before you came into office.

BROWN: Yeah.

HOLMES: And you were--you campaigned in support of the UFW.

BROWN: Well, I don't know that I campaigned--I campaigned with their support. I campaigned for the rights of farm workers, but it was not a front-and-center issue in the campaign.

HOLMES: You're correct on that.

BROWN: In fact, if you read Mary Ellen Leary's book about--what is that, Shadow 01:08:00Politics, or what was it called? [Phantom Politics: Campaigning in California] There weren't a lot of issues that were front and center, which there never are. Yeah, she was, anyway, so that's--

HOLMES: Richard Nixon, in 1972, had actually proposed to put farm workers under the National Labor Relations Act.

BROWN: Yeah.

HOLMES: Did you agree with that position?

BROWN: I hadn't really thought about it at the time. But so, all this--I didn't understand the intricacies, although I do think I understood that Chávez did not want to have the farm workers under the NLRA. He felt the business co-opted it, and it wouldn't serve farm worker needs. As a matter of fact, he wasn't even that interested in the state Agricultural Labor Relations Act--at least that was a question. He certainly expressed concern about a state law. But as I hear the history, that George Meany was pushing him to have some kind of, come within 01:09:00some kind of labor law, because the AFL-CIO was supporting him, and they didn't want to just be paying for a crusade. They wanted a normal labor union. And Chávez, of course, liked a movement or a type of crusade. So there was a tension there. And I really liked the idea of the movement too. I was impressed by that.

SHAFER: What did you like about it?

BROWN: Well, it was something real. It was real; it was people that were organized about something important. A group of people that I didn't know, farm workers, people speaking Spanish. And it had pageantry, nuns and priests and 01:10:00volunteers, and food caravans going to La Paz, marches along the road with banners. This was a little--it's more interesting than--a lot of politics is just talk, you know, and it's not that interesting. But so I thought that movement was--well, it's like environmentalism. That's another dream, about a better world, a more beautiful world. So that's why I liked the movement. It's like being a missionary or something. It has some romance to it. And that was the beginning of that. Of course they had struggle with the Teamsters and the growers, and it was highly fraught politically, because the Central Valley did not--and in a lot of parts of California this is very toxic.

HOLMES: When you were--from the union's point of view, meaning not the 01:11:00Teamsters, but the UFW--you were a welcome presence after eight years of Reagan, who opposed the UFW.

BROWN: Right.

HOLMES: And actually used the tools of government to try to undercut their movement.

BROWN: That, I doubt you can write about that, how much--I mean they did--a lot of books are written about this. But this is when you come after somebody that people don't like, then they're very open to liking you. That's part of the way it works, until things don't work out as well as they wanted. And that's kind of the story of politics.

HOLMES: But when we look at the movement too, one of the central features, outside of the marches and Chávez's fast, was also boycotts.

BROWN: Yes.

HOLMES: Do you recall your position on that, because most unions were prohibited, or at least limited, to wage boycotts. Did you think the boycotts--?

BROWN: Well, that's not exactly true. A consumer boycott is always allowed. What was not allowed was the secondary boycott, and I'm not going to get into what that all was. Although I remember the junior college board [Community College Board] voting for a measure that was defeated, to not use non-union lettuce in the cafeterias, so that was a proposal, and I sided with the farm workers, and the four conservative members voted the other way--or maybe it was five. I can't be sure--it was maybe five to two. So in the boycott, yeah--well, I hired LeRoy Chatfield, who was active in the boycott.

So a boycott was a scary movement, and that's why it was effective for Chávez. He had it very well organized. And it was difficult--no one had been able to 01:13:00organize farm workers before. I think I mentioned before, I went to Stockton with the support group for organizing the union--I think the AFL was trying to organize farm workers, and they didn't succeed. And Chávez came along, and the boycott was a very powerful instrument, not just the strike, which was the focus. Harvest-time strikes, which for some reason were not an effective instrument, but the boycott was. And the boycott was in Canada, it was in England--it was all over the world. And it was longshoremen--it was longshoremen in other countries. So there was a lot to it. And then there was boycott lettuce, and that was--so that became very polarizing, and as a politician, you 01:14:00don't like polarizing. I tried to avoid getting on this side or that side, but I did support the farm workers. I supported them by saying we want secret-ballot elections. That was the key. We're going to have an election, and the farm workers will decide for UFW, for Teamsters, or for no union. So that was a more principled position that I embraced, as opposed to saying--running around saying boycott lettuce, which I don't think I publicly participated in.

