Jerry Brown | Interview 14 | July 8, 2019

SHAFER: It's Monday, July 8. We're here at the Mountain House with Governor Jerry Brown; Scott Shafer here, from KQED; and Martin Meeker from Bancroft Library. And Governor, we're going chronologically, as you probably noticed, and I think last time we talked a bit about '94--basically coming right up to your run for mayor. But I think we want to go back to something from that last conversation?

MEEKER: Right, so I've read through the transcripts of our last interview and found the conversation illuminating. But I felt like we never really got to the core of it, which was this notion of the We the People campaign. It was a phrase that was used throughout your presidential campaign.

BROWN: In '92.

MEEKER: Correct. And then also continued, you know, in the We the People organization when it was headquartered in Oakland. Can you tell us how We the People--it's a powerful phrase with a lot of resonance in American history, but how was it you selected that as a theme of your campaign?

BROWN: When talking about running for the senate in '91, and then switching to running for president, the whole notion of the--not the notion, but the breakdown of contemporary politics, the emptiness, the feeling which is very much alive today, that there's something wrong with the government, with the Congress, with the way American politics works. So that idea of take back America, really taking on the established political order, that was the idea of it. I'm not sure who, how we got into We the People, but Pat Caddell was someone 00:02:00I was talking to. In that first speech that I wrote--he had a lot to do with it. It's one of the few times somebody's ever written a number of paragraphs that I then incorporated into a speech. That was when I left the Democratic Party and talked about the corruption of money in politics.

And certainly, I experienced that, because the overwhelming imperative to raise money as the party chairman, and how crucial that was, just for registration. Just to get people to register takes money. And if you do it the old, traditional way, which is you pay a dollar or two, or something, for each new 00:03:00card of valid--of registrations, that's one way. Marshall Ganz, who was a professor of organizing at Harvard's Kennedy School, and was a major figure in César Chávez's work, feels that you have to build leadership and teach people the art of organizing. And he wanted, through the party, to create a group; a cadre, as it were, of leaders and organizers that would go out to register new Democrats, but at the same time would be a point of organization in the various communities. And we had, I think, up to twelve or fifteen organizers.

The difficulty is that unlike Chávez, where they earned $5 a week, plus they lived in a dormitory, or housing was provided, we had to pay a normal wage, and 00:04:00people had to have a car, and you had to have expenses. So when multiply that times thirteen, you're talking about a lot of money. You're exceeding well over a million dollars a month just for organizing. I didn't know how to raise that money. I couldn't. So that's why I had to stop that organizing drive, and that was much to the dismay of the people. But I had no way of bringing money in as party chairman. The legislators, through the fact that interest groups will pay them campaign donations--and whether you want to call it a tribute or a support for that view, certainly labor and various industries and professions will spend millions and millions of dollars. As a party chairman, operating just as a 00:05:00leader of the party, there isn't that power of either being a governor, or being a speaker of the assembly, or other major committee chairmen.

So I can raise a certain amount of money--which I did. I think I raised more than anybody else, but it's only a couple millions. To run these campaigns costs tens of millions. So that experience gave me a very front-row seat in the way elections are run. And I think as governor and candidate for president; yes, I raised money. But I guess the substance of the offices I was running for obscured--in a way that being mere party chairman did not. So the enormous need 00:06:00to accumulate, save, and then transfer money. Then that was really the launch pad for going against the whole system, which could only be done by changing the regime in Washington

SHAFER: So you had been in politics at that point when you took the party chair job, for almost two decades. Are you saying that the experience of being party chair was sort of a revelation to you about money in politics, and therefore created this need to sort of take back our politics?

BROWN: Well, that would be hard to say. I ran for secretary of state on trying to limit, particularly, the influence of what I called secret money. So we did that with Proposition 9, the Political Reform Act of 1974. But that didn't stop 00:07:00the flow of money. And in the governor's race, we limited the general election to under $2 million, in an agreement with Houston Flournoy. That's unthinkable today! So that wasn't a big thing. And then when I ran for reelection, it was very easy. The money virtually flows in. Then there was the experience of the senate, where I did have to work very, very hard to collect these thousand-dollar checks.

SHAFER: In '82--or '81?

BROWN: Eighty-two, probably '82, '81-'82. So yeah, did I know this? I guess, yeah, I mean this was politics, as I understood it, and it was an evolution. I don't think the money was anywhere near as prominent when my father was running, or at least as I saw it and understood it as a young boy. But then I got into 00:08:00it. But at some point you might say enough is enough. I mean it kept escalating, and it has escalated. I mean the whole notion of Jimmy Carter running with matching funds--Obama didn't want matching funds because he thought he could raise a billion dollars privately. So the limits, the normal behavior--and also, the money wasn't as publicly disclosed as much.

They say that Ed[win W.] Pauley, from Pauley Oil, a friend of my father's, put on the board of regents by, I think, [Earl] Warren, kept Truman's train running. They say that every day--and I haven't verified this--but I have heard that the Truman campaign would have to call Ed Pauley if they couldn't keep the train going, the whistle stop. So yes, he had the money. But did we know about it? 00:09:00Somehow it seemed more contained or more normal.

But as we fast forward to '92, it just seemed more excessive, more corrosive. In '92, what struck me, and maybe I hadn't focused on it, [was] that people who can write a thousand-dollar check, let alone a ten-thousand-dollar check, are what I call part of the 1 percent. I used that term 1 percent. I don't know if anybody else used it. But it struck me--well, who can give you a thousand dollars, let alone five thousand? Or the amounts that they spend to give to the party, like $34,000, whatever it is--you're talking about a very, very narrow slice. I don't know if that was the case. There were always rich people. You know, there was 00:10:00rich people and there were some good fundraisers. But somehow the money seemed to be a smaller part, because you had unions, you had clubs, Elks Club, various--there was more structure outside of pure media.

With television, and with the demise of the political organization, which people billed as a reform, it actually inserted money in the absolute paramount position, because the only way to get media exposure, whether it's TV, radio, or newspapers, is you've got to buy it, for the most part. Or you can create stories, and then you figure out ways of creating news events, but you've got to have that money. So by '92, it was much worse, and the system seemed unbalanced. And that's what I was running against, even though I knew, because I knew the 00:11:00system, I couldn't really envision how another system would work. And I think I said at one point, "They must go," kind of referring to the whole Washington elected establishment. But then of course how would it work? I never really figured that out or came to a conclusion: what is the alternative?

But I persisted in attacking the status quo, which was and is still a province of a relatively small number. Now, with the internet--Bernie [Sanders] and others have shown they can get money through the internet. That's something new. But it's still the big players, the Koch brothers; the Democrats have their counterparts, it's still a small slice of the very richest having an outsized, 00:12:00disproportionate influence on the process. I mean that's a huge influence. I mean if you talk about Russian influence--that's completely trivial to the influence of the top 1 percent in America. And yet, the democratic idea of we the people, the people being in charge, has to be very much corrupted by that notion. So that was the idea of a more populist alternative offering people a way, through an 800 number--we didn't have the internet then--how people could rise up and take back their government.

