University of California • Berkeley
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Willie Lewis Brown, Jr.
FIRST AMONG EQUALS:
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE LEADERSHIP, 1964-1992
With an Introduction by
John De Luca
Interviews Conducted by
Gabrielle Morris
in 1991 and 1992
Copyright © 1999 by The Regents of the University of California
Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading
participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of
Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of
collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a
narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-
informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the
historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for
continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected
manuscript -ts indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in
other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material,
oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete
narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in
response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved,
and irreplaceable.
************************************
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement
between The Regents of the University of California and Willie Lewis
Brown, Jr., dated January 26, 1992. The manuscript is thereby made
available for research purposes. All literary rights in the
manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The
Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part
of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University
of California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be
addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include
identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated
use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with Willie Lewis Brown, Jr., requires that he be notified
of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Willie Lewis Brown, Jr., "First Among
Equals: California Legislative Leadership,
1964-1992," an oral history conducted in
1991 and 1992 by Gabrielle Morris,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California,
Berkeley, 1999.
Copy no.
Willie Brown as Mayor of San Francisco, 1996.
photo - Dennis DeSilva i
Cataloguing information
BROWN, Willie L., Jr. (b. 1934) Lawyer, legislator
First Among Equals; California Legislative Leadership. 1964-1992. 1999,
ix, 331 pp.
Boyhood in Texas; education: San Francisco State University, 1951-1955,
Hastings Law School, 1955-1958; early Democratic party activities; election
to state assembly, 1964; legislative issues and politics, 1965-1992; Ways
and Means Committee chairmanship, 1969-1974; state assembly speaker, 1980-
1993, leadership concerns: government organization, revenue and taxation,
African American equity; managing Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign,
1988; working with Phillip Burton, Jesse Unruh, Robert Moretti, Edmund G.
Brown, Jr., and other political leaders of the era.
Interviewed 1991-1992 by Gabrielle Morris.
Introduction by John De Luca, President and CEO, Wine Institute.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Regional Oral History Office, on behalf of future researchers,
wishes to thank the following individuals and organizations whose
contributions made possible this oral history of Willie L. Brown, Jr.
Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc.
Henry E. Berman
Judge and Mrs. Jack K. Berman
Willie Brown
California Teachers Association
Ronald H. Cowan
John and Josephine De Luca
Arthur Edelstein
John Gardenal
Green & Azevedo
Jackson R. Gualco
Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc.
Peter D. Kelly
John T. Knox
Frank Murphy, Jr.
Nina M. Ryan
Phillip Scott Ryan
Kathleen Snodgrass
Maxine Waters, Member of Congress
Wine Institute
Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation
TABLE OF CONTENTS- -Willie Brown
INTRODUCTION by John De Luca i
INTERVIEW HISTORY vi
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ix
I GROWING UP IN MINEOLA, TEXAS 1
Memories of Mo 'Dear 1
School Days; Looking After Folk 7
Neighborhood Social Contract; Segregation 9
Mother's Treats 12
High School; Civic Affairs 15
II COMING TO SAN FRANCISCO, 1951 18
Uncle Itsy Collins; Family Card Games 18
Thoughts of Stanford 21
III SAN FRANCISCO STATE COLLEGE, 1951-1955 25
Duncan Gillies' Encouragement 25
Social and Family Connections 27
Student Housing, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Leadership 30
Student Politics 32
IV S.F. DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THE 1950s AND 1960s 33
Phil Burton Challenges the Old Order 33
Early Black Political Figures 37
Voting Trends and Constituencies; Regulation in the 1980s 38
V HASTINGS LAW SCHOOL, 1955-1958 43
VI PRACTICING LAW, 1959-1964 47
Independence, Friendships, Testing One's Skills 47
Eyewitness in the Courtroom 48
Oakland Raiders: Suit and Countersuit 49
The Missed-Nose Defense 51
Defending Prostitutes 52
Partner and Friend John Dearman: Pro Bono Work 53
Remembering Adolph Schumann 58
VII PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES 60
Legislators' Role in an Emergency [1991] 60
Impact of Prop. 13 [1978]; Code Compliance 62
Lobbying in the Public Interest 63
VIII EARLY POLITICAL CAREER 65
Fair Housing Legislation Campaign, 1956-1959 65
Starting a Family 68
Women and Minority Leaders 69
County Central Committee 70
Running for the State Assembly, 18th District, 1962 71
Attitudes of Jesse Unruh and the Media 73
Carleton Goodlett and His Support 76
1962 Campaign Team 78
Visit to the Tenderloin District, 1992 81
IX ELECTION TO THE ASSEMBLY, 1964 87
Observations of Speaker Jesse Unruh 87
Party Caucus District Services Then and Now 88
Defending Golden Gate Park; Freeway Issues 89
Party Appointments; Slate Cards 92
Finances; Polling 94
Auto Row and Free Speech Demonstrations 95
X FRESHMAN LEGISLATOR OF THE YEAR, 1965 99
Brown's Issue Agenda 99
Voting Against Unruh 101
Fellow Freshmen; Bob Moretti's Ambitions 103
Republicans with Social Conscience 105
XI LEARNING FROM PHIL BURTON AND JESSE UNRUH 107
New Democratic Talent in 1966; Full-time Legislature 107
Black Candidates; Attorneys as Legislators 109
Burton's Political Skills 110
Unruh 's Weaknesses 112
Some Reagan and Brown Technical Experts 114
XII BOB MORETTI AS SPEAKER 119
Brown Chairs the Government Efficiency Committee 119
From the Bipartisan Sixties to The Cavemen of Proposition 13,
1978 123
Moretti's Background 124
Electing a New Minority Leader, 1969 126
XIII WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE CHAIR, 1969-1974 132
Foundation for a Good-Government Career; Reagan Oversight 132
Procedural Flourishes 134
Policy Innovations; the Speaker's Political Chores 135
Medi-Cal Program Evolution 137
Relations with Reagan Staff 138
Learning Budgeting from Frank Lanterman; John Knox's Leadership
on Local Government 140
Taking the Budget on the Road 143
Education and Health Challenges 143
XIV FIRST TRY FOR THE SPEAKERSHIP, 1974 147
Black Caucus Defection; Waxman and Berman Maneuvers 148
The Berman Brothers; 1971 Reapportionment 152
Banishing of Willie Brown 154
Return Via the Revenue and Taxation Committee 157
XV RELATIONS WITH THE MEDIA AND THE PEOPLE 159
Maintaining a Law Practice 159
Observations on the Press; Quality of Information 164
Speechmaking, Image; Friendships with Herb Caen and Wilkes
Bashford 170
Polling vis-a-vis Constituent Contact 173
Demise of Newsletters 176
XVI ISSUES AND LEGISLATION, 1975-1978 178
Prestige vs. Public Policy Committee Assignments 178
Transportation, Rev and Tax Matters 180
Brown's Constituencies 182
Lobbying Fellow Assemblymen 184
Handling Controversial Issues: Abortion 186
XVII RACIAL MINORITY NETWORK 189
United Political Action Statewide 189
Higher Education: Admissions Equity 191
State Contract Preference 193
Developing Candidates; Ongoing Contacts 194
XVIII WORKING WITH JERRY BROWN; ADVANCING EQUITY ISSUES 197
The Governor and the Regents 197
Black Panthers' Social Advocacy 198
Conservative Response in Sacramento 199
The Governor and the Legislature 202
Leo McCarthy's Leadership 204
XIX BECOMING SPEAKER OF THE ASSEMBLY 208
Brown as Majority Leader; 1980 Primary Campaign 208
Conversations with Berman and McCarthy 211
Negotiating Republican Support 214
Putting the House in Order; Reapportionment 217
Supreme Court Appointments 218
Law-Enforcement Concerns 221
XX ONGOING CRITICAL POLICY ISSUES, 1981-1991 223
Health Care, Growth Management, Affordable Housing, Environmental
Protection 223
Individual and Agency Resistance to Integrated Services 225
Local-State Confrontations; Permit Complications 227
Educating Local Decisionmakers 229
First Funds for AIDS Research; Finding Resources for New
Programs in a Tight Budget 230
Grassroots Politicking Pro and Con; Public Schools and Property
Taxation 233
XXI THREATS TO DEMOCRATIC PROCESS AND INSTITUTIONS 238
Negative Campaigning; Campaign Reform Measures 238
Anti-Government Legislative Cavemen 243
Insider Politics; FBI Corruption Investigation, 1985-1988 246
1991 Reapportionment; Privacy of Court Deliberations 254
XXII PUTTING DOWN THE GANG OF FIVE, 1988-1989
Ambition and Expediency
Power of the Speaker
Efforts to Vacate the Chair
Primary Election Skirmishes; Republican Disharmony
XXIII NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC POLITICS; RUNNING JESSE JACKSON'S 1988
CAMPAIGN
Early Acquaintance
Primary Strategies
Dukakis's Fall Campaign
1986 Senate Victories
1992 Campaign Preliminaries
XXIV TRACKING SOLUTIONS AND PROBLEMS
Voter Responses Nationwide; Welfare & Job Linkages
Tieing Health-Care and Worker-Compensation Coverage; S.F.
Mayor's Race, 1992
Hazards of Term Limits
260
260
263
264
266
270
270
271
274
276
277
280
280
281
283
TAPE GUIDE
286
APPENDIX
A
B
INDEX
List of Speeches
"One on One with Willie Brown," James Richardson,
California Journal. August 1998
287
316
320
INTRODUCTION by John De Luca
I've known Willie Brown for more than thirty years, since early
1968 when I became chief of staff (and later deputy mayor) to Joe
Alioto, who had just been elected mayor of San Francisco. As I was
getting acquainted with the significant players in the political arena,
Willie was in his second term representing the city in the California
Assembly, on his way to several decades of exceptional influence in
reshaping our state's political and economic landscape.
To me, it is fitting that he has crowned his distinguished
fourteen-year career as Speaker of the Assembly, the second most
powerful position in state government, by becoming mayor of San
Francisco himself. As mayor at the turn of a new century, his great
contribution has been to keep before the American public the
extraordinary needs of our urban communities.
As soon as I met Assemblyman Brown, I discovered that he was a man
of uncommon intelligence. He was a pleasure to work with because he
was, like Alioto, colorful, a gifted orator, and a quick study. Willie
Brown could, and still does, pick up on any issue and take one thread of
a sentence and give a press conference for an hour, and people will
think, with awe, he really knows his subject matter!
There were many issues in those days that required that Mayor
Alioto and I meet with a variety of legislators and congressmen,
including Jesse Unruh, then an equally notable Assembly Speaker. In
fact, after initial differences, Jesse became one of Willie's great
admirers. One time, I was driving Unruh in from the airport to see
Alioto, and all Jesse wanted to talk about was how bright Willie was and
what a future he had.
After 1975, when I became head of the Wine Institute and thus of
the California wine industry, I would meet with Willie on questions
related to agriculture and tourism—the two leading industries of the
state- -and, although he was an urban legislator, I found him to be very
open to farm and rural issues. He was genuinely interested in the whole
state and became increasingly knowledgeable about its many complex
issues, including the most important matters of tax and finance, which
you will read about in this oral history. During his years as speaker,
he also became a seasoned administrator, learning executive skills that
have been valuable preparation for the responsibilities of the mayor's
office.
But to understand the true significance of Willie Brown and his
impact on our politics and government, one needs to consider his
ii
relation to the issues that have faced the cities of America in their
walk through the twentieth century.
You cannot be ideological when it comes to solving problems in the
American political system. You do need leaders who are visionaries, but
at the same time can face real-life problems in day-to-day governance:
the garbage must be collected, the buses must run on time, the city must
be kept safe. Our system of government is very demanding, putting the
emphasis on people who, while pursuing missions and goals, have also
learned to build coalitions and, through them, to reach consensus.
Willie Brown has been a consummate performer in how to put people
together and how to get at a problem and move forward on it, not only in
city and state government, but also at the national level.
To begin with, San Francisco has been blessed that, out of a small
population compared to the rest of the state, we have contributed a
remarkable number of dynamic leaders in both Sacramento and Washington- -
certainly Joe Alioto and Dianne Feinstein, Phil Burton and his brother
John Burton, George Moscone, and Leo McCarthy, to name a few; and more
recently, such notable individuals as Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer. As
capable as any of them and as expert at working with and resolving
differences among them is Willie Brown.
His early years in local politics coincided with a crucial period
in our times, during which he was (and continues to be) a tireless and
fearless advocate for the black community and all minorities. He was
committed to the traditional political arena in which you came to power
by running for office and being elected, or by being appointed to
administrative bodies, from which positions you then shared in the
city's decisionmaking. There were those in the black community who
talked of violence and or revolution as the way to bring about change,
but Willie Brown, while tough, was not nihilistic. Instead, he
reflected a new set of political values.
In the 1960s, an emerging leader like Willie could not divorce
himself from the civil-rights struggle that was happening in Selma,
Alabama and elsewhere, nor from the rhetoric of the times. He was
constantly being pressured to be more adversarial at the same time that
he was working within the system of votes and hearings and consensus.
Although there was an unofficial timetable for progress, it was too slow
for the most belligerent of his constituents. So he was really torn
between those who wanted him to denounce the most radical minority
groups and those who felt he wasn't going far enough for them.
It was an extraordinary era. Within months of each other in 1968,
we had the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.
Previously, in 1964 and 1965, the Watts riots in Los Angeles and the
Hunters Point and Auto Row minority-employment demonstrations in San
Francisco had shaken the city, which was again shaken in 1978 by the
iii
shootings of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Keeping
people from taking to the streets was not a hypothetical thing; it was
happening in other parts of America. Willie Brown and the other leaders
I've mentioned exerted their personal influence throughout the
community, working together to make sure that, whatever our differences,
we would work them out through the democratic process and not through
violence.
That leadership included remarkable figures in the black
community- -Terry Francois, Judge Willie Kennedy, Hamilton Boswell,
Carleton Goodlett, Joe Williams, Bill Chester, and many others whom
Willie mentions in his oral history. Among them were men like Leroy
King and Dr. Washington Garner, who spoke with authority as members of
the Redevelopment Agency and Police Commission, respectively. All these
people were senior in age to Willie yet, through the grid of personal
politics that he cultivated, he could speak from an understanding of
their thinking, and they understood his loyalty to the importance of
their concerns.
The personal politics practiced in San Francisco has few parallels
in the nation. Because of the city's size and compactness, you can
interact with people in all neighborhoods if you have the energy and
desire. It is a face-to-face city that has many civic and fraternal and
ethnic groups. And Willie Brown would meet with them in North Beach, in
Chinatown, in the Western Addition, in Hunters Point, the Bayview, in
every street and quarter; and he would encourage everybody to think that
if they had an occasion and they felt he should be invited, he'd accept.
He'd take in several of these meetings a night, and to each one he'd
give a talk that you'd think was the only event he'd prepared for, and
then he'd go on to the next one and the next one. And Joe Alioto and
George Moscone and Phil Burton and Dianne Feinstein were all doing the
same thing.
At all these meetings, people would ask Willie, and the other
elected representatives who showed up, to take positions on land issues,
rent issues, fire, airport, housing, redevelopment, transportation,
whatever. And in some cases, he would carry their concerns to the Board
of Permit Appeals, the Housing Authority, the Redevelopment Agency. I
can't begin to recount all the arguments that went on before the
Redevelopment Agency, for example, over putting together what later
became Moscone Center. Some of them so hot and heavy they ended up in a
stream of lawsuits. In some ways it seems to go with the nature of San
Francisco, like all the controversy recently over the downtown ballpark
and the new 49er football stadium, or what to do about the deYoung
Museum, all of which Willie is in the midst of as mayor. Some of these
issues are of concern far beyond the limits of the city itself, like the
city-states of ancient Greece that also influenced the commerce,
culture, sports, and philosophy of regions much greater than themselves.
iv
Some people thought that Willie, as an assemblyman, shouldn't be
speaking before the board of supervisors on those questions. But it was
not uncommon to have elected officials presenting positions before these
bodies. I remember one important moment when a question dealing with
the Police Officers Association (POA) and Officers for Justice (OFJ), a
group formed of black officers, was before the board of supervisors.
And the board passed a resolution 11 to 0 that favored the POA to the
detriment of OFJ.
Willie Brown called me and said, "This is not right. I think it
should be vetoed by the mayor." I said, "We don't usually veto an 11 to
0 decision, but if you will give me the substance of your views, I'll
bring them to Mayor Alioto's attention."
When I got the details to the mayor later that day, he said,
"Willie is absolutely right. This is an injustice," and Alioto vetoed
the measure and was sustained in a subsequent vote. Over the years,
Willie has said that was a defining moment when he understood that he
could work with the mayor, regardless of their political differences.
I think one of the important stories of our time is that Willie
Brown was able to walk a very difficult tightrope and fulfill the vision
which he embodies for all Americans, that minorities can come to power
and have an impact on public policy through the elective process. Even
when it didn't look as if he would ever move into positions of power in
the assembly, he persevered to become the leader of the assembly and
held that post longer than anyone else in the history of the state. An
indication of his role in California's political life can be found in
Lieutenant Governor Gray Davis 's recent statement that Willie Brown's
endorsement in the 1998 primary election was the turning point in
Davis 's successful campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
There were a number of us in San Francisco who felt that, at a
certain time, Willie should run for mayor as a natural progression for
his talents and experience. Because of his significant role in state
and national Democratic party politics, as well as in the legislature,
he was wise not to consider the possibility prematurely and thereby
limit his authority and effectiveness.
I don't believe he had any burning ambition to be anything other
than the top legislative leader of the state. He would always say, "I
enjoy what I'm doing." But when term limits forced the issue, he did
respond to his constituents who, in a sense, quasi-drafted him to run
for mayor, in recognition of his ability to do more in the public arena.
Through all these years, I have been a strong supporter of Willie
Brown and consider him a dear friend. There are others who are
certainly closer to him, such as John Burton, who might write a more
personal introduction to this memoir going back to their days together
in student politics at San Francisco State. But it continues to be
instructive for me to observe and enjoy Da Mayor's bubbling energy and
vivid oratory on the critical issues of the day. To say nothing of the
numerous fashion shows, fundraisers, and other celebrations
choreographed by Willie Brown in which my wife, Jo, and I have taken
part.
It was at one of these events that I gave a surprise toast to
then-Speaker Brown announcing that Henry Berman and I and a group of
friends had arranged for The Bancroft Library at the University of
California to record his oral history, providing an opportunity for him
to recount some favorite occurrences in a remarkable career his way,
without interruption or interpretation. This volume is the result.
John De Luca
President and CEO, Wine Institute
San Francisco, California
June 1998
vi
INTERVIEW HISTORY- -Willie L. Brown
Willie Lewis Brown, Jr., has been a legendary figure in California
politics since he was named the outstanding freshman legislator of 1965
by journalists covering the state capitol. The Regional Oral History
Office has looked forward to documenting his classic American success
story: the experiences of a poor boy from a small town in Texas who made
his way to San Francisco as a teenager, gained a college education and a
law school degree, and became a leader in the public life of the city
and state, and in the Democratic party nationally. This oral history
seeks to capture the remarkable vitality and accomplishment of Brown's
career through his years as speaker of the California Assembly and is
vital to understanding his later role as mayor of the City and County of
San Francisco (1994-).
As a student at San Francisco State College and Hastings School of
Law (1951-1958), Willie Brown's hard work and cheerful disposition won
him recognition in church and civic organizations. He went on to become
active in the early years of the civil rights movement, defending many
another poor person and speaking out for social justice in employment
and housing and an increased role for black people in San Francisco's
civic affairs.
Brown's activities and eloquence won him a seat in the state
assembly in 1964, the first African American to represent San Francisco;
he quickly mastered the intricacies of legislative life and, in 1980,
was chosen speaker of the assembly, second only to the governor in
authority. He held this position for a record fourteen years, during a
challenging period in California government, and became an influential
figure in state and national Democratic politics, including chairing
Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign.
The interviews in this volume were recorded while Brown was still
speaker, looking at the prospect of legislative term limits and a veteran
of several unsuccessful challenges to his office. He described these and
other contentious events with gusto, obviously having enjoyed the matching
of wits and demonstration of his skill. Five interviews were conducted on
Saturday or Sunday mornings between October 1991 and January 1992.
Always stylishly dressed in well-cut sport coat and slacks
appropriate to a weekend appointment (with a departure into a Forty-
Niners warm-up jacket on the day of the Super Bowl, for which he was to
host a pre-game party), Brown was ready to begin the interview as soon
as we sat down at the polished conference table in the library of his
San Francisco law office. As one of the most -interviewed public figures
of the day, his attitude was a relaxed "What shall we talk about today?"
In spite of his frequent and well-documented (see Chapter XV) annoyance
with the media, he was a responsive and engaging interviewee.
vii
The oral history followed a chronological outline with topical
focus in the sessions on his assembly years on governmental issues with
which Brown was particularly identified. Given his crowded schedule and
vision difficulties, it is not likely that he personally read over the
day's interview queries submitted before the session nor reviewed the
subsequent edited transcript.
Most of the topics were familiar territory, including stories the
speaker likes to tell, on himself as well as starring himself: being
raised on beans and vegetables, long before organic food became a
buzzword, under the vigilant eye of Mo 'dear, his tough and devoted
grandmother; how he learned grassroots politicking in the San Francisco
State College student NAACP and from legendary vote-counter Phil Burton;
how he voted against Jesse Unruh for speaker in 1965; how he was
banished to the smallest office in the capitol by Speaker Bob Moretti
and returned to chair the mighty Assembly Ways and Means Committee,
where he dazzled the faithful and irritated the opposition by his quick
grasp of legislative detail and finance; how he won the speakership in
1984; how he pushed for broader public policy initiatives in health
care, affordable housing, and growth management while tending to
assembly members' wants; how he put down challenges from young Turks and
old conservatives.
If Brown's time and the project budget had allowed, the oral
history could have continued indefinitely following the many byways of
his career, accounts of which are widely available. Speaker Brown's own
telling of the events discussed provide a unique view of his broad and
deep understanding of the complex processes and unrelenting effort
required to maintain effective government, responsive to the changing
needs of the citizens of the state.
Throughout the interview, Brown's gift for enjoying life and for
friendship is evident. Especially interesting are his accounts of
advice and sociability shared over the years with Herb Caen, whose daily
column in the San Francisco Chronicle shaped the Bay Area discourse on
many public issues, and Wilkes Bashford, whose high- fashion men's
clothing shop is frequently patronized by Brown. Brown's loyalty to
causes as well as people is also evident, as described in Chapter VIII,
in which the interviewer accompanies him on his regular Sunday visit to
St. Anthony's Dining Room for the indigent, where he joshes with
numerous regular customers while filling up their coffee cups.
It is also loyalty that made this oral history possible, through
the warmth of spirit of John De Luca, president of the Wine Institute.
Looking for an unusual toast for the Speaker's birthday in 1990, he
announced at the party that friends of Willie Brown's were chipping in
to sponsor his participation in an oral history to be conducted by The
Bancroft Library. Sponsors are listed at the front of the volume.
viii
Additional information on Brown's impact on the assembly and on
Democratic politics is available in Willie Brown: A Biography, by James
Richardson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) and numerous
articles in the California Journal, as well as in the state's
metropolitan newspapers.
In preparing for the oral history, several of Brown's chief aides
provided the interviewer with helpful insights, among them Bob Connelly,
chief administrative officer of the assembly and veteran legislative
strategist; John Mockler, education policy specialist; Joanne Murphy,
research and speech consultant; Steve Scott, health policy specialist;
and Brown's chief administrative assistant, Michael Galizio, whose
office made the initial arrangements for the oral history. Tapes of
informal background conversations recorded in Sacramento with several of
these aides are deposited in The Bancroft Library with Brown's own
tapes.
The transcripts of the interviews were lightly edited by the
interviewer and, in 1992, sent to Ms. Murphy for review as arranged by
Mr. Brown. Subsequent conversations with Ms. Murphy indicated that only
minor revisions were needed, although the transcript was not returned to
the Regional Oral History Office. After Mr. Brown became mayor of San
Francisco and interest in completion of the transcript became urgent, it
was learned that the edited transcript had been returned to Brown in
Sacramento and subsequently lost. Processing of the oral history was
completed using The Bancroft Library file copy under the agreement
signed by Willie Brown on January 26, 1992.
The appendix to the volume includes lists of summaries of bills
introduced by Brown, 1973-1990; speeches made by Brown as speaker, 1984-
1990; videos of Brown's television appearances, 1984-1990; and a few
selections from the numerous comments on Brown's activities that
appeared in Herb Caen's columns in the Chronicle.
The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to
augment through tape-recorded memoirs the Library's materials on the
history of California and the West. Copies of all interviews are
available for research use in The Bancroft Library and in the UCLA
Department of Special Collections. The office is under the direction of
Willa K. Baum, Division Head, and the administrative direction of
Charles B. Faulhaber, James D. Hart Director of The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley.
Gabrielle Morris, Interviewer /Editor
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
Berkeley, California
July 1998
Regional Oral History Office University of California
Room 486 The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California 94720
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
(Please write clearly. Use black ink.)
Your full name Willie Lewis Brown. Jr.
Date of birth March 20, 1934 Birthplace Mineola. Texas
Father's full name Willie Lewis Brown
Occupation bartender, porter Birthplace
Mother's full name Minnie Boyd Collins
Occupation housekeeper Birthplace Mineola. Texas
Your spouse Blanche Vitero Brown
Occupation dancer Birthplace
Your children son Michael, daughters Susan and Robin
Where did you grow up? Mineola
Present community San Francisco
Education San Francisco State College. 1951-55;
Hastings College of Law, 1955-1958
Occupation^ ) attorney, California State Assemblyman. 1964-93
Speaker of the Assembly, 1980-1993; Mayor of San Francisco, 1994-
Areas of expertise public administration, Democratic party
Other interests or activities
chaired Jesse Jackson 1988 presidential campaign
Organizations in which you are active numerous
I GROWING UP IN MINEOLA, TEXAS
[Interview 1: October 19, 1991] ##'
Memories of Mo "Dear
Brown: Let's go!
Morris: Where we would like to start is, tell us a little bit about
growing up in Mineola.
Brown: Oh, I saw that list of topics.
Morris: Yes, that's a reminder sheet of some of the points we would like
to touch on about how Willie Brown got started and his early ideas
about the world and interests.
Brown: How far do you want to go back?
Morris: Mineola.
Brown: Yes, but I mean, how far back in Mineola?
Morris: Well, your grandmother is referred to but she doesn't have a name.
The kind of lessons she taught you. Early influences is what this
category is.
Brown: I was raised along with three sisters and a brother by my
grandmother. Her name was Anna Lee Collins. She was my
grandmother. She was literally the center of the family. She had
four sons, three of whom were still alive and whom I knew and met
and associated with, and one daughter, my mother, Minnie. None of
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those lived in the home with us. They were all in various
locations earning money to send back home to take care of the
children. My mother was the only one of the offspring of my
grandmother who had any children, so to speak. Her son, Itsy,
currently the only surviving other member from that brood, had a
son named Maurice, but he did not live with us. So it was the
five of Minnie's children.
All of the resources that were forwarded back to the
grandmother were used to raise the three of us. Each of us had an
assigned responsibility and that is, frankly, the first of my real
memories of living in Mineola at 511 Baker Street. Each one of us
had a duty. I think my first job was to feed the chickens and get
water. There were no indoor plumbing facilities. There was no
running water. We didn't have a well on our property. The well
was on Jim Hunter's property which was maybe a block or a block
and a half away. You had to get buckets of water for purposes of
maintaining the family, whether it was to cook, whether it was to
wash dishes or whether it was to do baths. You had to--.
Morris: Haul water.
Brown: --tote water. We called it "tote water."
Morris: Tote, yes. You toted the water for the whole family?
Brown: Correct. I was the water man, so to speak.
Morris: That will develop stamina at an early age.
Brown: Then we bought ice from a traveling truck that sold ice about once
or twice a week. You had a little icebox in which you put this
ice. You put your water and you put everything else in there to
keep it cold. The chunk of ice--twenty-f ive pounds of ice--would
maybe take two or three days to melt. In between, sometimes it
would melt sooner. When it melted sooner, then we had to go all
the way over to the ice house and buy a twenty- five-pound chunk of
ice and lug it back for the icebox.
But you all had assignments. Everybody had an assignment.
One of my sisters, her job was to clean one day, the other one was
to wash dishes, and the other one was to cook. So everybody had
something to do. My grandmother- -we called her Mo 'dear.
Morris: Mo 'dear?
Brown: Short for Mother Dear.
Morris: That's nice.
Brown: But we called her Mo 'dear. All she did was run the house. She
didn't do anything else. She would supervise the cooking and give
directions on the cooking, but she mainly operated as the
supervisor. Everybody else had to perform a task.
Morris: Had she been a teacher herself early on?
Brown: No. 1 don't even think she graduated from high school. I don't
think she graduated from grammar school, as a matter of fact. She
clearly, though, could read and write and was very well aware and
had a great sense about her of how things should be done and would
not hesitate to administer punishment if she deemed it appropriate
to do so. She was real strict on discipline. You had to maintain
excellent grades. Everybody had to get good grades; if you didn't
get good grades, you were totally unacceptable. Everybody had to
go to church every Sunday. Except my grandmother. My grandmother
didn't do any of that. She didn't go to church. [chuckles] She
went over to the school to argue with them about anything. She
just made you do it all and you had to do it at every step of the
way. You literally had to do it.
Morris: If there was a problem at school, you had to go talk to the
teacher about it.
Brown: Hopefully, your problem would not get back to your grandmother's
ears, because if it did you were disciplined at home without a
hearing. Then you had to straighten it out when you got back in
school; so it wasn't one of these deals where there were any
negotiations or mitigation. She just assumed that you were wrong
if somebody said something. That caused you to always be
absolutely perfect, or you'd attempt to be perfect, in everything
you did.
One of my assignments, after I grew up a little bit and
managed to acquire a bicycle--. I had a luggage rack on the rear
of my bicycle. That luggage rack was for the purpose of giving my
grandmother a ride down to the Sabine River to fish. She loved to
fish and she would fish every day of her life if she could, if she
was healthy enough. But there were no cars or wagons; we didn't
have horses or those kinds of things to carry her. There were no
other men in the family except me and my little brother. So it
became my job to get my grandmother down to the fishing hole, down
to the Sabine River, which is maybe two or three miles away from
the house.
She would climb up on the luggage rack, on the carriage on
the back of my bicycle, put her fishing pole up, put her hat on,
and I would pedal her down to the river. She always walked back.
Her exercise was to walk back home on her own.
Morris: She would walk both ways until you acquired the bicycle?
Brown: I have no independent memory of how she got to the hole prior to
my acquiring the bicycle; but I assume she did because she had
some other people in the community who went fishing as well, and I
think they would hike to wherever they were to go fishing--.
Morris: Together.
Brown: Right. And then hike back. But she always hiked back. I took
her down to the fishing hole on my bicycle, but she never required
me to come back to pick her up.
The rules were set out; you knew what time dinner was, you
knew what time everything was, you knew what time you were
supposed to go to school, you knew what time you were supposed to
go to church, you knew how long you could stay out and play.
Morris: There was time for play? She made it fair.
Brown: Absolutely, as long as you did your work. As long as you did your
homework and your chores, you could play forever. She invited our
house to be the playground for all the kids, so we built the high-
jump pit and the pole-vault pit in her yard. We had one of the
few pianos where kids would be allowed to play at the piano, so
everybody in the neighborhood would show up there to play and to
play around the piano.
We usually owned the only football or the only basketball.
We had a basketball goal that I had built on the back of the wood
house where we stored wood. We had to cut wood and store the wood
and stack the wood, all that business, and then behind the wood
house we had the chicken coop where we raised the chickens and got
the eggs and those kinds of things. Then we had a pig pen where
we raised the pigs and the hogs for purposes of food. None of
this was for sale; all this was for food. Then we had a field
where we raised corn and beans and tomatoes. Then she had a
private garden of her own that was fenced in, and we were not
allowed in her garden. In her garden she would raise specialty
beans--now I know they were specialty beans and things of that
nature—and we raised the general crops.
We had a cellar that we were never allowed to go down in.
She stored the canned fruits in the cellar. She would buy
peaches, she would buy plums, she would buy strawberries, she
would buy all those kinds of things and can them for preserves,
jellies and jams. She would even can greens and can corn in Mason
fruit jars. Our job was always to wash the fruit jars, get them
ready, and screw the tops on. She did all the canning, all the
cooking for the canning and what have you.
So it was really a very well-organized household as I think
about it. The resources that kept the household going must have
been her pension. She must have had some form of Social Security
or some pension or something from her husband, whom I never knew.
Grandfather was long since passed before the kids came along.
Morris: Had Grandfather worked for the railroad?
Brown: No. Only my dad worked for the railroad. I don't know what my
grandmother's husband did. No one ever told me what he did. But
let me go back to the cellar. The cellar under the house was
where we stored the canned fruit because it was cool down there.
What I did not know for a long time is that Texas was a dry state
and my grandmother and her sons were bootleggers. [laughter]
They stored the booze in the cellar. That's where they stored
much of the booze.
Morris: Did they make it or were they just the distributors?
Brown: They were distributors and she made some of it. She made what she
called "chalk". That was some alcoholic beverage derived from
fruits .
But my grandmother was also in what you would call the night
club business but we called the honky-tonk business. She and her
sons had a joint around the corner from the house where they sold
food and drinks and had bands come in, all those kinds of things,
long before we came along. About the time we came along, the town
was beginning to deteriorate and everybody was beginning to move
out. So her sons moved out and that closed the place of business
and left her without any basis of income except what they sent her
and whatever she got from Social Security. But she had some check
that came in every month, small as it was.
When the kids were old enough, they would acquire some kind
of jobs. They would acquire jobs, sometimes, in the white
restaurants downtown or, for example, I shined shoes and mowed
lawns and harvested crops. All the kids participated, but you
kept your own money.
Morris: Did you?
Brown: You did not have to give any of your money as part of the family
operation. You could if you chose to, but you were required to
spend your money for necessities of life. If you knew you needed
shoes, and you had earned money, you couldn't wait for a
distribution to come from the grandmother from other sources or
from an uncle who might buy you shoes. If you were in the money,
you were expected to buy the shoes. That's how I happened to end
up buying my own bicycles. Every bicycle I have bought. As a
matter of fact, all of the frivolous toys, so to speak, that were
not considered necessities of life, you literally had to acquire
on your own because we were unusually poor. We were really poor.
I do not know, but I suspect that the quality of our health
is in direct relationship to the diet that we had and the foods
that we consumed. We ate red meat maybe once a week. We ate
mostly chicken and fish. Chickens we raised and killed and the
fish my grandmother caught. That was the extent of the meat.
Otherwise it was always vegetables. To this day, that has
probably been the thing that reflects itself more in our physical
makeup .
Morris: That is now considered the proper diet.
Brown: Correct. For us it was a staple. It was the way we lived. We
ate lots of rice. We ate lots of beans. We made our own bread.
We made whole cakes. As I said, we ate chicken. When we had
meat, we ate chicken once a week and fish maybe twice a week based
upon what she caught. They were always freshwater fish. That was
it. I didn't know what a steak was.
Morris: Even in Texas, a big steak state.
Brown: No. Not that part of the country. There were no cows in my part
of the country for steak purposes. It was rare to have milk,
frankly. Milk and orange juice, that was just unheard of to have
that kind of stuff. Those were all luxuries. Those were the
kinds of things you had to buy in stores mainly. We did not have
milk cows. We had cousins who lived further out in the country
who had cows. When they would milk their cows, we could pick up
fresh milk from them. That fresh milk may not have lasted but one
or two days based upon the fact that you couldn't keep it. The
milk that we had to drink and that we used for cereal--and we
always ate corn flakes--was Carnation canned milk which we would
take and dilute with water in order to make it appropriate for
use, because it was just too thick.
But we always had dessert. I can remember so clearly that
one thing she did was bake. She would bake sweet potato pies and
she would make lemon pies and she would make bread puddings and
she would make banana pudding and cobblers—berry cobblers in
season, peach cobblers in season, and pear cobblers. We had a
pear tree so she would make pear cobblers in season. It would be
Morris ;
Brown:
very rare to ever have an apple cobbler because you had to buy the
apples. Nobody raised apples.
But I now reflect on how people eat and notice that that is
the way I ate most of my life; all through seventeen years I never
developed a taste for steaks. As a result of that, to this day I
can eat a steak, but it isn't something that I crave. Some people
say, "I've just got to have a steak."
Hamburgers, however, were the order of the day.
you could get a hamburger, you had it made.
That was a special treat.
Any time
That was a special treat. The way you got addicted to or
acquainted with hamburgers was when either you or some of your
friends went to work as fry cooks or dishwashers in these little
roadhouses and these little places of that nature. They were
usually hamburger joints. So invariably a hamburger and milkshake
became a staple. That was considered what you ate if you went
out. You wanted a hamburger. Now 1 hate hamburgers. But that
was what you would eat if you went out. You'd want the perfect
hamburger. You'd want to toast the bun and do all that kind of
stuff.
But those were the early years in Mineola. Part of my
grandmother's instructions were: you have to do your chores, you
have to do all your work before you can play, you must be home at
night, you literally must be home at night, you had to always be
clean. You had to always clean your clothes, you had to wash your
clothes. One of the daughters had the responsibility for washing;
one had the responsibility for ironing. It was always a
participatory process. You absolutely had to always be clean. No
matter what you did, you had to put on clean clothes. You had to
always have on good clean clothes to go to church on Sunday. You
had to go to Sunday school.
School Days; Looking After Folk
Morris: What church?
Brown: C.M.E. Colored Methodist Episcopal. They now call it Christian
Methodist Episcopal, but it was the C.M.E. Church. You walked
everywhere too. I didn't realize that that was part of your
health. In this day and age, that's now part of your health
activities. But you walked everywhere. You walked to work, you
walked home, you walked to school, you walked to church. Whether
it was raining or not, you walked. Whether it was cold or not,
whether there was snow on the ground. There was no such thing--.
Morris: Did it snow in Mineola?
Brown: Absolutely. It snowed. You walked. I couldn't understand why
people objected to busing when I got to California in 1954. Of
course, by 1956, 1958, busing had become a big issue. For a while
I couldn't understand: What's objectionable about riding on a
school bus? I always wanted to ride on a school bus. The kids
who lived way out in the country got the chance to come in by the
school bus into the rural school.
Morris: And drive past you and you had to hike.
Brown: That's right. They would come in by school bus. We were envious
of folk who were on school buses. We thought that was just the
best thing that could ever happen to you, where you could get a
ride to school. A matter of fact, we used to go to the highway--
because both schools were on the other side of town—and time it
when the bus was coming by. We would work out a deal with the bus
driver, and he would pick us up when he brought the other kids in.
Morris: That's a real irony, because busing was the way country kids got
to school for two generations.
Brown: Listen. If you remember all of those great posters in the
Saturday Evening Post, it was always a kid running down and the
dog following the kid and the kid with his lunch pail down the
little country lane. Those [Norman] Rockwell pictures all with a
big yellow school bus and a cheerful fellow driving the bus. So I
had an image of a school bus that was very positive until I got to
California. Now it has become absolutely unacceptable to ever
ride a school bus.
Well, we didn't ride school buses. We walked to school. As
I reflect upon it, we lived furthest away than any other family.
We lived at the end of the town. There was nothing beyond us
except the trash dump and the railroad tracks. You go out our
house, through our back yard, and it was a railroad track. That
was the boundary for the little town of Mineola. Nobody lived on
the other side behind the railroad tracks. The woods were behind
the railroad tracks and then down here was the garbage dump.
Nobody lived beyond the garbage dump.
So we lived on the last street. Baker Street was the very
last street before the railroad track. That means that we lived
furthest away, which means we started earliest for purposes of
Morris;
Brown:
walking to school. Invariably as you walked to school you would
pick people up, and by the time you got to school, there would be
a crowd of people walking about the same time. So it was always
great sport. Going home, it was the same way. You would start
out walking with a whole group of kids, and kids would drop off
based on where they lived. We would obviously be the very last
people home from school. There were never any fights in the
morning going to school. The fights always occurred in the
afternoon after school. There were always fights.
Really?
Oh, yes. Kids always would fight. They would play, throw mud on
each other, rocks on each other, got the clothes dirty, and you
got a whipping when you got home. You had to go to school and
keep your clothes clean while you were in school. There was a
requirement .
N e ighb o rhood Social Contract; Segregation
Morris: All the kids in town had the same rules?
Brown: All of them. A few came from families where they didn't have as
strict rules as our family. But most families had essentially the
same rules.
There was no such thing as homeless people. The system we
now have is a little crazy. Everybody had some place to live.
People would take in cousins. People took in almost strangers.
Nobody was permitted to be a bum. A bum was a hobo who went from
place to place by train. He would hook a ride on the train and
roam around. But there was no such thing as people being
homeless. There was no such thing as kids being without some
parental guidance. There were no outlaw kids. There were no kids
living in the streets in that little town. And there was a system
of everyone participating in raising the kids. Everybody knew
what the rules were for everybody. They would say, "I'm going to
tell your mama."
You couldn't curse. "It's time for you to go home. Your
mama says you're supposed to be home by five o'clock, boy." You
had to leave. Or if you engaged in some improper activity, you
got whipped by whomever the adult was, wherever you were. Then
your parents were told, or your guardian, whomever was in charge
of you, was told that you did something wrong and you got whipped
a second time. There was no problem. Kids concealed improper
10
conduct. You actually learned that to break a window or do any
damage to anybody's property was really forbidden, I mean
absolutely forbidden. Stealing was almost a capital offense.
Morris: Really?
Brown: Oh, yes. The rules were very, very clear. The only thing that
people didn't look down their nose at was drinking. Kids were not
supposed to drink but it was okay for adults to drink, so you saw
a lot of folks drunk. Every Saturday night, people got drunk
partying and all that kind of stuff, but they all showed up for
church Sunday morning. No matter who they were. Adults and
children. Everybody went to church. Everybody had to dress and
go to church.
Morris: Bad headache or not.
Brown: That's right. Everybody went to church and what have you.
Stealing was totally unacceptable. Any other antisocial contact
was unacceptable, except fights between people. People did have
physical fights to settle disputes.
Morris: Was this white kids and black kids having fights?
Brown: No. This was black kids only. I lived in a community--. Mineola
was totally and completely segregated. All the black people lived
on one side of town and the white people lived on the other side
of town. There was no mixing at all. Black people had to buy
everything that they consumed and got from white people. But
blacks had no stores. The only businesses blacks had were that
they cut people's hair and did beauty work on people's hair. They
ran little joints like the night club-cafe and honky-tonks such as
my relatives had.
Morris: What about a doctor or lawyer?
Brown: No such thing. You had to go to white folks for all those things
which meant that you got almost no medical care and you got almost
no dental care. Dental care was not accessible. If you had a
tooth problem, you put a string around it and tied it to the door
and pulled it out, or you treated it with home remedies. I don't
remember the name of the medical book but there used to be a
standard medical book out of which all kinds of suggestions were
made. For example, you wore a bag of camphophenique around your
neck all winter and that was supposed to keep you from catching
cold. If you caught a cold, you took castor oil to clear it up.
For almost everything else you take black draw, I think they
called it. But you had all kinds of remedies of that nature.
11
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
My grandmother- -now I know what her medical problem was --had
a very, very bad heart and she had high blood pressure. She would
have spells regularly where she couldn't breathe and where she
would be under siege. We had to care for her. We all knew how to
care for her when she would get that way. But I can remember over
a ten- or fifteen-year period her being that way, although she
lived to be about eighty-five.
That's amazing.
But she clearly had a very bad heart. She would lie down for
hours as a result of those attacks. But she never let any of that
stop her. She never had a doctor ever in the whole time that I
lived with her until 1951, when I left. Then my brother lived
with her until 1957 and she died.
Was there somebody in the neighborhood who was especially good at
coming up with suggestions when somebody got sick?
No. It was pretty much Grandmother who had the theory on how you
treat people who are sick. I don't remember getting advice from
anybody else. I remember her giving a lot of medical advice to
neighbors. I just can't think of the name of the medical book
that she had that she always looked at. I never asked my mother
about my grandmother's schooling, but it was clear that she knew
how to read and write and count. She read a lot. She read the
Bible, she read books, she read everything.
Had she been born and raised in Texas?
Yes. She had been born and raised in Texas,
of a slave and had lived there all her life.
She was the daughter
Morris: In Mineola?
Brown: In Mineola.
Morris: Somebody said that she was also of the opinion that her
grandchildren should get out of Mineola. She wanted you to go on
to better things. Is that true?
Brown: She required of us, as I said earlier, to obey all those rules but
on reflection I see that in the process we developed the survival
skills that would take us to wherever we needed to go and where
she thought we should go. She had the vision that we all ought to
go to college, that we all had to go to college. She did not want
us going to college anywhere near Mineola. Although she was
unable to afford to send us any place except that. Only my
brother, the two of us, went further away than the Mineola area.
12
All of my sisters went to college in a place entirely Texas, Texas
College, which is twenty-five miles away. It was the college of
the church that we were a part of.
But everybody had to go to college. Everybody absolutely
had to go to college and that was my grandmother's goal. My
grandmother's goal was to get you out of Mineola and to get you
into college. I never had this conversation either, but the way
in which she treated us led me to understand that this is what she
expected.
Morris: Did you see your mother and uncles often?
Brown: All her children went away as they grew up, but they always came
back once a year at least. My mother came back a lot more often
than that because my mother's children were there. My mother was
just up in Dallas. They didn't have a high school; they didn't
have a twelfth grade in Mineola. You go only through the tenth
grade in Mineola. My grandmother sent my mother to another little
town where they did have an eleventh and twelfth grade and my
mother lived with a family there who had a daughter about the same
age. So she graduated from high school in that little town.
The woman who befriended her and the family who took her in,
that woman, her girlfriend, now lives in Los Angeles. Whenever
she comes out here to visit, Miss Gertride comes up here or my
mother goes by there to visit. These two old ladies are in their
eighties now and they were girlfriends who graduated from high
school together. That's kind of an interesting story.
Morris: That's nice to have that kind of a friendship.
Brown: Yes.
Mother's Treats
Morris: Did your mother have any ideas of her own that she added to your
upbringing?
Brown: Not until my grandmother died. When my grandmother died, then my
mother became in charge. But my mother literally echoed whatever
my grandmother said. She always wanted us to follow the rules
that my grandmother laid down. We were never permitted to say as
some kids would do--. Most of the kids in the community, by the
13
way, were raised by grandmothers because their mothers had to go
to work someplace. So most were raised by grandmothers. Many of
them would be able to argue with their grandmothers and say they
were going to tell their mother. We could never say we were going
to tell our mother because our mother was on our grandmother's
side in any argument, period. That was just the way it was. My
mother was like another one of my grandmother's grandchildren when
it came to events of that nature.
So we never had a higher authority to whom we could appeal.
If there was something that we wanted to do, like when I wanted to
move to Dallas--. My grandmother let one of my sisters move to
Dallas to get a job and live with my mother.
Morris: After high school?
Brown: Yes. Near the end of high school. She actually ended up
graduating from high school in Dallas. She was the only one. All
the rest of us graduated from high school in Mineola. She is the
second daughter. My mother allowed her to move up and live with
her.
My mother moved to Dallas and she lived up over the garage.
In those days in Texas, when you worked in somebody's house as
their maid or their cook, you lived in service. Living in service
was to live in a small, what we would now call, mother-in-law's
unit above the garage. The garages were detached and it was a
nice place. It was usually like a studio that people could live
in. My mother lived in that facility for many, many years.
Morris: It also meant she was on call seven days a week.
Brown: Oh, yes. She was like part of the family. She totally ran the
house. It was always a great treat for us when we knew she was
coming because she would always bring extra food. She would bring
the kind of food that we didn't ever get. But she could bring it
from her white people's house. She had a relationship where they
taught her to drive an automobile and she got a license. She
needed to drive their kids around and she could use their car to
come home. So she was very much a part of the family. Eventually
they gave her a car. They gave her the old car when they bought a
new car.
My mother lived there for a long time, saved her money and
with their support, eventually rented her own place to live over
in the black part of town. Otherwise, she lived in the white part
of town. There was a whole group of black maids who lived in the
white part of town. They were the only black people living in the
white neighborhoods and they were all maids. They all knew each
14
other; they all talked to each other. It was a social set among
all the black maids living in service. Every time one of them
would quit or move some other place, the group would find somebody
else for the white people who didn't have somebody to replace
them.
We would occasionally be allowed to go visit my mother.
There was never any room to stay overnight or anything but we
would go up to visit our mother. It was always pleasant to see
these big expansive yards.
Morris: Some Dallas neighborhoods are very fancy.
Brown: Oh, yes. Highland Park was where my mother worked and lived. It
was quite an experience to do that. But my mother would always
come for every graduation, every serious school exercise--if you
did plays or presentations or anything of that nature, she was
always there. She was always there on every holiday. Easter
Sunday, she got those days off. So she would come on Easter
Sundays or she would come on our birthdays. She would always
bring gifts with her, so we remember her more as a person who
always had a treat for us. She would always slip us fifty cents
or something that we were forbidden to tell our grandmother about
although I'm sure our grandmother knew that she was doing that.
But it was always a great secret that you wouldn't tell, an extra
quarter or whatever it was. Each of us had an allowance.
Morris: Did that come from Mom?
Brown: No, Grandmother. She ran everything. You had an allowance.
Everybody had an allowance. It could get to as much as twenty-
five cents a week. It could get to be that much. But only if you
got good grades, did your homework. And you had to attend every
class, by the way. You could not be absent from school. You
didn't need a truant officer in that town. You could not be
absent from school. You couldn't play hookey; you couldn't be
late to class. Any of those things, it was on your report card.
That was part of the discipline. You had deportment, and
attendance was listed right on the report card. That was all part
of the process all the way through the twelfth grade, not just the
low grades. This was all the way through the twelfth grade.
Morris: We need a few grandmothers like that around in the schools
nowadays.
Brown: Yes. So the schools had a whole different attitude and a whole
different view about things. My mother would always come back and
the community would always show up if there was a play.
Everybody's family showed up for the play in the school
15
auditorium. If there was a graduation exercise, everybody went to
the graduation, whether you had a kid graduating or not. It would
be unusual for the whole town, all the black community, not to
show up. There were only 254 kids in twelve grades.
Morris: In the whole school.
Brown: In the whole school. By the time I consciously remember school,
there were twelve grades. I think my sister just ahead of me was
the first to graduate from twelve grades in that town. Before
that, as I said, my mother only went to the tenth grade and they
had no other arrangement. By the time my older sister came along,
you could go to the county seat and they had a bus in between
Mineola and Whitman and it was ten miles away. So every day, my
older sister, for the eleventh and twelfth grade, had to get on
the bus and go up to Whitman, which was the county seat for Wood
County, in order to be able to graduate from high school. So she
graduated from Whitman High.