HOLMES: Because if we look at the politics during the boycott, it's interesting to look at--California growers supported your father his first two campaigns as governor.

BROWN: Yeah.

HOLMES: But then by the time we get to the boycott, which is happening by '66 and then later, that support had shifted almost unanimously to Republicans. Did 01:15:00you see this political polarization that--?

BROWN: Obviously. That's the whole name of the game in politics. If you don't see the polarization, you're going to--then you're blind, and you're not in politics. You're somewhere else.

SHAFER: Well, in terms of that polarization, what were you hearing from growers?

BROWN: I talked to a few growers. I had some grower support. I had Richard Rominger. I talked to him yesterday. He was secretary of my Department of Agriculture. But the farmers are mostly Republicans, and the areas were very Democratic at the time. Kern County was Democratic, Fresno was Democratic, and then all of that shifted. But this became another issue. These are the things that happen. Environmentalism divided the building trades from others. The war 01:16:00in Vietnam divided the Democrats--McGovern Democrats from the Humphrey Democrats. So politics is about getting a majority, and if you get too much divisiveness, it's hard to get a majority, and then the other side wins. And then they start getting divided, and then you come back and you get to win. That's just the way that politics works.

HOLMES: What do you recall of your role in the creation of that, of negotiation or going between UFW, Teamsters--

BROWN: During the campaign it wasn't a big issue. And during the secretary of state, we had an issue about Proposition 22. It was a grower initiative, and I called out there were fraudulent signatures, fraudulent statements made, so I pointed that out. But in terms of the--negotiating with the growers, that's what 01:17:00unions do. As far as the--the only negotiation I did was on the bill.

HOLMES: That's what I was referring to.

BROWN: And we had a lot--and LeRoy Chatfield did a lot of that outreach. We brought in all sorts of people, and to make the issue salient, because it isn't on everybody's mind, if you think about it. These farms are in very isolated areas. Most people in the urban areas don't know about it. So we brought in a lot of people. We brought in growers. We talked about it, and we listened. I spent hundreds of hours on that. And yeah, I listened and we modified, and then I came up with a proposal. And then we changed it, and then we got agreement, and then we voted. It was kind of dramatic. We did it at night.

SHAFER: What do you remember about the vote?

BROWN: Well, the vote was kind of after the fact. The key was the agreement. We 01:18:00got a lot of grower groups either didn't oppose, some of them even supported, and then we got the unions and the farm workers, and that was it. It was basically the UFW and some key grower organizations. That was the whole discussion. Everyone else was more observers.

HOLMES: What about the Teamsters? I know there was conflict between the UFW and the Teamsters during this time.

BROWN: They have a huge conflict. The Teamsters allied with the growers and took all their members. So yeah, that was a big conflict.

HOLMES: And were the Teamsters a part of the negotiations of this bill? Did they oppose this bill?

BROWN: In the beginning they were against it, but they came in. It was the growers, basically. The lawyers for the UFW, and lawyers for the growers--key growers. That's how it was put together.

HOLMES: What was your relationship with Chávez by this time?

BROWN: Well, Chávez is a distant character. I met him on occasion, and we talked. But he's not a guy you're sitting around having a burger with. No, he was distinct, he was somewhere else, and we had meetings, but not very many.

SHAFER: So there wasn't a personal affinity so much?

BROWN: Well, there was some affinity. I think there was an affinity. I think he trusted me more than he did--he didn't trust politicians, but I think we had a certain relationship. We talked. First of all, I don't know whether he talked to any politicians. So we had an extended discussion. And then I knew his lawyers, and LeRoy Chatfield, of course, knows people too.

HOLMES: When the bill passes, and it--the actual--

BROWN: The bill passed because there was an agreement with enough growers, and the UFW, that everybody said okay, now it's time to have it. And that's the way bills pass, is just key parties come to agreement.

HOLMES: The operations of the ALRA--it ran into funding issues a few years after--do you recall that?

BROWN: Yeah, yeah.

HOLMES: There was also, it seemed to be, in regards to trying to refund it, opposition, particularly, if I'm correct, within the senate. Do you remember the--?