SHAFER: You know, you mentioned Pat Caddell. And part of my--when I asked was being party chair a revelation in this regard, is wondering how much of landing 00:13:00on we the people, and the whole populism and take-back-our-government idea, a shift in you philosophically, versus seeing it as a politically opportune--?

BROWN: Well, I don't know how you distinguish those two. I mean, if you have an idea that has no political resonance whatsoever, then it's not a political idea. It's some personal predilection, but it's not something you can use in the public space.

SHAFER: But I mean you were running against Bill Clinton, who in some--

BROWN: But I ran the same thing, you know, the money, in 1974. You know, I was attacking the role of money, and the idea of the Political Reform Act was to limit expenditures more than contributions. So the idea was I understood the 00:14:00role of wealthy people and organizations in politics, but I thought if we could limit the spending, then that would limit their influence. Because, like an arms race, if you have a limit, you'd only use a hundred. That's different than ten thousand. But that was struck down in the Supreme Court [Buckley v.] Valeo decision, [which] said you couldn't limit expenditures. That was free speech. Once you couldn't limit expenditures, then the corollary to that was independent expenditures. You can't limit those either. So the only people you can limit are politicians themselves. So, basically, we've succeeded in marginalizing the candidates, but we haven't marginalized the interest groups. In fact, we have empowered them, enfranchised them, with the only true unlimited license to spend 00:15:00as much as they want in whatever way they want.

SHAFER: Without reporting it, in many cases.

BROWN: Well, they can report it though, so they report it. But if you spend enough, reporting's not going to have much impact. So I think it got worse. I thought Prop. 9 was going to take care of a lot of this money in politics, but it didn't--and it hasn't. And therefore, by the time we got to '92, by the time we got to '90--I was trying to build a popular base inside the Democratic Party. But it's pretty clear that the--and I knew that, but I experienced it firsthand: the party is an institution that operates in its own groove. And it's very much separated--not very much, but separated from the candidates. The candidate has to raise money, build a story, create campaigns. And the parties, these groups 00:16:00of people that meet a few times a year and come together and pass resolutions and fight about things--but they don't impact elections, for the most part, certainly not statewide elections.

In fact, Dianne Feinstein, when she ran in '90 for governor, she used the party as a backdrop to speak for capital punishment, get booed, film it, and use it against Van de Kamp in the primary. So the party really--at most is a prop. Then later on, because of the way the campaign donation rules operate, it does become a partner of the Democratic incumbents. And so that is important. But it still, nevertheless, the role of money seemed to me it was a way of talking about the 00:17:00imbalance in the American political world/the American society. Now, money's not the only thing, but money is always there, whether you're talking about actions, mobilizations of one kind--issue mobilizations, candidate mobilizations, money is a big, big piece in a capitalist society. That's where it goes. So I thought it was true, the distortions and the influence of the 1 percent, and I thought well, people could see that, and that was the basis. And I did win some primaries--not 50 percent, far below that, but more than Clinton and some of the other candidates. So yeah, it had a point, and certainly Bernie had essentially 00:18:00the same campaign I had. More than, what is it, twenty-five years later. So the topic is there. It hasn't gone away. But how to mobilize, obviously, it needed a campaign, or even the We the People organization, as building a different kind of understanding of our political system. Neither of those were enough to get the job done. And obviously, with Trump sitting there right now, with Obama losing massively the Democratic presence in Congress, all that indicates that there's plenty of distortion by the few who dominate in our society. But it's not clear on how to correct that or how to overcome it. But I was working on the 00:19:00very themes that people are talking about today--even the themes that Trump is talking about was part of my populist campaign in one form or another.

SHAFER: To what extent when you were pushing back on all the money in politics? Did people--because like not all the 1-percenters are Republican, right? I mean--

BROWN: No, a lot of them are Democrats.

SHAFER: And so what--to what extent did they say, you know, "Jerry, can you tone that down?"

BROWN: I didn't talk to them that much. The key experience in running for president on a hundred dollars is you don't go to fundraisers. I did have a few for a hundred dollars. But the absolute overwhelming experience of politicians in America is the fundraiser. In fact, people say that you're supposed to spend several hours a day in Congress. You go down the street, a phone that isn't a government phone, and you've got to be on the phone dialing for dollars. That's a very powerful imperative. So yeah, it's a good issue. It's a good issue 00:20:00politically. It's a righteous issue grounded in the times that we're now in. And the democratic system is being pulled apart. Now it's being pulled apart, not just by money; it's being pulled apart by conflicting philosophies and ideologies and identities. So that wasn't as clear in '92. You didn't have as much identity politics as you have today.

MEEKER: Governor, it's a rare politician who self-identifies--or at least during a period of your career--as a populist. Usually, populist is a term that is used derisively to an opponent. Is populism something that you think can be a force for good?

BROWN: Well, I think populism has been a force for good. There's a book on 00:21:00populism, I think written by a guy named [Lawrence] Goodwyn, about the populists--the rural populists. Now, some of that got into race-baiting. But a lot of that, those popular ideas, were incorporated into the Democratic Party, and maybe in the progressive movement in some way. So I mean populism has been around. Even the word, in Latin--populares were the people opposed to the--to the optimates, the opti--the greatest, the best. And you had that conflict in the Roman republic, so this is a very old story between the few and the many.

But the institutions, the power of money, just in how the bailout transpired. It was a bailout of banks. But I don't know how many millions of people lost their 00:22:00homes. There was no bailout of that. There could have been, and it wouldn't--I don't know how. It could have been part of the expense you would have had to bail out a lot of people. But if you look at what happened, the government could have gotten its money back in some way, but there was no political thrust. And different analysts will explain why that is, but I think we're still very much under the thumb of a very powerful dominance of a small minority.

Now, you always have rule by the most educated, by the most wealthy, by the families that are in a better strategic position. Certainly, somebody who's working off Hwy. 20 today, picking the row crop there, they're not going to have the same access as the Koch brothers--and that's just the way it is. The accumulation of power--it'd be like in Rome, different people had their armies. 00:23:00But democracy is supposed to be about the people governing. And the people are very much controlled--not all 100 percent by any means, but by the prevalence of these very small power groups that dominate the society.

I mean, we do have a hierarchical world. By the way, all societies are hierarchical, and maybe we want to go back to it. How do you create a real democracy? And what does democracy mean? Sheldon Wohlin, for example, doesn't think a state can ever be democratic. He coined the term fugitive democracy. It happens occasionally, like in the Philippines, when the people power put in [Corazón] Aquino and threw out [Ferdinand] Marcos. That would be an example of democracy working. So this is a big topic, that political scientists write 00:24:00papers and debate and have seminars--and I don't think that's what you want. You want to see where did this fit in.