My second sister ended up going to Dallas and living with my
mother to graduate from high school. My third sister, Gwen, by
the time she was ready to graduate, we had gotten the eleventh and
twelfth grade in Mineola. So she was in the first class to
graduate from the eleventh and twelfth grade. Then I came along,
of course, two or three years later and graduated from eleventh
and twelfth grade. But there were only 254 kids and that was as
big as school ever got. By the time I graduated, it started going
down in size in terms of total student body.
High School; Civic Activities
Morris: Was this high school run by the county or was this a local tax-
supported school?
Brown: It was the Mineola School District.
Morris: Mineola.
Brown: Yes.
Morris: Did they have black history?
Brown: Negro history. We didn't have black history. You had Negro
history before you had world history. You had four histories.
You had four histories: you had Negro history, Texas history, U.S.
16
history, and then world history. So in your high schools, in one
of those years, you would have a separate kind of history.
Morris: How about politics? There has been a lot of discussion lately
about Texas politics in the Lyndon Johnson era.
Brown: We knew nothing about it. As kids in school and as black folk,
there was never any discussion about politics. I had no clue
about what politics really were until I got to California. I did
not know of any politicians. I didn't know that the sheriff had
to run for office. I didn't know what that was. Nobody voted in
Mineola. My grandmother never voted in her life; not in her life
did she ever cast a vote. There were no such thing as voting or
registering to vote in that little town. There was a mayor but we
had no clue as to how he got elected. He was not relevant at all.
There was a police chief; we had no clue how he or she got
appointed. He was the only policeman in the town. Then there was
a sheriff for the county and we had no idea how that went about.
I don't think there was anything like a city council but
there must have been something of a town-elder group. But I have
no independent recollection of anything of that nature. There was
one little newspaper. Two as a matter of fact. There was a Wood
County Record, which was the county's main newspaper. And the
Mineola Monitor. The Mineola Monitor was just a local weekly
paper. Then, of course, we got the papers once a week. We got
the Houston Informer or the Kansas City Call or the Pittsburgh
Courier . Those were the black newspapers. Those were the Negro
newspapers. There was a blind man named B.C.--I don't remember
B.C.'s last name—but B.C. had the newspaper concession. I didn't
know until many years later that B.C. was not born blind. B.C.
was blind because one of my uncles took a shotgun and blew his
eyes out.
Morris: Oh, dear.
Brown: In a dispute. B.C. had been the meanest person in the community,
dangerously mean. He apparently messed around with my uncle or
something, my uncle took a shotgun and blew his eyes out. Nothing
ever happened to my uncle as a result, but B.C. was blind for the
rest of his life. B.C. got, I guess you would now call it, the
newspaper franchise. One of us, for a fee, would walk B.C. around
the entire area of the black community of Mineola to sell the
newspapers .
He would have the sack on his back with the various
newspapers. He actually could get around by himself. He learned
the streets; they had not that many streets. So he learned the
streets; he knew how to stay on the gutter side of the street or
17
just off the streets. He would hear the cars, and he could get
around pretty much on his own. But he would always give us a
nickel or so to go with him, so we would race to see who would
accompany B.C. on his paper route.
Morris: He didn't have any hard feelings for the loss of his eyesight?
Brown: No. I think he was probably wrong. I think he was maybe in the
process of killing somebody, or about to kill somebody. He used
to be very good with a knife. I think my uncle did the community
a favor. My family, on reflection, turned out to be kind of--. I
don't want to say the rulers, but kind of the judge and the jury
of what went on.
Morris: Conscience of the town?
Brown: Not so much conscience, but I don't know if they had a conscience
either [chuckles]. But they certainly refereed and settled more
disputes and were known for their fairness, apparently, in dealing
with people.
Morris: More so than the minister?
Brown: Oh, the ministers were not relevant at all.
Morris: Really?
Brown: As a matter of fact, the one minister was also a school teacher.
I. W. Whitmore was the principal of school. He was also the
pastor of the local church. His authority and respect came from
being principal. But they didn't have a lot going for them. The
people in the streets had more going for them in terms of
relationships than the teachers and the preachers. It was not a
community that was preacher-dominated.
18
II COMING TO SAN FRANCISCO, 1951
Uncle Itsy Collins; Family Card Games
Morris: Interesting. Now is it time to tell me about your uncle, Itsy
[Rembert] Collins?
Brown: Well, there were three sons. Four actually- -one I never knew
because he had died early on. The three that I did know were
Richard, Son, and Itsy. Richard got drafted, or volunteered, for
the military. Son and Itsy moved to California at the start of
the war [World War II] for the purpose of working in the defense
industry.
Morris: That is "Sun" as in the sun shines?
Brown: S-O-N.
Morris: Yes. Okay.
Brown: That was his only name. His name was Son Collins. Itsy Collins.
Richard was called Baby Collins. Then the other son whom I did
not know was Q Trickt?). Richard, or Baby, Collins, who moved to
Dallas and married a school teacher, either volunteered or got
drafted for the military service. My grandmother used to tell the
tale that they were trying to find my Uncle Itsy to draft him.
But they found her baby son Baby instead, thought he was Itsy and
drafted him.
Itsy and Son came to San Francisco to go to work in the
shipyard. Son actually took a job in the shipyard. When he died,
he was still an employee in the shipyard. He died of old age but
he died as an employee of the federal government working in the
shipyard.
Morris: Down at Hunter's Point.
19
Brown: Hunter's Point, yes. Itsy came, as I said, with Son. They came
out here together. Itsy took one look at the people working in
the shipyard and decided it made no sense for him to work. He
would be better off if he set a game of chance for them to enjoy
themselves in. He did just that. He never had a job in his life.
He is eighty-seven now, I guess, and he has never worked a day in
his life. He has been a gambler, and a great gambler. He was
very wealthy at one time. He owned lots of real estate here in
San Francisco and had a good wife who managed his money well.
He was the star of the family, so to speak. He was the most
handsome of Mo 'dear's boys and clearly the most fun-loving and the
most risk-taking and the most socially acceptable, kind of a
lady's man. He always had very fancy cars, very fancy clothing,
he was always physically in better shape than any of the other
boys. He was always more generous to people generally and
particularly to the family than any of the other boys. So he
turned out to be everybody's favorite uncle and, I think, my
mother's favorite brother.
Morris: Sounds as if he is a very colorful fellow.
Brown: Oh, yes. He is still as crazy as all hell.
Morris: Had he been a card player in Mineola?
Brown: All his life.
Morris: Was that part of the family income?
Brown: Everybody in the family had to know how to play cards. The
recreation of the family was playing cards. My grandmother played
cards full-time. She is the one who taught everybody how to play
cards .
Morris: Aha! What were the favorites games?
Brown: Bid whist is what we played more than anything else. Bid whist is
a form of gin rummy. I think white people call it gin rummy more
than-- .
Morris: I thought whist was sort of an ancestor of contract bridge.
Brown: It is, same as contract bridge. Or gin rummy, because of the
making of the books. Then whist is probably closer to bridge,
except you don't have a dummy in whist. Everybody is a
participant in whist. Bid whist is similar to bridge in that
regard. But everybody had to play whist. There were whist
tournaments in that town. You played whist almost every day. You
20
would play cards almost every day. You would play hearts, you
would play coon cane[?], you played poker, you played whatever had
to be played. And my grandmother played with you. She taught you
how to do it and constantly, always, was looking for somebody to
play cards with. And she could order you to do it, so you usually
had no choice.
Morris: At what age did you start learning these games?
Brown: Oh, I bet I was playing whist at seven or eight years of age.
Morris: That's wonderful.
Brown: Absolutely. I was into card playing. And so were most of the
other kids in the town. You played cards. You played cards and
dominoes. My grandmother played dominoes as well. She would tell
you that you were learning to count playing dominoes. That was
how you learned to count because you had to build the numbers. So
those were the games of chance.
And it didn't take any wealth to be able to play those two
things. I'm sorry she didn't understand Scrabble and all that
kind of stuff, because just think of the kind of vocabulary kids
could have really developed if they had been so exposed. But you
knew how to count. You learned how to count in both of those
games. And you learned strategy because you had to remember what
cards had gone and try to remember how many trumps had already
been played and you had to try to figure out how to set up a
situation where you controlled the game by the resources in your
hands. It was all those kinds of things.
Yes, you were definitely a big-time card player with my
grandmother.
Morris: That's wonderful.
Brown: Itsy played a card for a living, and believe it or not, still
does.
Morris: In his eighties.
Brown: Still. Right now. I bet you this morning Itsy is in a game some
place here in the Fillmore where he lives.
Morris: Really? Are there card rooms over here?
Brown: He ran illegal card rooms. There are no legal card rooms. They
are all illegal card rooms over here in San Francisco. Like in
21
Emeryville, there are legal card rooms. I don't think he has ever
played in Reno or Vegas or any other place where it was legal.
Morris: That is no fun? Or how does it work?
Brown: I think he likes to be the house man. He likes to run the game
because his theory always is, because the house gets a cut of
every pot, there is no way you can ultimately not make some money
gambling. Because it is not a gamble for you, it is a gamble for
everybody else. And if you play long enough, the house will get
all the money. If you keep cutting the pot one percent on each
hand, or you cut the pot a set fee, only fifty cents on each hand,
you just drop it in to manage the house.
Morris: You had to really keep an eye on what's going on to make sure you
get your fifty cents.
Brown: No, you just take it out.
Morris: Really.
Brown: You just take it out. He plays in the game. He is part of the
game because it is his house. He is running the game. As he runs
the game, when everybody antes up, he then takes fifty and drops
it in the pot. His problem is sometimes he starts drinking too
much Rimini and starts playing out of the cup.
Summer Jobs: Thoughts of Stanford
Morris: So did you plan on coming to San Francisco with him for a long
time?
Brown: No. I graduated from high school in May of 1951. I graduated
second in the class. Frank Crawford was first in the class. I
got a scholarship to Prairie View A&M College. That's a little
college in Hempstead, Texas, just outside of Houston. I went down
to Prairie View for a summer program of some sort. I don't even
remember the details of the summer program. I was down there for
a brief period of time and I clearly did not like Prairie View.
They had a deal where you participated in raising some of the food
that the students consumed. They had a deal where you ate family
style, you and seven other people around the same table, and that
was your table for the whole year. Those were your dining
companions for the whole year. They served the food family style
by putting it in big bowls and putting on the table and you passed
it around.
22
Morris :
Brown:
I had the misfortune, if it was eight people, I had seven
football players, if it was six people, five football players, and
me. I think it was seven, as I remember. Eight people per table.
Whenever it got to me, there was almost nothing left.
Morris: And you are not going to argue with a football player.
Brown: No. There was almost nothing left. I, of course, always had a
mouth. I was always told to speak up. My grandmother always
said, "You speak up. You speak up. Don't let anybody tell you.
If you've got something to say, you say it." You couldn't mumble
and get mad under your breath with my grandmother. You had to
tell her exactly what you thought. Before she beat you to death.
Did she really punish you frequently, fiercely?
No. She punished fiercely as often as you needed it. But I don't
remember any real monthly pattern or daily pattern. One of my
sisters she never even touched, as a matter of fact. I got more
whippings than anybody else. I got more whippings than everybody
else, I bet you, combined. Because I was always protesting. I
was always protesting for some reason.
Morris: Protesting?
Brown: Protesting. She would say I was always defying her orders. I
remember one time I had dropped her off at fishing. She had told
us not to play the piano. Well, I not only was playing the piano,
I had taken the bottom of the piano off. I was down there
stroking the strings as if it were a harp. I mean it was loud!
My grandmother apparently decided to cut her fishing trip short
and walk back home. Apparently, one or two of the kids who were
out there having fun saw her and turned and split, and I'm still
there stroking things. She took her fishing cane--. It felt as
if she were a block away. She rapped me, really rapped me.
But no, I didn't plan on coming to California. I went home
after about two weeks, after this summer program, and told my
mother I didn't like that. I wasn't going to go to school yet; I
was going to go to work. My mother, through her white people's
contacts, got me a job at Founder's Library at SMU [Southern
Methodist University] . I worked at the library for a couple of
weeks and then I got a better job as a janitor over at the
football player's dormitory, where they had Doke[?] Walker and Cal
Rote[?] and Fred Bennett, all those people, Gilbert Johnson. That
was when SMU was number one in the nation in football.
And football was the biggest thing going in Texas. The
rules didn't require you to be able to read or write after four
23
years in school. So they were paying them under the table and all
that business and so forth. I got a job in Founder's Library and
a room over at the dormitory at SMU. I did not have any
discussion with my mother or my grandmother, but I know now that
my grandmother went nuts when she heard that my mother had even
considered not following through with putting me in college. My
mother began to talk to me about it and told me to save my money
up and she would let me do what I wanted to do, which was to go to
this school called Stanford because I wanted to major in math.
Morris: Where did you hear about Stanford?
Brown: I read about Stanford as being a math facility and a math school.
I think one of my teachers told me something about it. I became
fascinated for a long time with going to Stanford. Some of the
kids were wanting to go to LACC [Los Angeles City College] . Some
of the kids wanted to go to CCNY [City College of New York] . We
all had big dreams. None of us knew anything about Harvard and
Yale, Princeton and Georgetown. We heard about these schools.
Morris: Because somebody else from Mineola had gone?
Brown: Not somebody from Mineola but folk who had left Mineola knew
people who had gone to those schools because, you see, if you went
to LACC that was considered a real glamorous thing for blacks to
do. Blacks were not going to UCLA [University of California, Los
Angeles] in numbers then; they were going to the city college.
But we didn't know that. We just heard LACC, and that was just
something glamorous. Or NYCC, and that was something glamorous to
do. Well, I had no hope of ever getting to New York. I didn't
know anyone who had ever been to New York. So New York wasn't on
my list at all. I had read what Langston Hughes had said about
New York and all that business in all those black textbooks that I
read, but none of my teachers had ever been to New York. I had
one teacher who was from Illinois and had talked about going to
the University of Illinois, but no one else had said anything
about any great schools. So I was pretty much set on not going to
LACC or NYCC. CCNY it was called. I was set on going to this
place called Stanford.
II
Morris: Why were you set on not going to CCNY?
Brown: I really wanted to be better than everybody else. I really had a
need, for my ego more than anything else I guess, to be better
than everybody else. When people were talking about going to
these other schools, I wanted to go to Stanford. I had no idea
what Stanford was, but it was better than anybody else, Stanford
24
[was], because nobody else was wanting to do it. So I wanted to
go to Stanford.
Stanford was San Francisco. So I thought. And that's what
we agreed upon, so I worked that summer at SMU until my mother
made the arrangements with my uncle to let me come to San
Francisco. Then I quit my job in August, first or second of
August, and my mother put me on the train. I didn't go down to
Mineola to say goodbye to my grandmother. My mother put me on the
train and I headed for California. I headed for San Francisco and
I arrived here on August A, 1951.
25
III SAN FRANCISCO STATE COLLEGE, 1951-1955
Duncan Gillies' Encouragement
Morris: Had Itsy gone down to take a look at Stanford?
Brown: No, he didn't know any of that. Except that he may have done some
checking; but when I got here, it was clear that Stanford was not
in the cards. I don't remember how that determination was made.
They didn't take me; they told me where the school was.
Morris: "They" being Stanford?
Brown: No, my uncle and my aunt, Itsy and Ruby, told me where the school
was and I went up to the school that they told me, this college.
And it was San Francisco State College. At that time, San
Francisco State College was on 8th and Buchanan and Laguna. It
was bordered by Buchanan-Laguna and it was that little cluster of
buildings that is now the University Extension center here in San
Francisco. That was all of state college, the whole state
college, those three little buildings.
So I walked up to that school and went into where you
registered, talked with those people and they told me I had to
take an entrance exam to get in. So I could get in; it wasn't one
of these deals where you had to file months or a year in advance
as you do now. They would take anybody. So I showed up, took the
exam and didn't pass it, because it was an exam that covered
subject matters that my high school had not prepared me for: the
science portion of the examination as well as the math portion of
the examination. I was good in math but my demonstration of
goodness in math had been to commit to memory the theorems, for
example, in geometry. I never understood the process and the
reasoning because the person who taught it in my high school
didn't know it himself. He was the coach and it was just one of
the assignments he undertook since nobody else would do it. He
26
didn't know anything about geometry so all he did was to require
us to memorize, and we memorized.
But to this day, I really appreciate what Coach Gregory did
because it equipped me literally for the law. The fact that he
required us to develop memorization skills and that was
essentially what we were measured on in geometry. But when tested
in geometry, I had no clue how to do the figures and do the
computations and come up with the equations.
Morris: To get from A to B and from B to C.
Brown: I had no clue. I could memorize it all but I didn't have any
understanding of it. This person giving the exam noted my
previous performance in high school and noted my test result and
suggested that he would recommend that I be permitted to enter on
a probationary status. He said, "If you can perform college work,
and I assume you can, you will be able to stay here, but you
really got to be able to do it." His name was Duncan Gillies. I
also had a conversation with him about Stanford. He was a
psychologist who taught at Stanford as well. He was just up at
San Francisco State, I suppose, on a short professorship
relationship where he didn't have full-time faculty status at
Stanford.
But he recommended that 1 accept the offer and he said, "I
really think you can do the work and I will assume the
responsibility to be your counselor."
Morris: That was decent.
Brown: Yes. That's exactly where I got the shot. He did that. Then I
got what they called in those days cinch notices. After the first
six weeks, there were examinations six weeks from the time you
entered. Well, all this language was foreign to me. All these
words were foreign to me. I was literally having to take the
dictionary in order to do my homework, in order to read and
understand what I was doing. I had to take the dictionary and
look up almost every word because many of those words I had no
familiarity with.
That too caused a level of training skills to be acquired.
Morris: But you had been reading Langston Hughes and other notable
authors .
Brown: I had a literature instructor who I thought was the finest person
in the world because she used to let me get up and recite The
Merchant of Venice and Chaucer's stuff. I mean, she was a
27
fabulous woman. But she never took us through- -we did all the
Shakespeare but she never took us through the reasoning and what
was happening and what have you. It was just another one of those
things where it was almost entertainment rather than
understanding. The only thing I could do was sentence structure.
She understood how to do subject--.
Morris: Parse the sentence.
Brown: Absolutely. She would break it down and you had to do it on stick
figures and all that business. So I was very good at that, but
the rest of it I was in trouble with. No science. As a result of
that, I was not competitive as a college-prepared freshman. In
the first six weeks, I think I got cinch notices in half of my
classes, if not more.
Morris: That is a kind of a warning?
Brown: Yes. But by the end of the term, as a matter of fact, by the
second time — every six weeks you had examinations—by the second
six weeks, I was performing at an acceptable level. By the end of
the semester I was already trying to figure out how to do
something other than just school. From that point on, it's just
history. I went on through with no trouble at all.
Social and Family Connections
Brown: But that is what gave me my shot. I came to enjoy San Francisco
State. It had so few black students in attendance that we
immediately all met each other and developed a kinship and a
social relationship. So within sixty days from my arrival here in
San Francisco, I was already somewhat connected socially by virtue
of my college program. I joined a fraternity in college and all
that business, a black fraternity. So I immediately gloramed on,
so to speak, to a network of people that eliminated the loneliness
and isolation that would have visited itself, particularly in view
of the fact that this was a streetcar college, not a resident
college. In a resident college, you can probably develop those
relationships quickly because you are locked in twenty-four hours
a day, seven days a week, you eat at the same place and what have
you. While in a streetcar college, you come to class and leave.
I walked every day to school.
But because there were so few blacks, we would actually sit
at the same table in the cafeteria. We would hang out at the same
table in the lounge. We played the same games: we played whist
28
Morris :
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris;
Brown:
and we played that kind of stuff among us. We didn't play chess
because we played checkers and dominoes. We didn't know about
chess, and we didn't know about those things yet because you were
still basically from a black world.
We all had something in common. We were either just one
generation removed from the South, or we had just come up from the
South maybe a year or two years before. Most had not graduated
from California high schools.
Really?
Area?
They weren't part of the old black community in the Bay
No, no. The old black community in the Bay Area went to Cal.
There weren't very many of them either.
No, almost none. But they would send their kids to Cal. They
wouldn't send them to a teacher's college. It was San Francisco
Normal before it changed its name to San Francisco State.
Well, it was just beginning to move.
Just going through the transition. As a matter of fact, I was
there for the movement out to the new campus. I was in the first
class to graduate from the new campus. The class of 1955 was the
first class to graduate from the new campus.
Did students help with the move? At Berkeley there are tales
about moving the books into the library back in the twenties.
I didn't participate in any of that and I don't know of any
students who did. But yes, I entered San Francisco State College
with the assistance of Dr. Duncan C. Gillies.
Did you stay in touch with him?
All the way through my career. He ended up being a full professor
on the faculty at Sonoma State many years later. I have gone back
to make speeches and do lectures for his classes over the years.
Was that affirmative action for its time or was it more just that
he was a good counselor?
No. I've got to assume that I was not the first person to whom he
had extended a helping hand. I don't think his extending an open
hand at that moment was based on race; I think it was strictly
29
based on the desire to give students a shot. At one time in this
state, we must have had that kind of activity for all students.
Morris: Well, it's a good teacher's instinct.
Brown: That's exactly right. It had nothing to do with race. At that
moment, it had nothing to do with race. But now we have an
organized program for the purpose. It clearly was not an
organized program then.
San Francisco State had very few teenaged students. San
Francisco State was an adult student campus. You had lots of
veterans who were returnees. Most of the people who attended
school there, I'll bet you 80, no, maybe 70 percent of the
students who attended school there worked somewhere. They had
jobs: post office, stores, police department, sheriff's
department, Muni [San Francisco Municipal Railway] drivers.
Everybody there. It was like they went to school part-time. It
was as if they would go to school for three hours in the morning
and then you wouldn't see them in the afternoon because they were
not on campus .
I was one of the few people who stayed on campus all day. I
didn't have anything else to do. The first semester actually, not
the first year. My Uncle Itsy and his wife Ruby allowed me to
live at their place until I could get my feet wet and until I
could get a job. They offered that assistance. I started working
a little bit right away. I started working as a shoe-shine boy on
Fillmore Street to make my money, spending money. My uncle bought
me a suit. He bought me a suit of clothes which I did not have;
he bought me a shirt and a tie. I remember a double-breasted blue
suit from Howard's and a light blue shirt and a yellow tie and
some black shoes. I thought I was the hottest thing. I wore that
every Sunday. Every Sunday of my life.
My grandmother had said, "You must belong to a church." So
the first week here, I joined a church. I joined Jones Methodist
Church over on Post Street. I found out that my uncle had not
gone to church since he had left home, nor had my aunt. They were
totally non-church people. Period. They just did not go to
church. I ended up every week going to church by myself. I went
to church every Sunday by myself. I met people connected with the
church as a result of that and developed friends. Then my mother
had some cousins who lived up the street from the church with
three daughters. I would go over to their house after church.
After I finished church on Sunday, I would go over to their house
to visit with them.
30
My second uncle who lived here, who lived in the public
housing projects, had an agreement with my mother that he would
take me for the second half of the first year. Everybody
anticipated that I would work my way out of having to live with
any relatives. I lived at his place. And as soon as I turned a
little money, I started offering to pay. Or in some cases, buying
stuff. I would buy the milk and the bread, stuff of that nature,
because I had always been taught--.
Morris: Been brought up to contribute.
Brown: Absolutely. I had always been taught that you had to pay your own
way. That was one other thing that we were told: You have to
carry your own weight. Nobody is ever going to assist you. My
guess is the family would have if I had ever demonstrated a great
need for it, but it was clear that you were not anticipating that
you would get a scholarship from the family. You had to do that
stuff on your own.
So by that time I moved in with my second uncle for the
second semester, and he really didn't have much room. I had to
sleep on the couch, which was a fold-down. He had one bedroom and
then a couch in the living room, so I would fold it down and that
was my bed. Except that he ran a gambling game on weekends. He
ran a gambling game that started Friday night and then it went to
Sunday night. So from Friday to Sunday, I didn't have a place to
sleep. So 1 would either end up sitting up watching the game or
working the game. I could work the game because I could cook food
for the people and sell it to them right there. Or I could go get
the beer or things of that nature.
So I discovered the YMCA. For a dollar a night, you could
stay at the YMCA. So I started in part staying at the Y on Turk
Street for a dollar a night when I was faced with that business.
Eventually I segued out of his house to the Y because by now 1 had
begun to work. I began to sell shoes. I began to do things of
that nature.
Student Housing; Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Leadership
Morris: Your fraternity did not have a residence?
Brown: Not at all. Everybody was either living at home with their
parents and commuting to school every day. Nobody lived on
campus. I may have been one of the first students to live on
campus. And I did. The second year, I moved to school. It
31
wasn't on campus. The school, to comply with all the rules
involving veterans, had bought a big old Victorian-type structure
at 2255 Mariposa. For thirteen dollars a month, you could live
there and share a room. I shared a room with a guy named A.B.
Butler, a veteran, a kid from Texas who had a couple hundred bucks
a month coming in from his G.I. Bill. He dressed well, had it all
going. He was my roommate. I slept on the top bunk and he slept
on the bottom. It was thirteen dollars a month for rent and a
dollar a day for food. So for forty-three dollars a month, you
had room and board. But you had to cook your own food and make
your own lunch. It was a cooperative food program, with nobody to
do the cooking. They had a central buying source, the food was
there, and they would keep it stocked. So you continued the
process that had almost begun in my home.
They had a rec room there, ping pong table and all that kind
of stuff. So the second year I lived at 2255 Mariposa and I
worked as a shoe salesman to send myself to school.
Morris: Was the Alpha Phi Alpha chapter the same one students at Berkeley
belonged to?
Brown: No, they were two different chapters. Alpha Epsilon was the one
at Cal and Delta Omicron was the one at San Francisco State.
Morris: Were there some people who are still friends there or some things
in the fraternity that were particularly helpful to you
personally?
Brown: Well, the fraternity afforded me, again, an opportunity for a
wider range of acquaintanceships and friendships and the
developing of my leadership skills. I was made national vice-
president. There were five undergraduate vice-presidents. I got
elected one of the five undergraduate vice-presidents. We always
threw social events, we had study programs, we had a lecture
series, we had our role models of Alpha brothers nationally who,
if they were in the area, would come visit. We had a graduate
chapter of Alpha brothers who would offer assistance and guidance
to the undergraduate brothers.
Morris: Here in San Francisco?
Brown: Here in San Francisco, right. I am still a member of the graduate
chapter here: Gamma Phi Lambda. That process, as I said, more
than anything else, helped me to hone my skills from a leadership
standpoint. It gave me an opportunity and gave people the
opportunity to see me in a leadership role. That's what the
fraternity did for me more than anything else.
32
Morris : Who were some of the people in the graduate chapter when you were
an undergraduate?
Brown: The grad chapter members were a guy who is now dead, a judge named
Joseph Kennedy; a judge named John Bussey was an Alpha; Granville
Jackson was an Alpha; T.W. Washington was the major real estate
mogul here in San Francisco--he was the permanent treasurer of the
Alphas; Byron Rumford, the assemblyman of Berkeley, the first
[black] assemblyman from that side of the bay; Lionel Wilson, who
was a judge, was an Alpha [later mayor of Oakland].
Morris: So the graduate chapter was throughout the area.
Brown: Yes, it was the luminaries of the Bay Area. At one time, there
was only one graduate chapter. There are now two, one in the East
Bay and one in the West Bay. But there were so few graduate
chapter members that they had one chapter and it covered both
sides of the Bay. So we had access to them and they had access to
us. They were part of what we maintain were the great network of
black community leadership.
Student Politics
Morris: Did you become interested in politics as an undergraduate?
Brown: I became a participant in politics from the first day I got there.
Virtually. Student politics.
Morris: Fall of 1951?
Brown: Absolutely. I was into student government activities literally
from day one. I was recruited, frankly. I can't remember who,
but I distinctly remember John Burton being part of the school at
that time. Charlie Warren; Bob Burton, John's brother; Burt
Phillips; Don Johnson, who is now I think superintendent of
schools over in Mar in County someplace. But student activists
were part of what San Francisco State was about. I remember going
to some of the student council meetings and listening to what was
going down. I mean to say, I can do that. I started messing
around with student government.
I was on the council for a period, helped to run campaigns
for two guys who won the presidency of the student body.
33
IV SAN FRANCISCO DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THE 1950S AND 1960S
Phil Burton Challenges the Old Order
Brown: So I got in the swim of student politics quickly. That led
directly in 1952 to participating in Democratic politics.
Morris: That fast?
Brown: That fast. I was messing around and looking at Democratic--. As
a matter of fact, it was a little more left than that. It was
really the left wing of the Democratic party that was trying to
organize on campus. I did not formally join until 1954 or 1955
but I was clearly involved in student politics as well as
organized politics.
Morris: This was an effort to organize Democrats on the student campus?
Brown: On campus. Absolutely.
Morris: For any particular candidate or just to get you out as foot
soldiers?
Brown: In 1952 I think it was [Adlai] Stevenson in 1952 and in 1956 it
was [Estes] Kefauver.
Morris: At that point there were people like Bill Malone--.
Brown: He was running the city. We didn't know anything about any of
that.
Morris: I see. This was on beyond you.
Brown: That was beyond me. Not until Phil Burton lost to the dead man in
1956 did we even begin to look at the county committee. Bill
Malone was the head of the county committee. No. I'm sorry. It
was 1954 Phil Burton lost to Cliff Berry. Then I think he won; in
1956 he beat Tommy Maloney, I think, in the district that his
brother [John] now represents. That's when I began to become
conscious of city and state politics.
Then we started running people for the county committee as
early as 1958. Then they ran me for the county committee in 1960,
and I won.
Morris: That was your first seat?
Brown: First elected office. I got elected to the county committee in
1960 and I think it took us until 1964 to throw the Malone people
out and put Jack Morrison in as county chair.
Morris: What was the problem with Bill Malone?
Brown: They were just too conservative and were holding on to everything.
They showed zero interest in the problems of old people, zero
interest in the problems of racial minorities and clearly were
indifferent to students. They were just too conservative. The
left wing of the labor movement headed by Harry Bridges and the
Hallinans were at odds with the county committee, as well, because
they were obviously socially unacceptable to the county committee.
Anyone who was considered even close to being a red would be
unacceptable.
Morris: But were there splits within the labor movement?
Brown: Absolutely. It was a very conservative labor movement. The
building trades and those people were very conservative and the
ILWU and the SEIU, the hospital workers and people like that,
mainly racial minorities, were all very liberal. They were the
followers of Phil Burton, so to speak, or the cooperative person
was Phil Burton and that's why I naturally gyrated to them.
Morris: All three of the Burton brothers were involved in politics?
Brown: Absolutely. All of the Burtons were involved. All the relatives,
all the cousins, everybody connected with the Burtons were
involved in politics in one manner or another. It was frankly
fun.
Morris: I can believe it, if there were enough of you younger fellows to
make a dent in that short of time. Was it because of the numbers
of young people in the post-war era that there were enough of you
to make change?
Brown: I think it was enough of us willing to invite the old people
living in the flop house hotels in under our umbrella, enough of
35
us to invite the black community to come under our umbrella and
enough of us to invite and understand the need to have the labor
movement, which had the only resources. Because we had no money
and we couldn't raise any money, but the labor resources had the
personnel and the machinery and the xerox machine. It wasn't even
a xerox machine; it was a mimeograph machine.
Morris: Mimeo and ditto.
Brown: Ditto.
Morris: It had that purple stuff that came off on your clothes.
Brown: That's right. Those two machines. They had those. In those days
we had to do duplistickers by hand. We typed them by hand.
Morris: For the labels.
Brown: Right. For the labels. And it was a labor-intensive operation
for politics rather than all this computer system. We put that
combination of people and resources together. It wasn't that we
were outnumbered; you could literally count us. There was the
late Frank Brand, the late Phil Burton, the late Sala Burton, Jack
and Jane Morrison, the late George Moscone, Frank Kailatha[?], Joe
Beeman, John Burton, John Dearman, Doug and Rosemary what are
there names? Bob Erickson, his late wife Betty, Susan Kennedy--.
Morris: Is she related to Joe Kennedy?
Brown: No, she was related to George Hardy, the ex-head of SEIU. Her
name was actually Susan Kennedy Kelly. Who else by name? Oh, Sue
Bierman. And some people had a little bit of money. Doris Kahn
was married to Jacob Kahn, who was a doctor. They had a few
resources. There were some people really dedicated to maintaining
the old ships and they still are connected, Karl Kortum and Jean
Kortum. They were part of our crowd. So we had an interesting
combination-- .
H
Brown: They were major players in San Francisco politics. The town was
still literally divided between Italians and Irish. It was still
owned by the Italians and the Irish and it was run that way. That
was the division. Not until [George] Christopher introduced the
36
process.1 But the town was pretty much divided. The school board
was appointed. They always had a Catholic priest on the school
board; that was one seat. Then they had a labor seat. It was
incredible. They had an Irish seat. They had an Italian seat on
the school board. There was no room for blacks, hispanics and
Asians on that school board.
Our politics led us to lobby and get that changed. Zu
[Zuretta] Goosby was the first black to serve on the school board
in this town. He got that through our leverage.
Morris: What did you do to bring that into focus?
Brown: I think we had Mayor [John] Shelley. We helped Shelley become
mayor [in November 1963] so that Burton could become a congressman
and then Burton and Brown could become members of the assembly.
George Moscone we put on the board of supervisors. Jack Morrison
we put on the board of supervisors.
Morris: Was this a master plan that you folks had sat down and worked out?
Brown: Phil Burton's master plan, not our master plan. We didn't have
anything to do with it. Phil Burton occupied the same role as my
grandmother. Phil Burton ran the whole operation. He just ran
the whole operation. He did all the thinking and didn't suffer
from the need for advice or counsel. He made the decisions and
sold them to us as the proper way in which to do it.
Morris: As kind of a chess strategy that he had in mind?
Brown: Yes. Absolutely.
Morris: And it was the school board first?
Brown: No. The school board just happened to be one of the entities that
we needed to get action on. That was only appointed, not elected,
as it is now. From our constituency standpoint, that had to be a
part of the matrix; otherwis.e, you were just being grossly
political. We didn't want to be viewed as just grossly political.
And obviously, somebody needed to be on the school board because
the school system from a student population standpoint was slowly
but surely edging over toward being dominated by racial
minorities. There was in fact some discrimination clearly, based
'George Christopher [Christopheles] began his political career with
election to the board of supervisors in 19A5 and went on to be elected
mayor in 1955. In the 1962 Republican primary he ran for lieutenant
governor, and in the 1966 primary for governor.
37
minorities. There was in fact some discrimination clearly, based
on where you went to school, tracking and all those kinds of
things, so you needed some representation on the school board.
Phil understood that and that was a good way to appeal and develop
loyalty among blacks for vote-getting purposes, while serving the
public good as well. It was an easy kind of thing to do.
Early Black Political Figures
Morris: How did you get black folks interested in politics if a lot of
them came from areas where they were not participating and not
voting?
Brown: Apparently, it must have been relatively easy, because in the late
forties or early fifties, long before I paid any attention to city
politics, a black man ran for the board of supervisors, a
preacher--a fellow named F.D. Haines. The board of supervisors
were elected city-wide at that time. The way you got on the
board, I don't think there was ever anybody directly elected to
the board in anybody's memory. You got appointed to the board and
then you would run for reelection and win.
Morris: As an incumbent.
Brown: The Downtown Association ran the campaign, and they ran a slate.
That slate would be embraced by the Chronicle and the Examiner and
the News and the Call-Bulletin. There were four newspapers at
that time in this town. It was just almost an agreement that
those would be the people who would get elected to the board.
Labor had almost no voice in determining who would get elected to
the board of supervisors. And certainly none on who would be
elected to the mayorship. That was a sweetheart arrangement that
they had.
But as early as 1948 or 19A9, they ran Dr. Frederick
Douglass Haines. Dr. Haines didn't win but he set the stage for
future candidacies. Every four to six years thereafter, there was
always somebody talked about as a possible candidate for the board
of supervisors. They also talked about running somebody for the
state assembly. They did in fact run Joe Kennedy, the name that I
spoke about earlier. They ran him for the state assembly. They
ran a guy named John Adams, another lawyer, for the state
assembly. Neither one of those guys won but they did make a
little bit of an impression. Joe Kennedy did, in the fifties, get
appointed to--.
38
Morris: Municipal court?
Brown: No. He got appointed a public defender. He was a chief trial
public defender. Cecil Poole got appointed by Pat Brown in the
forties and early fifties to the district attorney's office. So
we had a black in the D.A.'s office and we had one black in the
public defender's office. We thought we were moving.
Voting Trends and Constituencies; Regulation in the 1980s
Brown: Out of that, though, came an understanding of how to elect folk to
public office. Clearly, when Phil got himself elected and went
off up there [to Sacramento] to help draw the lines, he drew the
lines for the new districts in the sixties with me in mind. He
drew the lines to give me a shot at an assembly seat.
Morris: How did that work? Had he already begun to analyze voting
districts and voting patterns?
Brown: Absolutely. He knew the voting habits and voting patterns and the
voting trends like you know the palm of your hand.
Morris: Back in the San Francisco State era?
Brown: No, in the late fifties. 1956 to, say, 1960, he developed that
ability that stood him in good stead until the day he died for
reading voting trends and population shifts, et cetera. So he was
a master at that process as early as 1961.
Morris: Did he ever talk about how he developed these ideas and where?
Brown: No, he did not. He did not talk much. Phil gave orders more than
talk. He gave directions more than shared insight on what his
thought processes were. He would tell you the end result. He
would seldom ever permit you to know what he went through, how he
synthesized information, what signposts one should observe in
order to get the right perspective on what the trends will be.
Morris: Did you have trouble with that since you had been raised to ask
questions?
Brown: It didn't keep me from asking questions. Sure, I asked questions.
But I also knew that if I heard his answer and his explanation,
nothing flattered me more than to be able to figure out without
having to ask why he said what he said. I delighted in trying to
read his responses before he gave them, trying to read what he
39
would do before he did it. I must say that I did develop some
skill at being able to do that.
Morris: So that early on, you also got a sense that it's not just the
candidate but it's the constituency.
Brown: It is the defined constituency. You can have the best candidate
in the world and if he is running in a gun owner's district, that
single issue could be the cause of his or her defeat. I figured
that early on.
Morris: Was Phil already practicing law when you and John were at San
Francisco State? How much ahead of you was he?
Brown: My first conscious knowledge of Phil was in the late 1950s. I was
out of San Francisco State in 1955 and into law school. I went to
law school with Johnny Burton as well. So we were fellow students
at Hastings in 1955 and I do remember by then Phil was already
active in the field of politics. I have never known him really to
be active in the field of law. That was just his handle.
He never really practiced law because Phil had no interest
in making money. Phil was about exercising power.
Morris: But you need to have a certain level of income to support your
power plans.
Brown: Except Phil had a different lifestyle. It was a very modest
lifestyle. As a result of his having such a modest lifestyle, he
didn't own anything. He didn't own any place to live. He was a
renter. Maybe he had one or two suits and didn't care about those
kinds of things, or one or two pairs of shoes and didn't carry
more than that. So what he earned from his public service jobs
was sufficient to maintain him. He didn't need any more. In
those days, the labor movement could pick up your tabs. My guess
is that Phil Burton's dining was paid for more often by the union.
He had no other overhead.
Morris: That was for the period when labor was organizing its own
political--?
Brown: Absolutely. And when the rules were different. The rules are now
quite different on what you can do for politicians and that's only
been with the last sixteen or seventeen years. Before that, you
could, business and contribution-wise, give anything you wanted to
a person seeking public office. There were no reporting
requirements. You didn't have to report anything. And there was
no direction on what you [a candidate or elected official] could
spend your campaign money for. If you chose to spend it to buy
yourself a house, you did so. It was nobody's business but yours.
Morris: Did you see any problems with that at the time?
Brown: Well, we didn't do that because we never had the resources to even
consider doing that. We were never into money. None of Phil's
political descendants were ever into making money from politics or
doing anything except using the resources to get yourself elected
and to get your friends elected. It was a sharing process. We
literally shared our resources with each other for our mutual
success purposes. So we never had to face those questions. By
the time people start running those questions out there, we had no
trouble obviously complying with them, dealing with them, or
supporting them except that most of us did resent the assumptions
that go behind those rules and regulations. The assumption is
that politicians are dishonest people and that you need to do
these kinds of things to protect and insure their honesty.
We knew that was, in fact, not the case. You don't need
limits on what people can or cannot receive as contributions.
There clearly is a value in reporting what people receive and
requiring them to report various sources, et cetera. There is a
value in that. The public ought to have a right to know how you
got elected and who provided you with resources and what you have
used those resources for. But beyond that, it is silly to have
all these dumb rules.
You have no idea how stupid these rules are. For example,
two or three years ago a rule passed that the campaign could only
have one credit card. So wait a minute, I'm in Sacramento doing
some business connected with my operation and my campaign that I
don't want the state to pay for, I'm going to pay for it out of my
campaign. Except that the credit card is here in San Francisco
because the people need it here who are doing the business of
running the operation here. You can only have one credit card. I
said, "The hell with that noise. Let them accuse me." I think
what is the theory of the law, and clearly the reality of the law,
is you ought to report every transaction involving your campaign,
regardless of how it was paid. They said, "Not only can you not
have but one credit card, you can't use your own personal credit
card and get reimbursed."
I said, "Wait a minute. I can't have but one credit card
and I can't use my own personal credit card?" "Yes, because if
you do that, that's a loan." I said, "What's a loan?!?" "When
you use your credit card to buy something, that is considered a
loan to your campaign and you have to report it as a loan." I
said, "I won't do that." They said, "Why not?" "Because I'm
going to have my campaign pay the Bank of America directly."
So the Bank of America never lent me any money. The Bank of
America, until they are ready to collect, is making the loan and
if it is paid before they collect--. We finally had them to at
least modify the regulation to correct that stupidity. But you
would have had a million transactions involving people who use
their own personal credit card for $2.80 worth of paper. That
becomes a loan to the campaign. Then you have to report it as a
loan and then you have to report a payback.
Now, if someone's running against you and they simply go
back and on an isolated basis, simply usurp and take out of your
report all of the paybacks, they can safely say in a piece of
campaign literature, "Willie Brown took from his campaign last
year $6,485." They don't bother to say those were reimbursements
for advances made to the campaign. But it is in fact the truth
that I did get $6,485 from my campaign last year. No question.
That's exactly what I got. But how do I explain that to a voter
who doesn't give me the chance to do it because I don't know he
has gotten a little item in the mail from my opponent, and he has
read that, and he says, "Hey, the cat's using this money wrong.
He solicited that money to run for reelection. He didn't do it to
use on his own." It's crazy, crazy. Absolutely crazy.
So while we would have been ordinarily the people who would
be advocating all of these reforms, we would have been doing so in
a fashion consistent with your, as a candidate, exercising good
judgment. We give you the guidelines to exercise good judgment.
It's up to you to exercise good judgment and it is up to your
voters to evaluate whether or not you have exercised good
judgment. But all these silly rules. You can't imagine how
really silly all this stuff is now.
Morris: It seems to have sort of snow-balled over the years.
Brown: It's a whole industry. You now have to have full-time an
accountant on a monthly basis, plus a lawyer, if you are a
candidate. I pay probably $150,000 a year to professionals to
make sure my filing process and what I do with campaign-related
funds and things of that nature are reported correctly.
Morris: This is the speaker's election fund?
Brown: Yes, because I run through probably $4 million on an election
cycle. I bet I spend $150,000, maybe as high as $200,000 in
professional services to make sure I obey these silly rules.
Because one of the things I have to do is I have to make sure I
have a representative, not on the state payroll, at every hearing
where regulations are being considered when you are allowed to
testify because some of the regulations are so silly. So I have
to have somebody at every meeting where they are discussing
regulations, just to make sure they don't go helter-skelter as
they go about putting these things in place.
Morris: That is a question I would like come back to.
V HASTINGS LAW SCHOOL, 1955-1958
Morris: If you have got some more time this morning, could we talk about
law school? Did you decide to go to law school because you were
already active in politics?
Brown: Believe it or not, law school was an accident.
Morris: Oh, really? [chuckles]
Brown: I graduated from San Francisco State, and I had to move out of the
dormitory because I had graduated. You could stay for the
remainder of the summer but you couldn't stay beyond that. A
friend of mine from New York who had attended San Francisco State
was, I guess, almost near graduation; he hadn't graduated yet.
But a brilliant guy, discharged from the air force. He was a
veteran. He is now a judge in Alameda County. His name is
Benjamin Travis. Benny Travis had always wanted to go to law
school. Ben Travis invited me to go down to Hastings with him in
the summer of 1955 so he could check on enrolling in Hastings. I
went down with Benny and while Benny was considering enrolling, I
decided that I would do that too.
Morris: What the heck.
Brown: What the heck. It was also a way in which to avoid having to go
into military service, because as a ROTC person, you had to either
accept a commission and go in the service for two or three years,
if you were appropriately qualified, or end up getting drafted.
Well, I didn't want to be drafted. You could go to grad school
and you could get a deferment. So I had been too late to make up
my mind as to what I wanted to do for grad purposes. Benny went
down. I had always kind of fancied myself a lawyer from what I
had seen on television and things of that nature anyway. So when
Benny went down to enroll in Hastings, I decided to do the same
thing. When I found out how simple it was, when I got down there
that one day, I actually enrolled just by accident and only
because Benny had gone down to check it out.
44
Morris: You didn't have to take the LSAT?
Brown: No. They let you do all that after you were in. In those days,
they wanted people to come to law school. It wasn't all these
deals you have to go through now. I couldn't get in these days.
Morris: Nobody's going to believe you.
Brown: But we went down there that one day and we enrolled. We enrolled
in law school and he got assigned to one section and I got
assigned to another. We went over to the law school, and there
was John Burton. I had no clue that Burton was thinking about
going to law school.
It was frankly fun. The three of us were the only three
students from S.F. State to--.
Morris: Travis had also gone to San Francisco State?
Brown: Yes, that's where I met him. He was living in the same dormitory.
We became good buddies. A matter of fact, Benny became in charge
of the food plan. He was the guy who had all the money to go buy
the food so you could eat. But let me tell you what Benny did.
Benny was so happy he got elected food chairman that he went
out and celebrated and got really drunk. He always thought he had
a cousin or something in Fresno. He got so drunk he got on a bus
and we didn't see him for three days. We thought he had stolen
our money. He was lost, drunk, for three days. But he had
obviously deposited and secured our money. We threw him off the
food plan when he got back. We fired him because we didn't eat
for three days, [laughter]
That's one of the great stories that all the people who
lived in the dormitory tell about Benny Travis. But we threw
Benny Travis out as a food chairman.
Morris: You didn't fuss when he went on to be a judge?
Brown: No. As a matter of fact, I helped him get the judgeship. I
actually got the judgeship for him. But those were the good old
days, fun, fun days.
I went to law school out at Hastings based upon that
accident of entering. It was a great experience, Just a great
experience. It moved me quickly into a whole new realm of people
because at Hastings were a number of kids who had gone to Cal and
graduated from the university but didn't go to Boalt for whatever
reasons—they had to work or what have you. Again, Hastings was
an all-work school. Everybody who went to Hastings had a job.
Classes were only taught at Hastings from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Then
everybody had a job in the afternoon.
[telephone interruption]
i*
Morris: You were speaking of the kinds of new horizons that Hastings
College offered to you.
Brown: Yes, afforded me. Hastings gave me the opportunity to meet all
these people from all these different universities and all these
different colleges. There were 250-260 of us in the first year
class, including four African Americans. A fellow named Al Brown,
Benny Travis, Willie Brown and one other, Gabe Solomon.
Morris: Any in the upper classes?
Brown: Yes. A guy who is a federal judge now was in the class ahead of
me. His name is Earl Gilliam. He is a federal judge in San
Diego. Then there was a fellow, a black supreme court justice,
who died.
Morris: Wiley Manuel.
Brown: Wiley Manuel, right. He was ahead of me at Hastings. Who else
was there? There was some other African American. But that was
it. We were limited. Very few people. Of the 250-260, seventy-
one graduated.
Morris: Is that about right for law school?
Brown: They said two-thirds of the people don't make it. Not any more.
They now graduate everybody. But in those days, when you came out
of law school, you were a lawyer in every sense of the word. They
had put you through the crucible to get there. It was a tougher
screening process.
At any rate, I met people who are to this day are still
friends and still acquaintances and it has afforded me both in my
political world and in my law-practice world just the best of
opportunity. There is almost no county in this state in which I
don't know somebody on that county's superior court, usually
connected with my old school days at Hastings. Or there isn't any
major law office in the state that doesn't have somebody with whom
I was connected because not only did I know all the people in the
class that started with me, but I knew the people in the two
classes ahead of me, and I knew the people of the two behind me.
Plus, I worked for a year at the school after I left as a teaching
assistant.
Morris: Did you?
Brown: Yes, I worked for a year. After I graduated, I elected [to stay
on) for a year as a teaching assistant in the field of torts. As
a result of that--.
Morris: That gives you six years of legal graduates.
Brown: Almost seven, of acquaintanceships. So it was not just my class
that I referenced when I say I know that on occasion many students
who are on the bench, I graded their papers. One guy reminded me
that I flunked him. I gave him a bad grade, [chuckles]
Morris: Am I right that Hastings' faculty is largely older, retired--?
Brown: They were all sixty-five. That's how I got the job. I got the
job because those old guys can't really do all the work,
particularly when you have some guy like eighty years of age. He
might not be able to do totally the work so he may want a teaching
assistant to conduct his class when he's not there, to do all the
grading of the papers, to do all of the work, to develop the test,
to do the counseling that is required. That's what 1 did at
Hastings for Leon Green, who was a professor they brought out here
from Texas. He got sick in the middle of the year a couple of
times, and they knew he had health problems, so they hired me to
be a teaching assistant for that purpose. It was fun.
47
VI PRACTICING LAW, 1959-1964
Independence, Friendships, Testing One's Skills
Brown: Then I taught night law school for a couple of years at Lincoln
College just to supplement because I did not want to work for any
law firm. I really wanted to practice law. I wanted to start my
own law office. I rented space from a guy named Terry Francois.
Again, the old school contacts stood me in great stead because
some of my classmates who couldn't find jobs practicing law became
insurance adjusters. In those accident cases, it's always helpful
if you know the insurance adjuster. So I would invariably end up
knowing the insurance adjuster at Allstate or State Farm or any of
those kinds of places. That stood me in good stead and helped
tremendously in developing my practice. 1 decided I was going to
practice law and mess around in politics which meant that I
couldn't take a job from anybody and which also meant that I
couldn't get myself obligated for a whole lot of debt because you
can't really do politics with a burden, with a great debt, on your
back.
Morris: Why is that?
Brown: Because you don't have time to earn the money to pay. And
politics doesn't pay enough. I think the salary at the time I got
elected to the state assembly was six thousand dollars a year,
five hundred dollars a month.
Morris: That was still a "part-time" legislature.
Brown: Yes. Five hundred bucks a month is what they paid you. Five
hundred dollars a month!
Morris: Those dollars were worth a little more than they are now.
Brown: Well, it was 1964. They were worth a little more but not much!
Not that much. Five hundred bucks a month.