BROWN: Yeah, well, obviously. The farm workers won elections, the growers didn't like it, and it was kind of a messy process. They had hundreds of elections, and they weren't geared up for that. And we did the bill in a special session so we got it faster. They weren't really ready for it. So that created turmoil, and each side--even to this day, you have these election disputes. And the farm 01:21:00workers say one thing, and the grower says something else, and thus it has ever been. It's kind of like between the landlords and the tenants' groups. One says rent control is just what we need, the other says it will destroy any new housing--and they keep these same arguments going for decades.

And you have--in California, you have rural Democrats, and so they are sensitive to the farmer concerns, and they wouldn't fund the bill, so it went out of existence. The whole board I appointed was gone; they had no money. But then Chávez got a ballot measure on, and based on the force of that, the farmers tactically decided we'd better let our rural Democrats vote for it. That's kind of the way it works. Legislators have different interest groups they look to, so it was refunded, and that's how it got refunded again.

SHAFER: Can you--you mentioned the dramatic negotiations that happened late at night.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: Can you just describe those a little bit? Like what was the--were people shuttling between--

BROWN: Yeah, between rooms, and I would go between rooms and talk to them.

SHAFER: Yeah, just--so can you, so talk about it.

BROWN: Well, you described it. There it is. [laughter]

SHAFER: But you were there.

BROWN: Yeah, I was there. It went on for a long time. I did a lot of listening, a lot of time--unusual, I don't think any governor before or since has spent the amount of time that I spent on that bill--or even on other bills. And I don't know whether it's a good idea or not, because these other governors seem to spend very little time on the details, and they do pretty well. So I may get into that because I enjoy it, as well as being needed.

But I did have to forge--I had to build confidence in both sides, and that was difficult--and I did that. So I thought that was--that was an achievement. But of course then, in the operation, it became difficult, because there's a 01:23:00conflict. Growers don't want a union telling them what to do, and the union wants to be able to have a voice in its conditions--and a strong voice--and that voice will be different than the employer. So it's basically; it's conflictual by nature. And we find the same thing with the labor movement more generally, except for the public sector, where because of the political involvement of public-sector unions, there's more support. But out in the private sector, you're talking 6 or 7 percent of the workers are in a union. That indicates how difficult it is to organize unions. The same is true for the farm workers. There hasn't been--there's been some organizing, but not very much, ever since that--after '81 or '82.

HOLMES: Two questions on that front. In regards to the negotiations, did you feel that there was, or do you recall, that there was maybe some parties that were asking too much or were not being as agreeable as others?

BROWN: Yeah, well like what--well, yeah, there's always--that's, in government they're all--everybody's asking for the moon, and you negotiate through--this is democracy.

HOLMES: Did you find one side much more difficult to work with than the other? I'm trying to find a--

BROWN: I can't tell you. They're all--they're all making claims, and the workers though, the UFW was the one looking for the law, and they had--they were very popular. And so the new Democrat--the Democratic majority, so the growers were under the gun, and they had these boycotts, and so they wanted something to settle down. And so they wanted something, but they wanted it as little intrusive as possible, so they were trying to create it weak, and the union was 01:25:00trying to create it strong. So there was the conflict, and we got something that was--that people thought was reasonable. But of course it's just words and language, and then as it carries on, then people had--they had other problems down the road. But eventually, the law is still in place, after all that time, and it's just as strong as ever. But there is not the movement, and there's not the César Chávez.

HOLMES: On that--and my second question is on that point, is as you mention, in particular if you look today, how much, how many, or very little farm workers are under an umbrella or the protection of a union.

BROWN: No union, yes, very few.

HOLMES: There have been those who have charged that Chávez's aim of a social movement, rather than a more traditional labor union has--I guess, in the long run, did not benefit farm workers as much as we would like to think.

BROWN: Well, there are at least three books on that topic.

HOLMES: Yes.

BROWN: I'd say four. I think you should consult those.

HOLMES: I've done so. My question is I wanted to get your opinion on that.