But I'm very aware, I've studied, I'm in touch with serious political thinkers. In fact, I just got a book yesterday from Wendy Brown, who is a professor at Berkeley, and she's writing a book on neoliberalism, which is, you know, a serious treatise. So I do work in the world of ideas, and I also work in the world of politics and elections.

SHAFER: We're going to spend plenty of time, at our next meeting probably, talking about your last time as governor. But on the money thing, I remember you being criticized by some environmentalists, the keep-it-in-the-ground people that--about your taking money from the oil industry. And I think your comment--I 00:25:00think you might have told us, was, "Well, I'll take their money and spend it on raising taxes on the wealthy to fund education." So I'm just wondering though, is that a--a transformation when you think about money and politics? I mean you have, I think what, fifteen million or so in your political--?

BROWN: Less.

SHAFER: Less than that now, now that you're paying Evan [Westrup] out of pocket. [laughter] But--you know, so I mean just wondering, like is it different--have you evolved on that question?

BROWN: Is there a list of sources that you shouldn't take money from? That's the question? By the way, no one ever thought of that in my first race for governor. Not taking the money from an oil company wasn't even an idea I'd ever heard before--or tobacco companies, for that matter. Of course they weren't as stigmatized as they are today.

That's a whole new part of identity--in some ways, it's risen with identity 00:26:00politics. There's some money is not as clean as other money, I guess. They say that. But when you look at politics, and you look at the way interest groups perform, they want action, okay? And some people have money, some have a union, some people care about the environment--some of them have money. Some of the people that are involved in Planned Parenthood--they want action. And if you don't do what they want--well, you won't get endorsed, or you won't get money that influences them. So we're talking now where we have soda money--should you have a Pepsi-Cola? For some people, that's bad. Oil, obviously, we say it's bad. And it is bad for the environment, but we use eighteen billion gallons every 00:27:00year in California. And all the people who are critics--almost all of them burn oil and buy oil. And they're giving money to--they're not taking money from the oil companies, they're giving money to the oil companies, which I would assert is worse, by any argument. So, I mean, if you want to talk about fracking, I can tell you why I didn't bother fracking. I think that's a very thoughtful decision.

SHAFER: Yeah, we'll get into that. Yeah, and we'll do that when we get--

BROWN: Unless you want to ban the use of oil--and if you ban the use of oil, you wouldn't be here today, would you? No, you wouldn't be here.

SHAFER: It's a long bike ride.

BROWN: [laughing] It's a long bike ride. I grant you. But insurance companies--where are you going to draw the line? If it's legal--my father used to say, "You can't sprinkle holy water on campaign money." It just is what it is. [Shafer laughs] I mean that may sound not in today's mood. And really. it's 00:28:00so hard to raise money for almost all candidates. Any money you can get is great. The only reason you wouldn't take it is you think your opponent could use it against you, and it would cost you more in votes than you would earn in votes with the money you got. So I don't think it's much principle involved. There could be. I mean tobacco was hurting people. I got that. But cars: fossil-fuel cars. Why don't these--"oh, I'm not going to comment on today's world," but statutes, stories, where do we stop here? And privilege--the people who make a certain amount of money. How can they do that, when you've got other people sleeping in tents--or not tents. So it's getting very confused today, how the 00:29:00world works. And it seemed a lot simpler in the early campaigns that my father was in, or that I witnessed. And compared to today, where everything seems to be a hot issue--

MEEKER: Well, Governor, in '92 you did limit contributions to $100.

BROWN: Yes, I did.

MEEKER: And later on you didn't have that upper limit on your contributions.

BROWN: Yes. Because I have experimented with a $100 limit. I don't know if anybody else has. Because I not only ran for president, I ran for mayor of Oakland twice--and I ran a ballot-measure campaign called Measure X, all limited to $100, but we didn't have to. And what I learned was that if you limit to $100, because you're running for mayor, it's not like Bernie Sanders can send out some statement based on I'm going to give free healthcare to everybody, and he raises $20 million. No, and there isn't that kind of reach, and there wasn't, 00:30:00certainly when I was running for mayor. You don't have that internet--well, we didn't have the internet the way we do today. And secondly, a mayor as candidate can't raise that kind of money. So you go around and you have fundraisers for $100, and it's the same people who show up: the developers put on--you raise $20,000 instead of $50,000, but it's the same people wanting the same things, and it feels identical. So based on that, I thought the $100 limit, which was a powerful message to say, "Look, we're not the same as the status quo. We are serious, and we want to change it in a more fundamental way." That was the point. It was a message to signal that this was a campaign different from the other campaigns.

MEEKER: So one last question on populism, and that is you know, you've identified it as a potential source of good, and I appreciate that. But it does 00:31:00have a tendency historically, and as recently as 2016 one might say, kind of unleashing dangerous animal spirits into the public sphere. How do you balance those two forces if you're working in a language of populism?

BROWN: Well, okay, all right. Here's the problem. If you want to mobilize the people you have to mobilize, you don't mobilize them with pabulum. You don't mobilize them with political-science treatises, and you don't mobilize them with policy papers. You've got to speak to people where they are. You have to--there has to be an identity. I mean in this day and age when everybody's into identity politics, you certainly have to assume that a successful political leader wins identification from millions of people. That's what it's about, and that's why Trump is supported fervently by his base. And other people--Bernie gets that 00:32:00too. And people are reaching. You can't mobilize people on just logic. It's not possible. So there is passion in politics.

Now, once you stir up passion and feeling, then it can go the opposite way. And that's why I think it was--I was trying to think the other day, who was the writer that talked about how democracy devolves into the mob, which then leads to the tyrant, and the aristocracy devolves into the oligarchy? I think it was Polybius, but maybe you guys can check that in The Bancroft Library.

MEEKER: Well, it's certainly a concern the founding fathers had.

BROWN: Well, they didn't like democracy. Democracy was not a positive--if I remember Federalist No. 10, the republic was the idea not the democracy. And you 00:33:00only had people who could vote who had property, it was only men, it wasn't Indians or blacks, so that was a hierarchically structured society. Now we're trying something else. It's one man--or now you'd say one person/one vote, and it's a mass electorate. It's not a few electors getting picked by the respective legislatures. This is 100 million people. This is 20 million people in California. There's only one way you talk to these people, and that's massive sums of money. And there's only massive sums of money from people who have large sums of money, unless you can, in a populist way, stir up such strong emotion that ordinary people say, "Here's my check," and they send it to you. And I got 00:34:00a lot of checks from people for $100--students, ordinary people. So I think the idea of populism--it has real value. But you also need a certain group that can be in prominent positions in society.

This is one of the unthought-out things in our politics. What is the role of hierarchy, which we have plenty today--whether it's in a union, or whether it's in a church, or whether it's in the government or in business? And what is the role of the ordinary member, the ordinary citizen? And that is not a completely stable relationship at all. It keeps moving. And because there are a lot of people who are feeling very disadvantaged, they're looking for a leader. And I 00:35:00think populism can get out of hand, that's the strong man. You're one step away from fascism. Well, that's where we are, and that happens. But how else can you run for office, other than you're the candidate of the elite? You know, Reagan's kitchen cabinet. They pick him, they do all the fundraising, He didn't have to worry about it--and there he goes!