Morris: What was there, or what is there, about the law that you enjoyed?
Brown: Independence. And the ability to be your own master. The ability
to have a referee determine when you pit your skills and your
knowledge, your interpretation and your twist on the rules and
regulations, and to have a referee called a judge rule, and to
have kind of a finality to that ruling. And it is, in part,
theatre. You are a performer before juries making your argument.
Morris: To give some structure to human conflicts?
Brown: Absolutely. To the resolution process at least. And my memory
ability and my verbal skills are great tools for the profession of
the law. That is why I love the profession of the law. Then you
can sometimes actually have fun doing your job as a lawyer.
Eyewitness in the Courtroom
Morris: Any particular examples that you recall in the practicing of the
law that were fun?
Brown: On reflection they turned out to be funny. I represented a guy
once who had used a credit card extensively to buy clothing at
Robert Kirk's in San Francisco. In those days you could continue
a case for several months. A speedy trial wasn't part of the
process. You kind of continued your case until you were paid; or
until you either got a good negotiated plea out of the prosecution
or got to allow your client to develop the resources to be able to
defend himself if you needed expert witnesses and all that kind of
stuff. Or, an alternative, just delay how long before he has to
go to jail. All of those are factors that you mixed into your
strategy.
In this case I in part decided, well, he couldn't afford to
pay the fee right away anyway. Then secondly, I figured it was a
case of pure eyewitness identity. Months could dull the sight and
the sound and the ability to recall. Six months or so later, we
finally got the hearing on this case. I had instructed my client
as all lawyers do, "You must make a very good appearance. So make
sure you are shaved and your hair is combed and your clothing is
properly pressed, your shoes are shined, shirts cleaned, good tie.
Make sure you look totally respectable. You've got to make a good
impression in court."
Sure enough, my client came in and you could not tell he was
a client. He just looked like any other well-dressed ordinary
citizen on his way to work at a business office on Montgomery
Street. We are in court and I'm seated next to him and the little
fellow on the witness stand is testifying—a clerk. I'm listening
closely, and the prosecutor takes him through and he identifies my
client. I then go back and say it's March when the incident
actually occurred and it is now September when we were finally in
court. I talked about the number he has waited on in that period
in between, how many transactions. Then I select individual days,
one or two on each one of the months. I said, "Now tell me, who
did you wait on those days?" "I don't remember." "You don't
remember anything about those days?" "No, I do not." Do you
remember anything about what you sold on those days?" "No, I do
not . "
I established over a six-time demonstration of this that he
really did not have a good memory. "Now, you say my client came
in March and bought these items." "Yes." "You distinctly remember
my client." "Yes." "Is there anything about my client that is
unique?" "No." "Nothing about his hair? Nothing about his
height?" "No, No." "And you acknowledge that you have no memory
of all these other people, thousands of people who you waited on,
et cetera?" "No, I have no memory of those people. All I know is
that I did wait on them but I couldn't identify them if they
walked in the courtroom." "Well, why did you identify my client."
"He's wearing the suit he bought with the credit card."
[laughter]
I turned to my client and I said to him, whispered
obviously, "Are you wearing the suit you bought with the credit
card?" Instead of answering me verbally, he nodded his head.
With that the judge went off the bench [laughter] and asked if I
needed a continuance, or at least a recess. Of course, I said, "A
recess. "
Oakland Raiders: Suit and Countersuit
Brown: Then on another occasion, I was trying a case for the Oakland
Raiders. I represented two members of the Oakland Raiders
football team who had been identified by Chuck Noll, the coach of
the Pittsburgh Steelers. He called them the criminal element in
the NFL. They were really great football players but they were
also really mean football players. They would on the first or
second play of every game just to let the wide receiver know that
they are there, whether the ball was thrown in his direction or
not, they would clobber the wide receiver. So from that point on,
50
the wide receiver would come out and he's looking around to see
where these really bad guys were.
On this occasion, my client, George Atkinson, hit Lynn Swann
like you would not believe. Lynn Swann comes out and crosses this
way [demonstrates], the ball is being thrown over here. My client
is here, he follows Lynn Swann, the ball is going this way, Swann
is going this way, another receiver is going. He does not go to
that receiver. He follows Lynn Swann who is not paying any
attention because he is running the decoy. My client stalks him
and hits him with a forearm in the back of the neck and put him
out of the game for two or three additional games.
Chuck Noll, the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, in the
interview after the game after they had lost and the damage to his
players has been recounted, proceeds to say that the Oakland
Raiders play a criminal element of players in the league and that
my client and Jack Tatum are the people who represent or who are
the criminal element or something to that effect.
My client decided, in conversation with me, to sue Chuck
Noll for slander. The Raiders joined him in that effort and the
Steelers were sued as well. I don't practice that kind of law,
libel and slander law, but a guy named Fred Furth does. Fred
Furth is a relatively famous lawyer at this business, libel and
slander.
Fred Furth filed a lawsuit and I was co-counsel on the case,
with Furth being the person who would ultimately try. Furth 's
office developed it and all that business and they were ready to
try it. Furth becomes ill and he can't try it. The only other
person in his office was a young guy who he just had assisted who
couldn't try it either. Well, I had to try my first libel and
slander case. And it is in federal court with a jury. It is a
two-month trial. I am in federal court examining Chuck Noll; I've
got Chuck Noll on the stand. Chuck Noll is a witness worse than
Clarence Thomas. He will answer no questions. He does it with a
degree of dignity that you just get angrier, angrier and angrier
and angrier.
I was just going nuts through this hour of examination. I
was doing the best job you could do on Chuck Noll but you really
can't shake him. The judge was watching this whole thing with
great amusement because he has seen me often enough in court and
he knows how I--.
Morris: You were really getting a workout?
51
Brown: He knows he's taking me through it. We had already agreed upon
the time schedule and all that business. So I was hammering away,
hammering away and I am getting no place in making the points with
Chuck Noll. I finally just kind of looked, gave the judge a
glance [recreates face of the judge] He was asking me if I wanted
to take a recess. [laughter] But that's the way he did it, with
the coach there and what have you. Only the two of us saw that.
I'll never forget that little experience.
The Missed-Nose Defense
Brown: Then the day [Mayor George] Moscone was killed, I was trying a
case in city hall, the morning Moscone was assassinated. It was a
drunk-driving case involving a high official in the federal mint
here on 5th and Mission. That's where the mint is located. It
was a high official and those high officials sometimes have those
parties after work. They had had one of those parties and this
guy had actually been designated as the driver long before people
started designating drivers. The other people were just going to
be the passengers so they could drink and he couldn't and they
actually did that.
Coming back from down on the Peninsula where this party had
been held, he was trying to make up his mind to either do 280 or
101 coming into San Francisco and he's unfamiliar because he
actually lives in Sacramento. He couldn't make up his mind; both
signs talked about Bay Bridge. He kept weaving back and forth and
he finally took 280. The Highway Patrol pulled him over, it was
late at night, they saw all these drunk people in the car, puts my
client through a sobriety test with the bright lights shining,
arrested my client and charged him with drunk driving. He loses
his job if he is convicted of drunk driving.
So the federal people got a hold of me and said, "Would you
handle the case?" I was trying the case for the jury in the city
hall before Judge [Charles E.] Goff. In that trial, the only
thing you could do obviously was destroy the credibility of the
highway patrolman. I was really getting no place in this case
because it was his word against my client's and my client's drunk
friends. Their credibility is somewhat questionable because they
were drunk and they acknowledged that they had been drinking. But
this jury I'm not sure is buying the story.
I finally get the highway patrolman on the witness stand and
I just decided on the tedious basis to take him through the
examination that he gave my client. Because it just dawned on me,
52
Morris :
Brown:
most people probably at 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning when they have
been working all day, may not really be able to put on the best
act out there on the side of the freeway where you are being
examined with a light shining in your face and what have you. So
I take this highway patrolman through the test and I'm having him
do the test and I have him stand up and show me what he was doing,
how he had the guy spread his arms and put his head back like this
and then try to walk a straight line, that kind of stuff. I said,
"Tell me where you had him do it." He told me about him walking
the straight line. I said, "Then, what did you happen to do
next?" He said, "I had him point to his nose." I said, "Do it.
Show me what you were doing." He missed his nose. He missed his
nose! [laughter] I of course leapt up and said, "He missed. He
missed." The jury just started laughing like hell.
The judge of course chided. He said, "Mr. Brown, you can't
have those demonstrations." I said, "No more questions, your
honor." We sat down, we rested and I argued and talked about how
obviously first, he couldn't walk right and secondly he couldn't
touch his nose. The highway patrolman turned beet red because
that actually happened. He missed his nose with his eyes closed.
You really have to kind of concentrate to go directly to your nose
and then you have to kind of guide it once you get there. But he
didn't. He missed it. That won me that case.
For a while around the court house they were talking about
the missed nose. "That's the missed-nose defense." All the
lawyers tried to use it but by then the cops had passed the word.
And they had been out practicing.
They had to be careful on examination.
Defending Prostitutes
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
I remember another case when I changed the whole operation as to
how you prosecute prostitutes in this town. I represented one or
two prostitutes and kept them out of jail. That is the only
requirement. They passed the word to all the other prostitutes.
Was this before there was a prostitute's organization?
it, COYOTE [Cast Off Your Old Tired Ethics]?
What is
No. COYOTE hadn't started yet. They passed the word on the
streets: Willie Brown is the best lawyer. He keeps you out of
jail. They pass the lawyer recommendations on. I go in and I got
53
six or eight prostitutes every morning in the same court. There
was only one court then that handled prostitutes. Clayton Horn
was the judge. He was getting tired of dismissing these cases and
not doing the cases. I went in one day and said, "I want to
propose a constitutional argument, equal protection under the
law." He said, "What do you mean, equal protection of the law?"
"Very simple. It takes two people to engage in an act of
prostitution. That's what these people are charged with. I only
see one person here. Do you know why I only see one person here?
Because your police department has elected to take the John, the
person buying the favor, and use him as a witness so it gives him
immunity from prosecution, uses him to prosecute against her.
Judge, that's the way it's been since day one. They can't
exercise that kind of discretion."
He said, "You know, I think you're right. Mr. District
Attorney, what do you have to say about that?" The district
attorney went nuts. "We can't be arresting—those are fine
upstanding citizens." That made the judge mad. When he said that
those are fine upstanding citizens and these are just street
women, the judge said, "Wait a minute. Mr. Brown is right. I'm
dismissing all these cases."
Changed the whole nature of prostitution cases. Now they
literally have to nail the person for soliciting rather than
engaging in. If there is an engaging in as a result of
solicitation, the second participant is disqualified from being
able to testify because a participant can't corroborate the story.
So we changed the whole nature of prosecuting people. Then I
stopped representing prostitutes because I went off to the
legislature. I wasn't here every day and if you're not here every
day, you can't continue to represent the prostitutes.
Partner and Friend John Dearman; Pro Bono Work
Morris: I came across a reference that at some point you had a partner,
John Dearman?
Brown: Dearman. He's a judge. He's a superior court judge. Yes, he was
my law partner here. Not in this office, in the office on Vallejo
Street and in the office on Octavia Street. At 666 Octavia and
1515 Vallejo, John Dearman was my law partner.
Morris: Before you went to the legislature?
Brown: Absolutely.
5A
Morris: Was he part of the Hastings and San Francisco State?
Brown: No, he graduated from Wayne University in Detroit, Michigan. He
came out to California as a social worker. I met him in an
automobile showroom looking at cars. I had seen him at a Young
Democrats meeting and I subsequently saw him on a Saturday looking
at cars. I used to go look at cars every Saturday. Before I
could afford them, a form of my enjoyment was to go to auto
showrooms and just look at beautiful cars. He had the same
tendency. It turned out that he was also from Texas originally
and had moved to Detroit to go to school. He had gone to Wiley,
graduated and then went to Wayne State to get his law degree and
practiced law briefly in Michigan and then decided to move to
California, became a social worker and a Burns guard out at the
ball park while waiting to become a lawyer in the state of
California.
We met each other and turned out to be friends. He was
dating a classmate of mine from San Francisco State and a fellow
church member- -the woman in mind- -and we turned out to be friends.
The friendship blossomed through the political world from about
1960 on into a law partnership. He was the only real law partner
I ever had.
Morris: Interesting. He got social work training after he already had his
legal training?
Brown: Correct.
Morris: Does that say something about the way the two of you practice law?
The social work component?
Brown: We probably did more free work than any other collection of
lawyers. We never overcharged anybody. We never had a client
complain or take us to the state bar about any action that we had
done. We never have run cases, like hiring doctors and ambulance
chasers to bring us cases. So we were never really successful
money-wise. We never made any real money practicing law. But we
had a real good time and developed great reputations in the
community. Mine has obviously contributed to my success in the
field of politics.
In 1977, I got John Dearman appointed a judgeship by then
Governor [Edmund G., Jr.] Brown and then Governor Brown elevated
him a year or so later to the superior court. He just finished a
stint as the presiding judge of the superior court. Over the last
year he has been the presiding judge of the superior court. He
has just a great reputation as a trial judge. Almost every good
law firm in the city attempts to get their cases in his court.
55
He has a daughter who graduated from Hastings last year and
she is now a lawyer with one of the big firms in this town,
Morrison & Foerster or somebody like that. There is another
daughter who graduated from Santa Clara with an MBA. And he has
two sons, both of them still in school, still messing around. His
wife was diagnosed with MS twenty-five years ago and she is on and
off confined to a wheelchair.
We lived around the corner from each other all those years.
We still are the best of friends, I had lunch with him yesterday.
We are still the best of personal friends and family friends.
Morris: That's a nice kind of partner to have.
Brown: Yes. We travel together, go to jazz festivals together, we drink
together. We've had football tickets together for thirty years.
We have season tickets to the 49ers' games right next to each
other. They still come in my name and he just pays for his share.
Morris: Yes. Did you take a special interest, either of you or together,
in civil rights cases and affirmative action complaints?
Brown: Oh, yes. We did all that. As a matter of fact, he tried the
first of the cases involving the sit-in demonstrations in San
Francisco in the middle sixties. We had to recruit lawyers to try
all those cases. Hundreds of people were arrested. They were
tried in units of ten and twenty each. John Dearman was one of
the team. I think it was he and Vince Hallinan who tried the very
first case. I was the coordinating lawyer for all the lawyers on
the case. He tried the first of the cases. I assigned him to try
the first of the cases. So yes, we took a great interest in all
civil rights issues.
In 1961, I did the first sit-in demonstration in San
Francisco. We blocked the housing development called Forest
Knolls. It resulted in the Fair Housing Ordinance being enacted
in San Francisco. That was more years ago than I care to
remember.
Morris: I came across a press clipping that said you were looking to buy a
house yourself.
Brown: Correct.
II
Brown: My wife went to look at this new subdivision, and they wouldn't
show her the house. The people who were showing the model home
abandoned the property the minute she and her girlfriends showed
56
up. They told me about it when I arrived home. As a matter of
fact, I called home from the ballpark to see what was happening
and she told me about it. I told my buddies. They said, "Well,
if that's the case, let's go see what they'll do with us."
So instead of going home from the ball game, we went by the
housing development.
Morris: This is you and Mr. Dearman?
Brown: Dearman and a fellow named Everett Brandon. We went by the
housing development and at the housing development, likewise, they
bailed out of the house. Well, we didn't leave.
Morris: These were the people holding the house open?
Brown: Yes. We decided that all the sales people and the personnel that
handles that, the hell with them. The telephone works, the
television works, the refrigerator has some beer in it, why don't
we wait for them to come back? [laughter] That's how the
demonstration started. At 5:00 or whatever time it was scheduled
to close, they did not come back. They sent a guard to close it
up, as they would normally do, I guess. We said, "Fine. We'll be
back tomorrow." One of the enterprising ones of us, I think it
was Brandon, said, "Why don't we call the newspapers and let them
know that these people won't let you rent this house and that we
are going to sit in."
Sure enough, we called. The next day the television cameras
and the newspapers were out there. We decided we would really up
the ante a little bit because that was on Sunday. We decided we
would come by there after church. I got my wife and the kids up
and we came by as a family after church, which made it even more
dramatic.
Morris: Oh, wonderful. Everybody all in their church clothes.
Brown: Yes. Everybody all dressed up. We started a demonstration that
lasted about two weeks in San Francisco. The mayor finally
stepped in and convinced the developer that he should in fact show
us that house. I was interviewed on television and friends from
around the nation saw that because it was good news. A couple of
them called and said, "Listen, I've always known you to be far
more definitive than you are in this interview. Is there
something you are not telling us about this deal?" I said, "Yes,
they keep saying I want to buy the house. No, no. I don't have
any money to buy the house. I just want to see it." [laughter]
57
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris;
So a couple of friends picked up that I wasn't being as
normally definitive. They said, "Listen, Willie Brown. You
can't embarrass black America. If that cat offers to sell you the
house, all of us are just going to have to chip in. So you go
ahead and say you want to buy that house."
Good. Did you take them up on that?
No, no. I didn't really want to buy that house. My wife didn't
want that house either after we saw it. It was made out of
cardboard almost. But we did get the housing ordinance enacted as
a result of that demonstration in San Francisco. Over the
years-- .
We were actually at the start of the riots in '66 out at
Hunter's Point. When those riots started, we were in that
building where they started. They decided to burn it down. We
had to go out the back door, over the back fence and race down the
street to get away from there. Again, Dearman and Brown.
Oh my goodness,
residents?
Were you out there trying to negotiate with the
Yes, that was exactly what we were doing.
How did the Hunter's Point community in the 1950s and 1960s differ
from the Fillmore?
They were poor. Totally and completely poor black people with no
jobs, living in public housing projects. This side of town, you
had whatever black professionals there were and you had whatever
blacks of substance with regular employment there were. Also you
had the new living units being built; the ILWU and the Maritime
Union had built that unit over there next to Japantown and there
were other units being built where people were in fact actually
living. The people who moved out of the Fillmore, they moved out
only when they could afford it. And when they did that they moved
to Ingleside. But they still did their church in the Fillmore,
they still did their barbecue pits in the Fillmore, they still did
their recreating in the Fillmore. Hunter's Point was considered
kind of the ghetto.
Interesting. Well, we've covered a lot of territory this morning.
This seems like a good place to stop and pick up in a couple of
weeks .
Brown: Perfect. All right. Because I've got a 1:00.
58
Remembering Adolph Schuman
[Interview 2: November 12, 1991] it1
Brown: As a part of his will, Adolph Schuman left some money to St.
Anthony's Dining Room, so some of us go back with some regularity
and work as part of Adolph 's team, one, two, three, four hours. I
have become one of the coffee servers for Adolph. We try to set a
date when we all can do it. They set this date.
Morris: When you say Adolph1 s team, what--?
Brown: That's just a group of friends of Adolph' s who go back and make
sure that he is remembered because that's what he used to do when
he was living. He used to go down and serve. So we go back
periodically and serve coffee. It turns out to be just lots of
fun.
Morris: Had St. Anthony's become as big a meal program before Mr. Schuman
became interested in it?
Brown: No, it's always been, at least as far back as I know and can
remember. I don't think Adolph 's existence was a key to their
becoming as successful as they are in what they do. I don't think
that. I think he's just one of the many people that has
consistently assisted, but he was not primarily responsible.
Morris: How did Willie Brown and Adolph Schuman get to be buddies?
Brown: In the world of politics, Adolph was a Green Book Democrat. He
was part of the Green Caucus.
Morris: Oh, I see. One of the ones who provide the faces of all those
fine Americans.
Brown: The money, right. Adolph happened maybe to be the most liberal of
the Green Caucus. Traditionally, people who hold membership in
the Green Caucus would be extraordinarily conservative and
interested in maintaining the status quo. Adolph was not like
that . Adolph was very much into tomorrow and the future of the
Democratic party. So he invested aggressively in the newcomers
rather than in the oldtimers. By dint of his own resources, he
'This and the following page were recorded en route to St. Anthony's
meal program in San Francisco's Tenderloin district for Brown's regular
monthly visit to pour coffee and greet patrons, assisted on this occasion
by the interviewer.
59
would force the Green Caucus to be of great assistance to
liberals.
He would do things that were unbelievable for zero credit.
When we were in Miami in 1972 for an example, as I'm recalling, we
were part of the [George] McGovern delegation. I think Adolph was
part of some other delegation.
Morris: Was he?
Brown: Could have been. I don't remember exactly, but probably [Hubert]
Humphrey. We won the right to represent California in a debate
and in a vote before the full convention. And the people we had
with us obviously were the newcomers to the Democratic party.
They couldn't afford to be all the way down in Miami staying at a
country club resort and paying that enormous amount of money.
This was when they first really opened the delegate status up to
people other than professionals.
Adolph every day gave cash money to the leadership of the
California delegation to feed these newcomer delegates. He never
requested anything for it. He just said, "I know this is going to
help." It was like four hundred or five hundred bucks a day. In
cash money he would supply it so we could pick up the tab for the
food for the masses. But that's the kind of person he was. So we
remember him fondly for that and for many other reasons. St.
Anthony's was so important for him. We go back.
60
VII SOME PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES
Legislators' Role in an Emergency [1991]
Morris: While we are on the subject of the here and now, I saw you very
visibly on the television in Oakland right after the huge fire in
the hills. I wondered how you got over there and what the speaker
of the assembly can do when there is a major disaster like that.
Brown: Any disaster in which the state of California becomes a player or
a party, we're usually invited in by the local elected officials--
in this case, it was the mayor-- just the question of what happens
to the property tax base of a community devastated by any natural
phenomenon, in this case a fire, just that tax base is so eroded
that the locals become really strapped for resources to address
the ongoing problems, let alone the problems created by virtue of
that natural disaster. In this particular case, Mayor [Elihu]
Harris invited the governor as well as the legislative leadership
to come down for first-hand inspection. The individual
legislators there called upon us and petitioned us to call a
special hearing and provide whatever resources the state has set
aside [for emergencies] --fire protection resources, rebuilding
resources, et cetera.
There has also been the request made that we change some of
the laws to facilitate the recovery. So I was there as part of
the legislative leadership to address that issue.
Morris: Not everybody takes the time to actually go walk around seeing as
you did.
Brown: That's true, but there really isn't any way, in my opinion, to
fully understand and appreciate, other than either to live it or
come as close to living it as you possibly can. I am telling you
that there is nothing I have ever seen that compares. The quake
damage doesn't even come close to what that fire did. It looked
like Hiroshima must have looked like after the firestorm created
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by the [atomic] bomb. It looked like a firestorm that would have
accompanied a bomb. It looked as though somebody had figured out
scientifically how to have a fire reach its maximum intensity in
the shortest period of time and cover the widest area and to do
that much damage. That fire was so hot, it melted the sidewalk.
Morris: My lord.
Brown: I'm telling you, it's just unbelievable. It's unbelievable.
There is nothing left. It's got to have been the only type of
fire that was capable of destroying fire places. There are some
fireplaces that are still standing, but most are not. The fire
was so hot, the mortar in the bricks melted.
Morris: Are there some public safety ideas that have been around that
you've been interested in that maybe could be addressed?
Brown: There is no question. The nature of the materials that are used
for building purposes, the grid system that is designed in and
around the building operation and the location of structures, the
whole business of whether or not you leave certain kinds of trees
in close proximity to buildings without some great fire design
protections; all of those things have been addressed. Plus the
whole business of urban-based, closely located facilities of that
nature — they really ought to have an internal sprinkler system.
Public dollars could be used to run [sprinkler systems], just as
we do along the freeways. When we landscape freeways now, we run
a sprinkler system all through it for the vegetation. We clearly
could, for safety purposes, develop a sprinkler system along the
hillsides et cetera that are in close proximity and that at even
the hint of fire, at least you would confine it to a certain area
by virtue of the existence of those sprinkler systems. All of
those things.
Morris: Largely landscape sprinkling.
Brown: Absolutely. All of those things. You can reclaim desert land by
the use of certain kinds of irrigation systems. You clearly can
design a safety system in and around urban areas where you still
have the open space but you also have the ability, on a moment's
notice, even computerized, to reduce the potential for damages.
All public buildings in San Francisco are now to have sprinkler
systems in them. That is for the purpose of reducing the damage
that could be done by virtue of a fire. You don't save the books,
maybe, but you certainly reduce the potential for this building
creating a block fire, rather than just the one building fire.
All those kinds of programs have been known and made available.
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Impact of Prop. 13 [1978]; Code Compliance
Brown: You can see the impact of Proposition 13 (1978) in what happened
up there, as it will happen a number of other places throughout
California. When Proposition 13 passed, Proposition 13 removed
from public use, on an annual basis, somewhere in the neighborhood
of $12 to $14 billion. That $12 to $14 billion was being used to
provide services. It was not being stolen. It was used to insure
the quality of life for Calif ornians . Without that investment to
sustain us for the last ten or twelve years, without anything
supplementing our resources, we have been without real maintenance
dollars available to even keep the infrastructure system going.
While we have grown by about twelve million people since the last
time we had those dollars available to us, it's beginning to
directly reflect itself in our safety programs, in our maintenance
programs .
You go into almost any public building, except in the brand-
new communities, and you clearly see that there is a difference in
the quality of that structure, even though it is as magnificently
designed as our city hall, the interior looks like a dump because
when they did the cuts, they cut maintenance. They went from
maybe three janitorial crews to two janitorial crews the first
cut. The next cut they went to one janitorial crew. Now they may
be down to a skeleton janitorial crew to maintain the facility.
So now you are reduced to sweeping floors. You no longer have
people who do nothing except polish the interior of the elevator.
You no longer have people whose job it is to simply go around and
make sure that every nick in every wall is immediately repaired
and repainted. You do not have a crew whose job it is around the
year to start in the basement and paint to the top and then when
they are at the top, go back to the basement and start the paint
process all over again.
You don't have any of that any more. You don't have the
people on a five-year schedule to change the carpet in every
public building. And the public buildings are beginning to show
that, and it is all related to the absence of dollars. You use
the restricted number of dollars you had to continue to maintain
those things that are directly related to the service delivery
system. Those things that are indirectly related, you have
eliminated.
Morris: What do you do about things like the various parts of the building
industry that have avoided putting in fire-resistant roofs?
63
Brown: You lift their certificate of habitation. It cannot be inhabited
if it does not have that. That's what you should do, that's what
you should do, and that's the way you ought to play at it.
Morris: Is that a political matter of discussion with building
organizations?
Brown: Absolutely. It's totally political. Just the business of shake
roofs versus shingle roofs, we would never have been able to pass
that legislation because we have never been able to dramatically
demonstrate the safety to the extent that those of us who are
elected officials would overcome the residual downside in loss of
support from the building industry.
Morris: Is something like this fire bad enough that they will accept the
political necessity of complying with safety statutes?
Brown: They have panicked. Absolutely. They are now talking positively
about some limited, grudging acceptance of a fire retardant
standard required for the construction of every building.
Lobbying in the Public Interest
Morris: Do lobbyists from one part of the economy sometimes help in
convincing people from other parts of the economy that something
is needed for the rest?
Brown: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, the best advocates and the best
lobbyists are those who assess what is in the public interest and
then sell that, not only to the legislators but to their fellow
participants, and to prove to them that it is in fact profitable.
An example, for many years in the sixties, the AMA [American Medical
Association] and our own version, the CMA [California Medical
Association] , were adamantly opposed to public assistance on medical
care. Then of course, at the national level, we created the
Medicare program. Then we supplemented the Medicare program in
California with Medi-Cal. Suddenly doctors discovered that they
were being paid for services they formerly were giving away.
Suddenly they discovered that they could put together a clinic
operation and use lesser medical personnel than fully trained and
fully staffed doctors and be reimbursed at a rate where their profit
would be greater than if they were using a fellow professional.
As a result of all that, the greatest advocates for Medi-Cal
and for Medicare now are the organized units of medicine, whereas
in the past they didn't want any government regulating them and
telling them what they could or could not do. They discovered
that it was good public policy, i.e., expanded medical care, while
at the same time, it benefitted them handsomely.
Under all circumstances, dentistry has always had that
attitude. Dentistry had been trying to convince medicine for
years and years that they really ought to be advocates for
publicly assisted, medically funded programs, because dentistry
genuinely believed it. So you ask me, are there certain units in
the private sector in the economy that have advocated and led its
brethren, I think dentistry kind of led medicine but now medicine
is more enthusiastic about it. It is obviously a benefit to the
public.
Then there is also the incidence of safety devices in
automobiles. Most auto manufacturers in the past have opposed
safety devices. One or two auto manufacturers used the existence
of safety devices as a sales pitch, as a marketing tool. Now all
of a sudden, every ad you see says, "We have an airbag, we have
involuntary restraints." They are using crash tests to show that
the interior of an automobile doesn't collapse in an accident at
certain speeds. Until two years ago the auto industry absolutely
opposed the mandate for f ive-mile-an-hour bumpers, they opposed
mandating the use of seat belts, they opposed air bags, [even
though] the consumer organizations supported that and advocated it
and so did one auto manufacturer and I don't even remember which
one it was. Luxury cars.
Morris: Was it Volvo?
Brown: Could have been Volvo. One of the luxury car people have at all
times taken every safety device you could think of, they would
charge you for it and they would sell it. The auto manufacturers
didn't want to do that because they didn't want to drive the price
of the car up.
Same as when it was a question of pollution. They didn't
want to build pollution-free engines. Now they are opposing the
mandating of, as the fuel of choice, natural gas; they don't want
to build cars that can in fact use that. Some segments of the
industry do. Sometimes they bring along other parts of the
industry as a result of that advocacy.
Morris: That sounds as if the citizen organizations maybe convinced some
of the professional lobbying groups.
Brown: Listen, many times a consumer-based organization becomes the
leader.
65
VIII EARLY POLITICAL CAREER
Fair Housing Legislation Campaign. 1956-1959
Morris: That brings me back to what I wanted to ask you about in your own
career. When you first were involved in local politics in San
Francisco, did you have some special concerns as a black person
for the black community or other ethnic and minority groups in San
Francisco?
Brown: People would like to tell you that they start out with a great
vision and a great mission. But that's not the way I started out.
When you really start out, it is a day-to-day operation. I knew
that you couldn't get housing. I knew that you couldn't get jobs.
I knew that you were not being paid well or as well as your
counterpart. I knew that you could not enjoy the benefits of this
democracy. My goal was simply to try to relieve us of that misery
and make things kind of available to folk. I didn't have any
great grand design long-range as such. Mine was that if I could
see my way to get a bill passed that would result in fair housing
or fair employment practices, that was it.
Morris: To what extent were people in the San Francisco black community
involved in getting the first fair employment and fair housing
legislation passed?
Brown: The black community probably supplied one half of the effort and
resources. The Jewish community supplied the other half. There
was something called the Council for Civic Unity that was made up
of a group of people; Ed Howden, Frank Quinn, and people like that
put that organization together with old people like Terry
Francois, Carleton Goodlett and Frederick Douglass Haines, the
pastor of 3rd AME Church and Jefferson Beaver--that crowd; they
all put that organization together and that organization's quest
and goal was to get a fair housing ordinance passed in San
Francisco.
66
Morris: Fair housing first?
Brown: Yes.
Morris: Was that already underway when you were a student at San Francisco
State?
Brown: Yes. They were advocating that. They had an agenda to pursue
with the NAACP and the other organizations. That was my exposure
to it as a matter of fact.
Morris: Did you find that there was less discrimination in San Francisco?
Brown: A lot less than in Texas. There was not a separation of the
races. But there was clearly evidence of racism.
Morris: How about in relation to other groups like Chinese Americans and
Japanese Americans?
Brown: There was not a lot of contact. The Japanese had been relocated
out of the black community into the camps and they were really
just coming back. But the black community owned or occupied the
space that the Japanese had previously occupied. Now the Japanese
have gotten it back. They've slowly but surely gotten it back.
But there was not a lot of contact. There was almost no contact
with the Chinese community, I mean almost none. At anything below
the top leadership level. There were one or two Chinese who knew
one or two blacks, but that was about it. There were no common
meetings. The only coalitions that you could point to that
existed were those that were rooted in either organized labor, the
Jewish community or the black community. There wasn't anybody
else involved.
Morris: The coalitions recruited those three: labor, the Jewish groups and
the black groups.
Brown: Yes.
Morris: Was the fair housing a matter of talking before the board of
supervisors or was it more activist, pickets and that kind of
thing?
Brown: It was a combination. There were examples that would be made of
clear landlords who were discriminating. The picket line, in
which I participated, was directed at the Gillick Brothers, a
group of home builders up in an area behind the University of
California Medical Center called Forest Knolls. They were the
culprits so there were demonstrations around their corporate
headquarters as well as demonstrations to block entry and exit
67
from their housing project up on the hill. There were other
persons, other realtors, who were similarly demonstrated against,
both rental realtors as well as ownership realtors.
Morris: Were there sizable areas of San Francisco where you weren't
welcome?
Brown: Absolutely. The Sunset was considered off limits. As a matter of
fact, there were only two or three communities in which the
welcome mat was there. The real estate people would only show in
certain areas of San Francisco. You still had to buy through a
dummy buyer. The Council for Civic Unity supplied some of those
dummy buyers. We were still where you would have a white person
go look at and acquire a house for you and then transfer the title
to you. There was a program put together by the Council for Civic
Unity and by the Peninsula Housing Coalition and organizations of
that nature. You could buy in the Fillmore, in the Haight, in
Hunter's Point /Bayview and in Ingleside and that was it. You
couldn't buy any other place in San Francisco. Not directly. You
would have to do it through somebody.
Morris: Did it take state legislation before it began to noticeably open
up?
Brown: Yes, it did take state legislation.
Morris: Would you have worked on that campaign on the state legislation?
Brown: I did. Absolutely.
Morris: That was one of the things that Pat Brown campaigned on.
Brown: Pat Brown campaigned on it. Democrats campaigned on it statewide
for legislation as well. We all were part of that.
Morris: Was that a matter of going through the Democratic state convention
to get it into the platform?
Brown: The Democratic party was pretty much of that attitude as I recall.
You did not need to lobby the convention. That was one of the
tenets of the program. Fair employment practices, fair housing,
admission of Red China to the U.N., they were all standard pieces
of the Democratic platform.
Morris: The Democratic party or the Council of Democratic Clubs?
Brown: Both. The Democratic party didn't go totally liberal and ask for
the admission of Red China to the U.N. but all the other facets of
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what CDC was about were pretty much standard Democratic party
material.
Morris: Did you have any chance to see Pat Brown in operation? Did you
feel that he was seriously campaigning for this?
Brown: Absolutely. He was seriously campaigning for it. As a matter of
fact, he even talked about the time schedule in which he would
sign such matters into law, and he so did.
Starting a Family
Morris: With all these grass roots political things you had going, how did
you find time to get married and start a family? You were
finishing law school--.
Brown: Actually it was easy. The woman whom I married [Blanche Vitero]
was the woman whom I had dated all during my college life. As a
matter of fact she was easily the one that I spent the most time
with consistently, so that was an easy transition from pure
student to student husband. She was still in college and all of
our mutual friends were getting married or had gotten married and
that environment created the dynamics that contributed to the
marriage.
Morris: It gets to be the time to do that and the people are the right
match.
Brown: If I had gone away to school, if I had gone some distance, I
probably would not have gotten married, because I would not have
had that kind of a relationship on a constant basis. Day in and
day out. The only people I associated with were that crowd.
Morris: Interesting. Did the girlfriends who became the wives share the
interest in politics?
Brown: No. Most did not. As a matter of fact, most of my friends did
not share it on that side. Beyond my buddy who is now a judge,
John Dearman, whom I met after college and after law school, I
guess maybe John Burton was the only one who went through the wars
of college and law school and stayed in the field of politics. On
the wives' side, none followed that.
69
Women and Minority Leaders
Morris: So Sala Burton's interest in politics was kind of unusual?
Brown: Yes.
Morris: There weren't too many teams?
Brown: There were teams, but there were usually teams that were created
in politics, not before politics and then graduated into politics.
Some guys would end up marrying some person whom they met in the
political world or some woman would marry somebody they had met in
the political world. But seldom, if ever, did they transition
from law school together on into politics.
Morris: Right. But was there equal representation of woman in the
political organizations, would you say? The Young Democrats?
Brown: No, not an equal representation. There were an equal number of
women; in some cases there was a superior number of women. But in
terms of control, power and authority, it was still pretty much a
man's world.
Morris: Do you remember any women who did stand out in either the CDC or
the Young Democrats?
Brown: There were a number of women who did good things.
f*
Brown: [Some names lost when tape was changed.] ...and people like
Marlene Bane and Maudelle Watson. Later on, there was Nita
Wertner on the PERS [Public Employees Retirement System] board.
Spectacular in the field of politics, did just an excellent job.
So there are some notable examples of women.
Vaino Spencer, who is now an appellate court justice in Los
Angeles County. There are some notable exceptions.
Morris: Was there a statewide organization of black political leadership?
Brown: There was a loose federation that several times tried to create a
black statewide organization, but they were never successful until
1978 or 1979, I guess, when we created BAPAC. We founded BAPAC.
BAPAC is now thirteen years old and in great shape. It has
probably twenty-five or thirty chapters statewide. It has its
70
annual convention, it has an office with paid personnel, and it
does a newsletter.
Morris: I've heard people in the East Bay speak highly of an organization
called Men of Tomorrow. Is that something that you are aware of?
Brown: Yes, I was aware of it, but I never really fully participated.
The Men of Tomorrow are a group of black men that replicated Men
of Tomorrow organizations existing in other states and in other
cities. They are a group of civic-minded professionals. They are
all professionals. It is like the Commonwealth Club without the
benefit of speeches every week, or every month, and with a service
component to it, the service component being one that did
scholarships and one that did tutorial programs and things of that
nature directed at blacks.
County Central Committee
Morris: Since we met last time I have done some reading on the county
central committee. You were elected to that in 1960?
Brown: 1960.
Morris: It sounded as if there were constant factional disputes there.
Brown: Yes, there were the conservative Democrats and the liberal
Democrats. The conservative Democrats were headed by a guy named
Bill Malone and Don King, who was a young version of Bill Malone.
Don King is now an appellate court justice here in San Francisco
and Mr. Malone is long since expired. As part of that group of
people who controlled the county committee, there was definitely
an Irish Catholic flavor to it. Leo McCarthy and John Foran were
all part of that collection of people. As a matter of fact, King,
Foran and McCarthy practiced law together. They were a law firm.
Then they had the building trades with them on the labor side.
They had members on the board of supervisors whose names I can't
remember, Bill Blake and a few other people, who were part of
their operation. They invariably controlled the county committee
until we began to flex our political muscles by electing people to
office in the 1960s.
Morris: What were you able to accomplish as a member of the county central
committee?
Brown: Just to oust the old guard and install our own people. Our
people's jobs were to do a voter-registration operation and a get-
71
out-the-vote operation to elect our kind of candidates to office.
They achieved that handsomely.
Morris: Did you develop some working cooperation with McCarthy and Foran?
Brown: Only after we defeated them badly. We had contests against them
for office. Moscone ran for state senate against and defeated Leo
McCarthy [in 1966].
Morris: Moscone was one of your--?
Brown: Moscone was us.
John Burton actually ran Moscone 's first campaign. Moscone
ran for the state assembly against Milton Marks, then a
Republican, and he lost. He promptly turned around and ran for
the board of supervisors and won [1963]. Then while serving on
the board, he and McCarthy challenged each other for the state
senate seat that was being vacated. As a matter of fact, being
created by reapportionment, not vacated. Moscone won that state
senate seat.
Morris: McCarthy also went on the board of supervisors.
Brown: Yes, Moscone and McCarthy actually got elected simultaneously to
the board of supervisors.
Running for the State Assembly, 18th District, 1962
Morris: Okay. Then how was the decision made that it was time for Willie
Brown to run for the assembly in 1962?
Brown: It was actually a decision that Phil Burton pretty much made in
coordination with the black community. The black community had
run a fellow named Joseph Kennedy the first time and he lost.
Then a fellow named John Adams ran, another black man, and he
lost. The community increasingly was beginning to identify its
political muscle and to do so in conjunction with the ILWU, with
the liberal wing of the Democratic party, headed by Phil Burton,
and with the SEIU, which is the Service Employees International
Union, which is made up mainly of nurses' aides, janitors and
people of that nature. Most of them were racial minorities.
Morris: Was that George Hardy's organization?
72
Brown: That's George Hardy's organization. So in the process we would
begin obviously to reflect a need for direct political
representation. Phil Burton as a member of the California State
Assembly participated in the reapportionment of the 1960s. On the
last day of the reapportionment of the 1960s, when they counted
up, they only had seventy-nine seats. Phil had a map dividing San
Francisco for the eightieth seat. In those days, you didn't have
to do one person, one vote. Not until the middle sixties did
Baker v. Carr get decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. That
required one person, one vote.
So you divided, I assume, on lines of interest, parish lines
and other kinds of things that determined whether or not you would
be elected. The result of that was that Phil showed up with the
eightieth seat being located in San Francisco by division between
existing seats in San Francisco. At that time, there was a seat
that Phil held, there was a seat that Milton Marks held and there
was a seat that a fellow named John O'Connell held and there was a
seat that a fellow named Ed Gaffney held. That's how Phil got
that seat. And he had me in mind when he did that. He had me
along with several other blacks who were interested. We were able
to convince them not to run. I was the only one.
Morris: Really. Who were the other fellows?
Brown: A fellow named Herman Griffin and I don't frankly remember what
the third name was. Al Hicks, I think it was.
Morris: I would think that would be a tough job, to convince people that
they shouldn't run for office. How do you go about it, if you
have three people who are interested?
Brown: It's a very tough job. But you can usually succeed at doing it
if, one, you already know that they are not personally very
strong; two, that they are without the resources to run and they
always seek comfort from somebody else in telling them what to do
and how to do it and you can demonstrate to them that their
numbers do not work.
Morris: So you steer them in another direction.
Brown: Absolutely.
Morris: Were you able to keep the other fellows in the camp to help work
for you if they weren't going to be able run themselves?
Brown: Absolutely. By all means, that is exactly what you do. You
convince them, you talk to them about their taking a back seat and
73
Morris;
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
maybe being the chair of your choice, whoever the choice is of
that person's campaign. You definitely do it that way.
Was this tried with Mr. Gaffney?
No, Gaffney was a lost cause. I don't think Burton even attempted
that because Gaffney was supported by Jesse Unruh. Gaffney was a
twenty-two year incumbent. Gaffney chaired a committee at that
time in the legislature. Gaffney was a member of the painter's
union, so Gaffney was not likely to be talked out of something.
And this was not a black district. This district had fewer than
15 percent black voters in it.
At that time? Really?
Absolutely. It has fewer than 10 percent now. But it was fewer
than 15 percent, so you were not talking about a person running
for office who is white in a black ghetto. You're talking about a
person running for office in a Democratic ghetto.
Were there enough black voters in San Francisco in the sixties for
there to be a district that was primarily--?
There have never been enough black voters in San Francisco to
control any district.
Really?
There are only 80,000 black folk now in San Francisco and if you
just say half of them would be registered to vote, that's not even
a third of the numbers for any district in any year.
All right. That's interesting,
the way people were spread out.
I thought maybe it had to do with
No. They are located in three distinct communities, but even if
put into one community, they would still not be sufficient in
numbers and would not have been sufficient in numbers to elect
anybody then. You would have to come down to real small numbers
of people to make the black community dominant in any district.
Attitudes of Jesse Unruh and the Media
Morris: Had Unruh spent much time in San Francisco talking with San
Francisco political folk?
Brown: No. Unruh didn't spend any time anywhere talking to anybody.
Unruh was very powerful and pretty much indifferent as to what
people thought at the local level.
Morris: Really?
Brown: Absolutely. You didn't have to be in those days. You didn't have
to be any kind of politician you have to be today. You really
kind of have to be a hands-on, people-contact politician. In
those days, you defined what that contact would be, you defined
what the issues were, and you delivered the message.
Morris: You, the in-person, the already-elected guy.
Brown: The politician, absolutely. The newspapers didn't have the width
and breadth of people covering you. They didn't have five people
for each story. There was very little pack journalism. There was
a mutual respect. They didn't invade your private life at all. A
drunk politician was not held up to public ridicule. Fixing
parking tickets was not a crime. It was not a socially
unacceptable thing. Utilizing campaign funds for personal
purposes was not unacceptable, so you didn't have people pursuing
Pulitzer prizes as journalists by destroying politicians.
Now you do. I guess you graduate from journalism school and
your goal is to destroy somebody, preferably higher elected
officials, and that thereby enhances you. You didn't have that
mentality then. So you didn't have the Chronicle defining Phil
Burton. Phil Burton defined Phil Burton to Phil Burton's
constituency. And Phil Burton's shortcomings were never
demonstrated: the fact that you owed somebody money, or you
borrowed money from somebody, or the fact that you got an
advantage by virtue of being a politician, a courtesy was extended
to you that did not extend to the general public. None of that
was anything except business as usual.
Morris: In the media.
Brown: The fact that you could say you had a law firm and you represented
people doing business with the government, it was not a crime. It
was not socially unacceptable and it was not subject to criticism.
Morris: Ten years earlier, I have heard it reported that the major
newspapers' endorsements and slate cards in the paper were
considered extremely important.
Brown: Newspapers named the elected officials in many cases. In many
cases we were the first group to come along and defy that.
75
Morris: What did you use to balance the weight of the local newspapers'
endorsements?
Brown: Foot soldiers, and we printed our own newspaper.
Morris: Did you?
Brown: Oh, sure. We print the 17th District Reporter or the 24th
District Reporter. We publish it maybe four times during a
campaign. Every weekend in October before the general election.
We will have identified by virtue of doorbell ringing our base
constituency, we would synthesize it down to the exact number of
votes we thought we needed and we would gear all of our marketing
to that collection of voters. All of our campaign would be to
that end.
Morris: Not the whole district?
Brown: No, we did target voting. I would hope some of those people
wouldn't show up until the day after the election. They would
have the wrong day. What little mail we did, we did targeted
mail. We did targeted contact and developed our own slate card.
We actually developed a slate card that mirrored the ballot.
People would go to the polls with our slate card in their hands
and mark right from our slate card. That's how we broke the backs
of the influence that the newspapers had on it.
Morris: Did you go to the Examiner and the Chronicle?
Brown: Oh, yes. We did all of that. I did. Some of the either guys
wouldn't, like Phil. I don't think Phil cared about what the
papers said. He just assumed that since they had never endorsed
him in the past, there wasn't any reason for him to suspect that
they would. Since the editorial policy was so distant from
anything we believed in and anything we were about--.
Morris: Even the News and the Call-Bulletin?
Brown: Absolutely. They were just as alienated. We only had the ethnic
language newspapers and one of the black papers. We had the Sun-
Reporter.
Morris: Was that a major part of your campaigning?
Brown: Absolutely. A major part. As a matter of fact, the guy who owned
the Sun-Reporter was one of the co-signers for a loan in my first
campaign. He was one of the co-signers. There were five people
who co-signed for a $7,500 loan to get my campaign going.
76
Morris: Who were the other four?
Brown: It was Carleton Goodlett, Joseph Williams, Terry Francois, Zu
Goosby. Who was the fourth?
Morris: Phil?
Brown: No. Phil didn't have any money, couldn't get any credit,
[laughter] These had to be people who--.
Morris: Substantial.
Brown: Yes. I think it was Jefferson Beaver. I can't remember. I think
it was Jefferson Beaver.
Carleton Goodlett and His Support
Morris: How did Carleton Goodlett find time to practice medicine, run the
paper and be sort of--?
Brown: Carleton Goodlett may very well be one of the best doctors who
have ever been produced in this country. There was nobody who
could diagnose as Carleton could. Carleton really ran his medical
practice. That's how he sponsored and financed all of his other
things .
Morris: Right. I wondered about that.
Brown: He subsidized everything right out of his newspapers. Carleton
Goodlett was also a hell of an entrepreneur too. He owns lots of
papers across the nation. He built homes. He really understood
how to make money. He was a capitalist of the worst order.
Morris: Of the worst order?
Brown: Of the worst order. He didn't believe in union personnel working
in his office. He did not pay top dollar to people. But he
clearly understood economics and economic development.
Morris: Did he start the paper as a part of this capitalist dynamic or was
it to get information to the black community?
Brown: I really don't know because he owned the paper by the time I got
to San Francisco and he owned this little paper. There was a Sun
and there was a Reporter, and they finally merged. I think he
77
owned the Sun and then he bought the people out who owned the
Reporter and he ended up owning it exclusively.
Morris: There was a man named Tom Fleming.
Brown: Tom Fleming is his editor, his guru and his everything. Tom
Fleming was a highly trained, educated black man, trained at the
white universities. I guess he must have come out of the
University of California.
Morris: He studied there for a while.
Brown: Yes. Tom was an economist, I think, and just a good friend of
Goodlett's, very intellectually oriented. Goodlett was above all
else an extreme intellectual, extremely well-read, well-informed.
Goodlett had his Ph.D. at twenty-two or twenty-three years of age,
and then went to medical school.
Morris: Then went to medical school. That's pretty remarkable.
Brown: Then went to medical school. And he was a straight-A student
under all those conditions. He got his Ph.D. from Cal. They
wouldn't let him into medical school at Cal. So he got his Ph.D.
at Cal in psychology and then went to Meharry to get his medical
license .
Morris: Was he out there on the liberal frontier with you and your
friends?
Brown: No, no. He was further left. Further left! Carleton was up
there with the independent progressive types. He was really a
left-winger.
Morris: Even as a capitalist? How did he--?
Brown: Extreme capitalist! It was never a conflict for him.
Morris: How did he reconcile it to you?
Brown: I never had any great discussions with him, any detailed
discussions. We teased him, though, full-time about paying
minimum wage to his employees.
Morris: I've heard the same thing about the Bay Guardian.
Brown: Same way. Bruce Brugmann is the same.
Morris: That they are radical on the front page and tight-fisted in the
office?
78
Brown: In the board room, right. Well, Goodlett was the same identical
way. But Tom Fleming was Goodlett 's good friend. He took care of
Tom. That's the only job Tom's ever had, working for Goodlett.
Morris: Keeping the Sun-Reporter going.
Brown: Keeping the Sun-Reporter going, wrote a column for the Sun-
Reporter. He was Goodlett 's police reporter. He hung out at the
crime beat, developed great friendships. Tom just fit the mode
for Carleton extremely well.
Morris: Would the two of them want to talk to all of these young fellows
and make some decisions themselves as to who might run and who
maybe should wait?
Brown: No, only Carleton. Tom wasn't a part of any of that. Tom was a
true intellectual. Tom was an observer of the activities and
almost a consultant type. Goodlett was a hands-on participant.
You would find Goodlett ringing doorbells. You would find
Goodlett in headquarters addressing envelopes.
Morris: Really?
Brown: Yes. You would find Goodlett raising the money. You would find
Goodlett appearing on the platform with you. You even found
Goodlett running for office. Goodlett ran for governor.
Morris: Did he? When?
Brown: 1974 maybe? Either 1970 or 1974. [1966 primary]
Morris: How did he do?