BROWN: Yeah, but that's--yeah, this is not an examination on the writings of others. This is fairly detailed stuff. What did Chávez do? What did he think? It's a very interesting story about what happened when the board was reestablished, and how anxious César was to have these elections, and was it--that's a whole historical period. But you can say that in the first year there was tremendous enthusiasm--not all elections, but most of them, the majority, were won by the farm workers, maybe two-thirds. One-third, either no union or Teamsters. So it was very exciting, very impressive, but it didn't sustain itself over time. And that's because it's different--you had difficulty dealing with a lot of undocumented people, you had people who don't have a lot 01:27:00of confidence. The grower, the employer, is very strong--but that's a whole story of how that happened. And, you know, and there was a big surplus of labor. When César--as I understand it--now you're asking me to opine on historical materials, which--I'm only an amateur.

HOLMES: Well, I'd just like to hear your feelings. You were there.

BROWN: But it's a product of--look, in the 1960s, when César came to the fore, there was a labor shortage. And then, over time, there became a labor surplus, and those factors--so there were a lot of factors involved, including the personality of César, and the way he wanted to organize a top-down union, and whether or not there was enough democracy and decentralization to be effective. All of those have been written about, and people have some very strongly held opinions.

SHAFER: You pointed out a moment ago that no governor, up to that point and 01:28:00maybe since, had spent as much time as you did on this issue.

BROWN: On this issue, or on most other issues.

SHAFER: Why this one, what was--?

BROWN: That interested me. I thought it was right. Remember, we had the civil rights movement, and that was mostly in the South, and that had interested me. That was going on when I was in law school. I was on the East Coast then, so it was a little more immediate. So this was our civil rights movement. That's why it--people were saying--there was the movie Harvest of Shame. [Bobby] Kennedy had come out. There'd been the fast. So this had a certain--this was not bureaucracy as usual. It wasn't just another, you know, billion dollars for this interest or this sector. It was a human--a very human story with people who did humble work in the fields. You can still see them if you drive down Highway 20 01:29:00here. So that--I think it has all of the elements of drama. And then I think you had the earlier stories of John Steinbeck. And so there was the whole story of farm workers, novels and movies, and the Kennedys. Kennedy is shot--the whole, so there was a lot of romance in this, as well as an underlying reality that our food depends on these foreign laborers who don't make--who were getting very low wages. And relative to what they do, still low wages.

SHAFER: Did you--earlier you were saying how governors come/governors go, and the bureaucracy is there when you get there.

BROWN: Yeah.

SHAFER: And it's there when you leave, and you kind of change things around the margins, but you look for things where you, whoever that person is, whoever the governor is, can really make a difference, that it wouldn't have happened if 01:30:00that person wasn't governor.

BROWN: Right, and I want to say in that context--You've got the complexity, whether it's education finance, whether it's Medi-Cal finance, whether it's the highway system--these are complicated. Whether it's water, the tunnels--we spent $240 million just on the preliminary environmental analysis, and now they're going back to square one. So when you realize there's that much study and evaluation and facts, and alleged facts, and then you say the governor--okay, you have a few minutes or a few hours--yea or nay? If you have a very clear mind, you have to understand--well, it's not clear here what the consequences are. So that--but what's clear is that there's a certain continuity that is 01:31:00maintained. So governors have a rather thin impact, for the most part, and it's more drama--and that's probably why Reagan talked about it's important to be an actor.

SHAFER: But in that regard, did you see this issue as one where gee, another governor might not do this, so it's--

BROWN: Well, that was a part of the democratic constituency, you know, the--

SHAFER: There are a lot of issues that--

BROWN: Yeah, but there are not a lot of issues--first of all, farm workers were all, for the most part--there were some Filipinos, there's some Arabic, but for the most part, you're talking about Mexican immigrants. This is a very big part, an emerging element in California. It's very big. You can see this got bigger and bigger. So in 1975, you look at it--this was a very big piece of California that was, and was to come, and that certainly did not escape my notice.

SHAFER: So how much of it do you think was that, and the drama of it, versus 01:32:00like in your heart feeling this is really important because of who it affects and these--?

BROWN: All of those things are put together.

SHAFER: They're not separable?

BROWN: I don't know--well, make that distinction for me again.

SHAFER: Well, I mean on any issue. Politicians can see what the pluses and the minuses are, in terms of their own political future.

BROWN: Yeah, and what other things do they see?

SHAFER: Well, what their own inner convictions are.

BROWN: Abstract ethics. Ordinary conviction or consequences. I mean you can cut this thing seven different ways, if you want to look at it.