Now, you're standing there--okay, I don't have that kind of money. I've got to get it. Well, then you've got to be a populist. And if you're going to be a populist, you're going to have to appeal to emotions. You cannot appeal--if anything, Hillary's policy papers--there was a certain wonky quality, as we would say today, which couldn't stand the power of the rhetoric of Trump.

[side conversation deleted]

BROWN: At least it couldn't in certain swing states. It obviously worked--Hillary worked quite well in Orange County in California--not so well in Ohio.

SHAFER: She did get more--four million more votes.

BROWN: She did get more, and that's something. We keep forgetting about that. [laughing] But not in the four states where she needed to get them.

[side conversation deleted]

SHAFER: So we want to get to your race for mayor. But, in 1996 your father died. And I was reading an article about the funeral, and Pete Wilson was there. He was the governor. Your sister, who had lost to him a couple of years earlier was there. And I just wonder, what do you remember about the eulogy that you gave and the thoughts you had as your father passed?

BROWN: Well, I did say my father--because it's true--that he thought, he said to me, on more than one occasion, his proudest achievement was giving non-citizen people, mostly Filipino and Mexican workers, the right to get state pensions, which today we call SSI. And he did say that. Now, some people interpreted that 00:37:00as a slap at Wilson. I wasn't even thinking of Wilson. I was just thinking what could I say, that my father said, that would be relevant during this talk in the church. And that's all I said. It was pretty simple. People don't realize it today. If you are here legally, before 1960 or '62, you couldn't get SSI. My father signed the bill that you could.

SHAFER: I mean so much has been said and written and speculated about you and your relationship with your dad. You know, when you boil it all down, what is the essence of that relationship?

BROWN: Well, I don't know. I don't have an essence. And I don't have to see an essence. In fact, I'm just reading a biography of Kafka, and he had quite a sour 00:38:00relationship with his father. In the first hundred pages, that's what we're talking about. Now, that's one thing. This is a topic that people like to write about. In fact, this guy writing the book is Miriam's father [Miriam Pawel]. But my father is--was different. He had a different. You know, his grandmother never went to--I don't think she went to high school. It was a different era. There was no television. He felt that he couldn't go to the university because he had to work. He and his brother were, as they say, go-getters. They were out; they were hustling. And so action and doing and getting ahead was very, very important. So I had more of an inclination, more of a tendency to think about 00:39:00ideas, and I didn't hustle as much as he did.

SHAFER: What do you mean?

BROWN: I had jobs, you know, a paper route, or selling popcorn and candy bars at Kezar Stadium during football games. But he was much more driven. So I came up in a different world. And then in the seminary, he would always say, "Well, when are you going to go out and do something? Are you going to become a teacher? What are you--?" He could not understand or appreciate contemplation or meditation or reflection. In fact, the story is when he went to his first retreat, I think in 1940 or '41 at El Retiro, the Jesuit retreat house in Los Altos--and he had to sneak out and get a newspaper. That's completely contrary 00:40:00to the notion that [laughing] you're going to spend three days in a retreat and you're not going to read the damn newspaper! Well, he was very much interested in that, so that's a different view.

And the relationship that I see between sons and fathers today is so different, so profoundly different. I mean my father did his running for office, being district attorney. That was when I was growing up till I was, I think, in the eighth grade, and then he ran for attorney general. But he did his adult thing, and I played with my friends in our neighborhood--Forest Hill. And I wasn't in an organized soccer team. One day the Pop Warner league had some tryout by 00:41:00Kezar, on the green next to Kezar. So I went for a couple hours, and it wasn't quite for me. [laughing] So that was the end of that. So there was no organized--my father didn't take me to games. As a matter of fact, when I was in the freshman elocution contest and the sophomore oratorical contest--which I won--I had to get the neighbor to give me a ride, because my father was off somewhere. And I liked that fact, because when he was at home, then you know, you can't go out after dinner. You had to give an accounting. But when they're not around, you pretty much can do what you want to do. And I certainly like doing what I like to do. But we went on vacation together--that was always nice. And I don't remember much conflict growing up.

Now, in running for office, he had a different view. For example, when I was going to run for governor--I may have told you before--we had a film made, a 00:42:00commercial, where we attacked two Democratic incumbent senators for their corruption. And we showed it to my father, and he was just appalled. Just emotionally, "This is unthinkable!" [laughing] So we didn't put it out.

SHAFER: He just thought that was like dirty politics, or what?

BROWN: Just unthinkable you'd attack a Democrat. It wasn't his world, I think. It was just a different--I mean they made fun of Nixon and the Nixon loan. They had--Tricky Dick. They were going after Nixon. In fact, they had signs, but that was Nixon. He was the opposite--he was the other side. So I think my father had more of a loyalty--maybe because he was always doing well. And the only people who would be the insurgents, you know, the anti-Vietnam people, the California Democratic Council--they were perhaps, you know, pushing him in a direction he 00:43:00didn't want to go. So my interest--and certainly the money in politics was something that didn't--and for him, getting the money was the problem, not getting the money out. It was just not a thought. And so I think there were some different ways.

He once told me that when you campaign, go up there to Redding or go to--I think he said Redding or Chico--the first thing you do is go in and meet the city clerk. Go meet the people at the courthouse. Meet all the courthouse people, then go meet the editor of the newspaper. That's what you do. So in my world, knowing that Redding is a very small fraction, and knowing that it's all media 00:44:00and you've got to make stories, you've got to make news. And you've got to make news in all of the different parts of California. And we thought of California as divided into media markets. The LA market was the biggest; San Francisco was the second biggest. Then you had San Diego and Sacramento. These were the main media markets. Well, he didn't think in those terms. They didn't. And I remember he would get Allen's clipping service, and he would be reading stories. You know, you could have the Redding Searchlight, or you'd have a Eureka Standard--he'd go, "Look at that. Boy, that's a pretty interesting..." I said, "What? That's a waste of time." Those have no meaning. So he was imbedded in his time, probably the same way I am.

So then when I get into office, he wants me to--you know, this is a new spirit, young people, we're doing things.

[long side conversation deleted]

BROWN: There were just different issues. I don't think the word environment existed when my father was governor. Earth Day was 1970. He lost to Reagan in 00:45:00November of '66, so a lot of things changed. He was supportive of Lyndon Johnson. I was the peace slate '68, ultimately for Gene McCarthy in that California race. So there were some differences, but they're not psychological. Or there's not--both his propensity to action, to what I considered more conventional thinking. I'm interested in, you know, he's not interested in--he probably would never know who Ivan Illich is or Gregory Bateson, or even Stewart Brand. So these were people that I found interesting. Or Buddhism--what is Buddhism? Or what's meditation? He wouldn't even--those words wouldn't even come to him.