Brown: Poorly. But he made a dent. He made a major dent. [95,476
votes — against Pat Brown and Sam Yorty]
Morris: Did you get out and ring doorbells for him and make speeches for
him?
Brown: Oh, yes. I was a Goodlett person. But he didn't run that kind of
campaign. He ran basically a media campaign.
1962 Campaign Team
Morris: So what things particularly stick out in your head about your 1962
campaign?
79
Brown: The 1962 campaign was a marvelous campaign. The people who were
the geniuses in the 1962 campaign were Frank Brand, a Jewish
lawyer who had been a candidate in the 22nd Assembly District
against one John Busterud and had lost to Busterud earlier in the
decade; Joe Williams, who was then an inheritance-tax referee and
a lawyer, Phil Burton's law partner, black; Rudy Nothenberg, who
was an employee of Joe Williams; and Jackson Hu, who was an
inheritance referee, or an inheritance-tax appraiser.
Morris: Was that a Chinese Hu?
Brown: Yes, Chinese. Hu. His widow is currently the inheritance-tax
referee. Their son is the chairman of the planning authority.
Wayne Hu. All derivative of Phil Burton. At any rate, Rudy
worked for those two persons and Rudy ran the campaign. Rudy was
the guy who ran the campaign. There was also Frank's eventual
wife, a woman named Joan Finney who became Joan Brand. Joan Brand
is now my appointee and has been for the last ten years to the
Medi-Cal commission. I literally take care of Joan. Frank
committed suicide.
Morris: Oh, dear.
Brown: He was Moscone's executive director of the PUC, and whatever
overcame him, he put the hose in his car and sat and read until he
died.
Morris: Was this after Moscone was killed?
Brown: No, before Moscone was killed. Frank died probably in 1975 or
1976. He just became overwhelmed by virtue of the social
responsibility and the accusations about his law practice. Not
crookedness, he just became indifferent to his law practice and
wouldn't do the work. He was a very sensitive man and then he
killed himself. Their son hijacked a plane to Cuba. So these
were really radical people.
Morris: I should say.
Brown: Really radical, very colorful, very good, strong people in terms
of their social commitment. In that 1976 campaign, a fellow named
Niles Garrett was the alleged campaign director. He was a law
student at Hastings and a good friend of ours. He practices (I
think he has been disbarred) but he is in Pasadena. He was from
down that way and he came up here to law school. He was a good
friend, smart. We had him running the campaign.
My wife, Blanche, put together the typists. She and her
sisters were the fastest known typists of human beings. They
80
could all do 100-120 words per minute, and you had to type stick-
on labels in those days. So they ran the typing pool; they ran
the stick-on program along with Sue Bierman who is now on the
planning commission. She was the wife of the professor of
philosophy at the S.F. State College then, Dr. Arthur Bierman.
Jane Morrison and Jack Morrison. Jack Morrison was the
chair of the county committee and Jane worked with KNBR in that
campaign. The late Doris Kahn, who was married to Jacob Kahn, a
welcome physician. She was our only Pacific Heights contact.
That was the 1962 campaign. Karl Kortura and Jean Kortum, Bob
Erickson from Kaiser. He is now probably president or something
of Kaiser.
Morris: Kaiser is a pretty conservative outfit too.
Brown: Yes, but they had some people working for them who were not.
There was a guy named Bill Porter who was a descendant of the
Roger Kent fortune. He was part of our team in the 1962 campaign.
Roger Kent was too. He came to visit with us, an old, revered,
respected man. There was a guy named Hal Dunleavy who was a
political consultant, one of the first political consultants that
anybody knew. He did mostly labor organization.
Morris: Was he one of the early polling people?
Brown: Yes, he was. Dunleavy Polls, you've got it. But Dunleavy was
part of that 1962 campaign. Bill Honig was my driver in the 1962
campaign. The current Bill Honig. His job was to get me up every
day, walk precincts with me and put me to bed at night.
Morris: Was this before he went into education?
Brown: He was thinking about going into education at that time. He was
still a lawyer. Then he went to work for the Brown administration
in their office of planning. He ultimately segued into being an
educator. But this was middle-sixties, early-sixties. You asked
about the notables and the activities I remember.
The campaign headquarters were at 846 Divisadero-- .
Brown: --which was the address of a place called the Playpen. The
Playpen was owned by a guy by the name of Bunny Simon who was
maybe the only black Republican, or one of the few black
Republicans we knew, but he was a great supporter of Willie Brown.
But the campaign was literally run from, and you would finish up
81
in the evening by drinking at the Playpen. We lost that campaign
by fewer than 1,000 votes as you will recall.1
Morris: That was pretty close!
Brown: We were really close. We published our own newspaper. I don't
think we got the county committee endorsement. We got the
Democratic Club endorsements of course. We got the endorsement of
the ILWU and the pension people. And we got the endorsements of
some community activist organizations, particularly the
environmental movement organizations.
Morris: Like the Sierra Club?
Brown: Well, the Sierra Club wasn't endorsing in those days, but whatever
the environmental groups were at that time, we got them. Because
the big issue was, of course, a freeway through Golden Gate Park.
That issue stayed with us for a long time. Through my 1964
campaign, which was how I won it.
We ran a good campaign in 1962, but we didn't do any voter
registration unfortunately. Or we didn't do enough voter
registration. We were not terribly sophisticated. We didn't run
a good get-out-the-vote operation. But the 1962 campaign became
the seed for the 1964 campaign. We campaigned for two years
thereafter.
Morris: You just kept your organization together?
Brown: Kept the remnants of the organization together and became even
better known throughout the district.
Visit to the Tenderloin District, 1992
Morris: Do you want to go down to check in with St. Anthony's?
Brown: We ought to go down and do at least thirty minutes. We break at
twelve because they stop feeding at twelve.
Morris: I don't want to keep you from that commitment.
Brown: Come on. Go down there with me.
'Legislative publications report that the count was Gaffney 10,968
votes and Brown 10,052 votes.
82
Morris: Yes, I would like that. [tape interruption) [Conversation
continues in car on the way to the St. Anthony's Dining Room]
Brown: That's where I live.
Morris: In this tower right on top of the hill?
Brown: Yes, straight ahead. When I first ran for office in 1962, I took
a photograph on that spot before the tower was built.
Morris: Of what San Francisco looked like then?
Brown: Yes. What San Francisco looked like. As a matter of fact, I was
talking to some of the landscape workers, people who were
developing the site, like that site that is being developed there.
They were doing that work on that site. That is now St. Mary's
Cathedral. None of this was here, nothing. All this was housing.
Morris: This whole area was just getting ready to be redeveloped.
Brown: Redeveloped. Correct.
Morris: What did you think at that point? That they were going to move
people out?
Brown: I knew that they were moving people out. But the people wanted to
be moved out. They didn't like those old Victorians. No one at
that time really appreciated what they had. So you lived in an
old house. This was a chance to get some money and go live in a
new house out in Ingleside. You took it.
What did we replace it with? Look at it. Look at that
stuff.
Morris: They don't seem to do justice to the site.
Brown: No way. Not even close.
Morris: Were there any social planners in the design of those buildings?
Brown: No, not at all. They were utility buildings literally designed
primarily pursuant to federal guidelines, strangely enough.
Morris: For what? Temporary wartime housing? Army barracks?
Brown: No, the design is determined by virtue of their lending practices.
Their guaranteed loan practices. They determine what you could
put in there. They wanted it strictly to be, every square inch,
living space. Very little socially useful space. No open space
83
for gardens and yards, things of that nature. That was not big at
all, not demanded. Today you couldn't build structures without
first addressing the amenities.
Morris: I haven't taken the time to go look at the Delancey Project.
Brown: You ought to see it. It's awesome.
Morris: You like it. You think it works?
Brown: Absolutely. Mimi [Silbert] did an incredible job, just one superb
job.
All this is Hastings, that whole block straight ahead. St.
Anthony's is all the way down there. You'll see when we get down
there all those homeless people. It's on Jones Street. This will
be the last shift.
Morris: Every day they have food available?
Brown: Yes. Oh, sure. I think two or three meals a day. Most of these
people have been fed once already.
[Background noise as Brown talks to men in line getting a meal on
a tray. ]
Brown: Do you want to pour?
Morris: Yes, I can do something useful.
Brown: You pour and I'll serve.
[Tape interruption. Resumes outside St. Anthony's]
Brown: This used to be the old IRS building. Some partners and I
converted it to a residence for Hastings students.
Morris: What a good idea. How many kids who go to the law school are from
out of town and need housing?
Brown: About 85 percent. There is a BART station right there, Civic
Center, where they can walk to, three blocks.
When the boat people started coming, the first wave, there
were some immigrants who stayed in the building. There are other
communities in San Francisco where the ones who have been here for
two or three years or five or ten years, where the better
restaurants are, better Thai restaurants, better Vietnamese
restaurants. But the newcomers, the immigrants, stop here.
Morris: Most of the people who come already know somebody here in San
Francisco?
Brown: They have a contact. They may not know them but they know that
there is a center, they know that there is something that gives
them at least transition assistance, off-boat assistance. Very
few come blind. Even though they may have no system of
communication. "Where you all going?" "San Francisco."
You know, I haven't a vote among that crowd at St.
Anthony ' s .
Morris: They don't register or they don't vote?
Brown: They don't have a residence. You can only register at an address.
Morris: Do they use St. Anthony's as a--?
Brown: No. They don't let them do that. From a voter-registration
viewpoint, that would be one of the ideal ways.
[tape interruption]
Brown: When Adolph died he was seventy-six. He died in 1984. Jo must
have been forty at that maybe. She is still under fifty. He left
everything to her and she has not violated it at all. She does
not live like a rich woman. She lives in the same apartment that
they lived in when he was alive. She has not changed her own
style. She doesn't have a limo with an attendant or any of that
kind of stuff. Still shops for herself. Works every day in the
business .
Morris: Nice woman. Comes down to St. Anthony's to--.
Brown: Every week. And on occasions [she] will provide the specialty.
After they are sick and tired of what they'd been feeding them,
she decided to give them chicken and dressing.
Morris: It's pretty much the same thing every week?
Brown: No. They rotate the meals. They have a standard menu, but they
rotate it. They'll have corned beef and they'll have lots and
lots of pasta, lots of meatloaf, lots of turkey, because that's
what they can afford. More turkey than you ever want to dream
about. So Thanksgiving day is ham for them. That's a good deal.
But those homeless people are amazing. They know exactly the four
or five places, and they know what the menu is, or they pass the
word. "Hey, man, they having barbecue chicken today or they
having ribs," then you'll get a run on your place for food.
85
Morris: By and large, they are pretty with it. They are bright-eyed and
know who you are and take an interest in what's going on.
Brown: Oh, yes. They're not whacked-out people. They are people who
genuinely would work if there was in fact a job. You know, your
life can become screwed up overnight. Let's say that you were two
wage earners and you were each earning $50,000-60,000 and you were
living like people who are earning $200,000 because if you earn
$50,000-60,000 a year, you do live at the $200,000 level. You've
got teenage kids, maybe one about to go off to college or went off
to college. You start having a little problem with the kid or
something. Suddenly, the old man loses his job and, in a year,
the house is gone. Now you are renting. The car is gone. The
old man is still looking for work and can't find it. He's forty-
two, forty-four years of age. The family situation starts really
to go sour then because the interpersonal relationships go badly.
Then the mother loses her job.
Then she has to find a job. She has less problems with
dignity than the father, so she takes a minimum-wage job. She
takes a job at $8.00 an hour as a desk clerk at Marriott (and
that's about all they pay). Now, that's not enough to sustain
anybody with anything so what you were renting suddenly goes and
now you are renting something a lot smaller, you're drinking and
you are really going to the tank badly. The wife-abuse process
starts, she ends up losing her job because she can't keep up the
personal appearance that she needs to keep up to be a desk clerk
at a hotel. She can't get to the hotel because it is so distant-
she no longer has a car, can't drive and all that business.
Suddenly there is no shelter. You are in the streets. That's the
life cycle for many of those people.
Morris: Are those the kind of personal stories that you've heard?
Brown: Absolutely. I bet you one out of every two has a similar story to
tell. Four years ago they were working and now have not worked
since.
Morris: Were there people in that same kind of predicament in the sixties?
Brown: No. I do not remember the people who were considered or in need
of assistance being anything other than mental cases or ex-
alcoholics or people who for whatever reasons just absolutely have
chosen not to be a part of any organized living system. They were
bums, real bums. They were there in most cases by choice rather
than circumstance.
Now, in the late eighties and nineties, it's totally
changed. There are people there totally by circumstance,
86
dominated by circumstance. We had a system that administered to
people's needs in those days. We had an outpatient service-
community mental-health programs were funded and they had good
counselors. You just don't have the same now. And you actually
had employment offices that found people jobs. There were want
ads in the paper that represented jobs, not situations in which
one announcement brings 5,000 applicants for ten positions.
87
IX ELECTION TO THE ASSEMBLY, 1964
Observations of Speaker Jesse Unruh
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
We'd just been talking about the 1962 campaign and you said you
kept the organization going?
Absolutely. Kept the organization going with all the people who
burned their bridges with the organized element of this Democratic
party like Unruh; they burned the bridges by virtue of supporting
me against an incumbent, so they were the outs anyway. The outs,
when they know they are totally out, tend to do a good job
organizing themselves for purposes of survival. That is
essentially what we did. We stayed together in the Young
Democrats, we stayed together in CDC, and we continued the
struggle as best we could politically.
Did you make Mr. Gaffney, the incumbent, nervous?
No. He was so old and so indifferent that he was out of contact
totally. There was no structure surrounding his operation. It
had deteriorated to the point where we should have beaten him in
1962.
Right. But Unruh was not aware or didn't care about that seat?
No, you didn't have the same kind of attention given by the
speaker's office to the survivability of individual members,
were pretty much on their own.
They
So he didn't take a look and see that you had run a good campaign
in 1962 and think that you were a good probability?
No, not at all. There was just such a luxury of an excessive
number of Democrats and the power, and he was so singularly
focused on becoming governor that he was almost indifferent to
what happened to individual members of the legislature. He was
88
still dominant in the legislature on the policy side, but that was
all geared for high visibility for gubernatorial purposes.
Morris: Because he had made a big thing about the public accommodations
bill?
Brown: Yes, the Unruh Civil Rights Act.
Morris: Right. But he didn't follow that through by thinking it would be
a good thing to have more minority people in the assembly?
Brown: No, he was far more practical than that. Unruh played the
traditional war-type politics, and loyalty was the most important
of the principles. He was not a hands-on, day-to-day executor of
marketing candidacies. He just didn't do that. That wasn't his
schtick.
Morris: Was he already building and dispensing a campaign fund?
Brown: Totally. That is exactly what he would do. But that was all he
did.
Party Caucus District Services Then and Now
Morris: What you did with the money was your business?
Brown: Correct. He didn't send anybody in, he didn't run a program year
round. He didn't run a maintenance program. He didn't encourage
you to do or monitor your doing x number of newsletters, x number
of community forums or town hall meetings, blind calls on
weekends. He didn't monitor how many times you served at St.
Anthony's, how many times you went to public affairs programs, how
many youth organizations you visited with or resolutions you
passed out, how many parades you rode in. He didn't do any of
that. He didn't monitor any of that.
Morris: And all those things have now been the kind of thing you keep an
eye on?
Brown: For the decade of the eighties, since 1 became speaker, we have a
whole unit of some forty people, professionals, whose job it is to
render services to the majority caucus. The Republicans have a
counterpart called minority services. They do the job. They do
radio feeds they do video conferencing. They do recorded
television programs, they do public service announcements, they do
directories, they do town hall forums. They do small business
89
conferences. They do women conferences. They do child abuse
conferences. They do health promotions. They do home owners
assistance programs. They do some of everything. Every month, we
try to have in every district, particularly in those of members
whom we think are at risk, some activities addressed to the
constituencies .
At one time, we had newsletter capacity so we would allow
you to send four newsletters or five newsletters in your two-year
cycle so every three months you could send a newsletter to every
voter; every registered voter in your district would get a
newsletter from you.
Morris: They are a fine art form,
them in the library.
I find them very useful and we keep
Brown: We've perfected that. [Proposition] 140 wiped out newsletters.
Defending Golden Gate Park; Freeway Issues
Morris :
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
So what do you think made the difference in 1964? Your two years
of building your contacts with the constituencies?
Yes.
He [Gaffney?] was
Morris :
Were there any things different?
One great issue. The freeway through the park,
for it and we were against it.
This was through Golden Gate Park?
Correct .
Who had proposed that?
Caltrans. They wanted the Central freeway [to tie in to the
Golden Gate Bridge?]. If you've noticed the stubs on all of our
freeway off ramps in and about San Francisco, that freeway was
planning to go someplace. We stopped them.
What was the coalition? Were people coming to you in that two-
year period saying there is a freeway issue?
90
Brown: I don't actually remember how we wandered into it but what we did
is I established a collection of advisers in different subject
matter areas—professionals, planners, landscape people, housing
people. No one had ever thought to utilize the talent of
unelected types. They all volunteered.
Morris: Professional technicians?
Brown: Correct. They would come together and would chat with you and
give you an idea about a program. One of the issues in the
program was, of course, the freeway.
Morris: By then, there was already the Embarcadero Freeway, wasn't there?
Had there been a debate about whether that should have been built?
Brown: Yes, but it was not as intensive as it came to be with going
through Golden Gate Park. Golden Gate Park was just totally and
completely unacceptable. There is no way anybody in his right
mind would have proposed running a freeway through that beautiful
place.
Morris: Would it be elevated to go over the park?
Brown: We didn't let them get that far.
Morris: Do you remember how you first heard that this was on the Caltrans
agenda?
Brown: I think Sue Bierman may have called it to my attention. All I can
remember is that I announced my campaign in front of the biggest
tree in the Panhandle; I said that tree would go with the park. 1
don't even remember if that was the route but we charged it with
being the route.
Morris: Did the Caltrans people come in and say, "That's not what we had
in mind?"
Brown: No, they were pretty faceless. And we stopped them cold, just as
they were forced to tear down the Embarcadero, just as they are
now forced to tear down the Central Freeway which is right here in
our own [Western Addition] community. They really are a faceless
group of bureaucrats that did not want to fight anywhere when
anyone has opposed their location of a freeway. They lost the
Cypress thing badly.1
'Due to neighborhood protests, the elevated Embarcadero and Central
freeways in San Francisco and Cypress Freeway in Oakland were dismantled in
1991 and 1992 instead of rebuilt after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
91
Morris: On their plans to reroute it?
Brown: Yes, they wanted to decide which way it would go. First they
wanted, obviously, to rebuild in the same roadway that they
already had. But the community didn't want them to do that and
they lost that fight. They are just so illogical and so without
any clout and without any equity from anybody, and so indifferent,
usually, in their initial planning, to the community's interest.
Ordinarily what they ought to do is say, "We need to move
traffic through your community. We are going to conduct a group
of community forums and let you tell us what you want us to do and
then we are going to put the planners to work." That isn't what
they do. They do it just the opposite way. They decide in secret
what they want to do and then they publish their plan. Then they
are bullheaded enough to go ahead and build anyway, to the extent
that they can, on the theory that if they stop it right here--.
Morris: You won't make them quit?
Brown: Yes, you'll let them go all the way. They end up building just
stumps. There are enough stumps around in our town to know that
they can't build anywhere.
Morris: Does that have to do with the fact that they are under the Highway
Commission?
Brown: They are an independent entity. They don't report. Only the
commission reports to the governor. They have their own special
funding source, i.e., the gas tax. If they had to come through
the legislature as almost every other agency has to do, including
the University of California to a limited extent, they would be a
bit more responsive and a bit more sensitive to constituent needs
and constituent demands.
Morris: Was that anything that you and John and Phil Burton discussed in
the process of mapping a campaign against the freeway?
Brown: No. It wasn't really mapped in that fashion. It was almost
helter-skelter. We said we were going to oppose it and then what
we discussed were techniques by which to oppose it. What did we
do? Do we do a march this way? Do we do a rally in the park with
thousands of people saying "Save the trees." Do we go to the next
Caltrans hearing and dominate the speakers at the hearing?
Morris: Did you do all of them?
Brown: We did everything. So we spent time programming that.
92
Morris: Did John Burton use the same issue in his campaign?
Brown: No. He didn't have to. John was running for the seat that Phil
had abandoned to run for Congress. That seat was inheritable.
Morris: So all he had to do was go and--.
Brown: And announce he was a Burton. And he won by 70 percent.
Party Appointments; Slate Cards
Morris: Did Phil have enough time while he was off there in Congress to do
some strategizing?
Brown: Absolutely. Phil was a hands-on person. Every weekend when he
came home, he dominated our schedules and as he was in Washington
he would call back regularly, even down to the extent of wanting
to name whom we could put on the Democratic State Central
Committee. We would have to pool a lot of resources so that we
could get the maximum amount of coverage for what we believed to
be the people we needed to reward and who were part of our
coalition. We wanted total representation. The way you did that
was that three of us had appointments. We each had five (in this
case Moscone was in the pot with us because he had been the
nominee for the state assembly) and so we had enough appointments,
then maybe twenty, and every once in a while, Phil could borrow
one from Stanley Mosk or somebody who had one statewide. He
convinced them that they needed to appoint x and it would be the
most high-profile Democrat that we needed to get appointed.
Like an Adolph Schuman we would need to appoint to the state
central committee. We could get a person like Stanley Mosk to
appoint Adolph. Adolph knows we got him the appointment but that
reduced the call upon our pool by one so that we could give our
appointment to a lesser-profile Democrat whom Stanley Mosk would
never touch. So those are the kind of decisions we made by virtue
of pooling.
Morris: Am I right that there is more prestige in an appointment by
somebody at Stanley Mosk's level? He was then attorney general,
am I right?
Brown: Yes.
Morris: That is a better appointment than an appointment from an
assemblyman?
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Brown: No, the appointments are the same, but for Stanley Mosk's purposes
it is a better appointment.
Morris: For him to make more high profile--.
Brown: Correct. And people who may be great contributors to him, than to
appoint some senior citizen from the Korean Center, for example,
who is less well known.
#1
Morris: --delicate negotiations as to whom do you need to appoint.
Brown: Very [delicate]. That's why Phil was always in charge of the
pool.
Morris: Right. So if there were four of you, two Burtons, a Moscone and a
Brown, that gave you twenty appointees?
Brown: That would give us twenty appointees.
Morris: Could you keep everybody happy?
Brown: Oh, yes, we would come close to keeping everybody happy because
we'd not only hook one from Stanley Mosk, we may borrow one from
our more conservative types. Phil was always into, "I'll put you
on the slate card if you'll do thus and so," so we would
occasionally get one or two from some more conservatives.
Morris: How widely did that slate card go? It sounds as if it wasn't just
San Francisco candidates.
Brown: Yes, it was. It was San Francisco County only. That was our only
area of jurisdiction. We would do some in Chinese, so it was
geared to the Asian community. It was geared to the black
community, it was geared to the Hispanic community, it was geared
to senior citizens and it was geared to families of organized
labor and what we could loosely identify as the liberal left,
social activists, environmentalist groups--.
Morris: That's quite a coalition.
Brown: Yes. It was not always a majority. It eventually became a
majority but it was not always a majority. [Phone interruption]
94
Finances; Polling
Morris: So did John have time to come and help in your campaign or were
you active in his campaign?
Brown: No, he had time to help in mine. His was not much of a campaign.
His was a paper campaign. All the personnel, all the volunteers,
including his wife, were over in my campaign, working full-time in
my campaign.
Morris: Really? And you did do voter registration and get out the vote?
Brown: We did voter registration. The next time around we did voter
registration. We went door to door and we did card tables in
front of the supermarkets and on the streets.
Morris: Did it cost more than the $7,500 of the 1962 campaign?
Brown: No, that was the 1964 campaign. I didn't have any money in the
1962 campaign.
Morris: Really?
Brown: None. This was the 1964 campaign where the $7,500 was borrowed.
Morris: And you did it on $7,500?
Brown: No, it cost more than $7,500. We raised a little money. There
were all kinds of fundraisers given on our behalf. The Morrisons
gave a $25-a-head dinner at their home. We gave a $25-a-head
dinner at my home. We took all the furniture out of the house and
we used all four of the floors and put card tables in. We all
cooked a dinner; it was a potluck dinner.
Morris: Oh, great.
Brown: It was that kind of a thing. People would give a ten-dollar event
at their home. Friends in Los Angeles gave a $25-a-head outdoor
party. People I had gone to school with. So we raised money from
other sources as well.
Morris: You said you had Mr. Dunleavy in your campaign. Did he do some
polling for you?
Brown: He did polling full-time.
Morris: What kind of polling do you do in an assembly district?
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Brown: We did it more to determine what issue would sell. We knew that I
had almost as much name recognition as the incumbent. But we knew
the word incumbent had more name recognition than I had. If your
name was Incumbent Brown, you win. Incumbent was the key word in
this district. So we had to try and figure out what kinds of
things people would want done. We were at that level of
addressing the voters and that's what we did.
The freeway was the biggest issue.
Morris: That came through in the polling too.
Brown: Absolutely.
Morris: What about negative aspects about Mr. Gaffney?
Brown: No. We wouldn't do any of that. We didn't even test it.
Morris: Really?
Brown: No, because negative campaigning wasn't part of what anybody had
ever heard about. You really sold yourself. In the selling of
yourself, you said, "He disagrees with me on the issues," but you
didn't attack him on the basis of his age. You didn't attack him
on the basis of his drinking habits. There was none of that.
Nobody attacked any politician for that.
Morris: Anything besides the freeway that really stuck out as an issue?
Brown: Nothing else. Absolutely nothing.
Auto Row and Free Speech Demonstrations
Morris: What about the civil rights movement?
Brown: But there was no difference in the views on that issue. All San
Franciscans were pretty much locked into that, although we were
conducting in the middle of my campaign the auto row
demonstrations and the hotel demonstrations to get black folk
working on auto row and get black people jobs in the hotels. We
had those massive demonstrations. I was a lawyer for those 775
students or so who got arrested. I recruited the legal teams that
tried those cases. They were tried in lots of ten or twenty
persons per lot.
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Morris: Was that the first time, or one of the first times, that that kind
of mass trial, or group trial, was used?
Brown: Yes. The only other time that I recall it being used was when
they had the city hall demonstrations when the House Un-American
Activities Committee met in San Francisco.
Morris: How does that strike an attorney?
Brown: We always consider it that you're unable to get a fair trial as an
individual because the conduct that is being described can be
absolutely considered outrageous, but you may not have been in it
except as a passive participant and what they are describing is a
group conduct and not your individual conduct. If they were
forced to identify you as having thrown the chair or the newsrack
that broke the window, they couldn't do that. They couldn't
identify who did it. So they would try you as a crowd.
Morris: What can you do as an attorney?
Brown: Well, you use the same rules of evidence and the same techniques
that you employ in other situations. And you try to force them
into having to identify your client. That's why they use mass
photographs and they show you were in the crowd.
Morris: But those courtroom techniques were just being developed at that
period?
Brown: Correct. Many of my campaign workers who had worked for me on
election day, were the people whom we were representing, the
students whom we were representing. Those trials were going on
simultaneously.
Morris: How many of them had also been involved in the HUAC demonstration?
Brown: I have no idea but I assume some because it was just four years
before.
Morris: Had those demonstrations made a major impression on you?
Brown: Oh, yes. Being washed down the steps at the city hall was
probably the last time city hall was cleaned [laughter]. But,
yes, it did make an impression. Some of the lawyers from those
cases, particularly Charlie Garry, tried two sets of cases for me.
Jack Berman tried two sets of cases for me. Those two were
lawyers in the HUAC trials.
Morris: Did you feel that the trials of the auto row demonstrators and the
hotel demonstrators--? Did you end up getting them dismissed?
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Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
No, no. Some of those kids spent time in jail. Some received
probation; some paid modest fines. Very few were acquitted. Some
were acquitted but very few. You really had to be in a good
courtroom to get acquitted. We tried them all by jury.
By different judges?
Different judges, different lawyers, and different courtrooms. On
any given day, we would have ten cases going. All the courts
would be taken up. We refused to waive time because you have to
be tried. It forced them to try.
Good heavens. So you were kind of stage-managing all this.
Exactly.
How did you decide which group of people, or did the judge decide
which group of people were going to be tried together?
They did it alphabetically. They just started at the top of the
list and the first ten people, fifteen people, whatever the
numbers are, were tried together.
That must have been quite something to do.
Oh, yes.
My question was what happened to your law practice while you were
campaigning but it sounds as if your law practice was also gc
full speed ahead.
going
Morris:
Right after that, in October, came the Cal Free Speech
demonstration. So I went from the Auto Row/Sheraton Palace sit-in
demonstrations in San Francisco right into the demonstrations at
the University of California.
You were over there as a fellow protester or were you there as an
attorney for the protesters?
No, I got invited over there to give them credibility since they
needed now people with titles and that kind of stuff, so I was
invited over to speak and be an inspirational part of the Free
Speech Movement and all that business.
What did you think? How did the free speech demonstrations
compare with auto row?
98
Brown: They were far more intense. They were far less geared to
relieving general social misery than they were to satisfying
student needs and student desires and student ambition.
Morris: Interesting. More political rather than practical?
Brown: Correct.
Morris: Again from a legal point of view, how did you feel the university
and the county handled them?
Brown: I don't think they had any choice. Once these demonstrations get
to the level where they are a significant disturbance, I think you
have to employ the civil obedience rules, not in a harsh and
hostile fashion and not where you hopefully become the object.
Rather than the initial issue the students were protesting, the
issue switched to the law enforcement authorities who are simply
trying to do their jobs. But I do think for peace and order, you
have to obey the rules.
Morris: Did you end up defending some of those folks?
Brown: No, I did not participate in the defense of any of those kids.
Morris: You just came and made the speeches.
Brown: Made the speeches and enjoyed the ambience.
Morris: Yes, it was pretty colorful.
Brown: Yes, it was awesome.
99
X FRESHMAN LEGISLATOR OF THE YEAR, 1965
Brown's Issue Agenda
Morris: What were you doing to prepare for being an assemblyman? That was
going to be a part-time job still.
Brown: Nothing. I didn't do anything to prepare. Nothing.
Morris: You just waited to be sworn in.
Brown: Right.
Morris: After you were elected and had demonstrated your political skill,
did Unruh or any of his people want to meet with you and talk
about you coming in as a freshman assemblyman?
Brown: No, there were one or two people who came in from the Democratic
Caucus. But I think they were strictly volunteers. They clearly
had no clout, no contact, and minor ability, I must say.
Morris: What did the caucus staff consist of in those days?
Brown: A secretary and an aide.
Morris: To deal with all the Democratic assemblymen?
Brown: Right.
Morris: So it was more on paper at that time.
Brown: Totally. They had no real interest in what you did. You used
your own staff for whatever purposes you wanted to use your staff.
But nobody bothered to check on you.
Morris: So now that you were elected, did you have some things that you
wanted to accomplish?
100
Brown: Oh, yes. I introduced a whole series of bills that we had talked
about from my task force, the task forces that I had established,
and from our own personal experiences. And from recommendations
provided us by people who were running nonprofits and other kinds
of agencies with whom we were associated.
Morris: Oh really? Like what?
Brown: Well, there were people who came to us about curbing Caltrans,
trying to block Caltrans from holding property.
Morris: Keeping the freeway issue going.
Brown: Yes, holding on to property. Caltrans would go acquire property
without getting any authority to do it and any agreement from the
local agency. Then once they had acquired the property in a
certain corridor, they would then come back to the local agencies
and say, "We already own the property." So Caltrans was a big-
time landlord.
Then there was the question of what happens to the property
once they've taken it and if we stop them from building the
freeway, to whom are they allowed to sell their property. Should
it be returned to the people who owned it or should it be kept in
the public arena. We, of course, wanted to keep it in the public
arena.
We also wanted to regulate auto insurance companies from
arbitrary cancellation of people driving automobiles.
Morris: Was that a big issue in the sixties?
Brown: A major issue, because if you had an accident, your policy was
cancelled automatically. You had no rights, no hearings, no
nothing. There was no fair play by insurance companies. So we
had that experience and so we addressed that issue in that
fashion.
We knew about child care from the child care advocates. We
put in legislation to create more child care slots.
Morris: At that point, there were repeated efforts to discontinue the
state support of child care.
Brown: That's right. Well, we carried that legislation to keep it going.
We carried an increase in the minimum-wage law. We carried
legislation for public employees to collectively bargain and
organize. They didn't have that option then. So we had an
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agenda,
agenda.
It was basically a liberal-left agenda, but we had an
Voting Against Unruh
Morris: How much contact did you have with Mr. Unruh?
Brown: The first vote I ever cast was against Unruh. The first day, the
very first day.
Morris: Would this be in December?
Brown: No, this was January. In those days you were sworn in in January.
The constitution was changed in, I don't know, 1966, when they
changed when you were coming back to work. But it was January
when you would come to work.
Morris: Why did you decide not to support him for speaker?
Brown: He had supported my opponent.
Morris: He had continued to support Gaffney; he didn't just stay out of
it?
Brown: In 196A, he financed the Gaffney campaign.
Morris: Did he know that you were going to oppose him?
Brown: No. I didn't know I was going to oppose him. It was not planned.
We hadn't even thought about it. We didn't even understand
frankly what we were doing. I just reacted to Unruh 's name and I
knew I couldn't vote for him. When I did that Burton, who thought
I had a game plan, just blindly followed. Then there was a third
guy named [William F.] Stanton who absolutely hated Unruh and who
just assumed that we really had something going, so when they got
to his name (you do it alphabetically, so Brown was before
Burton), he joined us. So at the end of the roll call, Unruh had
all the votes except our three and the presiding officer asked if
there was anybody who wanted to change their votes.
By now I realized that I was getting a lot of attention by
having apparently cast a vote against Jesse Unruh.
Morris: This was in the Democratic caucus?
Brown: No, this was on the floor.
102
Morris: This was on the floor. I see. There wasn't a caucus before?
Brown: No, you didn't do any caucusing in those days.
Morris: It was just straight up or down?
Brown: Right. They had maybe two caucuses the whole time Unruh was
speaker when I was there. At the most. He just gave orders, or
his staff passed the order, and you did what you were told. Those
of you who followed Unruh. Those of us who were Pat Brown's
people followed Pat Brown's leadership.
Morris: Did you make that distinction? That you were a Pat Brown person
rather than a--?
Brown: Quickly. Pat Brown was on the liberal side and Unruh was a
conservative, so it was an easy number.
Morris: Did Pat have much time to talk to--?
Brown: No, no. He didn't talk to us at all, not at all. But his public
pronouncements and his programs were automatically opposed by
Unruh because Unruh wanted to run against him for governor, if you
remember.
Morris: So that Unruh was already beginning to use a negative politics.
Brown: Negative attacks and hits. Yes.
Morris: So what happens when you are a brand-new freshman and you oppose
the incumbent speaker who is swept in as speaker again? Do you
get punished?
Brown: You get the worst committee assignments, the ones nobody else
wants. And you get the worst physical accommodations on the
floor, as well as office space. And you get the worst parking
stall. That's all they can do to you.
Morris: 1 see. What's the worst seat on the assembly floor?
Brown: They put me with a racist. Ike [Carl F.] Britschgi. I
straightened him out though.
Morris: How did you do that?
Brown: I just began to expose him to the real world of who blacks are.
He had never met a black as such. He was a very conservative
Republican from San Mateo County whom Unruh hated, so Unruh put us
together. He did the same thing in my office space; he put me in
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Morris :
Brown:
an office with a very conservative Democrat who didn't have
anything going. What he did was he created the opportunity for
the greatest friendship until this day, a fellow named Jack
Fenton.
Because you felt mutually on Unruh's bad list?
He defeated one of Unruh's incumbents too. He ran against a
Hispanic named Johnny Marino who constantly was getting drunk and
didn't get any notoriety until he got drunk outside of his own
county. He ran into a couple of cars in Marin County and got
busted for drunk driving. When the cops arrested him, he informed
them of who he was and whom he knew and what he would do to them
if they did anything to him. As a result of that, Fenton was able
to beat him in a Hispanic district. And that was an Unruh person.
So Unruh didn't like either one of us.
Fellow Freshmen; Bob Moretti's Ambitions
Morris: In addition to you, that freshman class was John Burton and Jack
Fenton, Craig Biddle, Eugene Chappie, Gordon Duffie, Newton
Russell, Ray Johnson--.
Brown: Wayne Shumaker.
Morris: Wayne Shumaker, okay. And Bob Moretti.
Brown: Correct. Ten persons, five Dems, five Reps [pronounced "Reaps"].
Morris: Yes. So that you didn't change the balance in the legislature?
Brown: Didn't come even close because just two years before there had
been a huge class of freshman. There must have been forty
freshman in the class before us, because of reapportionment .
Morris: So that there weren't that many old guard people to challenge
Unruh, were there?
Brown: No, none. Nobody ever challenged Unruh.
Morris: And nobody else even raised their head, the Republicans didn't
even--?
Brown: No. The Republicans were not an organized group as such. There
were maybe two, three conservative Republicans at the most and
they were not organized into a clique as they are today. You were
104
seated on the floor, Democrats and Republicans with each other,
and it was more based on friendship and locations from which you
were elected than it was on partisan politics.
Morris: Did the freshman function as a unit at all?
Brown: Yes, we met maybe once or twice and then we got double-crossed by
Biddle on a vote and I don't think we ever met again after that.
Morris: Really. What was the vote?
Brown: I don't know. Just some simple vote. Biddle was supposed to vote
with us. As a matter of fact, I think he was supposed to second
the motion, and he didn't and not to this day have we forgiven
him.
Morris: So that it diluted the freshman power as a result.
Brown: As a unit, yes. That's really where we started a friendship with
Moretti. Moretti was Unruh's chosen pet. He had elected Moretti,
Moretti had worked for him before, he gave Moretti all the best
assignments and the best office accommodations, put him on ways
and means, all that kind of stuff, as a freshman. Moretti
recognized that his future was not with Unruh; his future was with
the young guys who were starting out with him. Because he wanted
to be speaker and then governor. He had that dream.
Morris: Starting and coming in in 1965?
Brown: Absolutely. He had that dream. The rest of us were just glad to
be there. But Moretti had an agenda. He started lining up
support for his agenda, i.e., people like Willie Brown. He
recognized right off that those were great friendships, so he
grabbed on to Burton and Brown overnight.
Morris: It was clear to everybody else that you and Burton already had
worked together a lot?
Brown: Totally. Everybody just conceded that we were Phil Burton's kids.
Morris: Was that a good thing to be or was that a liability?
Brown: No, that was a good thing to be because it meant that we had a
heavyweight brother at home that if you messed with us--.
Morris: He would come in and lean on you.
Brown: Right.
105
Morris: And those were the terms in which it was done?
Brown: That's the way they perceived it. Then we considered ourselves
fairly smart. We read everything and understood most of it and
were totally nervy and could vote anyway we wanted to vote. So we
began to give people votes that they thought they would never get
from us. They thought they would only get real radical flaming
left-wing pinko stuff. They put Burton on the agriculture
committee. He became the best vote to subsidize the dairies of
the state.
Morris: Really?
Brown: Yes. The best vote.
Morris: They were having a big flap about marketing.
Brown: Marketing and milk prices, and Burton became their best ally. And
he made it respectable for the other liberals to be a part of
that. To this date, the ag committee keeps asking, "Can we have
Burton back?" [laughter]
Morris: Is he interested?
Brown: No.
Republicans with Social Conscience
Morris: He's got other fish to fry. That's wonderful. There was a group
of Republicans then who thought of themselves as young Turks--
[John] Veneman and [William] Bagley and those guys.
Brown: Veneman, Bagley, [Huston] Fluornoy, [Robert] Monagan, to a lesser
extent, Pete Wilson. Who else was a part of that crowd?
Ashcraft. Hale Ashcraft. Frank Murphy. One or two others. I
just can't think who they are. They were the bright Republicans.
They were not the old war-horse Republicans. They were aggressive
Republicans. They were the true conservatives. Conservatives
now, the word means more religious right. Conservatives in those
days meant people who really had great respect for the law, great
respect for the rules and the regulations and played by that. And
they had a social conscience. They voted for automatic COLAs
(Cost of Living Adjustments); they voted for senior citizens
programs; they voted for a tax system that was progressive. So
you could not say they were conservative by today's standards.
They would have been liberals by today's standards. But they were
106
the brains of the Republican operation. Unruh owned the
Republican operation, lock, stock and barrel.
Morris: How did he do that?
Brown: Just by virtue of dispensing campaign contributions, by virtue of
tight controls on staff and perks and the legislative level. It
was a reward for people who cooperated, and you would punish
people who didn't. There was no criticism of his managing the
system that way. The press did not take him on at all. They just
didn't in those days.
Morris: And the Republican leadership didn't take him on?
Brown: They couldn't. They were inept. And things were a bit more
dignified in those days. The debates were really great debates.
Morris: And the governor didn't take him on?
Brown: Yes. He and Pat Brown were at each other's throats full-time.
Morris: By 1965 and 1966, weren't there a couple a celebrated money bills
that Pat Brown's people just desperately wanted to fund the state
operations, and the mythology is that Unruh did not want them
passed because they were the governor's bills?
Brown: I don't remember specifically of those bills. But Unruh 's entire
agenda was never to move anything that Pat Brown would get credit
for.
Morris: Did that make it difficult to be an assemblyman trying to get some
specific legislation passed?
Brown: Not really.
107
XI LEARNING FROM PHIL BURTON AND JESSE UNRUH
New Democratic Talent in 1966; Full-time Legislature
Morris: Did you join forces at all with the Republican young Turks?
Brown: No, because by 1968, Unruh had become conscious of the value of
friendship with Burton and Brown, in part because Moretti had so
interpreted for him, in part because he was handicapped by the
quality of the people with whom he was associated. The more
conservative Democrats were not distinguishable from the non-
performing Republicans. The newcomer Democrats were really the
bloods because with 1966, [John] Vasconcellos was elected, [David]
Roberti was elected. There was a whole new collection of quality
Democrats who got elected. They were more like the Browns of the
world.
Morris: In 1966 you also lost a bunch of people who went over to the
senate.
Brown: You did, and that was all Unruh 's old group. That was part of
Unruh 's old group that moved over to the senate. We had people
who came in like Wally Karabian. We had a whole collection of
really talented new Democrats in 1966.
Morris: That's interesting. Where did they all come from?
Brown: Reapportionment. Baker v. Carr was decided by the Supreme Court
in 1965. The first elections conducted under the requirement for
one person, one vote, was 1966. So it was a mid-decade
reapportionment that had to be put in place. That was put in
place and accepted and districts were made. The most radical
change was that senate districts had to be equal population as
well, which--.
108
Brown: --we shifted from northern California to southern California
because in northern California, they had been designated by
counties and people represented territory rather than people. But
the state senator from Los Angeles County represented as many
people in his single senate district as did fifteen other state
senators combined. So when they went to one person, one vote,
almost twelve districts showed up in Los Angeles County. Twelve
senate districts ended up being in Los Angeles, or some other
similar figure. That meant obviously that many members of the
assembly had a chance to run for the state senate, and they did.
Morris: Onward and upward.
Brown: Onward and upward, thereby making districts available for people
to run for the state assembly. So you had people like Yvonne
Burke getting elected in 1966. You had Bill Greene getting
elected in 1966. You had John Miller getting elected in 1966.
You had David Roberti, you had John Vasconcellos , you had Walt
Karabian. Who else got elected in 1966? Ken Meade out of
Alameda. You just had a whole collection of fabulous people.
Morris: It's the quality of them that I'm interested in.
Brown: They were all great.
Morris: Because it sounds as if you didn't have a great opinion of a lot
of the assemblymen that were there when you arrived.
Brown: I had a great opinion of the Ed Elliotts, the Tom Carrolls, the
Alan Pattees, the Charlie Chappells, the Don Aliens. But they had
all been there for twenty or more years and they were not really
connected to things like the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley or
to the black power movement on the various campuses, to the
[Black] Panthers and organizations of that nature. They did not
seem conversant with the change in the population of California
that was taking place on a daily basis, the diversity of that.
So you had old-line politicians doing old-line kinds of
things in a new world. So when reapportionment came along and
sent all those persons over to the state senate, the new crop of
legislators was just absolutely fabulous. Simultaneously with
that the salary went from $6,000 a year to $16,000 a year based on
constitution amendments also passed in 1966; Proposition A and
then 1A. They had been co-chaired by [Pat] Brown and [Ronald]
Reagan, who were running against each other at that time. So
there was just a whole new generation of politicians to come
aboard, many of whom are still holding significant positions now
in the legislature.
109
Black Candidates; Attorneys as Legislators
Morris: You mentioned Yvonne Burke, Bill Greene and John Miller. Was
there a concerted effort statewide to look for and encourage black
candidates?
Brown: Not really. No one was a sensitive to that except some of us in
the black community.
Morris: I was wondering if you particularly had been interested in that.
Brown: Yes. We had a Black Caucus and when Merv [Mervyn Dymally] was
moving up to the senate (he went to the senate in 1966), he
reached back for and gave his slot to Bill Greene. Byron Rumford
sought the senate seat in Alameda County. He lost that senate
seat but in the process John Miller emerged as the new assemblyman
in what had been Byron Rumford 's seat. That is the process.
Unruh supported a young black man named Leon Ralph for a seat that
was being abandoned by a black man named Douglas Farrell, a
minister in southern California. But that was a black seat for a
black seat. That was not expansion of the number.
Morris: So it was more a matter that the assembly became a more appealing
place career-wise, with full-time--.
Brown: Yes, because you had talented people on the Democratic side and
talented people on the Republican side.
Morris: So that people with more ability came out to run for--.
Brown: Had sought public office and won. The legislature was made up of
more lawyers than ever before. I think there were thirty-one
lawyers out of the eighty in our house. Thirty-one of them were
lawyers .
Morris: Some people say that that has now become a problem.
Brown: Well, I think lawyers can still get elected easier than most other
people because they are already experienced at public speaking;
they already have the ability to quickly synthesize the large
volume of information and make some sense out of it, sometimes in
relatively simple terms, which is the way in which you have to
address voters. They are usually in need of public exposure for
their business purposes so they tend to invest a little bit more
effort in it. In any community in which they have been a part,
they usually have developed some followership because they are
lawyers for public organizational purposes, volunteer public
110
organizational purposes. They always tapped a lawyer to do the
work.
Morris: You say followership. They connected themselves with a leading
figure in the community?
Brown: No, no, no. They have developed people who are connecting
themselves with them, people who are following them.
Morris: Are there people in San Francisco, say, as well as statewide who
are looking for able young people to encourage to become
interested in public service?
Brown: I would say almost none, except maybe the colleges and
universities that have those programs and are doing the intern
stuff. Beyond that, there are very few. Coro Foundation, maybe.
Junior Achievement, they'll go through that. That's not really
what you're talking about, I don't think.
Morris: No, I'm talking about officeholders and party leaders.
Brown: No, very few of them are looking around to build a generation of
people to perform the task of public service.
Burton's Political Skills
Morris: Did you have a sense that Phil Burton was kind of keeping an eye
on you and his brother and some of these others?
Brown: Absolutely. It was not "kind of." He was full time devoted to
that. He was always looking for the next open slot so that we
could put somebody in it. Or he was looking for the person who
might eventually replace me or the person who might eventually
replace his brother. He really had a sense of purpose when it
came to trying to perpetuate the dynasty so to speak.
Morris: What did he do about human ego--?
Brown: He ran roughshod over it. Ego could not play a role in Phil's
life. He would not let your anger and your personal displeasure
with something you're not qualified to do cease the desire not to
have you do it and have someone else do it. He wouldn't let your
ego screw up the operation.
Morris: Really. What about his ego?
Ill
Brown: He maintained he didn't have an ego. [laughter] Which is the
ultimate in ego.
Morris: That's true. Did he insist that you do things that were really
against your personal principles?
Brown: No, he would argue it through and make you feel like an idiot if
you really had no real basis for the argument. But he was smart
enough to yield if you made a good case.
Morris: That's interesting. He would find somebody to do the task that he
thought needed doing.
Brown: He always had a backup name. You knew that when he was chatting
with you about it, there was somebody else he had in mind too.
You just happened to be first.
Morris: That's an interesting theory. So you always have somebody else to
put into the game if somebody gets--.
Brown: It's not ideal, but we go with it.
Morris: Is the sports analogy a legitimate analogy, since he played a lot
of basketball as a boy?
Brown: Yes, and college.
Morris: People use sports terms a lot and I always wondered whether sports
applies to politics or whether--?
Brown: Very much so. You always have to field a full team. You ought to
put your best team on the field. You should never have somebody
trying to be chairman of the Ways and Means [Committee] who can't
read or write. That's a mistake for your team. You don't succeed
ultimately in doing what you need to do.
Morris: You developed the sense working with Phil that this was the way
things are run?
Brown: Absolutely. I am not as tough as Phil was. He would not let
people persuade him if in fact he wasn't convinced. I sometimes
will yield. Even though I'm personally not convinced you ought to
do it. An example is Pete Wilson's EPA [Environmental Protection
Agency] last July [1991]. We allowed him to create an EPA Agency
by executive order and we could have dumped it. The Republicans
wanted to dump it but I couldn't intellectually come to the
conclusion. [Phone interruption]
112
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Maybe we could round this out with how Burton and Unruh contrasted
in the ways that they looked at the political scene and what ought
to be done in California.
Burton's entire agenda was to elect public policy makers who would
address the needs of people. Unruh1 s agenda was to elect policy
makers who would follow Unruh1 s lead and assist Unruh in his
pursuits of public policy regardless of what they may be.
Did they differ in the goals of what the public policies should
be?
Absolutely. Unruh was comfortable making some accommodations to
the business community. Burton wouldn't stay in the room with
anybody from the business community. Burton was comfortable being
the handmaiden and the tool of organized labor. Unruh was many
times the enemy of organized labor.
Unruh 's Weaknesses
Morris: Were there useful lessons to be learned from Jesse Unruh?
Brown: Yes. As a matter of fact, the speakership that I won was crafted
at the knees of Jesse Unruh. The maintenance of that speakership
in many ways reflects some of Unruh 's techniques, particularly the
ability to raise the money.
Morris: Phil Burton was not comfortable with the business community?
Brown: He didn't like them. It wasn't a matter of being comfortable. He
did not like them. He just figured that they were exploiters and
mean people and evil people and stupid people and he treated them
that way.
Morris: Even when he needed to tap somebody or when he was out looking for
campaign money?
Brown: He didn't tap them. They either gave or he didn't give a damn.
He was not a fundraiser.
Morris: That's interesting. How did he achieve all he did policy-wise
without a source of funding?
Brown: All organized labor money. He had a source of funding. All
organized labor money. He totally controlled national labor
political money. In those days, you could use labor money, before
113
the federal election law changed. Burton used it just as
effectively as Unruh used money from the other side, plus Burton
was so much smarter politically at electing people than anybody
else. He knew every district in this country almost as well as he
knew his own.
Morris: Nationally as well as here?
Brown: Nationally. Absolutely. That's all he was interested in.
Morris: But Burton had gone to Washington by the time you got to
Sacramento. What about how he and Unruh got along in the
legislature while they were here?