SHAFER: But how does this issue cut for you?

BROWN: Well, I explained it. I mean it was a) these were people who were basic to our existence, namely providing--picking the food. And secondly, they were a foreign group, for the most part, coming here to work on a basic part of our 01:33:00economic and social life, namely harvesting the food. And you had Chávez, who was a romantic figure, very interesting, very charismatic. You might even say mystical in one sense, or maybe not, but certainly that was an aura. So what, why wouldn't--that just, I'd met Dorothy Day, and all of my upbringing would be--would say this is an important thing to do. And politically, I don't know that it was--it had some, that would be hard to evaluate--I mean it's polarizing, so whatever you get, you lose something on the other side.

HOLMES: By the time this passes, California--as well as the nation--had already experienced ten years of various boycott campaigns.

BROWN: Yeah.

HOLMES: Were you hoping that the ALRA was going to at least ease up on some of this?

BROWN: Yeah, well that was the point. That's why the growers signed the law, to put it into a legal framework. That's why Chávez had some doubts about it, how effective it would be. That was the goal, secret ballot elections. Peace in the fields. That was the story.

HOLMES: As well as, particularly as you were talking about the mood, to use that term once more, you know.

BROWN: What? Of what?

HOLMES: We just had a recession. Unemployment was high, that another round of serious boycott campaigns would--

BROWN: Well, boycotts weren't that visible really. In Sacramento, I don't think that was salient.

[side conversation deleted]

We were trying to prevent, we're trying to reduce the controversy between farm workers and farmers. By having a legal framework that they themselves could work out through secret-ballot elections. And that was the idea. So it was solving what was a problem, and that's good because people think--they elect you 01:35:00governor, solve these big problems. And here I felt well, we had a problem--now we've got a solution.

HOLMES: But also as governor you have to keep an eye on your agricultural economy, which at this time was still the primary industry as well, right? And that the boycotts were hurting the agricultural economy over the last decades.

BROWN: Uh--that wasn't clear. I don't know--is that true? I don't know. Well, it would hurt certain individual growers, that's for sure. That was the point. That's how they saw--you know, the boycott did go away, for the most part. So that was not a problem after the bill passed.

MEEKER: I think we're going to switch gears a little bit, for a moment, before we break for lunch. In 1975, you signed what was described as a consenting adults law that had been carried in part by Willie Brown, which changed the sodomy laws in California.

BROWN: Yeah.

MEEKER: Which basically legalized private consenting homosexual behavior. I'd 01:36:00kind of like to go back a little bit. I mean, I know that you were raised in San Francisco. When was the first time that you encountered gay and lesbian people as like a politicized group.

BROWN: Right--probably when I was running for governor, I meet with some of them. Some of the San Francisco leaders, I think.

MEEKER: Was that a surprise to you, to see this new constituency maybe emerge on the scene?

BROWN: Well, I don't, yeah--I mean the Vietnam War was a new constituency, the environmental movement's a new constituency. You pick the newspaper up because it's new. That's what the whole business is--news, without the s. So yeah, that was certainly another--I mean the Vietnam movement wasn't that great either, but my father was campaigning against Nixon, and I remember there were people picketing his campaign office. Well, you know, when you're running a tight campaign, you don't want people picketing your office. So all these things are 01:37:00problems. Politicians want everything to go good, to win by acclamation, so you've got to maneuver through them all.

MEEKER: And so all of a sudden, a heretofore unrecognized group appears on your doorstep and says we want rights too!

BROWN: Yeah. They were pretty modest in the beginning.

MEEKER: What were they asking? Do you recall?

BROWN: No, no--I think--no. To avoid discrimination. Remember, this was a defensive campaign at that time. They put the Briggs Initiative on, that was, was it--?

MEEKER: Seventy-eight.

BROWN: Okay, that was '78.

MEEKER: That was a little bit later.

BROWN: But that was to be treated fairly like everybody else, not to be discriminated against.

SHAFER: It was decriminalizing too, right?

MEEKER: Well, 1975 was decriminalizing.

BROWN: Well, I don't know. I don't know if that was front and center. That bill, 01:38:00the consenting bill wasn't billed as strictly a gay bill. It was just consenting adults. That is to say that's pretty neutral. That's the way they sold it, but then we got it by one vote. And Mervyn Dymally was hiding in the bathroom, and we had to go get him. [ed. note: story revised later in the transcript] He was the twenty-first vote. So it passed and signed without a lot of fanfare.