I remember sitting in the firehouse and having a dinner--I bought a firehouse in San Francisco. This would have been '89. And I set up a little table, and I went 00:46:00out and got some sushi. He said, "What's this?" So it's a different world. His mother grew up right where we are now. That's where she grew up, and then she goes to the city, and it's just different. I remember in her place on Grove St., where the guy upstairs, I remember, was a [streetcar] conductor. And I remember he had the little coin [machine] that you strap onto your belt. And I remember he had that machine, and I thought boy, I'd like to get one of those. [Shafer laughs] Have dimes and nickels, and what have you.

SHAFER: Perfectly full of coins.

BROWN: Well, a streetcar conductor, living upstairs from me--I mean maybe in Oakland I lived in some low income--not that low income. But when I--

SHAFER: Eclectic.

BROWN: So, what I'm trying to say is his world was very different. It wasn't as 00:47:00polarized as it is today, and it's just a different world. I remember he'd get all the newspapers. I remember getting the Moose publication. The Moose, and then it was the Eagles. Just driving back from the river in Clear Lake, we turned onto Hwy. 20--there was a Moose Lodge. I haven't heard of Moose Lodges in years, but these were real things that you had to deal with. These were points of contact to an electorate. So, I'm just saying we were in a little different worlds. His people seemed a little bit old fashioned to me. We'd use a phrase that I wouldn't have used then--cutting edge. We didn't have that word cutting 00:48:00edge. That's only in the last twenty years. So it was just a different sensibility, and it's hard to compare.

But I was very conscious of the fact that I had the same name as my father was absolutely--that was it. Without that, I was nothing, and I didn't mind that. My whole life I've benefited from the fact of my father's achievements. No question about it. And I appreciate that. But I also knew, in running for governor, that he lost to Reagan by a million votes, so is this going to work or not? And that's why I said, "I won because of you, but I could have lost because of you." So it's inherent, in my paradoxical mind, that I could live with the idea that this is the plus and this is the minus. Now, as it turned out, it wasn't much of a plus in the general, but it was a big plus in the primary. Then, as I got down 00:49:00to the end there, and Flournoy--it was a very close election.

SHAFER: You know, I don't want to--I know you don't like, and you've already said that you're not, you don't want to talk about the psychology of it. But I wonder if either consciously or subconsciously--I mean you talked about the Allen clipping services, and how you looked at those and thought oh, that's a waste of time. I mean was there--?

BROWN: Well, I liked them--I'm interested, if it was something interesting or the LA Times or the Chronicle.

SHAFER: Yeah, but I guess what I'm getting at is like do you feel like maybe there was, consciously or subconsciously, an effort to be different from your father? Not just that you were different, because you were from a different time, but because you want--?

BROWN: Well, I don't know what that would accomplish. It's not to be different. It's to appeal to the electorate. And you can say one thing, that if Reagan wins 00:50:00by a million, then whatever my father was presenting was a million votes less attractive than what Reagan was--[laughing] So that's just a fact. Now, that's a fact. Now, so what do we say about that? I could see the value of Reagan, of the way he could talk, the way he looked, the way he spoke in very ordinary terms. Early on I don't think it was my father. It was more the legislators. They talk in these bill numbers, and there's certain language. And there's even a language that people use today--even today, often. The language of, "That's an issue." Well, ordinary people don't use the word issue. I don't know that Reagan talked about issues. He talked about stories. You know, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," and he'd get a big laugh out of that. Or he'd talk about a lady who drives a Cadillac and she's on welfare. These were very graphic, 00:51:00these are picture words.

So, no, I mean my dilemma was that I was only what, thirty-six years old? And how could I convincingly portray--how could I present a candidacy that people would buy just four years after they had voted for Reagan? How does that work? And the way it worked--barely--it worked, but it might have worked the other way. Had Nixon not resigned--had Nixon been president and had there been no Watergate, I think Flournoy would have had a very good chance I wouldn't have had. So I didn't know that. When you start to run, you don't know all those things.

So anyway, he went to a father-son communion breakfast maybe once in four years. 00:52:00And that was very enjoyable, and it was something. But it's nothing like today, where parents center their lives around taking their kids to soccer games and going to tournaments. I mean that was unthinkable. I was on the debate team, and they'd come by on the bus to pick us up. We'd go to Merced or go to Modesto, I remember, for debates. I overslept, and they had the bus go right over to Magellan Ave. in Forest Hill, and a guy came up and knocked on my window. I was on the first floor. [laughing] "Get dressed. You've got to get going." So I got dressed, and got out of there, and was on the bus. But my parents weren't, "You know, you've got a debate tomorrow." I don't know if they even knew! But I don't even know if I told them. I wasn't interested in telling them.

So the world of young adolescents was not connected to the world of adults like 00:53:00it is today, and that was fine then. It just seems, to me, far more natural. In fact, I find it rather odd that people are so interested in their children's soccer games. Particularly, I notice at the river, the Russian River, people used to go for the whole summer. And now, they've got to get back for soccer practice, and so the beaches are empty. So we've had a real cultural shift. Not one that I'm totally in sympathy with.

So all I'm saying is I think--and I'm trying to imagine the relationship. I think it's overplayed. In fact, I'm in 110 pages on the Kafka biography, and I'm 00:54:00questioning: is this a little bit of Freudianism, which people don't believe anymore? That's the trouble when you're eighty-one. You've seen too many of these stories and fads and conventions of understanding change--radically. And so there we are. So I do have a kind of a distanced view of a lot of the things that you want to bring up.

SHAFER: Yeah. Well, that was terrific. So around that time you're thinking of running for mayor, and you told us, I think last time we met--

BROWN: I hadn't thought of running for mayor when I moved to Oakland.

MEEKER: You know, I kind of think we haven't asked about the We the People Oakland part.

SHAFER: Okay, go for it.

MEEKER: Well, certainly, the running for mayor in 1998 happens, but in a context. And that context is your move to Oakland. You're setting up the We the People Foundation.

BROWN: Yeah, I moved to Oakland, yeah, and I was very conscious--I was in San Francisco, and I wanted to go to Oakland. In part, because it would be less 00:55:00expensive; in part, because I thought the politics were more working class, and that would fit better with how I wanted to be perceived and noticed. I thought it would be better. And I thought it would be easier--now, I wasn't thinking about mayor. I was thinking maybe senator--who knows what--it was ill defined. But I would be back running for office again, that was very clear. I had not ended my political interests, but I thought Oakland is a more working class place, town. It would be a better spot than the San Francisco scene, as it were.

SHAFER: And you'd looked at LA as well?