Brown: We brokered the two. Burton and Brown. John and Willie brokered
the relationship between Phil and Jesse.
Morris: Even when he was in Washington.
Brown: Correct.
Morris: They continued to have to negotiate with each other?
Brown: Occasionally. But by 1970, when the reapportionment process
started again, Unruh was already out. He didn't run for
reelection in 1970; he ran for the governorship and lost. So in
1971, when the reapportionraent came, he wasn't here. Moretti--.
Did you sense that he was not going to make it in the governor's
race?
Absolutely.
Because of the strength of then-Governor Reagan?
No, because of the weakness of Unruh with Democrats. There were
Democrats who sat on their hands because Unruh had been mean to
Pat. Unruh came closer than anybody in the history of Reagan of
ever beating him. Half a million votes was all he lost to Reagan
by.
Morris: Would money have made the difference?
Brown: No, it wasn't money. It was the indifference of the Democrats.
They never forgave Unruh, even in his death. They believe that
Unruh defeated Pat Brown. They believed that the kind of
obstacles that he established in the legislature, plus his
indifference to Brown's candidacy in 1966, the combination of the
two defeated Pat Brown.
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
114
Morris;
Brown:
Do you think that is a reasonable assessment?
is true?
Would you say that
In part, but I think the defeat of Pat Brown was rooted more in
the misunderstanding of Reagan and the quality of his candidacy.
We just flat out missed it. We misread him. We didn't take him
seriously. We absolutely thought George Christopher was going to
be the nominee. So we spent our time trying to keep Christopher
from getting the nomination in the primary. He didn't get the
nomination in the primary, and we thought this grade B actor who
didn't have a clue about government and was relatively empty-
headed, at least he demonstrated empty-headedness , we thought we
could take him.
Some Reagan and Brown Technical Experts
Morris: Did you have any knowledge or had you had any contact with people
like his campaign management professionals, Stu Spencer and Bill
Roberts?
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris;
No. None. We didn't know how good they were. We had experienced
that kind of campaigning in the Helen Gahagan Douglas defeat in
1950, or others had in the Nixon effort. But keep in mind we had
beaten the crap out of those same people in 1962, Brown versus
Nixon. We had won just by the skin of our teeth [John F.] Kennedy
versus Nixon in 1960. And [Lyndon] Johnson had walloped the man
whom Reagan nominated and became the spokesperson and the symbol
for, Barry Goldwater, in 1964. So by 1966, there was no reason to
assume anything negative about the strategy that was employed.
You wanted Reagan; you didn't want Christopher. You wanted Reagan
to be the opponent. But no one really understood what a great
communicator Reagan was and how much of a darling of the religious
conservative movement that we didn't even know existed that he had
become .
I'm told that polling played a very important part in Reagan's
1966 campaign, that they were developing all kinds of focus groups
and tracking and all of that.
We didn't understand any of that.
Isn't that interesting because you were saying that you were
putting together a lot of pretty sophisticated constituent
attending-- .
115
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
We did that at the district level but we were not part of the
leadership. We didn't have any influence. We didn't know whether
or not what we had done meant anything. We only now know that it
meant something.
Right. And it was what the Republicans were doing--.
In a sophisticated way. We did it by accident.
You wonder if they were surprised at their success.
No, I think it was a science. I think that Bush is currently
doing that. I think Bush's switch on civil rights, he had to. I
think Bush's pushing of Clarence Thomas [for appointment to the
U.S. Supreme Court], he had to. I think he had become convinced
from his focus groups and what have you that his clear racist
label, by which he was tagged from the Willie Horton experience,
could very well sink him with his very weakened domestic program
and domestic policy. He had to get rid of that tag as a liability
without giving up anything for it.
But there are those who think of the Clarence Thomas event as it
has played out has these kinds of mixed messages.
Bush will be able to avoid the racist tag because he did both
Clarence Thomas and he is signing what used to be the quota bill
and is now the civil rights bill. So it will be not easy for a
Willie Brown to stand up and use the old Willie Horton and his
refusal to sign the civil rights bill as clear evidence that, from
a race perspective, you've got to get rid of him.
Why don't we
thank you.
stop there for today? That's been very useful.
Joanne [Murphy] told me that she spent some time with you.
She did. She is a very talented speechwriter and researcher.
Then Steve Thompson told me that you had chatted with him briefly
to set an appointment and that he had dinner with [John] Mockler
and Mockler said he didn't want Steve in the room when he was
talking to you.1
'Supporting materials for this memoir in the Bancroft Library include
tape recordings of background interviews with Murphy, Thompson, Mockler,
and Robert Connelly, chief administrative officer of the Assembly Rules
Committee.
116
Morris: Mockler said that he was with you earlier.
Brown: He said he has known me the longest.
Morris: Right. I don't want to come between all those guys. I just
want-- .
Brown: You just want information.
Morris: Yes.
Brown: They are the best of friends but they are extremely competitive.
I mean, you will not see two friends more competitive than Mockler
and Thompson. They are both probably near genius I. Q. -wise.
Morris: Do you draw on the two of them for different kinds of things?
Brown: Make them compete.
Morris: Make them compete.
Brown: I make them compete.
Morris: Get the best from both?
Brown: Absolutely. I force each one of them to comment on each other's
subject matter. They delight in getting in each other's business.
Steven has primarily helped Mockler on education. Occasionally
they have cooperated. They cooperated on one major bill, to
combine children's services. It is the prototype of what people
are now doing. They did that seven or eight years ago. That is
the only time they really combined an issue. All the other times
they were at war with each other because Steven wants some money
for health, John wants some money for education, and there are
limited resources.
There are two other people who are their peers: Phil
Isenberg, who was their boss in the Ways and Means days, and Rudy
Nothenburg who inherited Phil's job and became their boss when
Phil went off to be on the city council of Sacramento. Rudy is
maybe brighter than all three of them. But they were all
extremely extraordinarily able people.
Morris: Right. You've all stayed in the same orbit now for twenty years?
Brown: Still. We cooperate virtually full--. Actually, Phil goes back
to 1961. Phil and Rudy are the two longest in terms of contact.
Mockler is the longest in terms of staff relationship.
117
Morris: Phil has changed venues, as it were, but they all continue to have
their interest in public policy issues.
Brown: Phil hasn't changed. He has done the same thing. He was staff
public policy. Then he went to city council. Then he was mayor
of Sacramento and now he is in the state assembly. So he has
stayed involved.
Morris: But he has moved around more.
Brown: Well, Mockler has too. He has been in staff, private, L.A. school
person. He was their analyst--.
Morris: Consultant.
Brown: No, he was the analyst. He went down there and became their guru
for a while. He left there, came back to staff when I became
speaker, stayed for a year or a couple of years and then went back
in the private sector. Steven has been directing health programs,
including one here in San Francisco for a brief period of time.
He put together a state-wide HMO for mental health and psychiatric
services. He did that privately. He came back as chief of staff
and then left again and came back as director of the Assembly
Office of Research. So they have all been in and out. They go in
and out .
Rudy left when he went to work as the first person for the
Fair Political Practices Commission. He actually put the rules
and regulations together following the reform act.
Morris: The 1974 measure?
Brown: Yes. Then he left there and when Moscone won the mayorship he
came in as Moscone ' s director of finance and deputy mayor for that
purpose. He stayed with [Mayor] Dianne [Feinstein] and then he
became the CAO and he has been CAO since that time. But everybody
has stayed in public policy.
Morris: They are confirmed political junkies, as they say.
Brown: Totally. And you see them all--if I gave a fundraiser today, and
you have to have reservations and all that kind of stuff, you
would come to my event, you would see Rudy behind the desk with
his wife, doing all the reservations. Even though he is a CAO, he
comes back to volunteer to do that. You would see Steve Thompson
and Mockler ushering and seating people on the floor.
Morris ;
That's neat.
118
Brown: They have stayed forever.
Morris: When I have talked to them I will feel more confident to ask you
to talk about the ideas in education and how they have developed
and then how you've paid for them.
Brown: Yes. They were the people.
Morris: You seem to have, from the beginning, gravitated toward financial
committees .
Brown: Yes. All right.
Morris: Thank you.
Brown: You are welcome.
119
XII BOB MORETTI AS SPEAKER
[Interview 3: November 16, 1991) *#
Brown Chairs the Government Efficiency Committee
Morris: I had a very, very lively briefing from your associates in
Sacramento last week. Mr. Thompson and Mr. Mockler.
Brown: [Laughter] The twins.
Morris: They both said the place to start was with your work on the
Government Efficiency Committee, that that was where you really
began to get your teeth into the legislative process. You and
Jesse Unruh had had some disagreements when you were a freshman.
How did you and he come to the point where he wanted to make you
chairman of the committee?
Brown: Actually, in the second term in the legislature, most members move
up in stature, but it's usually a very small step. In the second
term, for those of us elected in 1964, the opportunity was even
greater because one person, one vote had gone into place in
California following that Baker v. Carr decision in the U.S.
Supreme Court. There were some thirty or more new members of the
California State Assembly. The state senate had become one
person, one vote. Many existing assembly members had moved over
to the senate, people like [Nicholas] Petris and [Alfred] Alquist
and that whole crowd had moved over simultaneously. They left a
whole lot of vacancies in the California State Assembly.
That also meant a number of the chairpersons had moved on to
newer, better, higher grounds by their standards. So there were
clear opportunities for members of my class to move up. Only five
of us were Democrats in my class, five of the ten new members.
Each of the other four were given some respectable assignment but
two of us were not, so to speak. One worse than the others was
Willie Brown. But Unruh couldn't bring himself not to show some
evidence of interest in my career, so he appointed me to some
120
nondescript little committee called Legislative Representation.
It was a committee that had never met. It was a committee that
received no bills.
It turns out that it was a statutory committee, however. It
was a committee that had the responsibility to regulate and
control lobbyists who represented special interest groups. I went
back to the statutes, discovered the authority and the power
contained in that committee and immediately commenced to exercise
that authority and power. That absolutely annoyed the hell out of
lobbyists. I started the process of their having to register. I
started the process of their having to report what they were
expending on people, long before Proposition 9. Under my
committee chairmanship, I commenced to do that.
»
Morris: Way back in--?
Brown: 1967. 1967 was when this all started. Of course, the lobbyists
went nuts. They thought they were going to have to wear badges
and the badges were going to have to list who they represented.
They were going to have to say who they had dinner with and what
they discussed at dinner. I had all kinds of outrageous ideas.
Unruh, of course, was somewhat annoyed. He looked at the statute
and discovered that he could appoint the members to that
committee. So he put all of the leadership people, himself as
well as the speaker pro temfpore], the minority leader, the caucus
chairman- -there was nothing on that committee except senior
leadership people. And Willie Brown, the chairperson.
Morris: [Laughter] You were the chair. Pretty good.
Brown: I am the chairperson. Well, that would have obviously stymied
whatever I may have wanted to do, except that I could call a
meeting every day if I so chose. So I commenced to terrorize
Unruh by my public announcements and my calling of the committee
meetings at any time I chose to call a committee meeting and my
threats to inspect and require reports to be filed by third house
people. Of course, I was the darling of the press for doing all
this because here was a gnat annoying the hell out of the elephant
who was running the place.
That prompted Unruh into trying to reach an accord. He
discovered that the civil rights committee and the committee that
had all of the responsibility for much of the consumer actions was
chaired by a fellow named Lester McMillan out of Los Angeles. He
was having a squabble with Lester McMillan because Lester McMillan
was not doing what Unruh wanted him to do as it relates to
consumer matters and things of that nature. That really annoyed
Jesse Unruh. Jesse Unruh decided that he--.
121
Morris: What did Unruh want done in consumer action?
Brown: I can't exactly remember what he wanted done. But whatever it
was, McMillan was not doing it. [Phone rings] Do you want to hold
that one second? That's got to be somebody who knows I'm here.
[Phone interruption]
Morris: So Lester McMillan-
Brown: Lester McMillan. He and Unruh were having a little bit of a
dispute. About that time Unruh had decided to take somebody's
advice and shift the chairmanship of the Public Utilities and
Commerce Committee. That was a more natural place for Lester
McMillan to chair anyway. He was more into utilities and things
of that nature. So Unruh went to him and said he would like to
save himself from the trouble that I was causing him and the only
way he could do that was to give me the chairmanship that would
handle all the civil rights legislation and the consumer affairs
legislation. But he would in turn give Lester McMillan the
chairmanship of the Public Utilities and Commerce Committee. And
Lester agreed to that switch.
So he did that, moved me to GE&E, moved Lester to Public
Utilities and Commerce and abolished the Committee on Legislative
Representation so he would never again be harassed by some
upstart. That's how I got the chairmanship of that committee.
Morris: I see. Was that one of the committees you were interested in?
Brown: Not really. I served on that committee but I had no unusual
interest in it. I had been assigned to that committee because
Unruh wanted to get rid of his critics and he dumped all of his
critics on committees of no great substance to him. And then
suddenly consumer protections and consumer interest became a
lively area for legislative consideration. It regulated the
contractors and it regulated people like the people who told
fortunes. It was the licensing committee. It was the committee
in which all of these little unusual professions got their
license, all except the medical people.
Morris: This is the period when the Reagan Administration were doing a lot
of reorganizing. They made a bigger consumer affairs department.
Pat Brown had begun it and then Reagan made more of it. Was that
anything that interested you and your committee?
Brown: No, not really. It had no relevance whatsoever.
Morris: The thing that Thompson and Mockler both remember vividly is a
medical licensing bill, something to do with increasing access of
122
people to health careers, licensed vocational nurses and things of
that sort.
Brown: There was a whole series of bills that came through that
committee, some of which I authored in that area. The whole
question of whether foreign-trained doctors and foreign-trained
dentists particularly would be able to practice in the state of
California. That was in the jurisdiction of that committee and we
took care of that issue. The whole question of what kind of
educational requirements and whether or not you could become an
LVN, licensed vocational nurse, and whether or not you could use a
portion of that licensed vocational nurse's training to ultimately
become an RN. All of that came through that committee. We also
had all of the semi-medical type licensing provisions that are now
in the statute in the committee. Those were all the work products
of when we chaired that committee and when we had jurisdiction
over that committee.
Morris: Were they part of some overall policy interest of yours or just
they were government progress issues?
Brown: No, they were actually prompted by complaints from constituencies
and from some individuals whom I knew, particularly with the
Filipino, foreign-trained dentists. I had been approached by a
couple of Filipinos here in San Francisco who had graduated and
they had been practicing dentistry in the Philippines. When they
came here, the best they could be were bedpan persons. Although
they were clearly well-educated and well-informed, they had not
graduated from a recognized school of dentistry and there was no
access route for those persons to qualify to take the same exam
that you take if you graduate from the University of California or
from any of the other dental schools in this state.
I thought that wrong. Based on that brief exposure, I set
about to change that. I absolutely succeeded in changing it. It
is also interesting that at about that same time, Quentin Kopp who
is a practicing lawyer in San Francisco came in to visit with me.
His dad was a pharmacist; however, his dad had been trained in a
school which was not recognized by the admission officers for the
state of California because it wasn't on the approved list. His
dad was Jewish and, of course, Jews couldn't go to the approved
schools with any great regularity during that period of time. He
came to me about that and I put it in the bill to change that rule
as well, to allow Quentin Kopp's father to become a pharmacist and
to practice in the state of California. His father ultimately
became a pharmacist based upon the legislation which I passed long
before Quentin was a candidate for public office.
123
Morris: Does that mean it started an acquaintance between you and Kopp
that has continued?
Brown: Well, that's where I actually met him. We have never been
political cellmates. We have cooperated on some issues over the
years. But he is far more of a conservative, less sensitive to
the kinds of things that I am interested in.
From the Bipartisan Sixties to the Cavemen of Proposition 13, 1978
Morris: I get the feeling that in the 1960s there was more of a bipartisan
feeling in the legislature than there has come to be? Is that
your recollection?
Brown: We did not have in the 1960s and even the early 1970s, not until
the late 1970s, did there develop a real difference between
Democrats and Republicans on party issues. It had been in the
1960s a place that was dominated by subject-matter interests,
regardless of political party and regardless of how you were
registered. There was no such thing as a real conservative
Republican unit. There were maybe two Republicans, Charlie Conrad
and one other, and I don't even recall who the second Republican
would have been. But Republicans voted for things like child
care. Republicans voted for things like compensatory education.
Republicans voted for the business of automatic cost of living
increases for welfare recipients. Republicans voted for matters
that protected the environment. A Republican was the father of
the community mental health program for the state of California--
the Lanterman-Short . Frank Lanterman is a Republican; Alan Short
is a Democrat. Petris, of course, is a Democrat. But Lanterman
was always the lead author, whether it was Lanterman- [Jerome]
Waldie or Lanterman-Petris or Lanterman-Short, Lanterman was the
author of all of the mental health legislation.
So you have Republicans who were really into being
relatively aggressive about the issues that effect human beings.
Not until 1978 did that attitude change when Proposition 13 came
along and all these caveperson types, all these individuals who
were rooted, committed to the idea that government shouldn't exist
and had no reason to exist. They were anti-tax types. You didn't
have that attitude in the 1960s and the early 1970s.
Morris: Even though you had had Ronald Reagan as governor, who made a big
thing about there was too much government?
124
Brown: Absolutely. If you recall in 1973 or so, Reagan put on the ballot
Proposition 1, on a special election, which was a forerunner to
Proposition 13. The voters rejected it handily. Reagan was the
spokesperson and the leader for that issue. It was a vote which
was taken in an off year-- 1973 was not a regular election time.
Morris: There was only one other tiny item on the ballot.
Brown: Correct, and we defeated it. Bob Moretti and the Democrats were
the leading spokespersons in that debate around the state against
Proposition 1. That would have limited the amount of taxes that
could be collected, et cetera. Reagan was five years ahead of his
time in terms of Proposition 13 in that regard, but nevertheless
we did defeat it.
Moretti 's Background
Morris: When did you and Bob Moretti start talking about the possibility
of his running for the speakership?
Brown: 1965 [laughter], when we were first elected.
Morris: That possibility manifested itself that far back.
Brown: Yes. We had been gearing ourselves toward one day when Moretti
would become speaker. We had zeroed in on that early on.
Morris: Did Unruh think that was a good idea?
Brown: Oh, yes. Bob Moretti was Unruh1 s favorite newcomer to the halls
of the legislature. When Bob first took office with us in 1965,
Bob was given the best assignment, Bob was given the best
committee assignment, Bob was nurtured and directed by Unruh in
every respect. Bob served on the Rules Committee as a freshman,
Bob served on Ways and Means as a freshman, so Bob had all of the
options that a newcomer would have.
Morris: What was there about Moretti that made him the pick of the litter
for Unruh?
Brown: He had been an employee of Tom Bane's, who was Unruh 's Rules
Committee chair. Unruh knew him. He had done Unruh 's bidding
against the liberals in all of the struggles in CDC. He had been
just one of Unruh 's operatives for a long time.
125
Morris: Moretti was active in CDC to carry the Unruh message to the
Democratic clubs?
Brown: Absolutely. He was the opposition. He represented the
opposition. He was not really much of a CDCer. But he was the
conservative wing of the Democratic party that showed up on
occasion at Unruh' s behest to do Unruh' s bidding, and Moretti was
part of that group.
Morris: To stop a motion?
Brown: Absolutely. Whatever needed to be done, including endorsing
candidates and not endorsing candidates. It was the same in the
YDs. He was one of Unruh 's operators in the Young Democrats as
well. He and Bill Greene and Merv Dymally, they were all part of
the Unruh clique. We, of course, were part of the liberal, left-
wing clique. It was the Bermans and Burtons and the Phil
Isenbergs and that group.
Morris: I see. How did you and Moretti, representing opposite factions as
it were, get to join forces?
Brown: From the first day we were elected, Moretti was smart enough to
know that he could never be speaker unless he could carry with him
some of the people Unruh didn't have. So he deliberately set out
to make friends with Willie Brown and John Burton who were the two
liberal new members. Of the five Democrats elected, we were the
two new liberals. He introduced himself and we immediately struck
up a friendship because we were interested in the same kinds of
activities. We were not drinkers; we were not part of the good
old boys. He was twenty-eight and I was thirty so we were really
on the youngish side. Almost every other person was over forty in
the halls of the legislature except the three of us. So we set
out immediately on the basis of commonality of interest.
We began to look out for each in the various committees on
which we served. We would make sure our freshman class and our
freshman group got a fair shake by banding together. That was how
the relationship started.
Morris: That sounds as if Moretti might have personally had more liberal
interests than Unruh, even though Unruh was his mentor.
Brown: Very much so. He was not a conservative by any stretch of the
imagination. He came from a conservative background, from an
Italian family. He was second generation. He was the only one to
ever graduate from college, maybe even the first to graduate from
high school. He was the oldest son. His mom and dad were just
common, ordinary working people. He really understood the need
126
for health and he understood the need for insurance and he
understood the need for all of those things. And he had a natural
instinct for fairness on race, almost an aggressive instinct for
fairness on race, for which I didn't understand the source until
after I had known him for a couple of months. It turns out that
he was raised in Detroit and he was raised in the black section of
Detroit. Black kids had been the only kids who were really his
pals and his buddies in his early life. In the street activities,
they had been his allies and his friends and he had dated black
girls. So he had a natural affinity on the race issue.
That, in part, had played a great role in his commitment to
fair housing, fair employment practices and all those things
without even knowing the philosophy of why. It was just natural
with him.
Morris: Because of his personal experience.
Brown: His experience and the environment in which he was raised.
Hastings Street in Detroit was where he was raised.
Morris: So it was when Unruh decided to run for governor that you fellows
decided it was time to make your move and you began to--?
Brown: That is when we formally decided to do it. Actually we lost
control of the house in 1968 by one vote. It was forty-one
Republicans and thirty-nine Democrats, so Unruh lost the
speakership. Unruh became the minority leader and, I believe,
[George] Zenovich became the caucus chair. Then, of course, Unruh
showed a decided disinterest in what would happen to the caucus.
He didn't use any of the time and talent to try to get the
majority back in the next election.
Electing a New Minority Leader. 1969
Morris: Why was that?
Brown: Well, he had already zeroed in on his candidacy for governor.
With that in mind, we kept encouraging him to leave the minority
leadership job and let some of us take it over so we could in fact
survive as a house. He was not prone to do that because after all
a minority leader still had some leverage in terms of resources.
But some time in late 1969 he indicated to Moretti that he
would be stepping down as minority leader and we set about at that
stage of the game to make me the minority leader in place of Jesse
127
Morris :
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Unruh because by then, it had become pretty clear that in terms of
organizational activities and in terms of subject matter, from our
group I was easily the most comprehensive. My chairmanship of the
GE&E committee had demonstrated that for everybody. As a result
of that we decided, without a whole lot of discussion, that I
would run and become the minority leader and that that was the
practical thing to do, and that Bob Moretti would chair the
committee to reelect Democrats and to gain control. He would
assume the responsibility to raise the money and all kinds of
things, mainly because he had gotten the chairmanship from the
Republicans.
The Republicans genuinely loved Bob. In a Republican
speakership, he had been given the chairmanship of the GO
[Government Organization] Committee. The GO committee was the
horse-racing committee, the liquor committee; it was the committee
of substance for campaign contributions. The Republicans had made
the mistake of giving that to Bob Moretti. Bob Moretti used that
committee and that chairmanship and those resources to get
campaign contributions to get the house back.
Well, we couldn't let Bob Moretti leave that job and become
minority leader, so the next best thing to do with Unruh on the
way out was to make Willie Brown, the most trusted lieutenant of
Bob Moretti' s, the minority leader. Then there would be no
competition because Willie Brown would not be the candidate for
speaker; it would be Moretti who would be the candidate for
speaker, from the chairmanship of the GO Committee. That was a
deliberate decision that we made. That was cold-blooded and
deliberate .
However, we discovered that I had offended so many of our
liberal friends that five of them would not vote for me. The five
were: Charlie Warren, John Dunlap, Alan Sieroty, Jack Knox, and
Bob Crown. None of those five could bring themselves to vote for
me.
What had you done to offend them?
I hadn't done anything to offend them individually. I did offend
one or two and they used that group mentality to suggest that I
was too immature, too caustic, too volatile, and they were not
comfortable.
Because one of them wanted that job?
Absolutely. Bob Crown was running for the job. Bob Crown was one
of the people running for the job. In the first vote, Crown got
five votes, I got, I don't know, seventeen votes, and Joe
128
Gonsalves, the conservative candidate—there was a conservative
Democrat candidate named Joe Gonsalves--got seventeen votes.
So it was seventeen-seventeen-f ive, or some other
combination thereof, that reaches the total of thirty-nine. With
that in mind, we postponed a new vote until the following Monday
when we would return. Over the weekend, we concocted a scheme. I
had all the racial minorities, so it was literally--. I had
Yvonne Burke who was voting for me. So we were in good shape
because we knew those liberals could never vote for that
conservative Joe Gonsalves. This was a chance to move a black up
in the leadership role and we figured that they just absolutely
had to do it.
But we decided to do an exclamation point on our effort. We
knew that Knox and Crown were from this region so we called up the
black radio stations in this area--.
Morris: KDIA?
Brown: KDIA and KSOL. We had them over the weekend really do a number on
Willie Brown's behalf about these white liberals who wouldn't vote
for a black. They didn't call me by name; they just said that
they would not vote for a black. We did the same thing in
southern California. Well, that was a tactical error because when
we got back on Monday, they informed us that they would vote for
any other black, but not Willie Brown. We could take our votes
plus their votes and elect a minority leader, but it would never
be Willie Brown. It could be any other black. The other blacks
were militant enough to know and so fed up that they would not
agree to be a candidate and thereby stop what was rightfully
Willie Brown's place.
Morris: So they stayed loyal to you.
Brown: Except one. A fellow named John Miller from Berkeley. John J.
Miller from Berkeley finally said he would accept the role of the
minority leader. We thought about it for a while because we were
not very trustful of Mr. Miller, so we sat Mr. Miller down in
Moretti's office and we had five of our people there. We had
Burton, we had Fenton, Yvonne Burke, Bob Moretti and Willie Brown.
We extracted out of Miller [that] if we gave him the votes to
become the minority leader, number one, he would do what we told
him to do as minority leader. He wouldn't mess around with the
campaign committee that Moretti headed to get reelected. He would
stay out of all of that. He would just be the spokesperson on the
floor, plus he would support Moretti for speaker if we won the
house back.
129
He agreed to all those things. He did not keep the promise
not to run for speaker because as soon as we used the resources
that Moretti put together and all of the resources that we had, we
elected forty-three Democrats. In that forty-three were Peter
Chacon whom we elected with black votes mainly in San Diego; we
elected Lou Papan here in--.
Morris: South San Francisco area.
Brown: --the South San Francisco area. We really elected people to get
this thing together. We did and we won. So Moretti became the
candidate for speaker. However--.
Morris: You can do that in a campaign? You can say, "We'll put some money
into your campaign if you back our candidate for speaker."
Brown: Of course. We wouldn't do that otherwise. So we thought we had
the speakership won. But lo and behold, John Miller decided he
wanted to be a candidate because Moretti was too conservative. So
the liberals who didn't like Moretti didn't want to vote for
Moretti. A guy named Cory--.
Morris: Ken Cory?
Brown: --talked about becoming a candidate as well. So now we had to go
to the people we defeated for the minority leadership, the
conservative Democrats, cut a deal with them to get the votes, and
we did. We cut a deal and we got the votes to elect Moretti
speaker without the liberals coming aboard. So now we were in a
position where we didn't have to give the so-called liberals
anything. But we were smart enough not to let that bug us. We
proceeded to organize the house in a way that reflected what we
thought was good judgment. I became chair of Ways and Means; John
Burton took over as chair of Rules; Wally Karabian took over as
the majority leader; Jack Fenton took over as the chair of the F&I
[Finance and Insurance] Committee; I think we kept Carlos Bee for
a short period of time as speaker pro tern and I don't remember who
else we made speaker pro tern.
Morris: What did you do about the conservative Democrats that you--?
Brown: We gave them the chairman of the water committee, we gave them the
chairman of the ag committee. They all had assignments. We gave
Joe Gonsalves chairman of Rev[enue] and Taxfation] . So we took
care of everybody. We really genuinely took care of everybody.
To get Cory's vote, we even made him caucus chair. We took staff
away from him but we made him caucus chair. So we took care of
everybody.
130
Morris: Did he like the move?
Brown: Absolutely. We took care of everybody. We had to put the
speakership together so we put the speakership together the best
way we could. Miller still hung out--.
II
Morris: Did Miller have some special talents that made him somebody that
you would deal with as the Moretti and Unruh people had found a
place for you?
Brown: No, Miller did not. Miller was a talented human being
intellectually but he had no social skills, he had no organizing
skills, he was not attentive, no follow-through, none of the
above. So he didn't have any of the talent that you would utilize
as a legislator. He would be a good person to read the bills and
to speak on the bills and to carry a fight on the floor because he
could debate, but that was the limit, that was the total boundary,
the total height of his skills.
Morris: As a person from the East Bay, would he have had working
relationships with [Congressman] Ron Dellums1 people the way you
did with Phil Burton?
Brown: There were no such Dellums people. We literally assisted in
starting that. You remember that the East Bay was organized
politically by D.G. Gibson and Byron Rumford and that crowd. They
were the more conservative Democrats. The radicals coming out of
the student-protest movement in the last 1960s and early 1970s
were just beginning to see electoral politics as a means by which
to achieve things. So they began to talk about candidates for the
Berkeley city council, et cetera. Dellums was a candidate for the
city council from Berkeley. Dellums got elected to the city
council of Berkeley.
So there were no Dellums people. The radicals were there
but they were not at that stage of the game following the
leadership of Dellums; they were still following the leadership of
the radical whites. The blacks had not yet emerged as a
significant force in the radical movement. The blacks were still
the more conservative. So Miller represented the more
conservative blacks. Miller was on the conservative black side,
not the radical side.
Morris: I see. The older political organization, the D.G. Gibson--.
Brown: Correct. He had been from that school. He had been from the
elitist side of that school. He had not even been from the street
131
side; he hadn't been from the Pullman porter side. He had been
from the intellectual, elitist side.
Morris: Right. He had moved northside.
Brown: Correct. He had been on the school board. He had been elected by
the intellectual white liberals, not the radical white liberals,
to the school board. Then he had come to the legislature.
132
XIII WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE CHAIR, 1969-1974
Foundation for a Good-Government Career; Reagan Oversight
Morris: I gathered that it caused somewhat of a ripple to have you become
chairman of Ways and Means? The tradition was you were supposed
to have served on Ways and Means.
Brown: I had never served on Ways and Means. I had never served on any
significant committee beyond the GE&E Committee. I had been
assigned to committees on education, committees on judiciary,
committees on health. In those days none of those were considered
significant committees because they were not committees that
generated any interest for contribution purposes. Unruh would
consign to those committees his subject-matter people, mainly
because his subject-matter people would not create a burden for
him. He understood that and we understood it too so it was a good
arrangement .
It was a good arrangement,
subject-matter stuff.
We dominated the good-government
So I had never been assigned to any committee of any great
substance. I wanted to be majority leader. I did not want to be
chair of Ways and Means. I did not know anything about ways and
means, I wasn't interested in that kind of work, I didn't want to
work that hard and certainly didn't want to have responsibility
totally for the whole program of the legislature.
Moretti was wiser than Willie Brown at that moment because
he kept saying, "If you really want to ultimately be speaker, and
I think you should ultimately be speaker, you have got to show
that you are the smartest guy here. And you aren't going to do
that as majority leader. You are going to come off as being
brazen and offensive because you are going to cut people to
ribbons on the floor and you are not going to be doing anything
133
Morris :
Brown:
for them. It will be a glamorous position and you'll get a lot of
press, but it will not be the foundation for a long-range career.
"They aren't going to give you the time of day. A white guy
can get away with doing it, Willie Brown, but you can't do that.
You've got to show that you are the smartest guy here. I want you
to be chair of Ways and Means and besides that, I can't have a
successful speakership if you don't chair Ways and Means because
there is nobody else I can trust to do what needs to be done
politically to the stuff that comes through there. I can't trust
anybody else to do that and I don't want to have to watch people."
This was Moretti. Finally the team with Moretti, Burton,
Karabian, Fenton--we were all in the team, and it was a team
leadership operation—decided that, yes, I would go ahead and take
Ways and Means. Well, it only took me twenty-four hours to
realize how stupid I had been. I should have been petitioning for
Ways and Means because overnight, the Ways and Means slot got a
hell of a lot more attention than anything I could have ever
dreamed of. Certainly I would have been the great debater on the
floor. But that would have been limited to the times you were on
the floor. The first day I became chairman of Ways and Means,
immediately I met with the Legislative Analyst's Office and that
was Alan Post.
This was November [that] we announced I was going to chair
Ways and Means. So by Thanksgiving I was already into the process
of learning my job and the first thing I did was meet Alan Post.
Never a more delightful person I was ever to meet. It was really
a decided change in my whole career in the legislature because all
of a sudden, I was talking to a guy who really knew the subject
matter, knew state government, and for the first time had found
himself a student whom he thought he had an affinity with. With
that we started the number on Reagan, [laughter] That's where the
real criticism of Reagan began. That's where the oversight of
Reagan began because I asked him, "What am I supposed to do as
chair of Ways and Means?" I didn't know. He couldn't believe
anybody would really be asking those questions.
That they didn't know?
They didn't know and were really serious about listening. Then he
started telling me what to do and I would go out and do it, check
this and check that, read this and read that and come back. And
he was the person who actually appeared on behalf of the analyst's
office before Ways and Means. He testified at every Ways and
Means hearing. I am telling you that it was an absolute delight
to have Alan Post sitting there offsetting the Department of
Finance.
134
Procedural Flourishes
Brown: I had never enjoyed anything more because I was prepared better
than any person presenting a bill. I was prepared better than any
agency head. I was prepared better than any member. You are the
author of the bill. You step up and I say it's [A.B.] 8605. I
tell you, 8605 does the following five things. These are the
following people who support it. These are the people who are
against it. There have been the suggested following amendments
and 1 do so without any notes or without anything else.
I said, "The Department of Finance's analysis shows thus,
the analyst's people have said thus and so. Do you want to say
anything on it?" [laughter] Then I would direct it. I would say,
"Now if this witness would testify, this witness would say thus
and so--." It became the show of all shows. There was no empty
seat in the Ways and Means hearing room. I changed the meeting of
the Ways and Means. Ways and Means used to meet on Tuesday in the
morning. I changed the meeting to Wednesdays because every Monday
night we played poker all night, so we were in no shape to be
showing up at eight o'clock in the morning at a Ways and Means
hearing. So we changed the Ways and Means hearing, based upon our
poker game, until Wednesday. Ways and Means still meets on
Wednesday. We also changed the time. It used to start at ten
o'clock in the morning. We moved it back to eight in the morning.
I am the person who started the eight a.m. meeting.
Morris: That must have been a strain on some of your colleagues.
Brown: Only the first week. Because in those days you did not have roll
call votes. There were no roll call votes. Nobody questioned the
existence of a quorum. So at eight-ten, I would start the
committee. It was just Willie Brown alone and I would start
passing out whatever I wanted to pass out and killing whatever I
wanted to kill.
Morris: You were the committee in toto.
Brown: That's right. I had one or two people like John Vasconcellos
would always show up. I would have Ms. Pauline Davis who would
always be there. Frank Lanterman, my vice chair, would always be
there. Jack Knox would always be there. Bud Collier would always
be there. I had a few people who absolutely would show up. I had
Bill Bagley seated on the far left. I had all these people who
had the same assigned seats. I had John Burton on the far right,
on the upper dais.
135
Any time I needed a debate between Democrats and
Republicans, each of those guys were sharp enough and read the
subject matter to do the debate. Bagley and Burton were my
debaters.
Morris: Would you pass the word if you would like a little--?
Brown: No, I would just call on them. I would call on them, "Mr. Bagley,
this is something you have an interest in." Any time anybody
would question it I would say, "This bill goes out sixteen to
five." "How do you know it was sixteen to five?" I said,
"Sixteen to five. These are the five people who would vote no,"
and I would cite the five. "And the other sixteen don't really
care. So it is sixteen to five." And the bill would pass. Or I
would say, "This bill is dead. There are ten votes for it and
eleven votes against it on the twenty-one person committee."
It became kind of an incredible experience to just come to
Ways and Means and watch us do the Ways and Means Committee work,
and watch me chair the Ways and Means Committee. It was something
to see. And it was the most enjoyable experience I had in the
legislature. It was more enjoyable than the speakership.
Policy Innovations; the Speaker's Political Chores
Morris: Really? Because you were directing policy?
Brown: Absolutely, because I was doing policy and because it was still
really new to me.
Morris: What kinds of things did Alan Post suggest that you should take a
look at?
Brown: I can't frankly remember, but it was my introduction to subject
matter. At the same time, by the way, I hired Phil Isenberg to be
the chief of the Ways and Means staff.
Morris: What was he doing at the time?
Brown: He was a practicing lawyer in Sacramento. Phil Isenberg then
hired Steve Thompson to do health, John Mockler to do education,
Bob Connelly to do the environment, Ray Sullivan to do taxes.
[Phone interruption]
Morris: Were you looking for something in particular with these young
policy wizzes that you hired?
136
Brown: We just decided that we were going to be the cutting edge of
public policy in California in the Reagan years. So we set out to
put together the best set of brains that we could find at the
staff level. And that's how all this started. That's how all of
this started. We even decided where our office would be. We
reorganized that place like you would not believe. We really used
the leverage of the Ways and Means chairmanship and the total
trust and confidence that Moretti had in me. Moretti went about
being speaker by doing all of the social things that the
speakership requires you to do. He left the running of the house
literally to his lieutenants, to John Burton to do the rules and
to do all the house administration, and he left public policy to
me.
So it was a very good arrangement. He assumed the
responsibility to be the politician and to balance the
relationships between all the parties.
Morris: What does it mean to do the social stuff?
Brown: It means to hold the members' hands, to respond to the members'
demands, to the members' needs, to the job requirements have for
their friends and relatives, all those things. To put the dinners
together for the members, to put the trips together for the
members .
Morris: Sort of a super-caucus chair?
Brown: Yes. Because Cory was out of the loop. Cory was not on our team
so he was not considered a trusted lieutenant.
Morris: That's what I wondered. That was kind of a curious situation. So
Cory was incidental.
Brown: He had the title but he did not have the responsibilities. We ran
the place.
Morris: Okay. Was Cory also shooting for speaker or governor?
Brown: We couldn't tell. Cory was kind of an independent Unruh original
person who was very smart but didn't generate great fellowship.
Morris: What about policy goals? I assume that you and Moretti and John
Burton had some conversation about policy-wise where you wanted to
take it.
Brown: Oh, yes. We wanted to do automatic COLAs . We wanted to get the
abortion stuff through. We wanted to change the school formula to
137
include urban-impact contributions. So we had some genuine kinds
of policies and programs that we were pursuing.
Morris: Well, were these ideas coming from Isenberg?
Brown: Absolutely. They came from Steve Thompson. The childhood
disability screening and prevention bills came out of him. Some
of the childcare came from him plus constituents. All of that
flowed primarily from staff people. The first urban park ever was
Bob Connelly's and it was right here at Hunter's Point. We traded
that to Reagan one year.
Medi-Cal Program Evolution
Morris: Could we talk a little bit about the Medi-Cal/welfare reform bills
in 1971, which is something that has had a lot of attention from
the Reagan side? He said his feet were cast in concrete and he
wasn't going to sign a bill for withholding. That Medicare costs
were rising exponentially and were going to ruin the state. How
did you folks in the assembly go about responding to that?
Brown: Well, Reagan was still a novice governor.
Morris: Even in his second term?
Brown: Even in his second term. He was without the political clout that
he ultimately developed with the right-wing movement. The right-
wing movement was still a relatively insignificant, not terribly
recognizable unit. It certainly had very little influence on
elected officials. So Reagan's ideas were considered cockamamie
ideas. They were considered cock-eyed. We still had people like
Jack Veneman, a Republican from Modesto, who was as keen on what
the medical policies ought to be and what the medical programs
ought to be as was Phil Burton. We still had the Bagleys of the
world who believed that the tax system should be designed to be
for the ability to pay. We didn't have this business of trying to
skew it to big business or trying to skew it to the wealthy side.
We still had people who were conservative so-called, but they were
the classic conservatives, not this religious right.
So Reagan was almost without a constituency and without a
followership on those crazy ideas that he was espousing. After
all, he was Goldwater's spokesperson and Goldwater went down to a
smashing defeat. The legacy of that was still out there. The
Rockefeller-type mentality for Republicans was still in vogue,
even in California. [Thomas] Kuchel was still a U.S. Senator in
138
Morris :
Brown:
California. So you had that kind of thing going down in this
state. Even Richard Nixon was pushing some form of universal
health insurance.
So you had a whole different environment and different
attitude. So it wasn't unusually difficult to succeed in
defeating Ronald Reagan and keep him from putting into place any
of the crazy things that he talked about. As a matter of fact,
the early seventies actually started the period of incredible
expansion of coverage of the Medi-Cal program. After four or five
years of the medical providers in California experiencing that
they would be rewarded handsomely for their low-income practice,
they saw it as a means by which to get rich. So they really
jumped into this business of trying to gain control of the Medi-
Cal monies. They attempted to do so with all these prepaid health
plans and all those kinds of things that represented great
respectability for them to secure dollars.
They also had a guy named Earl Brian, who was an M.D.
Brilliant. Thirty-two or so. He was Reagan's main guy on the
health issue and he was oriented toward systems and delivering
services and having government pay for them for medical purposes.1
So it was not a difficult task for us to develop good programs from
our philosophical standpoint because we had willing participants
hidden in the Reagan administration, some hidden and some very
visible. In Earl Brian's case, very visible. We also had a novice
governor who genuinely would back down when leveraged.
When leveraged by the legislature?
By superior numbers, yes.
Relations with Reagan Staff
Morris: Was this because his legislative staff people understood and got
along with the legislative position?
Brown: Absolutely. Bob Moretti had a good working relationship with all
of those young guys in the Reagan Administration at the state
level. They were guys whom he played tennis with or he played
golf with or he recreated with. They were guys who told the same
'Dr. Brian was director of Health Care Services and later of the Health
and Welfare Agency. See his interview in Governor Reagan's Cabinet and
Agency Administration. Berkeley: Regional Oral History Office, 1986.
139
kinds of dirty Jokes that he told. So there was a kinsmanship.
Some were from [U]SC and some were from Notre Dame. They were the
young "Good Old Boys." Some of the Reagan people were people we
went to college with, like Donald Livingston who was part of the
Reagan administration. He had been a collegiate friend.
Morris: Of yours?
Brown: Of mine, yes. From San Francisco State. So there were all kinds
of angles into the Reagan administration. Jack Kemp had been part
of the Reagan administration. So there were all kinds of
connections that people had unrelated to the traditional kinds of
things now that infect the political system. You just didn't have
people coming from the right-to-life movement. You had people who
really got there by the traditional political process rather than
the religious right.
Morris: Got there by working on campaigns?
Brown: Or in corporations where they were assigned to go assist in
government.
Morris: In public affairs. That was what Don Livingston had done.
Brown: Correct. Absolutely.
Morris: So when you saw him turning up in the governor's office, you
renewed your friendship.
Brown: I knew I had contact. Absolutely. And he renewed his friendship
with me because, after all, they needed that since I was the chair
of Ways and Means and the author of Reagan budgets. They had to
deal with me on almost a full-time basis.
Morris: At one point, Livingston was head of something called the program
and policies unit in the governor's office.
Brown: Correct.
Morris: How different were his ideas for shaping programs and policies
from the governor's point of view and your ideas and Moretti's for
shaping it from the legislature's point of view?
Brown: I don't remember a great distinction between what we ultimately
did and what the Reagan administration embraced. Reagan's
speeches were quite different but the policy initiatives were
seldom if ever different because the authors of those policy
initiatives were the Venemans, the Bagleys, the Houston Fluornoys
and people in that category. The Bob Monagans . The only
conservative Republicans were people like Charlie Conrad. Nobody
paid any attention to Conrad. Certain the Reagan administration
didn't. You had the Pat McGees, you had the Charlie Chapells.
You had the Hale Ashcrafts. You had real tough Republicans.
Frank Lanterman was the leading spokesperson for Republicans on
all social welfare issues and health issues. He was as liberal as
any Democrat on those issues.
Learning Budgeting from Frank Lanterman; John Knox's Leadership on
Local Government
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
How did you and he strike each other?
combination.
It looks like an odd
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
He was my vice-chair, one of the best.
I know, that's why I'm asking. How did you guys get along?
I was his student.
Really?
I was his student. He really knew the subject matter and he
trusted me and he trusted my judgment, embraced whatever I did.
Usually what I did we had consulted about and we had made the
decision on and it was the only time that we would ever get
seventy-two, seventy-five votes for the budget first time out.
Really?
Yes, because he had helped to write the budget. His staff had
interacted with my staff in producing the budget.
How much different was it from the budget that the Reagan people
would have introduced at the beginning of the year?
Sometimes substantially different because sometimes they put in
some of the crazy ideas that Reagan had. But that's all they
would ever do. They would never go beyond that. We would proceed
to do the Ways and Means work we needed to do on the budget . We
would usually do so with the blessings of the administration so
when the budget finally got there, he didn't blue-pencil a whole
lot of stuff. Reagan was not a great guy on vetoing.
Morris: Really?
Brown: No. Did not. The blue-pencilling business started when
Deukmejian came along. Previous governors had used the blue
pencil sparingly, including Jerry Brown.
Morris: Because they were comfortable with the negotiating process of the
hearings and things like that?
Brown: Yes. Absolutely.
Morris: Did Lanterman go about things differently than Moretti? He had
been there a long, long time.
Brown: Moretti was not interested in subject matter, so you are comparing
apples and oranges.
Morris: But Lanterman had been around for a long time--.
Brown: About 100 years.
Morris: At least. Did he have any problems with these young guys?
Brown: Oh, no. Lanterman was as young in his approach to public policy
as any of the membership on the floor. His great, mammoth,
legendary debates were with Jack Knox over local governmental
issues. Lanterman was a real comprehensive student. He and Knox
would be at loggerheads over things like local agency formation
commissions, charter amendments, city and county boundaries and
jurisdiction of local governments for regional purposes and what
have you. There were legendary fights.
Morris: Who was on which side?
Brown: Knox was always on the side of trying to move towards
regionalization. Lanterman was a local control person.
Morris: In your view, which side determined the outcome of events?
Brown: Sometimes Knox won and sometimes Lanterman won. Knox had an
uphill battle always because his ideas were future ideas.
Lanterman was pretty much comfortable in the world in that area as
it existed.
Morris: How about from a point of view of your folks? We are talking
about things like San Francisco Bay conservation and development.
Brown: We followed Knox.
Morris: Were there similar efforts in southern California, in Los Angeles
or San Diego, to regionalize transportation?
U2
Brown: Oh, sure. You had the air quality districts, you had South Coast
Air Base district, you had all those kinds of things going on.
Everybody at one level or another recognized the need for a larger
unit of government for certain kinds of things. But everybody
understood turf and turf protection.
Morris: So, would Knox and Lanterman have some territory that they could
agree upon?
Brown: I suppose. I didn't pay real close attention to the finite
details. I just remember the great battles between the two
giants. Each of them were considered maybe the best floor jockeys
for managing legislation of any of us.
Morris: That was out of their own interest--?
Brown: Out of their own interest.
Morris: --rather than that they would assign them to this or that?
Brown: No. Out of their own interest.
Morris: Would your subject matter people go over and work with Knox?
Brown: We didn't pay a whole lot of attention to that area of the law.
We pretty much left that to Knox and to the Local Government
Committee .
Morris: Local government was not something that Ways and Means cared
terribly much about?
Brown: We didn't deal with it much.
Morris: Even in terms of its budget?
Brown: No, not in terms of its budget. We literally followed Knox. He
was literally our point person on that issue. So we would always
be on his side but we didn't do a whole lot of assisting in the
formation of his views.
Morris: So what they developed in the way of programs, and their budget
recommendations, would go into the Ways and Means--?
Brown: Usually was supported by the Ways and Means Committee.
143
Taking the Budget on the Road
Morris: I am told that you took the Ways and Means hearings on the road,
which hadn't been done before?
Brown: We changed the whole nature of how things were done around there.
We literally decided to take ways and means on the interim
hearings. We decided we were going to do interim hearings. Then
someone came up with, "No, let's not do just interim hearings.
Let's actually take the budget to the local level." We did some
of those hearings. We actually had budget hearings before we
adopted the budget. We had budget hearings in Los Angeles and
places of that nature.
Morris: What kinds of people would turn up for the hearings?
Brown: All kinds. The same kinds that turn up for city council and the
board of supervisors meetings. Mostly, however, the people who
were directly affected: the heads of the schools at the local
level, the heads of the various agencies that we were subventing
funds directly to, social service agencies and people like that.
People representing special districts. They were most effective
because they were best prepared. Citizens were kind of just--.
Morris: Did you get some new ideas for legislation?
Brown: No, I don't think we really did. What I think we did is I think
we gave the membership a chance to hear people reactions to what
we were doing. Very few if any new ideas came from the hearings.
Morris: Is that true in general that there aren't too many new ideas on
local government out there amongst the citizenry?
Brown: I would say, yes, that's true.
Education and Health Program Challenges
Morris: What about the field of education? You also had to deal with the
Serrano- Priest decision which at the time was supposed to make a
major change in how education was funded.
Brown: It was not, frankly, a difficult task. For a long time we had
known that the school finance formula was not perfect and not
144
effective. That's why when John Mockler came up with the idea of
urban impact aid, that was just a new factor installed in the
school formula to try to equalize the support to urban areas and
to people who actually needed the money. So we knew that there
was something wrong with the school finance formula. It was not
difficult ultimately to deal with that issue.
Morris: Was the urban-impact aid idea introduced as a result of the
Serrano-Priest or Serrano-Priest provided an opportunity--?
Brown: No. Actually urban impact aid came just out of Mockler 's head.
It came out of Mockler 's head and out of our experience of need.
We knew that a formula that generated so many dollars in Tulare
for each student, for example, was not giving the same amount of
learning dollars to the San Francisco student because the cost of
janitors were higher in San Francisco. The cost of the capital
outlay and other kinds of things associated therewith was greater
in San Francisco than it was in Tulare. So we had to try to
figure out some solution. And, in San Francisco you had language
problems that were not evident in Tulare.
See, you had a different kind of student coming. You had a
poorer student coming. You had students coming in who were
hungry, and the disciplinary problems associated with students in
San Francisco were different from Tulare. Understanding that, a
school formula that distributed money as if both situations were
equal clearly would end up being unequal in a place like San
Francisco where the cost was greater.
So Mockler came forward with indicators that would prompt
money from a separate pot, in addition to the regular categories
and all the other things; so we came up with urban impact aid.
That was considered to be part of the equalization process.
That's how that came about. That was not in direct response to
Serrano v. Priest .