MEEKER: You said that the lieutenant governor was hiding in the bathroom. Did he just not want to be associated with this culture?

BROWN: Yeah, obviously. Look, I know you have to pretend you're naïve, but you like to avoid the divisive issues. The issues you want are 80/20, and you want to be on the 80 side. That's the way it works. If you get on the 20 side, like 01:39:00busing or some of these other things, then you're cooked, and that's what happens. So sometimes you can't solve a problem, but at least you can avoid it, and deal with the problems you can, and then over time--things work out, as they've done with gay rights.

MEEKER: Did you have to convince the lieutenant governor to go out--?

BROWN: I didn't convince him. They did the bill. I just signed it. That's one thing, most of the bills we leave to the legislature, except the ones I get involved in.

[side conversation deleted]

BROWN: The farm worker rights in Fresno--it's just another, the social issue. The social issue is challenging for Democrats. This is Trump versus Hilary. And how much diversity do you want? Well, obviously, in the swing states they didn't 01:40:00want as much as they felt Hilary wanted, so it's still an issue.

SHAFER: You said you signed the bill with little fanfare. Was that because it wasn't a big deal or because you felt--?

BROWN: No, it wasn't as big a deal as it became later, but it was important. It was important. But it was a pretty low key kind of effort, I think.

SHAFER: Why did it become a bigger deal later?

BROWN: You tell me. Ask your journalist friends. They weren't paying attention, I guess. It wasn't a movement. You'd have to go read the paper. Go read the paper. What do they say? It had a different mood to it, didn't it? Did you go read any stories? On the bill, it was very small, aren't they?

SHAFER: Yeah, it seemed like Willie Brown and George Moscone were the big advocates for it.

BROWN: Well, they were coming out of San Francisco, and they were absolutely safe, and they could do what they wanted to do. That's different if you're Senator [Walter] Stiern from Bakersfield, from Buttonwillow. In Buttonwillow, 01:41:00they're not going to like that. They're not going to like a lot of things Democrats--and that's why they're all Trump--and they're Republicans right now. You see the problem. If you push these sensibilities in an election too far, you get Mr. Trump, or you get Brexit.

MEEKER: It's interesting in this exchange we have, because you are identifying certain types of questions as journalist-type questions.

BROWN: Well, that's part of the game.

MEEKER: Well, and those types of questions maybe are us thinking about the political calculus of something, right?

BROWN: Right.

MEEKER: Like what's to be gained by sticking your neck out here.

BROWN: Right.

MEEKER: Is it an 80/20 situation? Am I in the 20 or am I--?

BROWN: That's the way they talk about it.

MEEKER: So is that never done?

BROWN: Well, I heard a podcast the other day, which I found disgusting. It was 01:42:00all about Bernie Sanders--20 percent of his votes went for Trump, comparing Sanders with Elizabeth Warren, and then this one--all, all data. There wasn't a scintilla of substance in the entire podcast, by very serious people. So anyway, I don't know if that's quite relevant to your point, but we're really into the tactics too much. I think there are values and substance that are very important.

MEEKER: So in terms of a political calculus around something, is that not how--do you not think in those terms?

BROWN: In what terms? In politics--everything is about politics! If you're in journalism, you can think about something else. But if you're in politics, you run for election. And if you don't get more votes than your opponent, then you 01:43:00lose. And you're not there to lose, you're there to win. Win--of course, to try to do what you want.

MEEKER: So that's a calculus, right? That's a deciding--

BROWN: Well, it's common sense.

MEEKER: But that's also a deciding of where you might sit on an issue vis-à-vis where it might end up and how that would impact people.

BROWN: Yeah, first of all, a lot of these issues--how do you even know what they mean? They're not always that obvious. You know, and not every issue is a moral issue, right. People have different views. So what are you trying to get at? Well, how this is--the merits? Or is this a philosophy course on what is the abstract--are we going to be a deontologist or a consequentialist? One decides issues by what is the right thing, the duty. The other says well, what will work? What are the consequences? Well, you've got to think about both. In some 01:44:00ways, I still don't, what is--you had a point. I want to get the full richness of this question, because I'm not sure there is a lot behind it.