BROWN: I looked at LA, running for mayor of LA, because that's a big spot, a big job. But it seemed too expensive. And I got into a meeting of activists--maybe that was not a good measurement. But they all had their little issues. We sat in 00:56:00a circle, and one after the other, when I talked about running for mayor, every one of them just had their particular activist issue. And I thought to myself, I can't master this group. And then the money. And ultimately I decided--when I thought about running for mayor, I was already in Oakland. I thought, oh, Oakland is just like LA. There's only, in a factor of ten--Oakland is 400,000, LA is four million. But you have African Americans, you have Latinos, Asians, you have whites--you have all the different conflicts, and I knew I'd always done very well--I wasn't going to go run in Fresno or someplace. So I had this idea that yeah, being mayor of Oakland would be good. And I obviously knew I was going to go beyond that. I didn't know exactly where. In fact, I remember 00:57:00talking to Tom Quinn. He said, "That's embarrassing, to run for Oakland."

SHAFER: Why?

BROWN: Oh, because it's just small. You've been running for president. What are you talking about, running for mayor? That doesn't feel right.

SHAFER: Was that part of the appeal to you?

BROWN: No. First of all, you've got to be in office if you're going to run for the next office. But more importantly, because of my sense of what the media is, if you're a mayor in Oakland or a mayor in LA--it's the same size on television. You know, you look the same. You're a mayor--Oakland, LA. Now, they are bigger. That's a little oversimplified. But I thought the challenges were similar. If you can fix the downtown, if you can deal with crime, budgets, there was a 00:58:00way--to do the work of Oakland was probably easier and more manageable and more understandable, because it's much smaller. But it's still the same issues that you have in LA, and that's true today. But easier to deal with because it's just fewer people. And by the way, the elections are cheaper--a hell of a lot cheaper.

MEEKER: You mentioned the multiracial nature of Los Angeles and Oakland. But Oakland was a bit more--well, less multiracial, in the sense that African Americans approached--[crosstalk]

BROWN: Oakland, yeah--

MEEKER: --I think, 45 percent of the population.

BROWN: I think they were a little less than that.

MEEKER: A little bit--maybe 43 [percent].

BROWN: Forty-one, something like that. But they had been 49 [percent]. It's been going down.

MEEKER: But the largest of those four ethnic groups was African Americans.

BROWN: And you had an African-American mayor, and then you had an 00:59:00African-American police chief, fire chief, so it was quite a dominant--and the school board.

MEEKER: Not to mention the history of the Black Panthers.

BROWN: Yeah, right.

MEEKER: And that whole thing. So you're going into a city that has a really strong, both African American elected class, as well as activist population, as well as population.

BROWN: Right.

MEEKER: What were you thinking about in terms of that?

BROWN: I was thinking that I always got a very strong vote among African Americans, and I'd always won Oakland, and that I'm by far better known. So this is not a question now where I'm--in my father's name. My name itself is very well known, and very popular, among Democrats. So I felt confident that unknown African-American candidates didn't have much of a chance, because you can't beat somebody with nobody. And you're nobody until your name recognition reaches a certain critical point, unless there's some overall issue. And in truth, in 01:00:00Oakland at that time--and even today--there wasn't that much media. You had the Oakland Tribune, the Chronicle gave it a little bit, but not much. So there wasn't much news.

And you know, I did a couple mailings, which may not even have been necessary, because I mean Edmund G. Brown, Jr. on the ballot, in Oakland, versus x, y, and z. It doesn't matter--and two were Latino and nine were African American. But they weren't public personalities, so that was like an obvious.

SHAFER: Do you think that your We the People radio program played a role in heightening your name recognition or engagement in that community?

BROWN: No, no, not when you know the ratings of KPFA.

MEEKER: [laughing] What were the ratings of KPFA? How many people were listening to that show.

BROWN: Maybe a thousand. I think I had a very well listened-to show.

SHAFER: Well, you had a national show, right? On Pacifica.

BROWN: Yeah, maybe two thousand--I don't know, but very small. And that reached all the way up to Santa Rosa, American Canyon. That was not just people in Oakland, Emeryville, Alameda, Berkeley. But the We the People wasn't just an electoral idea. I mean that was based on the idea of CIDOC [Centro Intercultural de Documentación], the Center for Intercultural Documentation that Illich set up. I didn't know much about it, but I liked the idea of it. The developing of ideas--also, the other thing, besides Illich was more--I knew more about, was Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. And they had their house on 01:02:00Chrystie Street, I think St. Joseph's House or Marian House--I'm not sure. But Friday night, they'd have clarification of thought, so they had down-and-out people from the Bowery in New York--but they also had intellectuals. Thomas Merton went there. And so there was intellectual exchange, and so that interested me.

So, I'd come out of the seminary--you know, books and conversation, among other things. You're not going to Tahoe in the seminary, and you're not going to a shopping mall--they were just kind of coming into their own--to buy stuff. You're not going to the soccer game or the football game. You're not watching television. So it's basically exchange of ideas, prayer/mediation/reflection, 01:03:00what is the pathway to spiritual perfection? Or, as we might say in Buddhism, enlightenment. Getting on a path of what is important in life.

So now We the People was a place after that '92 campaign: "Okay, let's bring people together with ideas." And I also was influenced by Gary Snyder. When he built his house in Nevada City, his followers built it for him! They all camped out for six or eight weeks. And people would follow his poetry and his speaking. And so I noticed these people--and I don't want to compare them, because they're all different. But Illich, Snyder, Bateson--maybe even throw in Stewart Brand, 01:04:00although he was a little different. But he had his Whole Earth Catalog. They had a group of people in Sausalito. These were idea-centered efforts, undertakings. And so I thought at We the People--we had a couple hundred speakers. We had a big auditorium. We had a library. I had all my books in that library, and it filled a whole big room. So that was the idea, to discuss, to come to understanding--I still had the idea that politics was about ideas. So if you get the ideas right, if they're right for the time, then that's going to shape the society. So I was always kind of connecting the thought and action--or Ignatius Loyola calls it contemplative in action.

Now, in talking with some of my ex-Jesuit friends, we talk about, "Can you 01:05:00really be a contemplative in action?" In other words, if you really want to be a contemplative, don't you have to become a Benedictine? If you want to become an activist, maybe there's not going to be a lot of contemplation there. So that's an open question right now.

But I have to say, when I think about political ideas, I see them a little differently now, with the populism, with the identity politics. It's not about ideas. It's about who people think they are, and who they identify with. So it's not, in the words today, evidence based, or even logic based--it's identity based. And when I say identity, you know, the Trump voter, or the [Marine] Le Pen voter, or the Brexit voter, or the Hungarian voter who has put in [Viktor] Orbán. This is different than ideas influencing elections. Now there are 01:06:00ideas--the idea of the strong man, fascism has an idea. I used to think that more, that ideas--so people who knew about the nature of--we didn't understand Vietnam. It was a mistake. Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter, I think, to Truman or something, or Roosevelt. Said, "We're going to follow your Constitution." And we thought no, this was Russian and Chinese Communism taking another advance. We've got to stop it. I thought ideas were very important to clarify that. But I see more and more that ideas don't--they're not the idea. I mean if you think of presidential debates. They're not probing into climate change. They're not looking at the role of America in the world. What is our military spending? What is it based on? Do we need to spend more money than all our potential 01:07:00adversaries put together, more than twice or three times. So yeah, this where do ideas fit in?

