Brown cruises to victory over Kashkari
By Carla Marinucci and Melody Gutierrez
In one of the lowest-profile gubernatorial elections in modern California history, Gov. Jerry Brown — who never appeared in a single TV ad on his own behalf — sailed to a historic fourth term Tuesday against little-known Republican Neel Kashkari.
On a night that was grim for Democrats nationwide, nothing went wrong for Brown. Besides the wide lead he opened over Kashkari, the two ballot measures for which he campaigned — Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion water-infrastructure bond, and Proposition 2, beefing up the state’s rainy-day reserve — passed by huge margins.
With his wife, Anne Gust Brown, at his side, Brown said moments after the polls closed that he was looking forward to “this particular gift of another four years.”
“The key for the next four years is to make the government do what it’s supposed to do,” Brown said, adding that he would “do my very best ... to do what’s right for California.”
The governor chose as his backdrop the Historic Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento, once occupied by his father, the late Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown — a setting that not only dramatized his family’s political legacy in California, but his own status as a fixture in state politics for more than 40 years.
Brown’s margin of victory — with 26 percent of precincts counted, his lead was 57.5 percent to 42.5 percent — could end up being a low-water mark for Republicans. The party’s worst beating in a gubernatorial election in the past 40 years came in 1978 — when Brown earned a second term with a 56 to 36 percent victory over GOP state Attorney General Evelle Younger.
'Comfortable’ pick
Tuesday’s results show that for most California voters, Brown is “not the devil we know — he’s the governor we know,” said Jessica Levinson, who teachers political ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “Most people, at some point, have voted for Jerry Brown for governor, and it’s comforting. Voters tend to be comfortable with routine.”
The victory clears the path for the 76-year-old Brown to spend the next four years working on an agenda that would define his second-stint legacy in the governor’s office. That agenda includes making strides in construction of a high-speed-rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, putting long-term water-infrastructure changes in place, and firming up the state’s revenue outlook as temporary tax increases approved by voters in 2012 begin to expire.
Brown solidified his strength going into another term by campaigning not for his own re-election or even other Democrats, but by investing $6million of his political money in Props. 1 and 2. In TV ads and a handful of campaign appearances, Brown portrayed both as essential to stabilizing California’s economy over the long run, by providing more reliable water supplies and minimizing roller-coaster revenue rides.
Asked Tuesday night about his immediate goals, Brown said, “I just spent the last several months saying, 'Save water, save money,’ and those two are pillars.”
He said the state must be focused on “living within our means” while investing in schools, criminal justice system and infrastructure.
“I’m not under any illusions that this is some kind of picnic,” Brown said. “It’s difficult, because California is divided. Modoc doesn’t see the world like Berkeley, and Berkeley doesn’t see the world like Orange County.”
Still, Brown will have solid Democratic majorities to work with in both houses of the Legislature, though possibly not the two-thirds supermajority that Democrats held for much of the past four years.
Short shrift for party
Bill Whalen, a former adviser to Gov. Pete Wilson and a fellow with the Hoover Institution, said Brown’s failure to campaign much for his own party and his sparse record of endorsements for Democrats — even his decision not to deliver his election night remarks at the state party’s gathering in Sacramento — strongly suggested that a legislative supermajority was not one of the governor’s priorities.
“Once upon a time, it was critical for the budget — but now the budget is a majority vote,” Whalen said. “Politically, Jerry Brown is a party of one — and there have been many Democrats frustrated with that approach.”
Opponent ignored
In spending his energies on Props. 1 and 2, Brown all but ignored Kashkari, 40, a former federal Treasury Department official and first-time candidate who spent at least $3.1million of his own money on the campaign.
Kashkari, speaking to a crowd of about 70 supporters in Orange County, said, “I have gone into communities all over California and, you know what I found? People couldn’t care less what party I was from.”
He said the issues he ran on — jobs and education — “go beyond any political lines. They are American values.”
Kashkari did not campaign as a typical Republican — he favors abortion rights and same-sex marriage rights, and he spent a week posing as a homeless man in Fresno trying to show that Brown’s “California comeback” was an illusion.
He hinted that he wasn’t through with California politics, saying, “I promise you. I’m just getting warmed up.”
Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Tea Party-favored conservative who came within four points of Kashkari in the June primary, said Kashkari’s struggles showed that he was more the choice of party leaders and donors than GOP activists.
“He didn’t stand up on issues, he didn’t galvanize the base,” Donnelly said. “People don’t want a pretty, clever, packaged candidate — they want boots in the street.”
'You know me’
All in all, it made for one of the strangest gubernatorial elections ever in California, and a sharp contrast from 2010, when Brown had to overcome a $140million spending onslaught from his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman.
Brown made just a handful of appearances, even on behalf of his pet ballot measures, and never really laid out a case for a detailed agenda for his fourth term. But then, political observers said, he is the rare California politician who didn’t have to.
“His case is, 'You know me better than anyone you’ve ever known,’” said Corey Cook, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco. “'I’m fiscally responsible. I’ll manage the Democratic Party well — I’m a Democrat, but I’m a balanced one.’”
Cook noted that Brown has already reassured voters he will keep Democrats “in line” in Sacramento. Last week, the governor suggested that the unspent millions in his campaign fund could come in handy if he has to go to voters to pass ballot measures, as he did with Proposition 30, the 2012 initiative that temporarily raised sales taxes and wealthy people’s income taxes.
If “there are issues that come up in ’16 or ’18 ... some major ballot-measure battle that I can’t even conceive of,” Brown said, he wants to be ready.
Cook said that with “some talk of putting high-speed rail back on the ballot,” Brown is clearly armed and ready.
“If you’re a governor, you have to be prepared to fight on two fronts,” he said — “with the Legislature, and you might have to go to the ballot.”