MEEKER: Okay, it was in the context of the consenting adults bill, right?

BROWN: Yeah, right.

MEEKER: And what I'm trying to get at here is that here's something that is pretty new in the realm of politics--

BROWN: Very new, yeah.

MEEKER: --and in the public sphere. You've got this group of people saying hey, there's a law out there that's unjust, that's criminalizing natural human behavior. You, as an elected official has the opportunity to go out on a limb and say--

BROWN: Right, right.

MEEKER: "You guys on the fringe, you're right. I'm going to sign this." Are you thinking like okay, this is a moral issue, I'm going to sign it. Or are you thinking, huh, there's an interesting new constituency in the electorate and I'd better pay attention to this constituency?

BROWN: Oh. Yeah, that's a binary kind of--is it this, or is it that? It's 01:45:00neither. You look at a situation, and then you have your categories you can bring to it. But, first of all, it's a moral issue--you'd have to study a lot of philosophy to know what's moral and what's not moral. I mean it's a human issue, and you look at it, and there are--every day. Do you cover undocumented people with Medicaid--Medi-Cal. Does [Angela] Merkel let in people who are knocking on the door? Do you let in refugees, or do you put up barriers? Is that a moral issue? Is that a political issue?

MEEKER: Well, what is your decision-making process then? How do you get to the point of responding to these different ideas?

BROWN: You make decisions. You look at things, you talk to people, you read, you ponder, and you decide. So the decision is an act of your intelligence or--and your will. That's a whole--when we talk that way, there's a whole discussion of--in fact, you can, I could give you a book on decisionism! Which is not a 01:46:00very popular idea. But yeah, I don't think you can--it's not a process. I mean there is a process, because your brain has a process, but you're not conscious of that. All you're conscious of is you're talking to people--just like we're talking here. And it'll show up, and a lot of these bills show up, and people get very excited about things. And some things are not as--whatever the bill was in 1975, things look a lot different in 1982. And they look a lot different, you know, twenty years later. So it's hard when you look backwards--and that's part of what you're doing this. You're trying to see how things were very different. Very different--that we can say.

SHAFER: Your adulthood began in the seminary, and obviously you--

BROWN: But I think these categories--is this economic? Is this social? Is this 01:47:00moral? Is this theological? Is this egocentric? Is it altruistic? Those are all categories. And then you have the problem--you've got to decide. You can say yea, or you say nay. Well, you can have a variety--well, if you're going to say no, that would be--what would be the consequences of that? Or do want to think about it? Okay, they voted for it, sign it, go on to the next thing.

SHAFER: But some things you don't have to think about that hard, right? I mean every bill--

BROWN: It's like Harry Truman. You know, they said he didn't lose a moment's sleep over dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. What was his process? Did he have a process? Did the damn thing just happen? Did they have it, so they've go to use it? So those are all interesting questions, but we could spend the whole time just trying to--it doesn't go very far, is what I'm saying. And I would say I think about this more than most people. And my conclusion is, if I think back on what was my state of mind--first of all, you can't remember. That's impossible, 01:48:00forty-three years later. So you're making decisions, and they're coming fast. Now, some you have more time, some you have less time.

SHAFER: I'm just wondering that, with this particular bill--or maybe the farm workers, for that matter--?

BROWN: These bills are not even comparable. The farm worker bill was days and days, with press conferences and meetings with the press and meetings with the--this bill just pops up, I don't know where, and pretty soon there it is on my desk.

SHAFER: Did it happen at the end of the session, or something?

BROWN: I can't remember that. Did it happen at the end of session? I don't know. You guys have got to do more work then, because I don't think it was--

HOLMES: I think it was May 12.

BROWN: I think it was pretty quiet. See, you're seeing it with the eyes of today. 1975 was a lot different.

SHAFER: My question, though, is to what extent do you feel like your--the Catholic teachings, being in the seminary.

BROWN: Yeah, some.

SHAFER: Like how did that affect the way--?

BROWN: I have no idea. I have no idea how these affect--I mean they obviously have--I'm interested. I'm interested in theology; I'm interested in monasticism. I was talking to a friend of mine just Sunday, just yesterday, who was in the seminary with me--how did I start talking to him? Oh, there was something, "Tell me," I sent him an email, "Did you--what was it like?" It was something about--Oh, it was about the controversy among medievalists.