Morris: In those days, did the legislature feel as if the judiciary was
into its territory, that this was not a separate--?
Brown: No, we didn't react that way at all. That attitude did not
develop and take hold until the late seventies, about the courts
invading and doing legislative work. Some more conservative
Republicans like Reagan had always mouthed those words, that the
court was trying to be the legislature, but we didn't pay a whole
lot of attention to those words. Not until the cavepeople came
along did you begin to have that attitude holding its sway.
145
Morris: What about the business of the state revenues being able to pay
for the kinds of programs that the activist folks in the
legislature were interested in producing?
Brown: In the sixties, under Pat Brown's governorship, the process of
people programs being financed with state appropriations became a
comfortable method by which to address problems. The most
dramatic evidence of that would have been Comp ed [compensatory
education], when [State Senator Eugene] McAteer and that crowd put
together the Comp ed monies, they were in fact using federal
government and state general fund monies to directly address a
problem at the local level. That was the start of our doing those
kinds of things, as far as I remember. And that has continued to
the present day, so we have never been without some comfort by
legislators in appropriating money at the state level to address
the local problem.
Morris: I was thinking of it more in terms of the elasticity of state
revenues. When did there begin to be a concern which one hears
now that we may not be able to raise enough money to pay for all
the kinds of programs that the legislature would like to provide.
Brown: The late seventies. Not until the late 1970s did the attitude
reverse itself. We raised taxes in 1971 under Reagan's leadership
and it was the most massive tax increase until this time. There
had not been ever a tax increase of that nature in my time in
state government. So we did not really concern ourselves with the
inability of the state to continue to finance all of those local
assistance programs, whether they be the community mental health
facilities that Lanterman put together and so enriched over the
years, whether it be the child health screening and disability
prevention program that I put together and financed, whether it be
the urban impact aid that I talked about earlier, whether it be
the assistance that was given to some of the senior programs in
the state. All of those were things that we did and we didn't
even concern ourselves with the inability of the state to pay just
as we didn't concern ourselves terribly much and didn't listen at
all to Reagan's comments when we continued to expand the Medi-Cal
benefits.
And we did. Every year we would look for new additions that
were not federally funded for the Medi-Cal program. By the time
Jerry Brown turned his attention to it in the middle eighties,
when we really came face to face with the idea that maybe we can't
afford an unlimited amount of money in this category, there were I
think thirty-one extra programs. And I think in the room there
were thirty-one people. As we talked about what we would cut out
and what we would eliminated in the Medi-Cal assistance, there was
146
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
an advocate for each one of those programs except one, and that
was acupuncture.
We all said, "Hey, that's absolutely perfect. That's the
one we will dump." Then Jerry Brown said, "Gentlemen, there is
only one I care about." [laughter] And it was acupuncture. So
none of the programs could be cut. There was just no hesitancy by
any of us. If it seemed as if it was something we ought to do, we
did it. We expanded the coverage. We never even thought that
there would be a day when we could not afford it.
My guess is that there would not have come a day when we
couldn't afford it, believe it or not. If we had never gone in
for the indexing, which took lots of money away from the general
fund, and if we had never gone in to bail the locals out under
Proposition 13, we would not now be facing the budget deficit.
The tax system which we put in place in 1971 was a system
designed to grow as the economy of California grew and it would
have produced eons of revenue far greater than anything we would
have needed now or in the foreseeable future. But when we start
giving it away by way of the indexing, when we start giving it
away by all the other tax exemptions that we provided, we
literally through the tax expenditure process almost reversed the
progressivity of the original tax proposal in 1971.
Is that what they call the law of unexpected consequences?
I would suspect that that is a good example.
I would like to come back to this a little bit more when we get to
the Revenue and Taxation Committee.
147
XIV FIRST TRY FOR THE SPEAKERSHIP, 1974
Morris: Trying to proceed in an orderly fashion, we then come to 1974 when
Bob Moretti decided to have a try for the governorship and that
then led to you making a try for the speakership?
Brown: Yes.
Morris: How did it come about that so many talented people all decided to
run for governor in 1974?
Brown: Reagan decided he wasn't going to run for reelection. Every one
of those individuals had harbored a dream of being the governor of
the state of California. They all jumped in. They assumed that
there would not be a quality candidate running on the other side
of the aisle. That prompted their great interest. It was post-
Watergate, Republicans were in total disarray, and it seemed like
such an ideal time for a Democrat to win.
Morris: At the governor's level, is there the kind of mechanism that you
hear about at the local level where party bigwigs do some trade
offs and decide who is the best candidate so everybody can back
that person?
Brown: No. That doesn't happen. That's the mature way in which it
should be done. But that never happens on the Democratic side of
the aisle. They flirt with it on the Republican side of the aisle
and they succeed sometimes. Sometimes they don't succeed. But on
the Democratic side of the aisle they don't even flirt with it.
They actually embarrass those of us who would advocate it. If you
would advocate it, you would be accused of being the kingmaker,
trying to block the process of primaries. It's crazy because you
sap resources and literally reduce the chance for your candidate
to win in a general election. But that doesn't seem to annoy too
many people.
Morris: Did you spend a lot of time on Bob Moretti 's campaign for
governor?
148
Brown: I spent hours, days, weeks and months on Bob Moretti's campaign.
What we did not do is that we didn't apply the lesson that we
learned and the rule that we imposed on Unruh. When Unruh finally
announced that he was in fact going to run for governor in 1970,
we went to him and informed him that we would vote him out as
minority leader if he did not resign. He said, "I was getting
ready to resign anyway."
Well, when Moretti said he was going to run, we didn't
impose that same rule. Had we imposed that same rule, I would
have been elected speaker in 1974. Because in February of 1974 I
had the votes. I had all of my good friends, [Henry] Waxman and
[Howard] Berman and Ray Gonsalves and Barry Keene, I had them all
under my umbrella. But in the several months that elapsed between
Moretti's announcement and Moretti's candidacy (which proved to be
ill-timed), and his daily loss of influence as the campaign
unfolded and his absence--.
Morris: He was trying to be speaker as well as a candidate?
Brown: Correct. All of that combined to make it difficult for me to
pursue the speakership. I lost it by one vote.
Morris: That must have been maddening.
Brown: It was. It was.
Black Caucus Defection; Waxman and Berman Maneuvers
Morris: You have had a lot of press over the years so that your campaign
for speaker in 1974 has been pretty covered. What happened
amongst the Black Caucus, that they didn't stay with you? That
seemed to be one of the deciding points.
Brown: That was the deciding point. Our opposition, the conservative
wing of the Democratic operation up there [in Sacramento in the
legislature], knew that they could not win; they couldn't put the
combination together. They would have to break into the liberal
side. They did so through political promises. They made the
commitment to make a freshman majority leader, Howard Berman,
speaker. They made a commitment to give chairmanships to anybody
who would vote for them. So they made Barry Keene chair of
health, they made the late--. [John Quimby?] from San Bernardino
County; [they] made him chairman of Transportation. They made Ray
Gonsalves chairman of Education. All of those committees already
had incumbent chairmen who were already voting for Willie Brown so
149
it was easy to give those chairmanships away. If you vote for
McCarthy and McCarthy succeeds, you get that chairmanship.
Morris: Who was steering this group?
Brown: Waxman. Henry Waxman.
Morris: I thought he had been part of your votes back in February?
Brown: He was. That offer was never extended to me, and I clearly would
not have been able to make that deal because that means I would
have to fire folk who already held the chairmanships and who were
doing a good job and didn't deserve to be fired.
Morris: With whom you already had allegiances.
Brown: Who had already announced publicly that they were voting for me
for speaker. On merit they were voting for me. I was chair of
Ways and Means; there was no way they would not be voting for me.
And they had been part of the Moretti administration, I had helped
select them as the chairmen of those committees. So it was an
easy task for Waxman to promise the chairmanship to somebody else.
Henry Waxman, whom we had named as the chair of the
Reapportionment Committee, whom we had stuck by in spite of the
great criticism from Hispanics that he was looking out only for
the West Los Angeles crowd, Henry Waxman whom we had helped elect
to the state assembly; plus Howard Berman whom we had defied
scripture and helped elect to the state assembly. We would never
suspect that after almost fifteen years of friendship, programming
together, opposing and defeating a whole lot of conservative
Democrats, would they ever be a source of disloyalty. You would
never even suspect that.
But even given that source of disloyalty, that still would
not add up to a sufficient number of votes to defeat me. There
had to be a black component.
Morris: That's very disloyal. What was that all about?
Brown: The black component?
Morris: Right.
Brown: Simple. My roommate and best friend, [Leon Ralph], the man
scheduled to nominate me, unbeknownst to me, wanted desperately to
be chair of the Rules Committee immediately. He could not be
chair of the Rules Committee immediately because Burton was the
150
chair of the Rules Committee. Burton intended to go to Congress
Morris: John, too? Yes.
Brown: So he would have been chair of the Rules Committee as soon as
Burton was out of there, which was six to eight months later. But
when offered the chairmanship immediately of the Rules Committee,
he double-crossed me and never told me. He did it on the morning
of the vote. He walked into the room scheduled to nominate me,
was offered the chairmanship of the Rules Committee--.
Morris: On the way into the room?
Brown: --and sat on his hands and never nominated me. With that, [John]
Knox stepped in as a pinch-hit nominator because he is talented
enough and nominated me. But at that stage of the game we knew
that it was over. We still had one outside shot because it was a
one-vote decision. [Ken] Cory had not publicly committed, but we
had not solicited Cory either because we always thought his price
was too high. It was too late for us to then try and make a deal
with Cory. Cory was going to run for the controller for the state
of California at that stage of the game.
Morris: And he wanted your backing for controller?
Brown: No, no. We don't know what his price would have been but we knew
that in the early days, his prices had always been too high. So
we had just isolated him and never dealt with him. That was a
mistake as well, because we should have been about taking out
insurance against the possibility of a double-cross. But when you
think the double-cross could only come from the liberals and not
from your soulmates from the Jewish community or your brothers
from the black community and you were not looking at either one of
those areas for a possible defector, nothing comes as a greater
shock than to have--. It's like your mother not voting for you.
Morris: Had you and the roommate discussed his ambitions for the Rules
Committee?
Brown: No, no. The wonderful thing about my speakership campaign then
was that it was such a foregone conclusion that no one even asked
what their assignments would be. The assumption would be that
since I had operated so beautifully as chair of Ways and Means, I
had always made sure that the proper bases were touched, the
Moretti machine had been so efficient and effective at appointing
people and taking care of people, you would just automatically
assume that they would continue to exist, that it would never
sunset.
151
But you never know how greed and ego and ambition could
cause people to make assumptions. The assumptions that were made
and sold to my buddy, Leon Ralph, were very simple. They simply
said, "Leon, if Willie Brown is the speaker, there can only be one
black chief. He cannot name any other black to any important
position. You blacks are better off if you take the chair of
Rules, if Julian Dixon takes the caucus chair and John Miller
takes the chair of the Judiciary Committee, that's more blacks in
the leadership. Although you don't have the speakership, that's
more important for the black community and it's more important for
you personally because, believe me, Willie Brown's standards are
so much higher than what you would ever be able to meet, he'll
never seriously move you up in his administration. He will always
look to the most competent and talented person."
Morris: And you guys are not that talented?
Brown: That's the conclusion you would have to reach. That's the
conclusion you would have to come to in order to buy that
argument. But that is the argument that was bought.
Morris: Didn't John Miller also make an eleventh-hour move for the
speakership?
Brown: No, no. That was 1971 when he made his move. But because he
reneged on his commitment to us, we squelched Miller and never had
anything else to do with Miller. So Miller had a legitimate beef
with me. [Phone interruption] We had not done anything for
Miller. He had become a back-bencher in our administration
because he had double-crossed us. We had consigned him to the
scrap heap. He had been waiting for years to get even, so we
didn't even ask Miller to vote for me. There was no reason to.
He announced to the world that he was for the other guy and that
he was going to nominate the other guy.
Morris: So you knew there was going to be a split in the black caucus?
Brown: Right. Miller. All the other persons were either publicly
committed or so close to us that there was no need to solicit
their commitment. It would be like me saying I'm going to run for
mayor; I would not assume my son is for Frank Jordan.1 There is
no reason we would even ask him. I should go and assign him a job
of getting his friends to vote for me.
Morris: You hadn't read ancient Celtic and Greek lore.
'At the time of this interview, Frank Jordan was running for mayor of
San Francisco, to which he was elected.
152
Brown: I obviously had not.
Morris: Those guys were forever doing in their brothers and uncles.
Brown: Yes, but I didn't remember that.
Morris: I'm sorry. That's unkind of me to mention it.
Brown: No, it is not. It was accurate. I learned though. Let me tell
you. You don't have to run it by me but once.
The Berman Brothers; 1971 Reapportionment
Morris: Why was it against scripture for you and the Moretti folks to back
Berman for the assembly back in 1972?
Brown: Why?
Morris: I thought you said you had defied scripture in helping Howard
Berman get elected?
Brown: Because there were nine people in the race. They were all nine
good-quality liberals. They were all Jews.
Morris: In one assembly district?
Brown: For one assembly district.
Morris: Good gracious.
Brown: There were nine of them. They were all good people. They were
all quality people, really quality people. When you have a
contest like that, you always have three or four friends. There
wasn't any reason to take one over another because any one of them
would be a good colleague if he got elected.
Morris: And if you back one, you will make enemies of all the others.
Brown: If you decide to help just one. If you go in there, you became a
heavyweight. And they are all about equal in their abilities, so
it is going to be who the voters like. If we come in there with
this huge infusion of money and resources, we skew the scale to
one person. We did that on Howard Berman 's behalf.
Morris: Why?
153
Brown: Because Burton and Brown knew Waxman well. Waxman had always been
our guy whom we sent to the back room to count the votes. He
would always come out with the right count no matter what the
ballots that were cast. So he was a trusted lieutenant and if he
made a request of us, it was like me making a request to John
Burton. There just wouldn't be any hesitancy. He wouldn't
question whether or not he'd do it. He'd do it because it was the
right thing to do and it is comradeship. That's why we went for
Howard Berman. You just assumed that Howard Berman would kill
himself to help Willie Brown.
Morris: Had Mr. Waxman and Mr. Berman already developed the campaign
skills that have since been marketed around the state?
Brown: No. That all started with us. We gave Michael Berman, the little
brother, his first real reapportionment job. He learned
reapportionment in 1971 and that's when we controlled him. We had
Henry Waxman as our reapportionment chairman. That was a Brown-
Burton selection. Moretti didn't know Henry Waxman from Adam. We
told Moretti that this was the best guy to draw the lines. Then
of course, we staffed it with Rudy Nothenburg from our office here
in San Francisco and their little brother Michael, who was
considered to be kind of a wizard in mathematics. That's how all
this started.
Morris: Okay. Because by then we were into the wonders of the computer
age?
Brown: We were on the threshold. Computers were not there yet. When the
reapportionment plan was done in 1971 and 1972, they were still
doing it mechanically.
Morris: Was it computers that made the little brother a good choice?
Brown: No. He was just a smart kid. He was like Rudy. They were really
smart guys; they would work twenty-four hours a day; they didn't
need bread or water on which to exist, [laughter]
Morris: How did they get along with Phil Burton?
Brown: They were under Phil Burton's leadership. Phil was the leader.
Morris: Did they learn from Phil?
Brown: Absolutely. They learned everything they know from Phil.
Morris: He didn't do it all himself in the 1970s? He needed some help.
154
Brown: He gave them directions and told them what to look for and how to
look for it. They had some ideas about voting trends and all that
business because they had been involved in trying to run the
elections, and we had been successful in some of them. But it was
not the science that it is today. The Beraans hadn't yet put
together their dictionary, i.e., their Jewish surname dictionary,
their Italian surname dictionary, their Asian dictionary, their
Armenian dictionary. They had not done all that. That's a
process that has evolved over the last fifteen to twenty years.
All that was not in place when we were doing this. When I was
first defeated for speaker, none of that was in place.
Morris: Amazing technological advances.
Brown: Absolutely.
Banishing of Willie Brown
Morris: The reports are that after losing the speakership in 1974, it took
a while for you and Leo McCarthy to come back to speaking terms.
Had you been particularly aware of what he was doing since he is
also a San Francisco boy?
Brown: Leo McCarthy had always been our opposition. In San Francisco, he
had been our opposition. We defeated Leo McCarthy in a state
senate fight with Moscone. Moscone won it and we supported
Moscone. Leo then ran for the board of supervisors and got
elected. He was always our opposition for the county committee
chairmanships and things of that nature. He was always with the
Irish Catholic, old boys, conservative Democratic crowd.
So when McCarthy defeated me for speaker, there was no love
lost. But when I learned that we didn't have the votes, I
supported him.
it
Morris: That was very nice of you.
Brown: Absolutely. Not only that. I held a press conference and
informed the press that McCarthy had won the nomination of the
caucus and that I would be supporting his candidacy. There was no
speakership open.
Moretti ran for governor and he lost the nomination. The
day after he lost the nomination, there was a motion made to
155
vacate the chair. One Ed Z'berg from Sacramento moved to vacate
the chair. Now, Moretti lost his nerve at that stage. The
Republicans would not have voted to vacate the chair. There were
not forty-one Democrats ready to throw Moretti out. But Moretti
was so humiliated and so embarrassed and his expectations had been
so high, he had really lost that marvelous ability to strategize
that had characterized his speakership. He was just a shattered
man.
Morris: Really? Because of losing the primary?
Brown: Yes. Losing the primary so badly. So when they stood up on the
floor without warning and moved to vacate the chair on Moretti, he
recessed the house over my objections. I said, "No way. Force
them to a vote." I'm a great believer that if you know that they
don't have the numbers and that they are bluffing, and we
immediately check with our Republican friends, and Moretti was
very close to Priolo and Beverly and Maddy--he was very close to
that whole crowd—they would not have thrown Moretti out. Moretti
however yielded and went to a caucus. In the caucus, Moretti got
up and said that he intended to resign in two weeks anyway so
there isn't a reason to pursue this motion. I said, "Moretti,
don't do that because if you say you are going to resign within
two weeks, that's not time for us to put together the votes with
the Republicans for a bipartisan speakership. We'll be locked
into this crazy business of Democrats only. We obviously are not
in a position at this moment to do anything about it. Don't do
it."
Morris: For my sake, Willie Brown's sake?
Brown: But he had lost his nerve. He had just lost his nerve. We did
not know even at that stage of the game that I was right. Leon
Ralph was with me telling Moretti not to do it. At that stage he
hadn't been bought off. So Moretti counted over the ten days or
so that elapsed between that historical caucus and the date
scheduled for the vote and we continued to believe that we had
just barely enough to hold on and that I would be elected to the
speakership. Then of course, the number came about that that was
not the case.
Following that, I made the announcement that McCarthy would
be elected to the speakership and that Moretti would be stepping
down and that I would be supporting McCarthy's candidacy. I
sought out from McCarthy the commitment that the Ways and Means
chairmanship would be passed on to John Foran, his law partner,
also from San Francisco, and Foran was a competent person. I left
membership on the Ways and Means Committee so that there would be
no interference or assumed interference by me in the process.
156
McCarthy I think considered naming me chair of the Social
Welfare Committee. Then his people wouldn't even let him do that.
They were really mean: the Boatwrights, the Lou Papans and that
crowd and the John Millers so hated me--.
Morris: This is still the old San Francisco conservative Democrat crowd?
Brown: No. Beyond that.
Morris: This is spread out into the--.
Brown: McCarthy understood that he couldn't and shouldn't dump all over
Willie Brown because just as Willie Brown lost the opportunity, he
was offending enough people by terminating people to pay his debts
that somewhere down the line may become a majority and Willie
Brown might be back. But his people around him wouldn't let him
do that. They really pressed him to isolate me.
Morris: I understand Miller carrying a grudge, if you want to define it
that way. How about Boatwright and Papan?
Brown: Well, Papan was just Leo McCarthy's clone so that was an enemy on
the natural. We had supported someone against him in the primary.
Morris: In the district?
Brown: In his district. Yes. I had supported a Burton candidate
actually, not my candidate. It was a John Burton candidate. I
don't remember the guy's name but he was obviously a stiff because
he didn't win. So that made an enemy out of Papan.
I had insulted Boatwright at some point, so Boatwright says,
in some thing I did in the Ways and Means Committee. I don't know
what I did, but I did something. At any rate, Boatwright wasn't
ready to forgive me for that. There had also been a fistfight
early in the year between Lou Papan and Ken Meade. Ken Meade was
a Willie Brown supporter. Lou Papan had busted Ken Meade 's eye,
and we had to carry Ken Meade to the hospital on a stretcher and
all that business. So there had been some real bad blood between
the McCarthyites and the Brownites and that spilled over into
banishment of Willie Brown.
So they took my office, they took my committee memberships,
all of them. They took my staff and they consigned me to the
smallest office that they could find.
Morris: On the fourth floor?
157
Brown: No. I don't remember which floor. I think it was maybe the third
floor. But it was a staff office. They didn't even give me a
member's office and the office was so small that there was only
room in the front part of the office for the secretary and her
desk. No visitor chairs. The visitor chairs had to be set in the
hallway. So if you came to see me, you had to sit in the hallway.
That's how they tried to humiliate me. Did not even bother me. I
never complained. I never blinked an eye. I went back to San
Francisco to practice law and I only came to the capital on the
days when we were on the floor, or the days on which I was
eventually assigned to some committee memberships.
Morris: You're saying that Leo did not take command of his own
speakership. If Leo didn't bear you a grudge--.
Brown: I think he bore me a grudge but I don't think he would have been
stupid enough to be as vindictive as he was towards Willie Brown
and Willie Brown supporters.
Morris: But what you are saying is that Leo's lieutenants prevailed over
Leo's instincts.
Brown: Encouraged. I've just got to believe that Leo was wanting to do
something in the future politically. Knowing how cautious he is,
I don't believe that he would have naturally banished a Willie
Brown to the scrap heap knowing that I had a life expectancy
politically in perpetuity, [laughter] And if he was ultimately
going to be something in this state, it didn't make any sense to
make a permanent enemy out of me.
Return Via the Revenue and Taxation Committee
Brown: They consigned me to the scrap heap and it didn't bother me too
much. But there was one person who actually asked for me to serve
on his committee after a couple of conversations. It was Dan
Boatwright .
Morris: Really?
Brown: He brought me onto his committee. He brought me onto Rev and Tax.
Morris: Now what do you suppose led to his change of heart?
Brown: I really don't know. It may be that he discovered that I had not
insulted him in the way in which he thought I insulted him. The
insult turned out to have been a bill that I killed. He thought
158
he had the votes, and in those days you didn't have roll calls.
He thought I had been arbitrary. He subsequently discovered,
however, that many members will tell the authors of the bill they
are for it, but they quietly tell me, "Don't you let this bill out
of committee." He discovered that I had really been true to what
I should have been as chairman and that's protecting the word of
any member who gave me his word privately. I think he must have
discovered that some place. He certainly determined that it was
not malice to Boatwright from Brown that prompted Brown's conduct.
He came out of the Richmond community. He was very close to
all of my black friends in Richmond and I think he wanted to
somewhat make amends with them as well. That's my speculation. I
never had any personal knowledge but I can tell you the pattern
would be that. I struck up a friendship with Boatwright. I
ultimately ended up representing Boatwright as Boatwright ' s
lawyer.
Morris: Really?
Brown: I was Boatwright 's lawyer for many years in several of his
transactions. At any rate, Boatwright apparently put in a word
and I got onto Rev and Tax. 1 didn't even want to be on Rev and
Tax but it was the only decent committee that meets on Monday and
I was only in the capitol on Monday and Thursday. I was not in
the capitol any other time. So it didn't make any sense to assign
me to any other committee.
Morris: Okay. So your celebrated speedy trips from Sacramento to San
Francisco were not five days a week.
Brown: Two days a week. Mondays and Thursdays. 1 would go up early
Monday morning. I would come back Monday afternoon. I would
either go up late Wednesday afternoon or early Thursday morning,
and I was back here by noon on Thursday. I wasn't even there to
vote on Thursday. I would just put my key in and leave. I would
make roll call and leave. Then I practiced law full-time.
159
XV RELATIONS WITH THE MEDIA AND THE PEOPLE
Maintaining a Law Practice
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Did the fact that you were in the assembly and in and out of very
visible positions affect what kinds of clients came to you for
legal advice?
No. I have never had clients connected with the legislature at
all. I have never had the opportunity, frankly, to represent
insurance companies and to represent banks and to represent S and
L's [savings and loan companies]. I have never done any of that.
I have never represented trade associations. I've always had the
same basic kind of clientele. They were people who were based in
San Francisco doing business in and about San Francisco with both
government and non-government. That's all I've ever represented.
That's been consistent throughout the thirty-plus years of my law
practice.
So my law practice didn't change. It's just that I did more
court work. I actually tried drunk driving cases. I actually
tried divorce cases. I tried criminal defense cases involving
controlled substances. I made appearances before boards and
agencies for licensing here in the city. I represented people who
had problems with the police department for dance permits. I did
all those kinds of things. You can only do those if you are
actually here because those hearings occur on days that the
legislature meets.
And you have to sit around a lot--.
And wait to be heard. That's right.
Monday morning and--.
And you have to go in on
Morris: --to get continued.
160
Brown: Yes, and get your case announced. The courts were very
cooperative. Every judge knew me personally and most of them
liked me, so they were really accommodating. They knew that some
of my criminal clients would come in on Monday morning, and the
judge would say, "Mr. Brown is your lawyer?" "Yes." "Mr. Brown's
day in court is tomorrow." [chuckling] And they would continue
it without my being there. They don't do that kind of stuff any
more.
But they used to continue my matters without me being there.
And I practiced all over northern California. I would go as far
down as Monterey to represent people. I would go as far in the
valley as Modesto or actually Fresno to represent people. I would
go as far as Chico to represent people, up in Butte County, Marin
County, Santa Rosa. So I went all over. Judges became
knowledgeable, kind of, about my whereabouts. Like, for example,
if I had to be in Santa Rosa on Tuesday, I would try to make it
Tuesday morning in Santa Rosa. Then I would have my office call
the courts in San Francisco and say, "He's in Santa Rosa this
morning. He can be there at two o'clock." And they would
continue my matter at two o'clock in the afternoon. So I had
really great cooperation from the court system for my appearances.
And it was good.
Including the federal court. I tried federal court cases.
I represented the then Oakland Raiders. I represented Nate
Thurman and the [Golden State] Warriors. 1 represented a lot of
people .
Morris: Really.
Brown: Yes, I had a good clientele.
Morris: That must have been kind of fun.
Brown: It was.
Morris: Some major groups there.
Brown: I even went to Japan and tried a case for three weeks, with Cecil
Poole. We went over to Japan and tried a heroin smuggling case.
Morris: In the Japanese courts?
Brown: No, it was actually under the military. We had these persons who
had been accused by the military of doing it.
Morris: People in the service?
161
Brown: Yes.
Morris: So you were trying somebody in a military court?
Brown: In a military setting.
Morris: You were representing somebody in a military court.
Brown: In a military setting, right.
Morris: Is that unusual? I thought usually you were represented by
somebody from the judge advocate's--?
Brown: No. You have your choice. You can have a private counselor or
you can have someone else represent you. But because this was
civilly related--.
Morris: Getting to know all the judges in northern California must be a
useful ear to the ground of what's going on in all those different
counties.
Brown: Oh, yes. And they loved to have me come in. They loved to have
me drop by. They would always invite me for coffee. They would
interrupt the proceedings to take my matters, so I really had a
good working relationship with most of the judges and most of the
benches. They served me well. They never cut any corners and did
any rulings but they were courteous enough and cooperative enough.
My guess is that they treated other lawyers similarly. It just
wasn't the same formalized, rigid distant process that it is
today.
Morris: Well, you would get to know what's going on in the courts too.
Brown: You get to know what's going on in the courts too. And the judges
were connected. In the political world they were really connected
folk. You would go into Fresno and you would end up spending the
morning in the chambers. They would call the other judges down to
visit with you. It was kind of fun.
Morris: Did those turn out to be useful as contacts and information later
on?
Brown: No, it turned out to be more useful for them. Even to this day,
there are judges who call me directly about matters pending in the
legislature and about their retirement benefits and about court
proceedings. That's why, if you go through my record, you will
see that I carried legislation to reform the court system. That
came because of my close working relationship with judges. I
carried the trial court speedup measure. I carried the experiment
162
measure. I carried the judge's salaries bills, all caused by my
long history being a practicing lawyer who happened to have been a
legislator.
Morris: Or who happened to still be a legislator,
attention.
It was part of his
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Correct.
You took some flak in the press about representing businesses who
wanted permits or had other matters before city and county boards.
Yes, they wanted to change the rules. The press wanted
desperately to figure out how to change the rules. It all started
with an organization called the Bay Guardian. They say that the
rules ought to be that I as a state elected official can't appear
before local boards and commissions. That is not the law, it
never has been the law, and it never will be the law. Unless, of
course, you change the method of compensation and redefine the
duties of state elected officials. Just like local elected
officials who happen to be lawyers, like Quentin Kopp, can, and
when he was a member of the board of supervisors did with
regularity represent folk before state boards and agencies because
there is no disability from that.
But the press wanted so desperately to impact upon me and
who Willie Brown happens to be that they've always had that
standard and they have always tried to make it such that locals
would somehow defer to Brown because of his stature. When in
effect locals require more of Brown and more of Brown's clients.
I have to literally tell my clients, "Listen, you've got a
problem. If I am going to represent you, you better understand
that it is going to be in the newspaper and that if you were going
to get any kind of a break, you probably are not now because no
local judge is going to take the hit for having given a favor to
somebody who was represented by Willie Brown. So if that's a
problem you ought to hire somebody else."
Do you divide up the chores with your law partners on that basis,
that somebody else might represent this client better--?
I don't have any law partners.
You are a sole practitioner?
As of 1977, I became a sole practitioner. When Proposition 9
[June 1974] went into effect, you began to have different
standards for what is a conflict of interest. You can
accidentally end up with a conflict of interest, something you
163
have no knowledge of, because your partners may be representing
somebody and you never know who your partners are representing,
like your partners never will know whom you are representing. You
produce a share of the income, they produce a share of the income,
you share the bills--.
Morris: You share the income.
Brown: Yes, it goes into a pot. Seldom if ever do you sit around in a
room and discuss every case and every nuance of every case. Only
if it is a real complicated one and you are looking for help.
Otherwise everybody carries his own files. I have no clue what's
in his files. So with that in mind, you run the distinct risk of
an inadvertent conflict that could be terribly embarrassing if you
don't stay on top of it. The only way to stay on top of it is
don't do it at all.
So I became a sole practitioner. I own the lease on this
place; all these people in this office rent from me. They are my
tenants. I have absolutely nothing to do with their practice.
Whatever clients they have, I don't even know who their clients
are. I am not interested in knowing who their clients are. If I
have a client that I want to associate them on, I hire them to
participate with me, but it is my client and I know everything
that is being done on behalf of that client. I collect the money
and I pay them so that if there is any heat to be taken, any
mistake to be made, I made it. It is not inadvertent; it didn't
come by accident. So I try to take the responsibility as well as
the benefits derivative therefrom.
I do that with all of my law situations. I regularly refer
cases out of the office completely. If I think there is any hint
of a possible conflict with my state duties, I refer the case out.
I do so in writing so there is no question.
Morris: There is a paper trail.
Brown: Yes. I still get criticized.
Morris: Because you are a public figure, the rules of libel are different
for you than they are for me.
Brown: Totally.
164
Observations on the Press; Quality of Information
Morris: The business of the press coverage is really interesting because
you were named by the press the outstanding freshman legislator
back in 1965. They loved you then but there seems to have
developed some tensions in your relationship with the press.
What's happened in the nature of the media coverage?
Brown: I invariably challenge everybody. If I think you are wrong, I
tell you you're wrong. And I tell you at the top of my voice from
the highest peak in the world. I do not tell you subtly; I do not
tell you quietly and I tell you sometimes in terms that are
considered derogatory and sometimes even personally insulting.
You don't forget that and you jump at the opportunity to return
the favor. That escalates sometimes.
Then there are others in the press who are really stupid.
There is nothing that offends me more than stupidity. If you are
in a press situation where there are thirty of your colleagues and
you ask me a stupid question, I will characterize it as a stupid
question, tell you why, tell you why you don't know your facts,
and what you ought to do is read the damn bill and then ask your
questions. There is no reason for me to humiliate people like
that but, you know, what the hell? You only live once.
That has developed a trail of detractors who are just
waiting. And then there has been a change in the journalistic
standards since Woodward and Bernstein.1 There is now the
unidentified source and there is now the rat-pack-journalism type
activity. There are now the persecutorial journalistic types who
assume rules and regulations of what the standards ought to be and
want to hold you to compliance with those bogus standards.
There is an incredible wealth of material for journalists to
write about concerning people who hold public office. In the old
days, there was no requirement that you reveal who contributed to
you. In the old days, there was no requirement for you to reveal
what you did with the money that was contributed to you. There
were no prohibitions against personal use. There was no
requirement that you reveal who your clients are and what you
earned per year and what you owned. All of that new information
has changed the nature of a journalist's attitude about elected
officials. They look now to try and tie any of those factors to
'Washington Post reporters Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein
collaborated on numerous articles detailing the 1972 Democratic party
office break-in and subsequent Watergate scandals.
165
your duties. If you vote for things that affect lawyers, they go
and see if lawyers made contributions to you. If they did, they
make the jump from the contributions to your performance. They
refuse to believe that you had the attitude that you exhibited by
that performance long before anyone gave you any contribution.
They would rather take the cynical tack.
When it is pointed out to them that that is what they are
doing and how it is just as logical to do it the other way, then
you are a smart aleck. They will then begin the watch. The watch
is to wait for an opportunity to ding. That is a part of my
relationship with the press.
The second part of my relationship with the press is one of
my duties as speaker. I am the spokesperson and the heat taker
for the house. Decisions that individual members make--. For an
example, if a member comes to me and says, "You've got to get me
off of this committee. I want to run for x and on this committee
I will have to vote against my best interests for that candidacy.
So you've got to take me off the committee. But the constituency
that wanted me to go on the committee is going to be mad if it is
known that I asked you to take me off. So just take me off."
So you have to throw them off with a big flash?
I have to throw them off; not with a big flash, I just remove them
from the committee. They then say, when they're asked why they
were removed, "I have no idea. It's the speaker's choice. The
speaker makes the assignments." When they come to me, I have to
keep-- .
Morris: Mum on it.
Brown: --mum on it. I have to say, "We're reorganizing," or, "It's a
better delivery system." They know I'm bullshitting. So they say
that I threw him off because he was voting differently from what I
wanted him to vote, because that's what his sponsors would say
when he tells them, "I don't know why he threw me off. I was
there to vote and he replaced me with somebody who's voting
differently." Then the sponsors proceed to ding me for having
done that. That becomes cumulative.
Morris :
Brown:
Common Cause will come in with some cockamaraie idea about
who ought to do what to whom and I will tell them to go jump in a
lake. They would not accept my philosophical views when I met
with them on the issue. They will try to maintain that because
they consider themselves right and me wrong, they are moral and
I'm immoral and they try to figure out some reason why I'm
immoral. I'm immoral because I accept the contributions. So I
166
become the hate object of that crowd. They are the favorites of
the press because the press loves anybody who will ding us. And
they get good press. Part of my official duty was to say no to
that cockamamie idea because it would adversely affect the
membership. Then I have to take the heat.
Then, in addition thereto, I do generate tremendous campaign
contributions, probably five, six, seven, ten times greater than
any other member. But every other speaker has done and had the
same privileges. It's just now that is more visible.
Morris: More so than the caucus chairs?
Brown: The caucus never raises the money. It's the speaker who has to
get reelected to the speakership, so he is not about to allow the
caucus chairman to do that because the caucus chairman may be his
opponent. So why would the speaker transfer that responsibility
to the caucus chair. It would be dumb to do that. You are
building in the seeds of your own destruction if you do that. So
you don't do that. You don't do that. It's just illogical to
assume that that would happen. There is no caucus chairman whom
you would ever trust that much, particularly after the bad
experiences we had with loyalty.
Collecting all those contributions obviously leads to
potential criticism for when you cast your votes or when you
intercede on behalf of a policy issue, you can legitimately be
accused. They write those great stories. I get angry when they
write those stories because I know they are not true. There are
just as many people on the opposite sides and on the losing side
of the issue who contributed, because everybody contributes to the
speaker. But when you read it in the press, you would think only
one collection of characters are contributing. Those are the
characters who won. That's bullshit. When the trial lawyers win,
they have their part of the group that contributed, but the
doctors lost. The doctors equal the trial lawyers in
contributions .
Morris: That's a very interesting point.
Brown: And people never know that because the press never prints it. I
get pissed. I said, "Hey, if you are going to print the
contributions I got from the winners, simultaneously print the
contributions I got from the losers." They say, "But the losers
didn't have any influence over you. Their contributions didn't
work." I say, "Oh. So if the trial lawyers had lost, you would
say the doctors bought it. If the trial lawyers win, you say the
trial lawyers bought it. That's illogical. If monies have an
influence and it's the same amount of money, then there must have
167
been some other factor that prompted the decision to go with the
trial lawyers." But they don't print it that way. And they do it
with reference to the entire membership. So I have a running
battle with them on that score.
Finally there are some genuine right-wing conservative
reporters whose agenda it is to eliminate liberals. They reflect
that in their writings and their editorials.
II
Brown: You talked about how I was rated in my early years. I'm still
rated at the same level by the press today. On any scale of
evaluating members of the legislature, if you go back and take a
look, the only place they ding me is on integrity. They still say
there is nobody brighter, nobody who works harder, nobody more
sensitive, nobody more comprehensive, no one more dedicated and no
one more effective. But they then say, "We question his motives."
Morris: What about the aspect of the press as conveyers of information to
the public, the voters?
Brown: They will not assume any responsibility for that. I maintain that
the press is the fourth branch of government. They are unelected
but they have just as much influence as any person voting on the
floor of the legislature. Members invariably will say to me, "How
will this play in the press? What will the L.A. Times say about
it? What did the Chronicle say about it?" They are concerned
about how it is played. The press knows that and the press uses
it to the hilt. The press will repeat for days, print one story
after another, one angle after another, on something they are
really interested in. Then as soon as it is done, they then take
credit for having influenced it. But when you say to them,
coupled with that awesome power is a responsibility to print the
truth, there is a responsibility to be objective, there is a
responsibility to be balanced, they bridle at my invading their
First Amendment prerogatives that they jealously guard.
You don't get factual reporting any more. They don't even
make a pretense that it is factual. They write news analysis for
straight reporting. That is doing a disservice to this democracy.
This democracy survives and has to survive on the basis of the
quality of information and the accuracy of that information.
Otherwise, good decisions can't be made. But that is not
happening.
I'm telling you, twenty-five or thirty or forty years ago,
when there was competition among the news sources and the news-
gathering sources and the news-delivering sources, that
168
competition kept them honest. One newspaper would point out the
inaccuracies and the opinions and the stupidity of their fellow
newspapers. There were major wars between the newspapers in any
given city and there were always three or four of those newspapers
out there. They spent a lot of time dinging each other.
Morris: Right. There is the L.A. Times, the Oakland Tribune and the San
Francisco Chronicle.
Brown: They fought each other.
Morris: They were the kingmakers in the forties.
Brown: Yes. And they really fought each other. If one printed a story
that was not truthful, the other delighted in pointing out the
inaccuracies. You don't get that any more. It's almost a
rewrite. They are all almost as if they were one newspaper.
They, the editorial boards, allegedly have not pooled their news
reporting sources but they have pooled their commercial side. I
maintain that the commercial side now drives what happens with the
news .
I challenged them once when I carried a bill involving
mandatory seat belts. It was opposed by the auto manufacturers,
the auto dealers. The newspapers wrote editorials against my
seat-belt bill. I said those newspapers were getting their
inspiration off of the ads. Because if you take a look, there are
a million dollars' worth of ads every day for the sale of
automobiles. It shouldn't surprise anybody that on the editorial
page they would take the position of the car dealers.
They went nuts. "The editorial page has nothing to do with
the commercial side. They don't even talk to each other," they
said. I said, "Then why would you say to me that because auto
dealers gave me a million bucks, I am voting with the auto dealers
and that there is a direct connection? Yet you get a million
dollars a day from the auto dealers and you are telling me there
is no connection. I am willing to accept your word but
henceforth, goddammit, you accept mine." Not to this day have
they forgiven me for that challenge.
I do it regularly with them now. I question the editorial
policy and how it relates to the contents of the ad page. And
apparently it's beginning to reveal itself in terms of my
accuracy. There are some reporters who are beginning to say that
they get a call from their editor saying, "Listen, I got a call
from Macy's who buys a page every time. They are concerned about
your position on retail credit." We had a bill in the legislature
this last session on that.
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris:
169
I said to one of my reporter friends, "You guys are missing
a great trick. There is a bill moving through the legislature
that will increase credit card rates above 19 percent when in fact
prime rate is below nine. Don't you think we ought to carry a
little bill that will restrict them to what the feds are now
restricting them to? If you guys get a newspaper thing going, I
think we can do that." One of my guys came back and he said,
"Listen, we talked to our people about that and they say that's a
problem because all of those stores that you are talking about
advertise with us, but they make a fairly good case of why credit
won't be available unless the interest rates are high and they can
cover all their losses and what have you." I said, "That's a
conflict." "Yes, it is, probably. But we can't really do it."
So I got no editorial support on trying to kill the bill
that took the lid off the interest rates at the state level. You
as the public don't even know we did that. We did that at this
last session. We took the lid off. That could go up to 25
[percent] .
Well, California retailers got that done and the newspapers
stayed silent. That should have been a major campaign.
The days of the muckraking crusading newspapers are over.
Over.
Yet, this morning's paper has, I thought, a very nice article,
brief and to the point about a Willie Brown-backed health
initiative. '
Yes, that was yesterday when I made a speech in Los Angeles. I
made a good speech, and this guy happened to be a fairly decent
reporter. But I'm telling you, there won't be any editorial
policy following that. They will not now follow up every day and
begin to help lead a campaign that would persuade my membership to
vote in that direction. They won't do that.
Do you have any sense that the media picks and chooses? Some
papers are for better transportation and others are for better--.
Brown: No, it is usually based on whether or not there are ad buyers.
"'Willie Brown Backs Health Initiative," Sabin Russell, San Francisco
Chronicle. November 16, 1991, A16.
170
Speechmaking. Image; Friendships with Herb Caen and Wilkes
Bashford
Morris :
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Right. But you do a healthy schedule of speechmaking.
Oh, sure.
To get the word out to the media and to the public about policy
issues?
To everybody. I believe that if I'm given an opportunity to chat
with you, you will become a permanent admirer or at worst you will
respect Willie Brown, and you certainly will not let the mythical
Willie Brown invade your judgment and control your judgment about
who he is. That's why I will go everywhere every chance I get to
make every public appearance I can. It has been basically the
cornerstone of my success as speaker. I would have long since
been out as speaker if my membership believed all the stuff that
has been written about me in the newspapers. My membership knows
that 98 percent of that stuff is either wrong or not relevant. My
membership knows that the cars and the clothes have nothing to do
with the quality of my work. So they don't even pay any attention
to that. Most people think, "Well, doesn't that offend them?"
Newspaper guys: "Don't you think that's the wrong image." I say,
"What are you talking about. Image? Give me a break. There is
nobody who can lead the house like Brown and they will tell you
that. Image? We're not concerned about Willie Brown's image."
By and large, my observation of the people in the legislature is
that they are quite well turned out.
More of them want to be like Willie Brown. They want to be like
Willie Brown. They would like to be as well-dressed as Willie
Brown. They make an effort. They really make an effort. Very
few people come in there without their shoes shined, without their
shirts laundered. Very few come in with stains on their ties
because it's not just Willie Brown who points out there are stains
on their tie. Everybody in the room is checking it.
Even Tom Bates has given up wearing plaid sport shirts to the
assembly and he wears a suit now and then.
He wears a suit and a tie.
asks me, "How do I look?"
Absolutely. And he looks decent. He
Morris: Does he? [laughter]
171
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Absolutely.
While we were here, I wanted to ask, because your readers are
going to want to know, about Wilkes Bashford and Herb Caen,
speaking of the media and how one dresses.
Let's take Herb first. Herb is an old, dear and trusted friend.
I think Herb adopted me somewhere in the sixties. He decided that
I was his kind of person first and, secondly, his kind of elected
official. That has never varied. He criticizes me; he takes me
on when he thinks I'm wrong; he treats me not with friendship or
deference, if there is something I ought to be shot at for. He
praises me, he laughs with me, he enjoys me and we talk to each
other four or five times a week. We see each other probably over
the year on an average of once a week, if not twice a week. He is
intimately involved with my public celebrations. He attends every
one; he sometimes MCs them. I am intimately involved in all of
his birthday parties and all those kinds of events. We go to
baseball games together, football games together, and we do
charity stuff together. Like, in two weeks, we are going to co-MC
Moe ' s Kitchen; that's the Cecil Williams food program.
We do lots of things personally together. We always spend
New Year's together in Paris. We love clothing, we love music and
we share those respective kinds of things. We love good food,
great conversation and a good joke. We invariably call each other
up. I get the funny stuff in his column before you get it because
he calls to tell me. He calls to tell me, "Listen, let me tell
you what just occurred." Or he calls to read something to me or
he sends me a copy of something somebody sent him, a clipping of
something somebody sent him. I likewise call him up and tell him
the stuff I heard that is funny and the stuff that I heard that is
about to break or some insider gossip. I call him up and deliver
that information.
So we have a good working friendship. We have a personal
friendship. I think we generally like each other. And we'll call
each other up to say, "I'll go if you go. I'm not going to go if
you don't go." To an event, because it's going to be boring.
We'll say up front it's going to really boring,
there we end up talking about everybody.
But if we're
And because you're there you add a little liveliness to the event.
That's right. Last Saturday night, for example, we were blackjack
dealers at a charity event for the Jewish Community Center, and it
was a riot. Then Wilkes became a friend of ours because we both
ended up shopping in his store. We became acquainted with him by
virtue of that relationship. We found him interesting enough to
172
Morris ;
talk to. He found us interesting enough. That friendship ensued
and it has continued to the present day.
Was Mr. Bashford something different in gentleman's clothing in
San Francisco?
Brown: Radically different. It was classic with a unique flair and an
attention to detail, fabric, and well-coordinated. He was in a
little dinky place in the parking garage on Sutter Street when we
discovered him.
Morris: Right next to where the World Affairs Center is now?
Brown: Correct. Exactly. Right. He had only that first little store.
He didn't have where you come out of that walkway. He had that
first little space and that's all he had. It was just himself and
one other guy. He farmed out his tailoring, et cetera.
Morris: How did you happen to find him?
Brown: We used to wander around town twice a week. I would meet Herb for
lunch and we would walk and we would look at the town. We lunch
in different places, just the two of us. We would lunch at the
St. Francis [Hotel] one time; we would lunch at Bardelli's the
next time. We would lunch at Sam's the next time. We would lunch
at the French Room. We would just go to different places.
Morris: The old reliables.
Brown: Yes, absolutely. Then sometimes we would venture out and we would
do some experimenting, but we decided we didn't want to be driving
to different locales because he had to get back to work. We would
do those on weekends. Then we would do nightlife together. In
the process of wandering around--we were both into clothing, and I
mean heavy into clothing, [phone interruption]
Morris: You said that Herb Caen decided that you were his kind of
politician. That suggests that Herb Caen has a great interest in
politics and government.
Brown: Very keen. Full time. He could have very easily been a political
columnist. He is very opinionated, really liberal, aggressive.
Some of the great columns that Caen has written--. If you go back
to the middle seventies, you'll see his anti-war columns, his pro-
civil rights columns. He would do a whole column on the subject
matter. Those were some of his finest moments, where he genuinely
expressed himself politically. It was well-thought-out and well-
framed. That has continued to this day. He talks about politics
every day, every time I talk to him.
173
We would make bets on elections. We've got a bet right now.
He's got Jordan and I've got [then Mayor Art] Agnos.
Morris: What are the odds?
Brown: Well, I don't know because 1 discovered from his girlfriend the
other night that he's covering his bet. He went out and he bet
the same amount on Agnos and had somebody else take Jordan, so
he's going to break even. [laughter] So I'm going to tease him
next week when I see him. I'm going to really give him the
business. He's covering his bet.
Polling vis-a-vis Constituent Contact
Morris: How about the guy who runs the California Poll?
Brown: Mervyn Field.
Morris: Is he part of any of these walkaround lunches?
Brown: No. We see Mervyn occasionally but he's not part of any of that.
We have interacted with Mervyn over the years. As a matter of
fact, the legislature retains Mervyn to do some survey work for us
through the office of research and has for a long time. It's a
token amount. As a professional, he just wishes to be paid. Most
of it is his doing pro bono work. But to keep the integrity of
the information proper, we pay him. It's just a small step.
Morris: You keep touch with several polling people to get a different view
of things?
Brown: No, I don't. I really don't. I don't play close attention to any
of the polling people. Some of my colleagues live by polls. I
think Pete Wilson does a poll every week. He does a telephonic
poll. I have not had a great amount of confidence in polls. I
have a lot more confidence in focus groups. I like the idea of
taking a cross-section of the citizens and spending two or three
hours with them and observing what they say and giving them all
the nuances and all the choices. I think you get a better
perspective. You get a better idea of what the body politic is
really like rather than those snap- judgment telephone calls.
Morris: Even though what you described for Pete Wilson sounds like the
rolling poll that the Reagan people kept going?
174
Brown: Bush is the one who has perfected it. They have perfected it.
They do [it] weekly if not daily. When the issue is really hot,
they do daily snap counts and testing. They make their decisions
based upon that process. I have never been a student of polls.
Probably only within the last half dozen years have I come to even
agree to finance polls. In the past I was anti-polls.
Morris: Feeling that you and the people you are close to have more
reliable information among your contacts with people?
Brown: Instincts, yes. Absolutely. I think the membership of the
legislature, being that it is the lowest common denominator of an
electoral district in the state of California, and if you work it
the way you should work it, which means you go out every day or
however often you are there and if you talk to enough people, they
can get the feeling of what people think.
Morris: How many of your colleagues in the assembly over the years do you
feel have actually done that?.
Brown: A hell of a lot more today than were doing it yesterday. They
were far more distant. But the younger, newer members have gotten
elected by being visible politically in their districts. They
actually do town hall meetings. We even have got some members who
do once a week coffee calls. They just go ring somebody's
doorbell until they find someone who will invite them in for
coffee. Once a week, on a blind shot. They do it with
businesses; they do it with all kinds of people. And they get a
good handle. I guess [Tom] Hannigan does it best, but they get a
good handle on who and what the people are really thinking in the
district.
Morris;
Brown:
We all talk to the service clubs and the service
organizations and we visit with local elected officials and
appointed officials and individuals in that category. But some of
us really do an outreach. Then you have your staff whose job it
is to do cold calls once or twice a month. That's just getting on
the telephone and getting the telephone book with an address in
the district and just call until you get somebody on the telephone
and say, "I'm calling from Speaker Brown's office. This is not a
survey but the speaker has us just selecting a name at random and
calling to ask if you would chat with us about what you think
government is doing and should be doing and what you think is
happening in the district." And they make notes.
