With No Primary Fight, Brown Launches ‘Reasonable Jerry’ Tour

by Thomas Del Beccaro

No surprise: Jerry Brown is running for office again.  In Jerry’s words, “I’ve run for more offices than any other candidate that still is alive.”  This time, he is the lone Democrat candidate running for Governor in California.  Since his belated announcement last week, Jerry has done his best to sound reasonable as a candidate.  Surely, California voters should know it is only an act.

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In running for those many offices, Brown has taken countless liberal positions.  As Governor, Brown empowered public employee unions, strongly opposed the death penalty and appointed judges who strongly opposed it.  He opposed Prop 13 before he was for it – but only after the voters passed it. When he ran for President, in 1980, he was for universal health care and said his economic agenda was based, in part, on Buddhist Economics – followers of which endeavor to measure “Gross National Happiness.”  In 1992, when he ran for the Presidency a third time, he touted “living wages,” fought free trade agreements and said he would consider Jesse Jackson as a running mate notwithstanding Jackson’s controversial if not anti-Semitic remarks.  Such is the life of a career liberal like Jerry Brown.

In 2009, while still in the race for Governor, liberal Gavin Newsom said of Jerry Brown’s candidacy: “We’re not content to relive history. We’re going to keep making it.”  To ensure that Brown’s latest history would not include a loss to Newsom, Brown resumed his liberal ways.

Brown attempted to kill Sen. George Runner’s Voter ID Initiative by dubbing it: LIMITS ON VOTING.  INITIATIVE STATUTE.  [which] Prohibits citizens from voting at the polls, unless they present a government-issued photo identification card.  Under similar circumstances, Brown’s Democrat predecessor dubbed the Voter ID initiative he reviewed as “VOTER IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENT.  INITIATIVE STATUTE.”

Brown filed a lawsuit against San Bernadino County for “failing to consider how growth and new development will impact climate change” – even though the regulations related to AB32 had yet to be put in place at the time of the lawsuit.

In 2008, Brown was also sure to say, before voters passed Prop 8, that it would not apply retroactively to the same sex marriages that Gavin Newsom “legalized” in San Francisco.

All of those positions and actions taken by Brown, on law and order/voting, the environment and social issues, are considerably Left of center and were either taken because he is that Liberal or because he wanted to make sure that then candidate Gavin Newsom would not get to the Left of Jerry Brown.  But now Gavin is gone.  There is no one for Jerry Brown to out-Left.  Soooo, its apparently time for “Reasonable Jerry.”

Like:  The “No tax increase Jerry” – unless the voters want it – meaning he is now against it before he might be for it, or

The “I will look at the pension crisis” Jerry – as if he will take on all those public employee unions he empowered, or

The “I will downsize state government” Jerry – even though the budget increased 120% when he was Governor.

And perhaps the coup de grâce, The “We don’t need mere ambition to be Governor” Jerry Brown.

Clearly, Jerry Brown knows no shame, and without Gavin Newsom in the race, he is trying to tack away from his Leftist rhetoric and embark on his newly discovered Reasonable Jerry Tour.

However, those watching Jerry well remember his comment that “It doesn’t matter what I say, as long as I sound different from other politicians.”  Hopefully, this Fall, voters will understand the true Jerry Brown and let him know that it does matter what you say and even more what you have done.


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Posted Mar 10th 2010 at 7:00 am in Featured Story, Politics, State Politics | 46 Comments