SHAFER: Oh that. [laughing]

BROWN: The medievalists of color, and they were protesting at a medievalist meeting. They said there are too many white people, and the medievalists of color walked out and wouldn't go to the meeting. So I sent it to this guy, because he was in the seminary, and he stayed much longer than I did. I said, "What do you think about this?" And he said, "Well, it reminds me, when I was 01:50:00studying philosophy, I had a couple weeks off, and I read one of Thomas Aquinas's main works in Latin--and I even had 250 footnotes in Latin." And then I called him up, and we talked for a half an hour, and I said, "Don, that's really interesting. Would you send me that thesis? I'd like to read that." So he's going to send it to me.

So if you ask me, am I interested? That's pretty interested, isn't it? Sixty years after being there, I'm still following--so I'm very interested. And we were discussing the medievalists and the people of color, and they were fighting--was there enough diversity among the medievalists. [laughing] And they were also talking--it was in the New York Times, that the right wing, and the people in Charlottesville, are using medieval symbols and costumes. So somehow, the medieval is now becoming caught up in the whole racist and white supremacy, and so this becomes part of the discussion. But it did lead me, not to a 01:51:00discussion on the contemporary issue, but rather--oh, this is pretty interesting. You read about Thomas Aquinas, which I don't fully understand that well, and I would like to get that, and we can go over it and we'll talk about it. So yes, I'm very I am interested.

In fact, I went to the theology at Berkeley--not to your little organization, but to the--you know, the--

MEEKER: The Graduate Theological Union.

BROWN: The Graduate Theological--yeah, I went to the Jesuit office, and I talked to those guys, and I asked them, "Who's your man on monasticism? Early monasticism. I want to know more." Well, they gave me a name, but he wasn't there. And he's from Sacramento. And I called him over to the governor's office, and we spent two hours. And then a few weeks later I brought him to the mansion, and we spent another two hours talking about early monasticism. So you ask me--am I interested? I am interested like no other governor is, in the topic. 01:52:00And I'm still interested. In fact, the guy's going to come out here, Mr. Expert on--he studies, knows Latin and Greek. So I have a certain investment in that topic, and it interests me.

SHAFER: I was going to move on a little bit?

MEEKER: Yeah, please do.

BROWN: But it has changed. It really has changed. You know, the church has changed, the seminary is not a seminary for young people. It is now a place for old and dying priests, and the world is changing. The number of people going into the pursuit of the priesthood--so the world had changed, and the West is changing, and that interests me too. And the dominance of men is changing, and the whites are changing--so it's all part of that world that interests. So these are ways of getting at change. And so theology is one way, and politics is another way, that's all.

That doesn't quite go with your point, but it's not like I've got a little--oh, 01:53:00I learned something in Catholic school, and therefore I've got to deal with capital punishment or gay rights--or even welfare, and that's all going to dictate--it doesn't work that way.

SHAFER: Well, what I was really going to ask is did anybody from the church come to you to try to get you to veto it?

BROWN: No, no.

[long side conversation deleted; conversation revisits Brown's remark about the passage of the Consenting Adults Law at the conclusion of session 7]

SHAFER: Well, you said it was a tight vote, and the last vote a holdout.

BROWN: Yeah, okay. Yeah, it was a very close vote, and one of the senators that was not present, Nate Holden, they had to go looking for him. And actually they found him--I think he was in the men's room. I don't know that for sure. People have told me that. But they located him, and he came in and he voted. And that was--made it twenty-one votes in the senate, and that enabled it to pass. But I think that indicates that this was a controversial vote for the senators at that time.

SHAFER: The implication being he was hiding. He wasn't just--he didn't have to 01:54:00just go to the bathroom, he was hiding.

BROWN: Oh, right. [laughing] Well, people--they talk about ducking votes, in general, okay? So obviously, this might have been one of the ways he was ducking that vote. Now, in later years, I'm sure he had a very different perspective. But at that particular hour, in 1975, things looked a little differently--particularly some of the churches, the black churches, I think. And this, remember, was not being sold as a gay rights bill. It was being sold as consenting adults. So it was an issue of sexuality, sexual morality, and it was breaking new ground--obviously. The Supreme Court didn't take it up for many, many years later, and that's the way it was at that point in California.