We the People was a place of ideas. And then Illich came over a two-year period, and he came up with the idea of Oakland Table. We have a lot of materials that were presented there. And some of his people are friends of mine, and we had speakers there and we'd talk about different things. And there is that idea of creating--I had a platform in progress, and that was an attempt at that. Illich once said, "What you need to do is write seven essays." I think it was six or 01:08:00seven. "And these would be the pillars. You have to write what are the key points that undergird our common political life." And so I'm always, "Okay, what would these be? And what would an essay like this look like?" Now, I haven't produced those seven essays yet--I may yet produce them. But I was very interested in ideas moving people, moving the society, the culture. It appears that we're in a much more demagogic era, where it doesn't feel like a contest of ideas. It feels like a contest in imagery and political iconography, trying to scare the hell out of people in various ways.

SHAFER: One of the ideas that you had kicked around and thought about as you were beginning to run for mayor was the idea of the Oakland--and I may be mispronouncing it, but the Oakland Ecōpolis? Ecŏpolis?

BROWN: Ecŏpolis, yeah. And a couple of professors from the Midwest wrote a piece on this, and I put it up on the webpage.

SHAFER: What did it mean to you?

BROWN: Well, it was a vision. It was a--well, what's the plan? I'm going to run for mayor. I want to have an idea. So I don't know where I saw these guys. I don't know whether they had the term ecopolis or not. And I asked them, can you write a paper? Now, it turns out it's so romantic or so abstract, or the imagery--sailboats sailing down the estuary, and gardens producing the food--which, by the way we do, farm to fork. We do things like that today. But 01:10:00it was an attempt to have a platform, but it was not as grounded as I thought was necessary, so it really wasn't that practical.

MEEKER: Were you a fan of like Ernest Callenbach and his Ecotopia writings?

BROWN: No, but I knew about it, I had the book. I knew about it. Richard Register, this is another guy, and he's been around here the last few months talking about his ideas. Well, that idea of, there were books--Ecotopia was one idea, but Wendell Berry--

MEEKER: Small is Beautiful. [E.F. Schumacher]

BROWN: And Small is Beautiful. There were a lot of these ideas. But then when you try to apply them in the world of teachers' unions, highway construction, prisons, the budget, the tax system, Medi-Cal, then it becomes quite a gap 01:11:00between these ideas, which I found always interesting. And it was always a big part of the time that I spent. But then trying to apply it is something a little different.

SHAFER: So you were talking earlier about how now we're about identity politics, but when you were running for mayor, I mean there was a sense that Oakland was a black city that needed a black mayor.

BROWN: Well, a little bit, but who said that?

SHAFER: Well, I think there were leaders in the black community.

BROWN: Yeah, but how did they disseminate that idea?

SHAFER: Well, later on. I mean they urged Ron Dellums to run, for example. That's getting ahead of things, but--

BROWN: Right. But Ron Dellums was an icon in the East Bay. He was very well known. And Barbara Lee, who worked for Dellums. So, celebrity politics, or you can call it name ID. Dellums was a celebrity. But when I went there, yeah, the 01:12:00black community had its organization, had its churches, had its people. First of all, I had a very good grounding in my policies and my politics. So yeah, some of them were disappointed, and I think that was a definite--a factor.

SHAFER: Did you feel like you, going into the race, knowing that--

BROWN: I didn't think that. I thought the black vote was a plus, in my opinion. See, I always would get 90 percent of the African-American vote, so this was good.

SHAFER: Did you feel--I mean there were people, including Libby Schaaf who felt you were a carpetbagger, you know, coming in from--

BROWN: Well, I knew that was going to be an issue.

SHAFER: I mean did you feel like that, and the risk--

BROWN: Did I feel like it?

SHAFER: I don't know, not feel--I know you don't like the word. [laughter]

BROWN: What does that mean? I moved to Oakland. I didn't say, "You know, I'm a San Franciscan, but I'm going to go to Oakland--and I'm a carpetbagger." You don't even--why? I can move there. And it's cheaper, and people are buying 01:13:00lofts--and I'm there. So what more is there to talk about?

So those are just terms that people use. That has very little connection to reality. First of all, unless it's going to be in the Chronicle and the Tribune, pounded day after day, it doesn't exist. One little story by a group of people who said, but there was--it said something, but it didn't barely happen. First of all, there isn't that much campaign news disseminated in the media. Radio, television, newspaper. No, it's just not there. So how are they going to know? They're not connected. The more people knew about me and I did the mailing. No one else did a mailing. I did two newspaper mailings, but did that work? I'm not sure. I'm not sure it wasn't just that they knew who I was.

SHAFER: You know, you thought about running for mayor of LA, quickly looked at SF and then dismissed it. The media made a big deal of the fact that you were 01:14:00running for what Tom Quinn said was something that was, you know, punching below your weight, you know?

BROWN: Yeah. He'd want to say that.

SHAFER: Yeah, and so did you feel like that was part of, maybe, the appeal? And--like you said, you knew you weren't done with running for public office.

BROWN: Well, I thought it was a good next step, and I enjoyed it. I liked being mayor, in some respects, more than governor, because I was building. My idea of bringing ten thousand people downtown, which--I didn't have a commission. I didn't have all these commissions. I'd just say, "That's an idea. Let's do it." I got a good police chief. I thought we were making progress on crime, but later on it turned out we weren't. But I liked being in Oakland. You didn't have to jump on a damn plane. You'd see the neighborhoods--it was very grounded and very real. There were street corners, there were grocery stores, neighborhood parties. First of all, I was fighting crime and I was trying to bring in 01:15:00development, bring in people. Because downtown, there was one restaurant, Le Cheval. And now they have fifty restaurants in the downtown area. But that wasn't true--they never really recovered from the earthquake and the '92 recession.

SHAFER: What did you know about city government when you ran for mayor?

BROWN: I know if I've been governor eight years and the secretary of state, that seems to me to be more than most people are ever going to know. So--

SHAFER: But it's different.

BROWN: It's different. It's different. Well, I think what's different is the city councils. That if a group of people come and make noise, it affects the city council, even though by any strategic political analysis you can say these people only represent a small fraction of the vote. But they definitely get 01:16:00intimidated. And they do some pretty, it seems to me, pretty wild things.

I remember one condo project that was fifty feet. The height limit was forty along Telegraph Ave., and one of the councilmen said, "No, you've got to," councilwoman in this case, "you've got to take off two or three condos." That was the margin of difference. So the guy couldn't make it, so the project stopped. But the idea that people could say fifty-three condos, whether it was above the fifty foot--I don't know. I would go drive down the street and look and say what, forty, fifty, sixty feet? And I thought--what was Paris? Saint-Germain-des-Prés, that street--I think it's Boulevard Saint-Germain. I looked: they're like about six stories I think. It looks fabulous, right? If 01:17:00Oakland could only be Paris! But the idea of six stories was a horror. It was degradation. It was interfering with our community.