What kinds of response does that have?
All kinds. First they are ecstatic that somebody called them.
And they are most polite and sometimes very helpful in some of the
175
suggestions that they make and some of the observations that they
make.
Morris: Really. Can you think of any offhand?
Brown: Yes. When I was getting a bad time about the so-called tobacco
stuff this past summer,1 we just decided to increase the number of
cold calls. The reason there was never any need for me to try to
explain or apologize or what have you, was that in about 80
percent of the cold calls, the people knew that the press was BS-
ing. "Yes. We don't like smoking either but we know that's
bullshit. Why shouldn't he talk to those people? He talks to
everybody else. He ought to talk. That's what we want him to do.
We want him to talk to people."
Morris: Isn't that amazing.
Brown: Totally. Just blew me away, absolutely blew me away. It offended
the Examiner. The Examiner took a poll thinking they were going
to be able to print--.
Morris: Public outrage?
Brown: Right. Instead, they found just the opposite.
Morris: It's amazing what people will say on the telephone, I've found.
They have been just waiting for somebody to ask them.
Brown: To call them up. Sometimes some of my cold callers will say,
"We'll put Mr. Brown on," and I'll get on. If I walk in and
you're on the phone, they'll say, "Why don't you sit down and talk
with Miss X." So I get on the telephone and she says, "Hello, is
this really you, Willie?" "Yes, it is." "I saw you on
television. I read about what they said about you in the
newspaper. You're doing right. They wouldn't be writing about
you unless you were doing right."
Then you would have somebody who has difficulty with
English, [affects accent] "Oh, Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown, you're so
wonderful. My kid told me you were at his school and you speak so
good, we always vote for you, Mr. Brown." Well, that person will
'The Fair Political Practices Commission in November 1991 ruled that
Brown, and three other lawmakers, had broken no state laws after
investigating allegations that the four had improperly received gifts from
the Smokeless Tobacco Council, which opposed a bill to prevent local
jurisdictions from adopting conflicting anti-smoking ordinances.
176
forever be a Willie Brown voter no matter what the world says. So
many of my members are doing those kinds of things.
We're also doing things like small business conferences.
About once every quarter there will be a small business
conference. There will be a women's conference on women's rights
or women's business opportunities. There will be a renters'
information conference. All those kinds of things members are
doing. They are organizing and orchestrating.
Demise of Newsletters
Brown:
Morris;
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
At one time we had the authority to send newsletters. That ended
three or four years ago. So now, this outreach stuff has
increased because there is no way to reach the constituency.
There is no substitute now. When you had a newsletter, you could
actually hit the constituency in total about four times in a given
two-year cycle. That was almost a million pieces of mail, saying
anything you wanted to say, giving any kind of reports you wanted
to give as long as it wasn't a pitch for your reelection. That
was a good tool and a good vehicle and many members used that.
Now that we don't have that kind of stuff any more, we have
to do it on our own. We do another thing. Most of us do radio
feeds. Once a week I do a radio feed. It's now taken statewide
and it's just a commentary by Willie Brown.
Like the broadcasts that Reagan used to do when he set up a radio
studio for the governor's office?
Right. I have that same thing. We also have for those areas
where there is a reduced amount of competition for program
material on television, we actually do a three-minute television
feed with our members.
For some of the public access cable channels?
Absolutely. And many of our members use it. I don't do a
television feed because Viacom would never take it.
Do you have any statistics on how well used those are?
stations carry them?
How many
I don't personally but you could call the majority services and
they would have. They keep a running weekly snap count. They
keep a count of how many radio stations take my radio feed. They
177
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
take a count of how many television stations take collectively the
television feeds that we provide.
Do they run them as public service or do they cut them into their
regular news broadcasts?
Some of them use them both ways. Some of them use them as a
regular feature. If you agree to do it every week at a certain
time, you'll know that--.
They'll schedule you?
Yes. You'll know that at 12:03 there will be that feature.
Was the newsletter discontinued because of budget?
No, no, no. The newsletter was an initiative. One of those
reformed-minded right-wingers named Ross Johnson. Quentin Kopp
and Joe Montoya put that in as part of Proposition 73 and they
abolished the newsletter.1 No, it didn't have anything to do with
budget. They didn't even take the money away. The money is still
there. We now use the money for radio fees and we use the money
for television. You just can't write to your constituency. Real
stupid !
Amazing. We're at twenty past twelve. Shall we wrap up now?
Next time we meet I would like to ask about you and Leo McCarthy
coming to terms.
You want to start there?
right. Let's stop then.
Well, let's start there next time. All
'June 1988 campaign spending reform initiative.
178
XVI ISSUES AND LEGISLATION, 1975-1978
[Interview A: December 17, 1991] ##
Prestige vs. Public Policy Committee Assignments
Morris: We had gotten up to 1974 and we had gotten Leo McCarthy into the
speakership. It's reported that you spent a while not paying much
attention to what was going on in the legislature. It sounded as
if you were regrouping your forces and maybe even deciding whether
you wanted to stay in the legislature after you lost the
speakership the first time?
Brown: That's not accurate. There's no question about whether or not I
would stay in the legislature, none whatsoever. My services were
not utilized and my time was not utilized by Mr. McCarthy. But
you assumed that would be the case, where your opponent wins. I
appropriately respected that kind of a rule and absented myself
from the arena so as not to be a problem for his administration.
That only lasted for a couple of years. By 1976 or so, his troops
had leaned on him to make sure he understood that he couldn't
exist without utilizing all the talent in the place and that I was
at least a part of that. So I got an assignment.
Morris: Who was it amongst his troops who was saying that you really
needed to get Willie Brown back on the team?
Brown: I would assume that Dan Boatwright would have been the leader of
that group. But there were probably some others. But Boatwright
was most vocal about it.
Morris: How did you and Boatwright come to be close enough for him to
speak up for you like that?
Brown: We were not close as such. Boatwright just happened to have been,
is, and was a very independent, fairly savvy Democrat who
represented a portion of Richmond which had lots of my friends,
still has lots of my friends in that constituency. I assume that
179
a combination of his own intelligence plus their lobbying may have
caused him to become the spokesperson for utilizing Willie Brown's
talents.
Morris: Yes. By 1976 you were not only the chairman of the Rev and Tax
Committee but you were also on the Housing and Community
Development, Human Resources, and Transportation Committees.
That's a heavy load.
Brown: Yes, but keep in mind that we had had a major election in 1974,
bringing in all of these new people. There must have been twenty-
five or thirty or more new members as a result of reapportionment
and Watergate. So there were just lots of rookies on the
Democratic side of the aisle and all of the oldtimers had to
undertake greater assignments and a greater number of assignments
than they otherwise ever would have.
Morris: Could you explain that a little bit?
Brown: The place operates kind of on an institutional memory. Not kind
of, it operates on the basis of institutional memory. There has
to be a point person or some point persons on each one of the
committees just to offset the enormous power that bureaucrats
accumulate by years in place, just to offset the enormous power
that special-interest organizations and their representatives
accumulate by longevity and by resources and by being similarly
directed at their issue. That creates a serious imbalance unless
there is somebody equal in stature, equal in ability and equal in
memory of what has gone before them and what has been
traditionally a ripoff of the public, so to speak, an exploitation
of the public.
So any time you have a whole new collection of members come
into the legislature, the first decision the leadership makes is
to determine how we use the returning members more appropriately.
Each of us who were considered seniors had to undertake
assignments that we may never have been previously exposed to, but
because of our ability and skill and knowledge of the system, we
could in fact be the point leader. And both parties do that.
Morris: So that you've got somebody who remembers when that kind of bill
came up before.
Brown: When it came up before, what the advocacy was, whether or not it's
two economic interests competing against each other with no public
benefit derivative therefrom, whether or not it is a bill that
Republicans traditionally carry for their resource-producing
purposes, whether or not it is something that organized labor
desperately needs, whether or not it is something that ought to be
180
a chip left to be played as a part of a bargaining process
involving the budget. All of those things come from previous
exposure to the system, not from any immediate knowledge.
Morris: Housing and Urban Development, Human Resources, and Transportation
have some similarities. I was wondering if you saw some concerns
that you had running through those committees?
Brown: No, I didn't really ask for those committees. I kind of left it
up to McCarthy. I was not a part of his team. I had not been of
assistance in his election and in fact had opposed his election.
So I simply made myself available to accept any assignment that he
gave me. Those assignments that you identified, except the
transportation, were not considered choice assignments. He had no
great interest in human resources and human services. He had no
great interest in housing and community development; neither one
of those were considered to be prestigious spots. They were
considered to be good public-policy spots but not prestigious
spots. Most leadership politicians are far more concerned about
satisfying their members' desire for prestige than they are about
pushing public policy. I don't think McCarthy was any different
in his speakership in that regard.
Transportation, Rev and Tax Matters
Brown: The Transportation Committee in the middle seventies was not
considered an A committee, like A-B-C, committee.
Morris: Oh, yes. Top.
Brown: Yes. Top of the line. Since the early eighties it has begun to
be an A committee with the advent of light rail and the reemphasis
on public transportation, whether water-based or otherwise. It
has become a very exotic committee. It's become even more exotic
in the latter part of the eighties because it became the
beneficiary of monies provided through a ballot measure. It
became the vehicle by which you address seismic safety for
freeways and things of that nature. It also developed an interest
around the bullet train and high speed systems of transportation.
So it has become really a number-one committee.
But in the early seventies that was not the case. It was
considered a second-tier committee. In McCarthy's eyesight, that
was exactly where he thought he was in fact assigning me, where
you did good public policy work but it wasn't glamourous, it
wasn't attention-getting.
181
Morris: It wouldn't compete with Rev and Tax in visibility?
Brown: Absolutely. Whereas the Rev and Tax Committee was in the late
seventies not terribly politically popular but it was in fact the
workhorse committee. The assault on the property tax structure,
the whole question of indexing of income taxes, renter's tax
relief, all of those are subject matters to be dealt with in the
late seventies. I chaired the Rev and Tax Committee through all
of that, through Proposition 13, through the compliance, through
the bailout afforded to local governments as a result of
Proposition 13, the renter's tax credit which was Mike RODS' bill,
written in my committee. All of that occurred in Rev and Tax.
And it was not a terribly glamourous place in which to be but it
was the workhorse committee of the late seventies.
Morris: I would like to come back to that but before we do, transportation
in the mid-seventies--wasn' t that the era when Governor Jerry
Brown was taking a lot of heat for not building highways and there
were policy differences with the legislature? Would you have been
involved in that?
Brown: Yes. He had a woman named Gianturco. Whatever her name was.
Morris: Adriana.
Brown: Yes, Adriana Gianturco, who was his person in the field of
transportation. They set out to dump the freeway building program
in the state of California, or at least make it difficult. Only
because of her existence and that policy was there any real
attention given to the question of transportation. But it didn't
reach the level of real confrontation until the very late
seventies and at the start of the eighties. He got reelected in
1978 with minimal opposition; the anger had not yet crystallized.
The anger, the frustration and the annoyance, and the symbol of
Jerry Brown, had not yet crystallized.
Morris: Why did it crystallize as a controversial issue when a minute ago
you were saying that transportation became an exotic subject with
alternatives to freeways? In a way isn't that what Gianturco and
Jerry Brown were suggesting as a policy direction?
Brown: Yes. They may have been just ahead of their time but they were
doing their advocacy at the expense of freeways. In the early
eighties, it was not at the expense of freeways. When you
advocated the bullet train, you did not suggest that Interstate 5
shouldn't be built and that instead a bullet train ought to be
built. Gianturco and Jerry Brown were pitting freeways against
other means of transportation. The subsequent architects of the
transportation policy for the state of California have been
182
integrating surface road systems with other means of
transportation.
Morris: Transportation has also been traditionally a big special interest
area.
Brown: Still is. It will always be.
Morris: Truckers and fuel people.
Brown: Truckers, fuel people, auto dealers, auto manufacturers, driving
schools, concrete makers, operating engineers, the heavy
industrial unions; it's always been a major area of special
interest. It has consistently been the public works program that
is in perpetuity. There is probably a greater growth in the
number of employees of Caltrans than in any other unit of
government, on a consistent basis, except maybe the prison system.
Morris: As a growth area in state employees as well as in the business
world?
Brown: Yes, in the total number of [state] employees. Yes, maybe the
business world, but I know it from the standpoint of state
employees. My guess is that there are probably 50 percent or more
of the people working for Caltrans who consistently post sixty
hours a week, twenty hours of overtime on average. Absolutely.
Morris: So that it is consistently a heavy item in the state budget?
Brown: Well, no. You remember, the gas tax is a special tax that is
dedicated to road systems. That's it. That's where their money
comes from. Very little money comes from the General Fund. There
may be some maintenance money or something of that nature. But
the budget of Caltrans is beyond our ability to affect.
Constitutionally, the transportation commission takes care of
that. CTC, the California Transportation Commission.
Morris: Right. Their legislation doesn't seem to be something that you
were particularly interested in. You didn't usually carry very
many transportation bills.
Brown's Constituencies
Brown: No, never did. And still don't have a great interest in the
transportation subject matter as a personal vehicle for Willie
183
Brown's expression of public policy. There are other things that
have greater priority with me: health care, auto insurance.
Morris: Because they are the issues that relate to the concerns of people
in San Francisco?
Brown: They relate to my district. They related to the constituency in
San Francisco and they relate to that base constituency state-wide
that I have an affinity with. In addition thereto, there are a
lot more talented people in the area of transportation in the
legislature than Willie Brown.
Morris: So that you feel comfortable leaving it to them?
Brown: Absolutely. Leaving it to Richard Katz and to Jerry Eaves and to
Rusty Areias and people like that.
Morris: I have got here a couple of legislative packets by years that
Joanne Murphy pulled out for me.1 By 1977, 1978, you introduced
seventy-five or eighty bills. Is that a large number for a
legislator?
Brown: Absolutely.
Morris: How do you keep track and how do you decide which topics you will
follow?
Brown: That's a decision made usually at a retreat with the staff or at
some staff get-together, staff meetings or things of that nature,
before the commencement of the session. You will have many, many
options. Each one of your staff people will usually have one or
two subject-matter areas that they direct and control. They will
come forward with and propose solutions to problems, many of which
have been called to their attention by the constituency. Let's
say that the Filipino Dental Association comes to visit with the
staff and lays out to them what the problems are surrounding the
admission and the practice and the discipline process involving
Filipino dentists. There would be women who would come in and
request, from the women's movement standpoint, certain pieces of
legislation that they believe to be most appropriate.
Sometimes there are meetings with special-interest
organizations like the environmental movement. We'll have a
meeting with the environmental movement—twelve or fourteen
representatives of the environmental movement at every segment:
the Sierra Club, the Conservation League, across the board. They
'See appendix.
184
will outline their legislative package for the year or their
proposals for the year and make in many cases specific requests
for you or me or whomever to carry certain pieces of legislation.
Then you will have the single special-interest organizations
like the medical society, which will come in and have a packet of
bills and legislative proposals. Then organized labor will come
in, teachers will come in, trial lawyers will come in, appellate
lawyers will come in, the defense bar will come in.
Morris: This is as speaker or just from early on way back then?
Brown: No, just as a member. They come in from every discipline, every
walk of life. They'll come and chat about their problems and how
they think they can be solved and would you be interested in being
of assistance. They know of your background. The church lobby
comes in.
Morris: Really.
Brown: Oh, yes.
Morris: What kinds of things does a church lobby pursue?
Brown: A dram-shop act. They want to make sure that people aren't
permitted to drink alcoholic beverages. They will be concerned
about what people read, about what people can observe on the
stage. They'll address the abortion issues, those kinds of
things. They will be lobbying to have certain bills authored by
you or me or some other person.
So every discipline comes in. Out of all of this and your
staff recommendations, you may end up with a huge volume of bills.
Lobbying Fellow Assemblymen
Morris: Are some of those groups that come and talk to you also going to
talk to other members too?
Brown: They are going to those members whom they consider subject matter-
oriented members and members who are bright enough and able enough
and have the respect of their colleagues to be authors of
legislation. You do not go find a legislative jockey who can't
carry a bill. You have some of those. You have people who are
not able to explain a bill, cannot understand it, won't do the
work. After all, as a member carrying a bill, you literally have
185
to become the lobbyist with each of your fellow members. You go
to their offices before the meeting and before the public hearing
and you lay out your bill. You send them a copy of it first.
Morris: Then the constituency organizations.
Brown: No. This is you go to your individual members. Once I have
introduced a bill, once that bill is introduced, when that bill is
assigned—let's say I assign it to the Committee on Housing and
Urban Development--! will then scope the membership of the
Committee on Housing and Urban Development. I will go talk to the
chairperson first, the vice chairperson, and then I will talk to
the most influential member beyond those two on that committee. I
will talk to the staff and make sure the bill analysis is done
properly, et cetera, see if any of those people have any
objections and try to get them committed early. Then I will speak
to every member of the committee. When the public hearing is
done, I will then make the same or similar presentation, respond
to any unreadiness, questions raised that either one of them had,
when I visited with them privately, identify the people who
support it, identify the opposition, try to destroy the
opposition's argument before the opposition presents its argument,
and then hopefully move the bill out of the committee.
Morris: Roughly could you hazard a percentage or number of people in the
assembly who are functioning at that level, who are able to do
that kind of--?
Brown: About half.
Morris: Is that consistent over the years?
Brown: Absolutely.
Morris: How much of that do you have to do yourself and how much can you
delegate to the staff?
Brown: Member contact, you can delegate none of it to the staff. You
must make the member contact. You must either do it by telephone,
you must do it on the floor, or you must do it in your offices, or
you must do it during the course of some social gathering. To
send staff to represent you, unless it's a good friend--. If John
Burton had a vote on the committee, a bill on public safety, I
would not hesitate to have my staff guy chat with Burton and see
if the bill has any problems. Burton will not feel ignored
because my staff guy spoke with him. And the same for his. His
staff can call me up and say, "John has got this bill and he needs
your help." I say, "He's got it. What does the bill do."
186
So that's staff -to-staff contact. But if I was contacting,
let's say, Byron Sher, I would not have my staff contact Byron
Sher. If I was contacting Tom Bates, I wouldn't have my staff
contact Tom Bates.
Morris: Do you spend more time with Republicans?
Brown: No. You spend more time with wherever the votes are. You don't
designate them as Republicans or Democrats at that stage of the
game. You go for votes. If you, nevertheless, have a mental
health bill, you may talk to Frank Lanterman, who is a very
respected Republican, before you talk to the chairman, because you
would like to get Frank's perspective on whether or not the bill
makes sense or if you are doing any damage to existing law and the
existing delivery system, is there any possibility of improvement,
and then finally will he coauthor it. Frank coauthors it and
suddenly you have instant credibility on the mental-health issues.
So you don't designate them just as Republicans or Democrats.
Handling Controversial Issues: Abortion
Morris :
Brown:
It's the issue, yes. In a given year, like 1977-78, how many of
those seventy-five or so bills that you authored had co-authors?
Oh, I have no clue,
back that far.
I have no idea. There is no way to remember
Morris: Well, there is another question I was interested in. A lot of
them seem to be technical matters and a lot of them seem to get
dropped and held in committee or they reappeared as some other
legislator's bill in the course of the year. Is that part of the
process usually?
Brown: Oh, sure. That's standard. You would be lucky to move a third of
the pieces of legislation that you introduce. You would be really
lucky to move a third of the pieces of legislation that you
introduce because, invariably, you are not unique. There are
other people who have approaches to the same issue in their
districts. And they may have a superior approach. Or they may be
the chairman of the committee to which this bill is addressed.
Morris: To which it is referred?
Brown: Right. You are clearly not going to be the author of the bill
that the committee chairman is the author of. You may become a
co-author of his bill. So that's all part of precedent.
187
Morris: One that we might talk about in a little bit of detail. There are
several bills relating to Medi-Cal. One of them is an urgency
statute to appropriate $70 million to cover the anticipated
deficit for that program. It died on the floor but I assume that
a deficit of that size was suppressed in some way.
Brown: It was probably handled some other place. That would have been
bill that would have been requested by the administration. It
would have been carried by me or by some other designated member.
I don't remember the bill but if it was mine, it would be at the
request of the administration. I would have no way of knowing
about any deficit. It would have to be verified by the
administration. Somewhere down the line we may find a way in
which to take care of that deficit problem. It may be through
some other vehicle; it may be through the budget. Let's say we
carry it in a huge deficit appropriation bill. That may have been
just one line item in a larger deficit-appropriation bill. I
really don't remember.
Morris: It would be worked out in the process of the joint reconciliation
committee at the end of the legislative session?
Brown: No, it wouldn't wait until the end of the legislative session. A
deficit measure is always an urgency measure and it would move
ahead of everything else.
Morris: I noticed that at this point the bill "Prohibits the use of funds
to pay for abortions after the first trimester of the pregnancy."
Does that indicate that the abortion legislation had already begun
to be controversial?
Brown: The abortion legislation has been controversial since day one. It
has never not received the glare of the spotlight and great
scrutiny and public attention. In many cases, they are political
responses rather than principle responses. So, yes, it would have
been one of the highlights of the issues in that legislation.
Morris: Even though it was a fairly routine measure that Reagan had
originally signed back in the sixties?
Brown: From the time he signed it to the present day, there has always
been a cadre of anti-abortionists who consistently looked for an
opportunity to highlight the issue and to make the issue
determinative of their vote. They had been, in those years, few
in number. And they have grown in greater numbers because the
issue has become more visible with presidents taking positions on
it and with supreme court decisions and those kinds of things.
188
Morris: What makes an issue like that? I assume it was originally decided
that the public policy had been made. The governor of California
had signed the bill and the supreme court eventually upheld it.
Why and how does a public policy position like that become
challenged and so divisive?
Brown: It becomes challenged because people feel really strongly about
it. There are just absolute divided views. That's the one issue
on which people will change their political affiliation as a
result of one's position on it. It is an issue that generates
strongly held views and strongly held expressions. That's what
elevates it to the level of great controversy.
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Did you have to campaign on that or address that issue in dealing
with your various constituencies?
Not so much in San Francisco. San Francisco is pretty much a pro-
choice town. You're expected to be pro-choice. The issue for me
was addressed more often at the legislative level in my attempting
to assist in perfecting the pro-choice position, lobbying other
legislators who may be lukewarm or in some cases who may be even
hostile to that position. But it was never a great issue among my
constituents. One would assume that anybody running for public
office in San Francisco would be pro-choice.
From a public health standpoint, is it considered a routine thing
to have abortion accessible as you would have vaccination for
children?
In San Francisco, yes. But not statewide.
You have done quite a lot of work on health care over the years.
Is abortion just part of that or is it dealt with separately?
Brown: It is dealt with separately.
189
XVII RACIAL MINORITY NETWORK
United Political Action Statewide
Morris: You said that you had on some things worked with Boatwright
because you had a constituency over in Richmond. How did your
constituency begin to develop outside your district in San
Francisco?
Brown: Almost every racial minority official elected in the state,
regardless of the district from whence they are elected, assumes
some responsibility for representing racial minorities in every
community. You are called upon by those racial minorities in
communities where they are not represented to be their
spokesperson, to be their personality at their NAACP [National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People] banquets, at
their Urban League events or at their CORE events. If a
discrimination problem exists--.
fi
Brown: --of their problem and their plight and their effort. So almost
overnight, if not instantly, you become a part of the image and
the symbol of an emerging, struggling racial minority. That goes
beyond the confines of your district. In many cases, because of
the limited number of racial minorities at the electoral level,
you tend to know each other. You tend to at least be acquainted
with each other. You circulate in the same setting politically.
If you are a Democratic member of the assembly, invariably you
will be at the state conventions, invariably you will be at the
national conventions, invariably you will be at the county
meetings, and there may be one other racial minority there and
almost naturally you would say hello to each other and strike up a
friendship with each other, or an acquaintanceship. All that
spills over into being representative of the racial minority
constituency throughout the state, if not the nation, as well as
your individual constituency that elected you.
190
Morris: Does that mean that you would have been involved in electing Merv
Dymally for instance and then Tom Bradley?
Brown: Absolutely. There is not a black holding office in this state of
any significance that I didn't have some involvement with, just as
they have had involvement with my career. It may not have been at
the outset of their career because I may not have known them and
they may not have known me if we were both relatively anonymous as
persons seeking public office.
But once we are elected it becomes a process. It usually
actually begins before because of the Democratic party connections
or the Republican party connections. But if that is not the case,
certainly upon the election it is almost instant association.
Morris: Does this expand to include nonpartisan people like
[Superintendent of Public Instruction] Wilson Riles?
Brown: Absolutely. All racial minorities elected to office anywhere in
the state invariably become a part of the racial minority network
representing their ethnic stock regardless of the jurisdiction or
the geography of their electoral base.
Morris: What kinds of things could you do as a group that the Democratic
party couldn't or didn't do in the seventies?
Brown: Well, the Democratic party would not make the fair housing issue
their issue. Some Democrats would support it. But a Democrat in
Orange County may not want to support it because Proposition 14 of
some previous years had been on the ballot and had been rejected
and the courts finally threw it out. So you have a difference
there. You do not have a difference among racial minorities on
that issue. So you would have unanimous involvement and unanimous
participation on that issue.
Likewise, if there was an effort to get a change in the
admission policies at the University of California, you would not
just do that for that the Med Center in San Francisco or for U.C.
Berkeley; you would do that for the U.C. system statewide. In
some cases, the Democratic party may be of assistance; in other
cases they would not be because some of them may not share your
view in that regard. But all the racial minorities would clearly
share your view and be involved and committed to that program.
191
Higher Education: Admissions Equity
Morris: We haven't really talked about higher education. How much of an
effort did you need to put into getting the university and the
state colleges to take a look at their admission policies or their
hiring policies?
Brown: That effort is still being made. It was still being employed this
last session. A bill of mine was vetoed by the governor that we
identified as an education equity bill. It was a bill designed to
say there shall not be quotas but there shall be goals and there
shall be evaluations as to whether or not you achieve these goals
in terms of hiring practices among faculty, in terms of number of
students being admitted to the institutions, in terms of the
numbers of students being retained in the institutions, the
quality of the choices of the graduates and the type of graduates
who are coming out of the institution, the use of the resources on
behalf of the students and the institution and the distribution of
those resources as it relates to racial minorities.
Pete Wilson vetoed it on the basis that it was a quota bill.
Some parts of the system of higher education opposed it on the
basis that it could be construed as a quota bill. So how much
effort? It is an ongoing effort. We over the last several years
have had a major fight with the university over its admission
policies and the attempt to change those admission policies
because they were concerned with an excess number of Asians
gaining admission to the University of California. They wanted to
somehow slow that down. So they wanted to reduce the emphases and
the weight given to academic performance as a prerequisite to
enter the University of California and add some other factors.
The Asian community, of course, violently opposed that. I
represented a large segment of the Asian community and
participated in their objections to it.
Morris: San Francisco district Asians or, again, was that a larger
coalition?
Brown:
Morris:
Yes. Well, they put together a larger coalition,
the San Francisco district Asians.
It started with
In your own mind, how do you work that out? I have heard people
say that the black community has been working long and hard to get
more black kids into college and do well. Then it seems as if all
of a sudden Asians and Hispanics appear in larger numbers and come
past us in enrollment and employment. How do you deal with that
kind of feeling?
192
Brown: Well, you must open the doors and establish guidelines and steps
to secure equality. If others use those guidelines and steps and
those steps are in fact positive for racial minorities and
particularly African Americans, whether they use them or not,
those are the proper steps and you have just got to protect them
and you've got to keep them in place and you've got to enhance
upon them, regardless of who uses the ladder to get there. I'm
not terribly concerned if there is a greater number of Asians who
use the techniques that blacks have devised for equality and it
turns out a greater number of Asians benefitted from it. I would
not abandon my advocacy for those techniques based on that.
Morris: Does that mean that earlier groups have to work harder or
challenge--?
Brown: I don't know if the earlier groups have to work harder but
somebody has to put the guidelines in place. I would hope that
everybody who understands that, whether they are from the majority
side or the minority side, would participate in trying to help put
those guidelines in place. Then I would hope that there would be
services and resources made available to all the racial minorities
who need them and there would be help for them to utilize those
guidelines to gain a measure of equality. The university system
is supposed to do exactly that. We argued for years on a fair
admission policy, and they got a fair admission policy, so to
speak. Asians are now utilizing it and consider it more
competitive than most because of a strong academic commitment that
comes with the culture, within the framework of the Asian
community.
Now they talk about changing that. Although blacks have not
utilized it as handsomely and benefitted from it as handsomely,
I'm struggling to make sure that the change, if change comes, does
not slow down the number of Asians. I would not ever support and
would violently oppose any effort to deliberately change the
system so that Asians would be disadvantaged. I do not believe
that their numbers are such that their success is automatic. As
long as I don't believe that, there isn't any reason to change the
rules and regulations that seem to give them a greater
opportunity.
Morris: Is the equity question one that you use as a bargaining chip when
talking, say, to the University of California at San Francisco
people who are right smack in your constituency about their
concerns for other things, like building programs and staffing
budget?
Brown: No, because that is a whole different level. The equity
educational policy issue is a statewide issue. That is something
193
Morris ;
Brown:
that has to be addressed by the trustees, the regents, and the
president. At the local college level, they have very little to
do with deciding who ultimately gets into that institution. The
standards are set by the Board of Regents. They simply become the
persons who actually administer them. There is very little
discussion about who gets admitted.
There is a tremendous amount of discussion on their
employment practices and policies. So you can lobby specifically
for equity in employment and things of that nature, but as it
relates to professorships that is still the university state-wide
level.
That is an academic issue?
Absolutely. So you can't use the leverage to give them assistance
on local building projects in return for education equity.
State Contract Preference
Morris: Again, I find these packets of legislation you introduced by year
extremely interesting. The consistency of the issues. In 1978
there was A.B. 3694 which initiates a state contract preference
for minority companies in urban areas with high concentrations of
unemployed welfare recipients and disadvantaged persons. So you
get contract provisions that the state has been suggesting for
years too: if you are going to have state contracts, you would
have some more equity and you would get economic concerns of
individuals. Has that been a successful program in increasing job
opportunities for minorities?
Brown: In part. In part, there have been greater opportunities that have
been forthcoming to racial minority communities as a result of
that kind of legislation. But it has not solved the problem, not
by a long shot. As a matter of fact, in the mid-eighties, we did
A.B. 1933 that Maxine Waters authored that moved it up to about 20
percent. You had to show there was 20 percent of women, WBE and
MBE, 5 percent women and 15 percent WBE and MBE, and it was even
imposed on Caltrans and other agencies. Now that's being tested
as to whether or not it is legal because the supreme court has
changed its view as to what is appropriate to remedy previous acts
of discrimination, whether passive or not. As a result of that
new attention by the supreme court, we are having to undergo some
modifications of our legislative and statutory authority.
194
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
There is also always the advocacy role that we absolutely
must play with agencies of state government that have the
responsibility to administer the set-aside programs and the
affirmative-action programs. Sometimes you introduce legislation
to get that ball rolling and to get that dialogue going.
And you don't really expect the legislation to pass. You just
want to lean upon a particular department?
Correct. You want to force them into a hearing and sometimes even
under oath, to tell the truth about what they are doing or not
doing.
Eternal vigilance and all that kind of thing.
Yes.
Developing Candidates; Ongoine Contacts
Morris: Was part of what you were doing in networking with other black
legislators looking for candidates and encouraging people to think
of running for office?
Brown: The only time you do that is when circumstances present an
opportunity for that to happen. You usually do not initiate that
process. You usually are invited in to comment, to evaluate and
to participate in that community's efforts. You pretty much leave
the choice to the individual communities. As a matter of fact,
you have no option. You have to leave the choice to individual
communities. So, no, you do not go doing candidate development,
as such. Or candidate identification as such.
We do, through the organizations that we put together
statewide, provide a think-tank for folk who say they want to run
for public office. We tell them how, when, where, how to raise
money, how to access the constituency, how to utilize the media,
et cetera. But you seldom if ever go out and do candidate
solicitation.
Morris: Even though I have heard that one of the things one is doing in
the reapportionment process is looking for new, electable
candidates, people who will then support you when you want to run
for speaker again?
Brown: That's a process that you don't really initiate. There are very
few districts that have a winning edge clearly identifiable for
195
one party or the other where, if it's an open seat, there aren't
more than a half a dozen people who are beating your door down to
ask for your blessings and ask for your assistance. So you don't
really go out looking for candidates. The only time you really go
looking for candidates is in hopeless situations where you are
trying to create a diversion in some cases [laughter] or in other
cases get control of the state central committee appointments for
party head purposes or things of that nature. That's where you
have to go look for a candidate. To find a Democrat in Newport
Beach to run against Marian Bergeson is a thankless task. Most
know that it's a district that is 60, 65 percent Republican and it
votes always in favor of the Republican four or five points ahead
of registration. Nixon won it consistently when he was on the
ballot; Reagan has won it consistently. There has never been a
Democrat elected to anything in that area. Well, you're not going
to find too many Democrats out there running in that area. So you
may go looking for a candidate there.
Just next door, where Mr. [Tom] Umberg is a candidate and
it's a 55, 56 percent Democratic district, it has every racial
minority in the world in it, every ethnic stock and it has the
only poor people in Orange County, you'll have twenty people
running, so you don't have to go looking for candidates at all.
Morris: Is that sometimes a case of trying to discourage people so that
you can get all your black votes behind--?
Brown: Oh, you absolutely discourage people. With regularity you
discourage people. Some persons come in and they've got no
prayer. Some person comes in and they are not even registered but
they just decided they wanted to run for public office. "Well, do
you know anybody?" "No." "How long have you lived in the
community?" "I just got here yesterday." You would discourage
them.
Morris: Do they listen?
Brown: 1 don't know whether they listen or not, but the practicality of
running for public office and the enormous expense attached to it
sometimes forces people not to pursue their original dream. They
may come back to you and say, "Well, I'm not going to do it
because you asked me to," to try to pick up a chit with you. But
you have to be smart enough to know whether or not they had the
resources. If they really didn't have an option, then they don't
have a chit. Angela Alioto being talked out of the race against
Agnos would have given Angela Alioto a chit. But Cesar, who owns
that nightclub out in the Mission and who runs every time there is
a mayor's race and he has for the last twenty years, asking him to
get out and having him get out, you don't owe him anything.
196
Because in a ten-person race, he's going to finish eleventh.
"None of the above" finishes ahead of him.
Morris: But somebody like that, are they a real factor in a race?
Brown: No. The person who is going to run tenth or eleventh is not a
factor. The person who is going to run second or third is a major
factor.
Morris: Did you have somebody on your staff who looked after the political
aspect of the various groups that you worked with, including the
black political leaders movement?
Brown: No. Not really. You usually refocus your contact and your
communication relationships based upon subject matter content
rather than just pure unadulterated politics. You switch back
into that mode when you are running for office again. But from
the time you are elected, you tend to deal with the child-care
mothers around child-care issues. There may be some black women
in that child-care movement who, during the course of the
elections, you may be dealing with as a member of the Black
Leadership Forum. When the election is over, you'll be dealing
with that same person in her capacity as the child care mother
agency.
Morris: That's interesting. So you're dealing with people in two roles.
Brown: Absolutely. In between elections, pretty much program and policy.
During the electioneering time, purely electioneering. It's the
same with the gays. You may be dealing with the director of the
AIDS Foundation around research grant money for the AIDS issues,
et cetera, during the course of the year and the course of public
policy. Come election time, that person may very well be the
chair of the Alice B. Toklas Political Action Committee. It's a
whole different mindset. Some of the people who worked with the
two of you on the AIDS Foundation research projects may not even
be members of Alice; they may not even be involved with Alice at
all.
197
XVIII WORKING WITH JERRY BROWN; ADVANCING EQUITY ISSUES
The Governor and the Regents
Morris: Let's go back to the higher education question. When did Jerry
Brown suggest to you that he might appoint you to the regents? Is
that something that you talked about?
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris :
No. He did that blind.
What did he have in mind, do you think?
I'm not sure what he had in mind, but I can only speculate that he
was looking to shake up the board of regents. He was looking to
put what he considered to be a qualified racial minority on the
board of regents.
Even though there was already an assemblyperson?
racial component rather than--?
It was the
Absolutely. And then, he and Leo [Speaker Leo McCarthy] were at
each other's throats. I don't think when he appointed me he had
in mind trying to offset Leo's public policy with the board of
regents. That was not what prompted him to do that. I think it
was purely the benefit derivative to him as governor, having
appointed, one, someone whom he considered qualified, two, a
person who was black. I think that was key in his mind.
At that point, he identified you as having a statewide reputation
and visibility?
Brown: National reputation. By 1980, national.
198
Black Panthers' Social Advocacy
Morris: Yes, indeed. I came across a reference in, I think it was Dan
Walters' column in the Sacramento Bee, ten years earlier when you
came into the legislature, he saw you as having a militant black-
power kind of approach to politics. Was that an accurate
reflection of your thinking back in the sixties?
Brown: Well, I think I have always had and still have an absolute
commitment to using government power in effecting public policy in
a way that gives racial minorities, and particularly African
Americans, a fair shot. I have always had that and I have never
been other than vocal about that. In the sixties, when I was
first elected, the identifiable barriers were there and easily
seen by everybody and therefore assaulted consistently.
There was also the advent of the black-power movement, the
business of racial pride and all the kinds of stuff that went with
that in the late sixties. All of that prompted a different kind
of public presentation by me to be one of the windows to see that
and to see it from the positive side. By the middle seventies
that had pretty much abated. Many of the identifiable barriers
had been removed. There were in place many statutory protections
beyond anyone's belief, the swiftness with which they had come.
The Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of the middle
sixties were being heavily employed by the middle seventies.
There were also all of the set-asides. Even the Reagan
administration, in yielding to an urban impact aid factor in the
school finance formula and all the things that Wilson Riles had
put into place on Comp ed, all those were things. Then you would
get into bilingual education. So we were moving, not away from
the black-power advocacy but toward an implementation of the
public policy that had flowed from that advocacy. So you had
ceased being the so-called speechmaker and the rally person
because you are now inside where the decisions are to be made and
you have to hunker down and see that those decisions reflect that
advocacy role that you formerly played but now in a different way.
That may very well describe the differences between the Willie
Brown allegedly identified as the black-power advocate and
activist in the late sixties and the Willie Brown of 1991 who is
the speaker. The pursuit of public policy on the issues of
equality has not changed at all.
Morris: You were saying that you saw yourself as a window to view the
positive side, say, of the Black Panthers while their activities
in Oakland were alarming many people?
199
Brown: Yes. To see the programs and policies and things they were
pushing stripped of the guns and the alleged hate and the
offensive language, feeding people was really important. Trying
to reach kids to develop an educational foundation for every kid,
and a solid one at that, was very important. To restore pride in
the heritage of the community in which you lived was very
important and somebody needed to be a window for the world to see
that side of it.
Morris: Am I right that a couple of times, as an attorney, you defended
one of the Panthers?
Brown: Oh sure. I've defended the Panthers. I've defended individual
members on various charges. I've defended [Black] Muslims. I've
defended almost every unit that you can think of that has ever
participated in the civil rights struggle. I was general counsel
to all the auto row and the hotel demonstrations in the sixties.
Morris: You mentioned that.
Brown: I was likewise one of the lawyers representing the kids at San
Francisco State College in their struggle for a greater say and a
greater participation on that college campus. I was one of the
warriors who attempted to defend some aspects of the free speech
kids at Cal. So I've done it all from the standpoint of being a
lawyer. I've represented folk at every single community level.
Conservative Response in Sacramento
Morris: Did you have some dealings with Ed Meese? He was in the Alameda
County district attorney's office when the Panthers were first
active, before he went to Sacramento with Governor Reagan.
Brown: I had dealings with Ed Meese until he left the U.S. Attorney
Generalship. I was on a first-name basis, "We'll take your
telephone call" basis with Ed Meese. I could call Ed Meese during
the course of this interview, were he available in Washington. He
would, one, know the name and, two, take the call. He would
usually get back to me trying to respond to my request.
Morris: How did you find him to work with?
Brown: I found him comfortable to work with on the individual things
about which I would contact him. His public-policy positions were
always at odds with everything I was about, but that did not
interfere with our both doing our jobs, me as an elected official
200
and him in his appointed capacity. There was also a mutual
respect, even maybe a fledgling friendship. Even to this day, I
think it is still there.
It is kind of an amazing thing, with more conservative non-
racial minorities, racial minorities tend to have less of a
problem having those persons relate to them on an individual
basis. I suspect there is still a condemnation of black folk
generally, a skepticism about black folk generally, or in some
cases even a standoff ishness about black folk generally, but there
is clearly a definite, singularly directed level of respect and
appreciation and, in some cases, affection that flows from those
conservatives. It never changes their view on public policy!
Never changes their conduct with reference to the general group,
but individually there tends to be great respect.
Morris: One of the arguments in the sixties for things like school busing
was that if white kids and black kids went to school together,
they would get to be friends on a one-to-one basis over the ball
games and things like that and that would help people who had no
contact with other races to realize that they were not all that
different and therefore to change their view.
Brown: That's a good solid theory and I believe it.
Morris: But you're saying that in your experience, it hasn't worked.
Brown: No, no. It starts at that level, yes. But I'm talking about at
the level one would initially interact with me. An Ed Meese
interacting with Willie Brown can develop an acquaintanceship and
friendship just for Willie Brown, but it doesn't change his views
on affirmative action.
H
Brown: Ed Meese may never have become the conservative that he is, at
least on equal- justice issues, because he would have been an
observer of what the system was doing to Brown. He would have
been an observer of the same kind of human qualities he possesses,
Brown possesses. The accident of birth in terms of skin color has
had nothing to do with it. Ed Meese may have avoided being a
victim of his environment and the racist attitudes that exist
within that environment.
Morris: On the business of criminal justice, did the two of you ever have
a chance to talk about your ideas about civil disobedience?
Brown: No, not really. It was never at that level. If we had those
kinds of discussions, they were all rooted in some piece of
201
legislation that would be moving or some issue that had come up,
let's say, the Panthers invading the capitol with weapons, the
issue and all the things surrounding that would be addressed, but
they would be prompted by that incident. It would not be, "Let's
have a cup of coffee and discuss the philosophy of civil
disobedience."
Morris: When the Panthers visited Sacramento, was the governor's reaction
fear for his safety, or was it seen as a political-type statement?
Brown: No. The legislators who were in close proximity dived under the
seats and the desks. They feared for their safety, but beyond
that the reaction was one of just utter disgust with anybody who
would show up with weapons in the capitol. So no one really ever
focussed on that the reason for the weapons was to cause you to
react and get attention and then address the issues of lack of
food or lack of food stamps or lack of adequate housing, lack of
health care for their base constituency in West Oakland. Well,
the membership didn't make that transition and I don't think the
governor did either because the reaction was strictly to changing
the statutes as it relates to whether or not you can enter the
capitol with a firearm.
Morris: Did the National Rifle Association folks uphold the Panthers right
to bear arms?
Brown: They went strangely silent on the question of whether or not the
Panthers could walk into the capitol onto the floor or into the
gallery area of the legislature with rifles or with other weapons.
Even the [National] Rifle Association didn't evidence an objection
to restrictions and limitations on that.
Morris: Was Mr. [Assemblyman H. L.) Richardson then in the legislature?
Brown: No.
Morris: He came later?
Brown: He was subsequent, yes.
Morris: Certainly an interesting era. Did you counsel them to leave their
weapons at home?
Brown: No, I didn't even know they were coming. I just happened to be at
the rear door when they arrived and knew two or three of them by
first name and they knew me. I suggested to them that there was
going to be a problem if they stayed in there. I said, "Somebody
really may get hurt. Perhaps some of you guys won't do it but
you've now made your point so maybe you ought to let the news
202
world carry on henceforth." They stayed for a few minutes, they
left, put the guns in the trunk of their cars and got arrested
buying gasoline some place on the way out of Sacramento.
Morris: Oh, dear. Because they had been at the capitol?
Brown: Yes, they tried to charge them with disturbing the peace because
at that time there were no restrictions on where you could carry
weapons as long as they were exposed. Concealed weapons were the
only things that had any great restrictions upon them. So they
were smart enough not even to come close to having concealed
weapons and, in addition thereto, they were unloaded. They were
not loaded weapons. So a combination of those factors caused
them, I don't think, to have much of a legal problem, if any. But
they were arrested.
Morris: You did not provide legal services for them?
Brown: No. They were arrested though; but I don't even think they were
ever really charged. I may be wrong but I don't think so.
The Governor and the Legislature
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Along with Jerry Brown appointing you to the regents, did you take
up your seat and talk with him about higher education and regents
issues?
No. Not at all. He appointed the board of regents and I went
about doing my work.
As a regent?
As a regent, yes. We were both pretty much right on the job of
trying to democratize higher education. But we didn't have any
meetings where we sat down and engaged in dialogue about how best
to do that, et cetera. I think he pretty much left my contact to
my own discretion based upon his knowledge and reputation of me.
I was very close to Jerry Brown in the last two or three years of
his governorship. I may have been one of the closest legislators
to him. He didn't have a whole lot of friends.
Yes, I have heard that,
you together?
What kinds of things brought the two of
Just a common interest in public policy. My desire to make sure
that he wasn't just completely trashed because he was in fact the
203
governor. McCarthy and his forces were pretty much committed to
the idea of doing what Unruh attempted to do to Jerry's father,
and that was to make themselves supreme over their own incumbent
governor. They overrode his veto with some regularity, joined by
Republicans who were gleeful at the prospect of overriding
somebody's veto.
Morris: Any governor's veto or particularly Jerry Brown?
Brown: Any Democratic governor's veto. There was absolutely no
programming between the governor's office and the speaker's office
under Leo McCarthy. As a matter of fact there was outright
hostility. Some of us kind of felt that that should not be the
case, that we really ought to be on base with the governor in his
public-policy-making, and he particularly responded in kind to my
needs and to my desires. I was majority leader by then and so I
did provide him with some respectability inside the legislature.
Morris: Is that a philosophical point with you, that any governor--?
Brown: No, any Democratic governor.
Morris: Any Democratic governor, there should be some uniformity of
approach with the legislature?
Brown: Yes. I would think in a sense you can really make public policy
then. If you have both the executive and the legislative branch
under your philosophical control then you ought to go ahead and do
it. And you ought to assume the responsibility to do it which
means you ought to program together and then in effecting the
program you clearly want to be in a position where you protect the
governor's backside. In return the governor protects your
backside and signs your bills as you move them through the
legislature.
Morris: How do you decide or determine who gets the glory in a case like
that?
Brown: You ignore that. Who gets the political benefit you absolutely
have to ignore. Hopefully you will fashion the legislation and
ultimately hand it to the individual who spent more time working
on it than anyone else. If you are leadership you always hand the
ball off; you never take personal credit. If you start taking
credit, it will not be long before the membership will find
someone who is not so interested in feathering his own nest and
satisfying his own ego and building his image but in building the
image of the team and allowing each member of the team to have his
one time to carry the ball.
204
Leo McCarthy's Leadership
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Was this because Leo was shooting for the governorship or was
there some personal animosity between those two Irish--?
No. He was shooting for the governorship. He was definitely
shooting for the governorship. As a matter of fact, what prompted
the challenge to his speakership was his clear gubernatorial
ambition that revealed itself in November, 1979, at a fundraising
event at the convention center in Los Angeles where Ted Kennedy
was the speaker.
And Kennedy said to the group, "Here's your next governor?"
No. The money that was raised, McCarthy announced that it was
going into a special account to be used in the near future for his
other office pursuits.
Had he conferred with any of the leadership on that matter?
I have no clue. I was not part of the leadership in 1979.
Was this the point that there was a vote of no confidence in Leo
as speaker?
Yes. That's what prompted it.
It was an official vote?
Well, it was a vote in the caucus and then the subsequent vote to
vacate the chair on the floor. That vote never succeeded. That
vote never succeeded but nevertheless, it was a clear indication
that a majority of the Democrats did not want Leo to continue as
the speaker. The Republicans decided to stay out of the fight.
And enjoy the sight of the--?
The bloodbath, absolutely.
Even Jack Knox referred to it as a bloodbath.
Democrat.
He was a senior
It was a bloodbath. It was terrible because every day the entire
program was geared to attacking Leo McCarthy on every issue and
they were very good at it. The Republicans, of course, just sat
on the sidelines. If either one of them appeared to be running
out of gasoline they would always deliver an extra can to keep the
fire going.
205
Morris: Oh, really? In what way?
Brown: They would give a vote here or there. To criticize Leo. Or if it
appeared as if the anti-Leo forces were getting too much going,
they would occasionally give Leo a vote in order to--.
Morris: I see. At what point was it that Howard Bennan resigned as
majority leader?
Brown: He resigned as majority leader the day that he informed Leo he was
going to challenge him.
Morris: Was that in a caucus meeting in public?
Brown: No, no. A private conversation.
Morris: Just the two of them one on one?
Brown: I think Art Agnos was in and out of that meeting but it was just
the two of them.
Morris: What was Agnos1 position at that point?
Brown: He was the caucus chairman. He was a member of the assembly and
the caucus chairman. So he was third in command of the house.
Morris: It's interesting that in the north-south political rivalries,
northern California seems to have done pretty well in holding its
share of leadership positions.
Brown: In part because of longevity and in part because of skill. A
combination of the two. The south constantly is always turning
over. And the south tends to be a bit more conservative than the
north. So it has been easy--. Not easy, but it has been not so
difficult with institutional memory playing such a great role and
having such a great value, plus the philosophy of the north. You
pick up a third or more of the south just based upon that
philosophy and if you have that plus you have all the north,
you've got the combination that is the winner.
That's been the case in the assembly consistently, not in
the senate. The senate has never been under control of northern
Calif ornians . The closest we came was Hugh Burns down in Fresno,
but following Burns--.
Morris: And that's where the border lies.
Brown: Yes. Following Burns was Howard Way; following Howard Way was
Jack Schrade; following Jack Schrade was Jim Mills; following Jim
206
Morris ;
Mills was David Roberti. Schrade was San Diego, Way was Exeter,
Burns was Fresno, Mills was San Diego, and Roberti is Los Angeles.
So in the entire history of my being in the legislature, there has
never been a northern Calif ornian in charge of the state senate,
whereas in the speakership, the speakership moved from Jesse Unruh
in the south to Bob Monagan in the north (over here in Tracy) ,
from Monagan in the north to Moretti in the south, from Moretti in
the south to McCarthy in the north, and from McCarthy in the north
to Brown in the north. So the speakership has literally been a
San Francisco product since 1974.
Does that mean, in relation to what you said about more advanced-
type social thinking, that the assembly tends to be more liberal
by nature or is that a historical--?
Brown: It's more liberal by nature. It's the constituency. You are
elected from the smallest-base electoral unit in the state of
California. For legislative purposes there is the assembly
district, 372,000 people. The next is Congress. Congress is at
about 600,000 people. Then the state senate is about 744,000
people. So the assembly remains the smallest base constituency.