So then I got the idea--I understood how people don't want to change, and they are very much protective of the way it is. So I had a different view. I thought this should be a much more vibrant city. We're right next to San Francisco. And it turned out, that's the way it happened. It was probably inevitable. I mean the next two mayors weren't that solicitous for business, but it happened anyway, because it was good land and good weather, and right close to the Bay Area.

SHAFER: So when you ran, I think you talked about ten thousand homes, and people moving--development, generally.

BROWN: Development, yeah.

SHAFER: Schools, public safety. And I think arts and culture, maybe?

BROWN: Yeah, arts and culture--see, I thought I could do those things. And we did. We had public art, a lot of that--these festivals. We started a festival. 01:18:00There is that festival in the fall. I started that because I thought it was doable, and then I decided I wanted to have mayor appointments on the school board. But I took a poll, and I found that people didn't want a majority of mayor appointments. It wasn't a sophisticated poll, but it was enough. I said okay, I'll put three on. I put three on, and I run a campaign. I worked with Don Perata, and he had other candidates in Alameda, some other things on the ballot. But basically, we spent over $200,000, and the other side had one little mailing--and we only got 52-48. So that told me that the idea of a mayor taking over schools is going to be very difficult, and it couldn't work, because there was too much opposition, too much neighborhood feeling. Even the strong-mayor initiative that lost twice, that was problematic. And I was able to win it 01:19:00because I think people were tired of the incumbents and the status quo. They were looking for a change. But on that school thing, that's why I did three. And then they took my three--and I think they separated them, and they put under their name, mayor's appointee. And then when there'd be the normal debates or discussions or conflicts in the school, they'd say, "Well, we have these conflicts because of the mayor's appointees." Now, I don't know how much of that was disseminated, but that thought was there, and so I thought it got to be a we/them, and that became problematic.

And that's why I knew, when Mayor [Antonio] Villaraigosa was going to try to take over fifty schools, I thought boy, this is not going to work so well, because even if the schools aren't working, they do provide jobs, they do have identity, and the parents went there as kids. They're not going to want to turn 01:20:00it over to somebody downtown. And there is that feeling, the neighborhoods versus downtown. You find out in Sacramento that strong mayors had difficulty, because people think it's the mayor taking over the town, and they liked their fragmented--yeah.

SHAFER: What was your thinking when you--about going for the strong mayor? Was it that you didn't want to have to be--like preside over the city council?

BROWN: I did not want to go to the city council every day, every week. That was absolutely the most important.

SHAFER: Why was that so important?

BROWN: I don't want to sit there five or six hours. That's not what I've done, it's not my thing. Just sitting there looking and listening? No, I don't want to do that. And then secondly, I did want to have some influence on the city manager, the police chief, and so I did it. A guy who lived at We the People wrote the Measure X, wrote the terms. I said keep it simple. I want it on one 01:21:00page, want to make it seem like a very small adjustment. So all it was was, "The city manager shall be appointed by the mayor and shall serve under his direction and at his pleasure." That was it. Everything else remains the same. So, and that was the idea, to keep it simple, because before, they'd have these elaborate ballot pamphlet measures: because if the mayor's going to do this, the mayor's going to do that, it creates an impression of some kind of power grab, whereas I tried to prevent that. But I did think I'd have more influence than if I had to argue with the city council.

Now, it turns out, the city council determines the budget. The city council confirms appointees--key appointees, not all of them. And so the city council was very much--it's still a city-council-run government. And you don't have a 01:22:00foreign policy, and so I'm very aware the legislative branch is powerful. But I thought the strong mayor would be good--and there was a stagnation. I mean Oakland was at a stagnation because the economy was stagnant. And you had the rise of crime and deterioration, and East and West Oakland have a lot of rundown houses. And the problem is that people don't have money, and they can't fix them up. But now we have the other side--the way you fix them up is you bring in people with money. But then it gentrifies, and people get pushed out, and they don't like that. That's why I once said, that irritated some of the activists, "Well, you have slumification, or you have gentrification, so maybe we can find something in the middle?" But it's very hard, because it--

SHAFER: They called it Jerrification, I think.

BROWN: No they didn't. [laughter] Besides, if they said it, where are they going to get it printed? The big thing is there wasn't a lot of media exposure in that town. And you had [Phil] Matier and [Andy] Ross; you had that other guy that lived in Oakland and wrote--

SHAFER: [Rick] DelVecchio.

BROWN: No. It was another guy.

MEEKER: Oh, the guy who wrote for Berkeleyside eventually?

BROWN: No, that was a marginal character. He's still around. [laughter] No, this was the guy--he was an African-American guy. I think he wrote for the Chronicle.

MEEKER: Oh, Chip something?

BROWN: Chip Johnson.

So there was something, I don't want to overstate it. First of all, when nothing happens for--it was a very repressed, depressed economy. I think the general plan envisioned like 450 units a year. That was it. And they spent a lot of time on the planning, what was it, the estuary plan, and there was no building going 01:24:00on, because nobody wanted to build in Oakland, because you couldn't get the rents to support the investment. And so I wanted to cut through all that, and I made a lot of changes. I wanted to get people in there. I brought the Irish builders over from San Francisco, got on a bus, said, "Look at all these places. Why don't you build something?" And they started doing that, so that was very direct. And I did find that when I look at other leaders, that I see something, I say that makes sense, and I start to do it, or I try to do it. I think, for most political people, they have a lot of staff, they have a lot of layers to figure out what to do.

MEEKER: Were you paying attention to what Willie Brown was doing in San Francisco?

BROWN: No, no. It's amazing how San Francisco is over there, and what--no, I mean it was different fights.

SHAFER: You collaborated on the bridge though, I think, didn't you? Or clashed on the bridge, I remember.

BROWN: Well, he didn't like where it was going to land on Yerba Buena Island. I just wanted an iconic bridge. I thought it looked like a freeway on stilts. And finally they picked this one, which wasn't the one I was promoting, but I thought we should have a better--why not? You're going to spend billions of dollars--let's make it great. I'd even had [Santiago] Calatrava come over and give an idea. He came to the We the People building and left off some of his bridges that I thought looked good. I don't think we delayed it either. I think that's a myth. The process just took a long time.

SHAFER: I wonder, you know, when you ran for mayor, a lot of people were skeptical that you would stay four years, let alone eight. And you did stay for eight, of course.

BROWN: And I found it very invigorating, very interesting. I thoroughly liked that, because it was very concrete. I had my two charter schools that I had 01:26:00started were starting. Bringing development. When you can see nothing's there, and all of a sudden someone builds a five-story apartment building, that's pretty exciting, to go from nothing to something. As governor, you're dealing with laws, pass a farm labor law. You pass a workers' compensation law. You pass public members on the licensing boards. But nothing happens in the first few years. But in Oakland, things actually could happen. And there were other people who would fight it, like say, "Oh, don't! You can't. It's too tall or it's not this is not that." So I became adversarial to a lot of the--