To the extent that you have that small base constituency,
you have a lot more people input. Where you have a lot more
people input and where people can elect you from districts, you
don't have to worry about the huge number of voter participants.
Like in East L.A., you can have a district of 372,000 people and
40,000 voters. Whereas in Orange County, you have a district of
372,000 people and you have almost 200,000 people who are
registered to vote. In that 40,000-vote constituency, 8,000 votes
wins the election. In that 200,000-vote constituency, it would
take about 120,000 votes to win the election. Yet each one of
those members has the same power inside the halls of the
legislature.
Morris: Once there.
Brown: Correct. So that mass of people participating on the conservative
side of the aisle becomes neutralized for influence purposes.
Thereby you have liberals who are fewer in number having, in many
cases, just the same kind of voice as the conservatives have.
Morris: That's fascinating. It is a matter of numbers.
Brown: Totally a matter of numbers.
Morris: Were there other things besides saying he was going to run for
governor that alienated the membership from Leo?
207
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
His personality. An example was on that given occasion, when it
came time to introduce the members, he simply said, "Will all of
the members of the assembly stand up and please give them a round
of applause."
This would be a party function?
Yes. A party thing for a thousand people. He didn't identify any
of them. He just said, "Would all the members of the assembly
stand up and we'll applaud them." Instead of saying, "This is Tom
Bates, who is the chairman of the Human Services Committee from
Berkeley, California. This is Robert Lee, a new member of our
house from Oakland, California. His area of interest is thus and
so." He didn't do any of that. As they interpret it, he kept all
the glory unto himself.
Secondly, he did not see members. Members could not see the
speaker. The speaker was too busy. You saw the speaker's chief
of staff and you only talked to the speaker's chief of staff.
That's not very polite.
No, not at all. And the membership resented that,
opportunity, they got together and ousted him.
When given the
208
XIX BECOMING SPEAKER OF THE ASSEMBLY
Brown as Majority Leader; 1980 Primary Campaign
Morris: At what point did you see an opening for yourself in that Herman
challenge?
Brown: November of 1980. Not until after the election.
Morris: A year later?
Brown: Yes. Not until after the election.
Morris: What was Berman doing from 1979 until the election?
Brown: Waging major battles in Democratic primaries to try to win the
nomination for people who would be favorably disposed to him in
seats that were surely to be Democratic.
Morris: Did you help with that activity?
Brown: I was helping Leo.
Morris: Here in San Francisco?
Brown: No, statewide. All of my resources went to help Leo maintain the
speakership. After all, I was the majority leader at that time.
So I was on the same side with Agnos and all of the people who
come from northern California against those southern California
types .
Morris: Was your heart in that?
Brown: Oh, sure. When I get involved in a race, I become emotional about
it and I try to win it.
Morris: Do you?
209
Brown: Absolutely.
Morris: So you've got Democrats in effect campaigning against each other
in districts that looked like they were winnable?
Brown: Oh, sure. Charlie Santana over in the East Bay, the late
supervisor, ran against Floyd Mori, who was the assemblyman from
that area. He didn't defeat Floyd Mori but we spent a lot of
money to protect Floyd. But it exposed Floyd where he was knocked
off in the general election in what should have been a safe
Democratic seat. Gil Marguth beat him in that particular race.
Leroy Greene was under siege by a Berman-backed candidate, a
woman, and was losing for the last ten days. Somebody hit upon
the theme that this woman was a representative from Sacramento who
will be wholly beholden to the southern California interests and
therefore will vote to get the water from the north to the south.
I think somewhere somebody asked her the question about the
Peripheral Canal and she indicated a favorable attitude on the
canal. Well, from that moment on, it was all over.
Morris: So you saved that seat.
Brown: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, it was my responsibility. We
would assign an individual member to a seat. That seat was one of
the things that I had a job to do. We won that seat.
Morris: Do I hear you saying that if you have a really rough fight in a
primary, the fallout from that can be--?
Brown: Can be the source of defeat, because all your opponent has to do
in the general [election] is just collect all the things that were
said about you by your fellow Democrat. Then in the general
election, simply say, "This isn't what I say about Willie Brown.
This is what his fellow Democrats say about him." So those fellow
Democrats who voted against Willie Brown in the primary plus those
disciplined Republicans who always vote for a Republican candidate
whether he's competent or not, the combination of the two
hopefully will be enough to defeat you.
Morris: It sounds as if that approach contributes a lot to the financial
benefit of advertising agencies and political consultants and
media revenues.
Brown: That's if you use those people exhaustively. In some areas we do
and in other areas we don't. In some areas, we used amateurs to
run the campaigns.
210
Morris: That was one of the campaigns in which the Waxman-Bennan slate
cards were being used. People were buying and using those?
Brown: Yes. Being employed. Yes.
Morris: That looks as if that was an innovation in campaigning that also
involved a lot of money. Am I right?
Brown: That generates a lot of money for them.
Morris: As a profit-making venture.
Brown: Oh, yes. I'll bet you they make a half million dollars a year on
that.
Morris: Yes. But it's also an expense for a candidate.
Brown: For a candidate. A major expense.
Morris: And it's an expense that didn't exist before a candidate could buy
space on a slate card organized by a campaign-management firm?
Brown: No. That was an expense that was always there. Actually, Phil
Burton perfected the slate card concept here in San Francisco. He
did so as a voter assistance guide to people who may not read the
candidate's material. He encouraged unions to publish their slate
card; he encouraged ministerial organizations to publish their
slate card. What he tried to do was try to make all the slate
cards consistent. The Bermans saw it maybe in San Francisco (and
they usually keep their slate card out of San Francisco) . You may
have your own operation going in San Francisco but nobody else in
other parts of the state are using this same technique. So let's
use this technique.
They have had tremendous success with it, particularly in
races where there was not a lot of attention given to the race.
In judicial contests, people tend to go in and they take the voter
guide and use it if they trust the senders of the voter guide and
those who embrace and endorse that voter guide. So Berman and
[Carl] D'Agostino really figured that out and became a profit-
making center as a result of their having figured it out.
Morris: In some districts, the matter of selling the space for the local
races caused some controversy because it looked as if they were
selling space to the highest bidder, not necessarily interested in
which poor soul who was running for the city council--.
Brown: Yes, they have to guard against that. I'm sure they are not
always successful. But I think they try to keep the integrity of
211
the card geared to supporting Democratic candidates and being a
benefit to Democratic candidates. They are not above making
money, but I think that they would not consciously put David Duke
on their slate card, so to speak. At the local level, you don't
know who the David Dukes are, you may get bad advice and people
would accuse you of having sold space without reference to
philosophy.
Conversations with Berman and McCarthy
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
So in the process of working those districts in 1980, did you pick
up some allies for your candidacy for speaker?
No, not really. The people who were McCarthy supporters were
always Willie Brown supporters. I didn't get one supporter of
Berman that was not already a Willie Brown supporter. I got [Art]
Torres and [Richard] Alatorre, both of whom were Berman
supporters, to come to Brown. I got Curtis Tucker to come to
Brown, I got Waddi Deddeh to come to Brown, I got John Thurman to
come to Brown; and they had been in some parts supporters of
Berman. But those were ten, fifteen-year personal friendships.
If they were personal friendships,
supporters?
how come they were Berman
That personal friendship didn't translate into following my
directions on McCarthy. They had their own beef with McCarthy.
McCarthy had alienated people similar to Agnos1 alienating people
under the mayorship. So I couldn't translate that. But the
minute I became a candidate, they dropped Berman. That was the
difference.
I see. What kinds of conversations were there with Leo? Was
there some matter of timing or something like that? Did he give
his blessing to you?
Leo had the roll of the dice in the contest with Berman. He had
said that he would never continue as the speaker if he didn't have
a majority of the Democrats supporting him. In other words, he
wanted the Democratic caucus to make the speakership decision.
The speakership decision is made on the floor with forty-one
votes. Leo McCarthy did not want to win the speakership for his
own partisan purposes with any Republican votes. He wanted a
majority of the Democrats to be for him.
212
Morris :
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris ;
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
When the election was over in November, he and Berman had
divided the house almost equally, twenty-three, twenty-three, and
one abstention.
Did one of them roll the dice or was that figurative?
No, no. Figuratively. When he saw that he didn't have forty-one
Democrats supporting him, he announced that he wouldn't be a
candidate and he recommended that we look out for ourselves, which
was not a pleasant thought after having engaged in the Battle of
Berman for a year and then suddenly be told by the guy who was the
leader that--.
That he wasn't going to back you?
No, not me. That he was now no longer operating as the
spokesperson for our group. With that in mind, our group asked if
I would assume the responsibility for being the spokesperson and
to meet with Berman and see what kind of arrangement could be
made. After all, Leo in his role as speaker had named John
Vasconcellos chairman of Ways and Means. All the senior positions
and the most important committee chairmanships were in the hands
of Leo McCarthy supporters, not Berman supporters. Clearly Berman
would be dumping many of those persons from their lofty positions.
These were people who had ten or twelve years invested and they
were not about to be just dealt out as Leo was dealing them out by
saying look out for yourselves.
So we put together a negotiating group to go visit with
Berman and to tell Berman that none of these people would vote for
him unless they understood what he proposed to do, specifically
with reference to the following twelve, fourteen items. He
refused to answer.
Were those items mostly chairmanships?
Chairmanships, memberships, how you are going to run the house,
are you going to be fair, are you going to include everybody. He
flunked on all of those answers. The meeting was held in my
legislative office here in San Francisco on Van Ness Avenue. He
did not do well in his answers, so the members became enraged and
at that point suggested that maybe we ought to see if we could put
That's when I
the speakership together with someone else,
emerged .
Had you some thoughts that you might emerge?
On Thursday after the election, Elihu Harris, Maxine Waters and
Mike Roos came into my law office [then] over on Vallejo Street
213
and asked if they could have an hour of my time, they wanted to
talk to me about something. They laid out to me how yesterday's
meeting had been a disaster because Leo had said he was quitting
Brown:
Morris:
Brown:
II
--members together and that the Republicans had great respect for
me and that I ought to try.
They had done some soundings over on that side of the aisle.
Well, they did some telephonic soundings before they came in to
see me. I listened to it for an hour and told them I already
agreed with them but I thought it would be key as to whether or
not Leo McCarthy would support such a coalition. I sent them off
to the state building where Leo McCarthy was in his office for
purposes of having a conversation with Leo. They invited me to
join them after a brief spell and I did, but I said nothing. I
let them talk to Leo. I had pretty much primed them since they
were young and inexperienced. I pretty much primed them on the
kind of conversations you needed to have.
They had that conversation and they finally backed Leo into
the corner. He was reluctant to do it and they pointed out to him
how they had stood with him all these years, et cetera, and how it
saved his speakership and maybe even his career and that he owed
it to the membership to be supportive. He finally said yes he
would but he needed to chat with Art Agnos. They came back to my
office to report the final comments to me because I left before
the meeting ended. And they were headed back to Sacramento as
well.
While they were in my office, the telephone rang and it was
Art Agnos calling from Leo's office to say that he wanted to ride
back to Sacramento with them. He needed to hitch a ride; he lived
in Sacramento.
Morris: With them or with you?
Brown: With them. I was not going back to Sacramento. They rode back to
Sacramento and they called me at the end of that ride to inform me
that Agnos was trying to talk them out of it and that obviously he
and McCarthy had discussed it and talked about how he couldn't be
successful. But fortunately for us, Agnos was leaving the next
morning for Florida for the Thanksgiving holidays with his family
and he would be gone, out of touch with them, for the next several
days. We figured that we had just about seven days in which to
put the thing together. So we got on the telephone to the four or
214
five Herman supporters and informed them that we were going to run
and thought we could put it together and needed their help.
They immediately said, "If you announce, we will announce
for you. Whether or not you are going to win it, we don't care.
You are a good enough friend and we don't have anything going with
Herman except we don't like McCarthy."
Negotiating Republican Support
Morris: Was Agnos thinking that he might try?
Brown: No, not at all. There was no competition to put it together.
They just didn't like the idea of doing something with the
Republicans. They thought long-range it would inure to
everybody's detriment to do something with Republicans. We paid
no attention to that and put the thing together with the
Republicans. We gave Herman the second meeting opportunity. At
the second meeting he failed even more miserably. So we went
ahead and stopped those meetings with Herman and we stepped off
into the Republicans.
I had about five or six good friends on the Republican side
of the aisle by then.
Morris: Was Carol Hallett somebody that--?
Brown: She was the leader.
Morris: She was the leader you had already had working relations with?
Brown: No. I had good working relationships with her but not to the
extent that I had anything going with her. A fellow named Curtis
Tucker, who died in 1988, a member of the assembly, was a very
close personal friend of Carol's and he went to work on Carol.
Ross Johnson, who was just recently deposed as the Republican
leader, was a part of that. But the key guy was a guy named Ed
Rollins. Ed Rollins was a staff guy. He was Carol Hallett ' s
chief of state. He subsequently worked for Reagan in the White
House and for Bush and still heads the Republican campaign
operation.1 You see him on CNN and what have you.
'In June 1992, Rollins was a key strategist for Ross Perot's
independent campaign for president.
215
Well, Ed Rollins was an admirer of Willie Brown's, a man I
hardly knew; but he was just literally enamored with Willie
Brown's leadership potential. Knowing that Republicans wouldn't
dominate the house and could not elect anybody speaker, he thought
the next best thing would be to elect Willie Brown and he thought
Willie Brown would give the Republicans their place in the sun.
So they put together a series of requests of me at a meeting in
Carol Hallett's office. Present at that meeting were Bob Naylor,
Ross Johnson, Carol Hallett and Ed Rollins. A deal was made with
those three. It included vice-chairmanships, it included a budget
for reapportionment and in return for that they pledged twenty-
eight of the thirty-three Republican votes. You only need forty-
one to win so we only needed thirteen Democrats to win this. We
got twenty-three Democrats.
Morris: The twenty-three that you had originally counted stayed with you
throughout?
Brown: Correct.
Morris: What did Leo and Art Agnos do?
Brown: They were part of the twenty-three.
Morris: They did stay with you even though they wouldn't say that we think
Willie Brown should be the next speaker?
Brown: No. They finally came around to that. It was just the reality of
numbers. And particularly when I recommended to Leo, in view of
the fact that I knew he was going to run for lieutenant governor
in 1982, I recommended that he would be the speaker pro tern, the
presiding officer in the house, since he knew the rules. And he
did. He accepted the lesser role.
Morris: What kinds of personal concerns did the Republicans have aside
from the vice-chair and reapportionment?
Brown: That was it.
Morris: No policy?
Brown: No. They were not concerned about policy because they knew that
no one could be hammered into a pre-arrangement on capital
punishment, of pre-arrangement on choice, or pre-arrangement on
health insurance, from the speakership standpoint. The
speakership is the chief administrative operator of the assembly.
The person who occupies that job has to be a pencil-pusher, has to
be a landlord, has to be a supply sergeant, has to talk about the
parking spaces in the basement. You really don't want then to
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Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
have the parking space in the basement determined by how you voted
on abortion because if you hammer the guy to get his speakership
vote based on some philosophical view, invariably then all
decisions are going to be made on that basis.
So office assignments are going to be made on how you voted
on the tax bill and they should not be.
Occasionally you hear that so and so lost his office because he
didn't back the speaker on such and such an issue.
No, he didn't back the speaker. Forget the issue. If there is a
challenge to the chair and you support the challenge to the chair,
you are not backing the speaker. That way, you are no longer on
the team.
That's how you lose the office?
You could lose everything. If somebody made a motion to vacate
and that motion failed and you voted for the motion, why should
you continue to enjoy the prerogatives of the winning side. You
are now the loser.
Is that the way Leo had run the speakership?
Yes. Except he dealt only with Democrats.
What was Berman's approach going to be?
deal with Republicans?
Was he also going to not
Well, the Republicans wouldn't touch Berman anyway. He was a
blatant partisan person, I mean grossly partisan. They feared
Berman; they didn't fear Brown. In their opinion, Berman would
never keep his word even if given. So a combination of those
factors led them to the conclusion that they were better off for
fair play with Brown. They had some evidence of that when I
chaired the Ways and Means Committee for four years, gained great
respect and stature as a fair shooter regardless of philosophy.
Then the Rev and Tax Committee even more graphically
demonstrated it because on that committee were all of the
Proposition 13 babies. Everybody who had been supportive of
Proposition 13 and elected as a result of Proposition 13 signed up
to protect the taxpayer. Even though my philosophy was different
from theirs, they found me to be extraordinarily fair, fair at
hearings, fair in sharing resources information and permitting
their bills to go out. A chairman can be a tyrant if one chairman
chooses to do so. I never used the chairmanship in that way. I
would vote against your bill even if I was the only vote and I
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would let still your bill go out,
if I was the final swing vote.
I would vote against your bill
Morris: But you wouldn't just bottle it up in committee.
Brown: Wouldn't bottle it up. I always gave you a fair hearing. I was
always courteous, I always assisted you in finding the witnesses
and insisted upon my staff being objective in their analysis.
They would write a cheat sheet for me but they could not ding your
bill in the analysis. That became my standard.
Morris: Even offhandedly they would say to you--.
Brown: They would tell me. They would give me a separate recommendation.
But they had to be totally pristine in their presentation, and
that has followed me to this day.
Putting the House in Order; Reapportionment
Morris: What were your expectations when you took office as speaker? What
you would be able to accomplish and what you wanted to accomplish?
Brown: Well, first and foremost, I wanted to bring the house back
together as a house. I did not like the year of incredible
divisiveness and disunity and zero attention to public policy. So
I set as my first order of business to put the house in order.
And I did that in a very short period of time.
Secondly, I wanted to have a fair reapportionment plan that
did not gratuitously reduce a sitting incumbent's chances of
winning. I didn't worry about trying to enhance, but I did not
want to be in a position where 1 was deliberately trying to undo
what the voters had done when they sent you up to represent us.
Morris: How does protecting incumbents come up against the very strong
concern for finding a way to elect a few more Hispanics and a few
more African American candidates?
Brown: Wherever population dictated that, I was the first to call for it.
But I would not twist the system just to pursue that goal. I
thought it unfair to twist the system to do that. That would be
quotas and I am not a quota person.
Morris: Your observation was that there was enough change in demographics
to make some logical openings.
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Brown: Right, and that's why I named a Hispanic chair of the
reapportionment committee, Richard Alatorre, so that the quality
of the committee's work would never be subject to attack on a
racial basis. His successor was a black woman, Maxine Waters, so
I always kept the reapportionment operation under the leadership
of people whose questions and commitments to increasing racial
minority participation would stand the test of time.
Morris: You had found that the 1970 reapportionment was not handled well?
Brown: No, not at all. I thought the reapportionment in the 1970s was
handled very well. But this was 1981 and we had to do it again.
The masters did it in 1972. They were not available. We didn't
need them since we had Jerry Brown's signature. As a result of
that it was a far easier reapportionment plan.
Morris: Did you find that Jerry was responsive to your ideas about--?
Brown: More than responsive. He simply said, "Do it and I'll sign it."
Morris: Really! The mechanics of it didn't interest him, things like
that?
Brown:
No.
Supreme Court Appointments
Morris: Did you have any talk at all about appointments other than your
own?
Brown: Absolutely. Full time. Every time he had an appointment to make,
practically, he asked for my input. Judgeships. Everything.
Didn't always take my advice but anything I genuinely wanted I
got. If I said desperately, "Listen, I need this judgeship," I
got it, including Allen Broussard on the supreme court. That was
my appointment.
Morris: What was there particularly about Allen Broussard, and Wiley
Manuel before him? Were they people that you had been interested
in seeing elevated?
Brown: I helped get Wiley Manuel to the supreme court, but Allen
Broussard was my appointment. I convinced Jerry to take Allen
Broussard. He initially offered it to Sam Williams. Sam Williams
was in the Hufstetler firm in Los Angeles and Sam did not want to
move to San Francisco and didn't want to leave the private
219
practice of law. Sam had great credentials. Sam had been a good
scholar, quarterback of the University of California, one of the
first blacks to gain, I suppose, partnership in a major law firm.
He had been, I think, the chair of that committee appointed by
[Mayor Tom] Bradley to look at the Watts riots, whatever that
committee was called. He had really distinguished himself and he
had become the president of the state bar. Sam Williams was
president of the state bar, so he had all the credentials. Jerry
asked him to go on the supreme court. He finally reluctantly
turned Jerry down.
Morris: Did you talk to Williams too? Were you helpful there?
Brown: Oh, sure, absolutely. I was asked to help and I did. I came back
and started on Jerry Brown to appoint Allen Broussard. When I got
the commitment from Jerry, I called Allen's home, he was on his
way to Minnesota for some kind of a judges' convention. I got a-
hold of him at the airport and said, "Listen, I would recommend to
you that you get off the airplane, go home and sit by your
telephone. I have reasons to believe that you may receive a call
for an appointment to the supreme court." He cancelled his trip
and went home and he did get the call.
Morris: You didn't give him any more advance warning?
Brown: No, he understood what I was talking about, at that stage, because
he had gone through the clearance process by then. He was one of
the people who had walked the clearance process.
Morris: I see. So he was on the short list, as they say?
Brown: Correct.
Morris: Did he have some reluctance to go on the supreme court at that
point?
Brown: No. That was not a factor in anybody's mind except Sam Williams.
His wife did not want to move to San Francisco and the court is
based here in San Francisco. He didn't want to have to commute as
Malcolm Lucas and some of the other people are currently doing.
You notice that in the last several years, several people have
gotten off the court long before they reach any age of retirement.
Broussard has now gotten off the court. [John] Arguelles got off
the court recently. Otto Kaus got off the court and went back to
practicing law. All these were appointments made by Deukmejian
and Jerry Brown; the people quit.
Morris: Is part of that that there has also been continuing controversy
about the supreme court since Rose Bird's time?
220
Morris: Is part of that that there has also been continuing controversy
about the supreme court since Rose Bird's time?
Brown: Yes, there has.
Morris: As a practicing attorney, does that make the supreme court a less
viable body than it was?
Brown: I think it is a less-respected body. I think that the voters
throwing Bird and her court out, that was a political act; I think
the subsequent appointments have been rooted in politics and I
think the court has now the reputation of being a political court
rather than a Donald Wright court or rather than an Earl Warren
court or rather than any similar court.
Morris: Is this something that the legislature has talked about?
Brown: Yes, very much so. Many members of the legislature look at the
court as being a political court. And that is not good for a
court .
Morris: Were there some concerns or conversations with Jerry Brown that
maybe he was moving too far too fast in either opening up the
court or in challenging some conservative assumptions?
Brown: No, I don't remember any conversations of that nature. I think no
one ever envisioned that there could be an organized effort to
dump the court. Cruz Reynoso, first Hispanic, you would think
that is not a problem. Allen Broussard, second black, you would
think that is not a problem. Rose Bird, the first woman, you
would think that is not a problem; just as you would assume the
combinations could never be put together to dump those people.
There had not been any evidence of that in the past history
of the supreme court. So I don't think anybody talked to Jerry
Brown about the practicality of his appointments and their
retention ability. I don't think there was ever a conversation.
Not until Rose and Joe Grodin and Reynoso were thrown off the
court did anyone come to the conclusion that maybe you should
consider electability when you select a chief justice or a
justice.
Morris: Was the electability problem related to the fact that under Jerry
Brown the supreme court became a much more varied group of people
in terms of ethnicity and maybe social outlook?
Brown: Yes. I think a combination of those symbols plus their
performance on the court. They became protective of the consumer.
They became great respecters of individual liberties. They
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types. It's a combination of all those factors that has made the
court seriously at risk.
Law-Enforcement Concerns
Morris: In your capacity as speaker and also as a practicing attorney, did
you have any problems with the law-enforcement people in the
state?
Brown: No, not at all. I've always got along with them. Some of my
greatest supporters are the law enforcement personnel. When I
represent clients, they know that I represent them fairly and
appropriately.
Morris: You've also carried some bills for the Highway Patrol.
Brown: And I carried lots of their health and welfare legislation. I
don't carry any of their legislation to increase their ability to
violate the constitution. I oppose all of that and oppose it
vehemently. But on the questions of early retirement, stress
claims, uniform allowance, educational systems, survivor benefits,
I am their champion. Working conditions, the right to bargain
collectively, organize, I'm their champion.
Morris: Were there specific issues in relation to the courts that bothered
the law-enforcement people?
Brown: All the death-penalty overturns specifically bothered them. All
of the Miranda rights restrictions bothered them. The
admissibility of evidence secured by questionable means or the
failure to permit it not to be introduced bothered them. The
judiciary going beyond the strict interpretation of the statutes
bothered them, as it relates to criminal matters. So a
combination of all those things bothered them.
What really rankled them however was the reduced sentencing
that seemed to follow the environment created by this court.
People getting probation where previously they would have gone to
county jail, people getting county jail where they otherwise would
have gone to state prison, all of that caused the law enforcement
people to believe that they were fighting a hopeless battle and
the enemy was being supported by the leadership in government.
Morris: Anybody in particular in law enforcement who spearheaded this?
Brown: No. I couldn't identify them. Or I don't remember.
222
Morris: Anybody in particular in law enforcement who spearheaded this?
Brown: No. I couldn't identify them. Or I don't remember.
Morris: They didn't come to the legislature to revise the law?
Brown: Oh, yes, they came to the legislature but the committee structures
would never permit those kinds of bills to move. That's been an
ongoing criticism of the so-called Criminal Justice Committee.
That's the committee that allegedly kills everything and is a
graveyard; that is a committee that Burton chairs.
Morris: So John Burton was part of this reason for being upset with the
state of criminal justice in California?
Brown: Well, he is now. He wasn't then because he wasn't holding office
in California at that time. No. It was Byron Sher. Before that
it was Terry Goggin. So there was a whole series of Democrats and
Republicans. Ken Maddy chaired the committee at one time. None
of them would do the kinds of things that law enforcement wanted
to do. Law enforcement wanted to be able to break your door down
and the only thing they would be required to do is pay for your
door if they didn't find something. [Their view was that] if they
found something, even though they broke your door down just to
search and they had no probable cause, what they found justified
the original entry.
That was the kind of policy that they wanted to put in
place. They wanted to put in place that it was a death-penalty
case to strike a police officer whether you knew it was a police
officer or not. So all of those things were stopped by the
various heads of the Criminal Justice Committee. I was, of
course, as the speaker ultimately charged with having named that
person head of the committee and therefore not likely to provide
any relief to law-enforcement folks.
Morris: This sounds like a good place to stop for today.
Brown: All right.
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XX ONGOING CRITICAL POLICY ISSUES, 1981-1991
[Interview 5: January 26, 1992]##
Health Care, Growth Management, Affordable Housing, Environmental
Protection
Morris: Did you have a good holiday in Paris?
Brown: It was a fun trip.
Morris: Good. You're all prepared for the battles ahead this election
year?
Brown: I'm ready for them.
Morris: What I wanted to ask you about today is the changing politics in
the last ten years since you've been speaker.
Before we began taping, you said that there were some themes
that you had been interested in developing as speaker that
sometimes got lost in the shuffle of day-to-day passing of the
budget and things like that. What are some of these important
issues on which you've tried to educate the public?
Brown: There were three or four major issues that are still out there and
still pending and still requiring public attention, and more
public attention than when I initially fell upon them.
Morris: They've become more important.
Brown: They are universal health care (for lack of a better one-line
description); growth management, that translates initially into
regional government—the business of trying to make some sense out
of the crazy patchwork quilt we have of local governments and
local jurisdictions and special districts and single-purpose
regional agencies and multi-purpose regional agencies or dual-
224
purpose regional agencies and competing transportation systems and
the multiplicity of bridges. All of those things are part of the
growth-management process, as well as the location of the public
facilities that no one wishes to have located in their
jurisdiction or in their area, like jails and toxic dumps and
sewer-treatment plants. Nobody wants those things in their area,
yet they are absolutely necessary for the comfort level that human
beings wish to enjoy,
issue.
That's all part of the growth-management
That spills over into the affordable-housing issue. Then,
of course, the whole question of how much effect do growth-
management issues have on protecting the environment and how they
interrelate. Those are some of the issues that I envisioned
needed addressing at the outset of my speakership that still have
only been addressed, if at all, in a hesitant manner and certainly
not in a comprehensive manner, certainly not in a visionary manner
and certainly not in a manner that addresses the future growth
needs and the future growth patterns of California.
Morris: Why is it that there has been such a hesitant response?
Brown: Well, on the health issue, it is mainly because of cost. The
American system of health coverage is an employer-based system.
Normally the employer pays the benefit. Most employers, probably
75 to 80 percent of the employers in this nation, as well as this
state, provide health-care coverage as a part of the employment
package to their employees. The 20 percent who do not and their
employees' dependents constitute, I don't know, about four to six
million people in the state of California who are without health
coverage. That translates into an increased health cost for those
who are covered because the providers of the service factor in all
of their ancillary costs, including their share of the
uncompensated care costs. That's spread across the board.
Employers are now becoming more sensitive to the increased health
care cost rates. Some are even pulling out of the coverage.
As a result of that, when you attempt to have legislation
moved that would mandate coverage, you run smack into this alarm
about the increased costs and the unwillingness of that 20 to 25
percent of the employers to pay at all. Those employers are
usually small-business persons. Or a definition of an employee
not covered is usually a counter person at some [low-paying fast-
food kind of] place. They are a very tough collection of folk.
Morris: Is that because of their political persuasion or their economic
situation?
Brown: It's because of their political persuasion more than anything
else. As a result of their efforts, we have not been able to get
225
mandated coverage. We've just not been able to get any
coverage.
mandated
Individual and Agency Resistance to Integrated Services
Brown: On the question of regionalization or growth management of
regional government, it is similarly the politics that bar us from
achieving it. The clout of the single-purpose districts, the
counties, the cities, all of those little jurisdictions that know
that they are out of business, possibly. If the decision-making
and enforcement powers are transferred to a regional body, there
would be no reason for them to exist. There would be no reason
for their overlapping bureaucracies to exist. There would be no
reason for their overlapping capital-investment advisers to exist.
They are literally in place hiding behind something called local
control. They make a great case for blocking any efforts to
intelligently manage the process.
An example of that would be the Bay Vision 2020 that has
been working for a couple of years to put together just a modest
proposal to create a commission to talk about it. That was
killed. That's the latest example. All during the eighties,
legislation was introduced, mostly by me, and it could seldom, if
ever, get out of the first committee.
Morris: Really. But further back, all those special districts were set up
by legislation.
Brown: Most were established by legislation, some by virtue of local
power authorities in between the groups. At that time, people
envisioned that that was a good idea. Establishing BART [Bay Area
Rapid Transit], that was an option for the counties that were
involved. Only three counties opted to go into BART in the nine-
county Bay Area, San Francisco County, Alameda County and Contra
Costa County when, in fact, if we had created a state agency and
superimposed a rapid transit district on the nine-county Bay Area
and at the time of that process, you would have charged the cost
of that and spread it through all nine counties, you would now
have a marvelous system that would rival whatever they have in
Europe, whatever they have in Asia for the purpose of moving
people around- -particularly in Japan.
But no, you went into this little truncated system where you
have only three counties involved. Now you have SamTrans down in
San Mateo County, you have some other system in Santa Clara
County, you've got the Golden Gate Transit System coming out of
Mar in County. None of these interlock with BART. Then you've got
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
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Muni Metro [S.F. Municipal Railway] and you still have AC Transit
[Alameda-Contra Costa County Transit District]. Then you've got
several bridges that are under different bridge authorities. You
absolutely have nothing. When we put BART together, not only
could we not get BART to be a multiple agency, we couldn't even
get it to be a single-purpose transportation agency for the nine-
county Bay Area. It turned out to be only for three counties.
And it's still plagued with that deficiency.
People were resisting even then to establish the Association
of Bay Area Governments [ABAC] . That turned out to be a planning
and information system, not even a clearinghouse. We established
the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and its
jurisdiction was relatively limited.
We established the Air Quality Control District. It has
relatively limited powers because it is not connected to the
development and planning of transportation systems. It can only
set standards for air pollution but really has nothing else to do
with patterns of where people live that clearly could contribute
substantially to reducing how much travel time people actually do,
therefore how many vehicles are required and therefore how many
pollutants are in the air. They don't have anything to do with
any of the land-use patterns of where you locate manufacturing
facilities and what-have-you. Yet they are called the Bay Area
Pollution Control District. How can they be that without having
that necessary kind of clout?
Then we had MTC, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority,
that is, I guess you would best describe it, as a clearinghouse
for transit money distribution.
Mostly federal?
Mostly federal, but without any real control over transportation
systems as such. The amount of money that they have control over
and can participate in distributing or directing is not
substantial enough for them to have real influence. Then you have
PUC [Public Utilities Commission], still out there messing around
with what you do with the ferry-boat systems.
That's the local PUC?
No, that's the state PUC. The state PUC makes the determination.
The Public Utilities Commission of the state of California
determines what you can put on the bay, in addition to BCDC. So
you have all this multiplicity of agencies trying to mess around
with growth measures. Then you have, of course, your individual
county waste systems. Every county has its own waste authority or
some combination thereof. In a county like San Francisco, it will
227
not allow you to dump garbage in the city. [Phone interruption]
San Francisco does not permit dumping of garbage. So San
Francisco shops around to see which one of the adjacent counties
will accept San Francisco garbage. They have a contract with
Solano County to dump garbage. They have a contract with Alameda
County to dump garbage.
Morris: I think Alameda is shipping some of its own garbage out of the
county too.
Brown: Yes, they may be. San Francisco originally had a contract with
San Mateo County to dump garbage. San Francisco now has a
contract with San Mateo County to locate its jail. San Francisco
doesn't want any county jails. So we contract on land and we put
the county jail down there. We would love to contract out the
sewer-treatment system. We just can't find anybody to take the
refuse. So we're having to build our own.
Every other place is similarly situated. Many times you
can't build any housing in Marin County because you can't get any
water connection since the system is so limited. Each one of the
local jurisdictions do not wish to give up any of their authority
to try to correct it. That constitutes formidable political clout
that bars us at the state level from doing anything except
tinkering.
Local-State Confrontations; Permit Complications
Morris: What you're describing is the situation where one level of
political leadership is in direct confrontation with another level
of political leadership.
Brown: Where that happens and it's local, locals always win.
Morris: Why is that?
Brown: Simply because there are more of them. Simply because the
argument is easier to make. No one wishes San Francisco dictating
what you can do in Alameda County. All Alameda Countians have a
common interest. And they are more than there are San
Franciscans, just in the port authorities alone, for example.
Each one of these damn ports compete with each other. That's
crazy. Each one of those ports ought to be assigned a function
that they do best and the revenues ought to be then shared
regardless of where those revenues are taken in.
228
One example. The storage facility for automobiles may very
well be Richmond. The headquarters facility where all those
executive types like to live and recreate may very well be San
Francisco, and the pleasure crafts may come into San Francisco.
The container facilities may very well offload in the Oakland
port. The revenues and the cost of developing and maintaining,
that ought to be shared and at the end of the year, it ought to be
divided on a per capita basis or something.
Morris: Yes. Have you ever raised that point?
Brown: Absolutely. I introduced a bill to merge the ports.
Morris: Did you? A brave fellow.
Brown: I introduced a bill to merge the ports and almost got ran out of
town by the various port authorities. Only San Francisco Port
supported my effort.
Morris: Because they figured that they would be the chief honcho?
Brown: Not at all. They are just more conscious of the need for
regionalization, and I suppose their tonnage is down lower than
most of the others anyway and so there is obviously no great
potential loss in tonnage for them.
Morris: And all those overlap? All those local districts have
environmental protection aspects too, it sounds like.
Brown: Absolutely. If you were trying to develop something in this area,
say you were trying to do housing in Solano County as is the case
for lots of people these days, if you were water-related at all,
there may be as many as forty different agencies you would have to
go through. As you go through each one of those forty agencies,
seldom if ever are the review processes of one agency applicable
to the next agency. So you may have to start the wheel all over
again. The carrying costs for that, ultimately imposed upon the
price of the housing, drives the price beyond most people's
affordable level.
Morris: What about the idea of "going to the people," over and around the
intervening local governmental bodies? Is that something that
your speeches have been designed to do?
Brown: No, not really, because the decisions are made literally within
the legislature and there are no initiatives that the people could
directly participate in that would drive or influence that
decision.
229
Educating Local Decisionmakers
Morris: You seem to have a very heavy schedule of speechmaking addressing
these issues and other issues. Joanne Murphy gave me a roster of
the speeches you've made which looks as if there are fifteen or
twenty major speeches going on at a time, being presented to
different bodies.1
Brown: Those bodies are usually populated with the local elected types,
the local appointed types, of these boards and agencies in an
effort to remove their fears and in some cases illuminate their
thought processes on the issue. Most of them are without real
facts and without real information. They tend to react as if
there is a potential invasion. So I've spent lots of time trying
to educate them.
Morris: Have you made any progress?
Brown: Very little. Very little. The fact that many academicians and
many planning types have over the last five years embraced the
concept is a great step forward. The journalists have pretty much
embraced the concept as well, so we are getting a wider audience
now and we are getting a lot more attention than we got five or
six years ago. Bay Vision 2020 is an academician/business-driven
group of thinkers who put that report together with some
participation by elected officials but not at the local level, but
not enough so that when they went back for the appropriate
approval from all of the constituent organizations who had
contributed membership to Bay Vision 2020, they couldn't get it
passed. Here the people, the subgroup, who were assigned the
responsibility to do the evaluation and come forward with a
recommendation, unanimously recommended it. The bigger group
dumped it.
Morris: Within Bay Vision 2020?
Brown: Within Bay Vision 2020. Then there is a group out of Southern
California, out of Los Angeles, called L.A. 2000, that is really
on target. They are supportive of the kinds of efforts that I've
been making. There is a group in San Diego called Measure C that
has attempted to do something similar to this on a voluntary basis
and have had some success. I'm not sure what the incentives have
been for those local agencies to participate fully but they have
had some success. Even Orange County has now put together a group
of citizens plus elected officials who are talking for the first
time in the last twelve months; they began to talk about
'See listing in Appendix.
230
regionalization or some multi-purpose forms of government to
address the issues that are regional in nature rather than local
in nature.
Then there is a group working out of, and I think under the
directions of someone at, Sacramento State University. They have
and will be producing a plan or a proposal or some report within
the next several weeks. Then, of course, the governor appointed a
group of folk, a task force as he called it, for the purpose of
addressing growth management, and they too will be giving their
report within the next week.
Morris: That sounds as if it's become a trendy issue.
Brown: Very trendy issue. That's what I meant by over the last five
years, getting the attention of the academicians as well as some
of the business people and a few of the governmental appointees,
at least to the extent that they are discussing it.
Morris: Does the fact that San Diego and Orange County have fairly close
agreement between the business leaders and the political
leadership make a difference in getting an idea like this
accepted?
Brown: It would have. San Diego actually has some form of
regionalization in place as a result of voluntary participation.
It's interesting how they did it. They put together a proposal
called the Measure C, put it on the ballot to get the approval of
the voters for what they said they wanted to do. The voters gave
a thumbs up to their assent to such a proposal. It wasn't
mandated within Measure C; it was just an indication of what they
would do on a voluntary basis in order to test whether or not it
was acceptable to the public. They put it up as a public
question. It was overwhelmingly supported. So they have been
plodding along. Orange County is just beginning to think about
it.
First Funds for AIDS Research; Finding Resources for New Programs
in a Tight Budget
Morris: Could we go back a little back to where you started on health
care. The record indicates that you had a lot to do with some of
the revisions in state policy. Joanne Murphy was telling me about
your efforts to get some research money for AIDS [Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome] into the budget when it had not been proposed
by the research units of the medical school--.
231
Brown: And we succeeded. We succeeded in doing that.
Morris: Could you tell me that story?
Brown: In the early eighties, when George Deukmejian became the governor
of the state of California—in 1983 to be exact—people in San
Francisco at the university medical center told me about this new
virus that could threaten all of humankind, that people knew very
little about. It destroyed the immune system and they really
wanted to get into doing some research. They told me about
persons at other University of California-related medical
facilities throughout the state who had been at least informally
chatting about it. There was no such research proposal either by
the board of regents at the University of California or by the
president's office at the University of California and certainly
not by the state Department of Health.
Morris: Had the research people gone to those types of channels?
Brown: I don't know. I would assume that they had at least had the same
kind of discussions they were having with me but I was not privy
to that. When I learned of this, I asked Marcus Conant if he
would pull the people together whom he knew could do a definitive
proposal for me. We put together, I guess you would call it a
retreat, but it was actually in the downtown speaker's office in
the state building in Los Angeles. We brought all these
scientists into the conference room and I think they sat there for
a couple of days with Joanne Murphy doing the writing and the
scientists supplying the info[rmation] , we wrote the research
grant proposal that we translated into budgetary language and
budgetary appropriations and then made the appeal to the governor
with the scientists' supporting facts and documents, and the
governor assented to it as one of the trade items that was mine.
That became the first state anywhere in the nation to appropriate
money for AIDS research.
Morris: When you say trade items?
Brown: Well, during the course of any legislative movement, in particular
the budget, the governor always has a list of priority items that
he would like to have us include, and on merit they probably would
be included if you had all the resources that you ever wanted to
have; but you usually do not have the resources so you have to
make some determinations of priority. He sets his priorities;
then he will request of us, "What are your priorities?" If there
is a mutuality of agreement on priorities, then there is no reason
for dialogue. If there is a difference on priorities, then the
trade-off process comes. Can you delay yours and let me have mine
or can I delay mine and let Roberti have his, et cetera. That's
why I call them trade items [phone interruption] .
232
Say there are five such items that I had an overwhelming
interest in, like the child health screening-disability prevention
program or the AIDS research money, Roberti may have homeless-
shelter money that he would like to see definitely in the budget,
those are all things that would be foreign to the governor. The
governor may have in his proposal something to do with the World
Trade Commission or one of those Republican-type proposals [phone
interruption] , something that we would never even leave in the
budget as a priority item. With that process, he'll come to us
and give us his laundry list, we'll give him ours and if we dig
his kind of jive, we will then proceed with just those twelve or
thirteen items as being off the table and the other four hundred
items in the budget will be subject to sacrifice in order to
finance the remainder of the programs.
Morris: With this AIDS research bill in 1983, weren't we also in a budget
crunch in the state at that time?
Brown: Absolutely. When Deukmejian came aboard, he inherited a billion-
dollar deficit, a billion two or so deficit from the Jerry Brown
administration. Within sixty days, warnings were sent out by
[director of Finance] Jesse Huff and others that we would be
issuing warrants because we were running out of cash for the
state. That's when we created the trigger tax proposal. As a
matter of fact, it was my proposal. Deukmejian held a press
conference and announced that he had failed because he couldn't
reach an agreement with the senate. We took joint leadership of
the assembly at that time, Republicans and Democrats, with good
people running the Republican side of the aisle, and we put
together a proposal that created a standby tax. A tax that we
said would be imposed only if the economy performed in a certain
way and the general fund performed in a certain way or the
expenditure programs performed in a certain way.
Although Mr. Deukmejian had pledged not to raise taxes when
he ran in 1982 and we were in a tax-reduction environment as
fostered by the 1981 Tax Reduction Act that Reagan put in place in
Washington we were literally at the stage where we had to do
something. He knew that, so he agreed to a proposal called a
trigger tax. That proposal became what we used to get ourselves
out of the doldrums economically speaking. But in spite of what
clearly was a bleak period for funding for programs, the AIDS
research proposal had developed sufficient clout from the
scientific information supplied, plus the advocacy of my office,
and the combination of the two got it on the table as a new
program.
Morris: How about the community groups?
233
Grassroots Politicking Pro and Con; Public Schools and Property
Taxation II
Morris: How much impact did they have in keeping the AIDS question before
the public?
Brown: Community groups can be very, very important. The best example of
how community groups work is to watch the education establishment.
Morris: [laughter]
Brown: That is singularly the best place you can look at what you call
grass roots participation. The teacher movement throughout the
state of California, if not the nation, has mastered the art of
public persuasion with numbers. They more than any other single
group have caused the issue of public education to become a non-
political issue in that it crosses party lines. You've got as
many Republicans advocating for public education funding and for
protecting public schools as you do Democrats. The issue around
education is not whether or not you will do it, it is only how you
will do it. Some would insist that the public school system
remain in the frame and the model that we currently have. Others
would suggest some form of voucher, of choice, or what-have-you.
but they all are advocating constant, ongoing, committed support
for education.
Almost nobody recommends cuts in education. You don't see
candidates running for public office promising to cut back on
education. Not even a Republican runs on that basis.
Morris: What about the recurrent comment whenever there is a budget crunch
that there are too many administrators in the schools?
Brown: Well, that's the administrator side. The teachers usually say
that. But that's not cutting education as such. No one believes
that cutting an administrator interferes with the quality of
learning that goes on in the classroom.
But there are no politicians—as they do on welfare, as they
do on all the other areas—nobody stands up and makes speeches
about how they are going to cut back on the dollars spent or given
to public education. Nobody says that. [Governor Pete] Wilson
attempted to hold that kind of discussion and he couldn't even get
the proposal introduced into the legislature. No one would
introduce in the legislature a proposal to suspend [Proposition]
Morris :
Brown:
234
98. ' Wilson talked about it last year and then this year, when he
came in with his proposal, even though we still have a budget
crisis, he didn't even suggest it. He said, "Let's protect 98."
So all of a sudden he's on time too.
That comes as a result of the grassroots community-based
effective politicking that the teachers have caused to occur on
public education questions. Parents are involved in it, students
are involved in it, business persons are involved in it. Business
Roundtable is constantly holding a task force, or a team, on
education, or coming forward with new proposals in the field of
education. They all require money. No one is insensitive about
that.
So when you ask me, "Are community groups effective?" Yes.
Community groups are also effective on things like saving the
coast. Everybody wants in some manner or another to save the
coast and to save trees and to save mountain lions. Those are all
community-driven kinds of public participation policymaking. It
is very effective. But those are about the only things that are
effective by virtue of the existing ongoing community group
participation. There are some isolated single-purpose and single-
issue and single-shot community based groups that have some
influence.
On the negative side, there are probably two or three
groups, negative from my political standpoint. The pro-life
group--.
Pro-life?
Anti-abortion people. They are fairly effective but only in
limited jurisdictions. They do so only through the fear of
intimidation in people who pursue public office. The gun
operators or the NRA or whatever their state constituent
organization or subsidiary may be, they too have some clout routed
in community-type expressions and community-type activities. But
they are very limited as well. There are just a few isolated
politicians who yield to their demands and to their influence.
But they are in fact out there.
The pro-choice people on the other hand are a fairly
respected group but seem only to be handsomely energized when the
issue is actually upon us. Seldom are they involved in between.
November 1988, a measure to guarantee a fixed percentage of the
state budget be spent on public school education.
235
Morris: In between, yes. Is the success of the community groups related
to the kind of professional assistance and guidance?
Brown: Not really. It's more the issue.
Morris: Because I was thinking that the teachers have for years retained
Whitaker and Baxter [Inc.] who are known as some of the best
political campaign people in the business.
Brown: Yes, but that isn't where it comes from. It comes from their
figuring out a long time ago how to actively involve the
community-based residential teachers in every school-related
issue.
Morris: So then it has a career implication for the teachers?
Brown: Absolutely. It is a network that teachers really employ, use and
relate to. They keep the issue focused not on teachers but on
schools. If it got down to teachers, they might lose that one if
the issue of just merit pay for teachers was put, if the issue was
work hours of teachers, just teachers, not related necessarily to
education. Every teacher-related issue has been carefully
structured so that it becomes a schools issue rather than just
teachers. They always refer to it as schools or education. Pete
Wilson tried to make it as if teachers were responsible for the
debacle in Richmond that resulted in the Richmond school district
virtually going bankrupt. The teachers were smart enough not to
let that confrontation occur.
Morris: On the evidence, it didn't have much validity.
Brown: Very little efficacy. In southern California, in the L.A. school
district, which is a world into itself, the teachers this year
were smart enough to take a voluntary 3 percent cut in pay, which
thereby removed the issue when it came to the question of funding
the L.A. school system and the shortage of funds and where do you
get new funds. The teachers stepped up to the plate and smartly
removed themselves as a bone of contention by doing a voluntary 3
percent cut, which means that they may have saved themselves 2
percent because they may have had imposed upon them out of
circumstances 5 percent. But they removed it as an issue.
Morris: They pre-empted.
Brown: Pre-emptive strategy.
Morris: How about the effect of the single-issue organization in terms of
things like the Gann Amendment and the whole series of amendments
that followed on Proposition 13?
236
Morris:
Brown:
Brown: Those were single time, single-shots where they pushed the hot
button in the system. They were really not organized as such.
That was an apartment house owner-driven and financed scheme to
benefit apartment house owners.
Right. But the voters bought the presentation year after year.
That is correct, and I think in many cases they continue to buy
the presentation, although I think they are getting a little sour
on it now because they have suddenly discovered that the real
benefit over the decades of Proposition 13 has turned out to be
the commercial properties in this state that never change hands or
if they do change hands they change hands in such a way that there
is no reassessment. As a result of that, the contribution that
the commercial side of the roll makes to the total property tax
roll has consistently gone down and the contribution that the home
owner side of the roll has consistently gone up. That's why you
have incredible discrepancies between people living next door to
each other and how much taxes they pay on residences. Someone who
bought a home in 1991 is paying 1991 market prices for tax-
determination purposes whereas if someone had that house in 1978
when Proposition 13 passed, it could be the same identical house
worth the same "market value" but the guy who paid market value
today pays taxes on what he paid and the guy who bought in 1978
pays taxes on the 1978 level.
That has created just a terrible disquietude among people.
That issue is now before the supreme court for a determination.
But there is a consistent vote for protecting property taxes and
property taxpayers in this state, all generated originally from
Proposition 13's efforts.
Morris: Is that another example of the local-control issue?
Brown: No, that's not local control at all. That is just homeowners not
wanting to pay any more real property taxes. All those real
property taxes go to the locals; they don't go to the state.
There were no property taxes paid to the state.
Morris: Right. And you hear people say that if I have to pay a larger
local property tax, then that will reduce the amount that I will
have to pay to the state income tax people.
Brown: Proposition 13 is just the reverse of that because if Proposition
13 takes your taxes down, that means that you can't deduct your
property taxes at the same level from the state amount. So you
end up paying more state taxes as a result of the reduced
deductibility of the amount of the deductibility.
Morris: Did that provide a windfall of revenue for the state?
237
Brown: No, not really.
Morris: It wasn't sufficient?
Brown: No, not even close. As a matter of fact, the state out of its
surplus bailed out locals when Proposition 13 passed. We stepped
up to the plate and held locals harmless at about a 90 percent
level of their current budget for their budgets at that time.
That's how we bailed out Proposition 13 and barred the severe
adverse impact that Proposition 13 would have had the day after it
was enacted into law.
238
XXI THREATS TO DEMOCRATIC PROCESS AND INSTITUTIONS
Negative Campaigning; Campaign Reform Measures
Morris: Just going on with the list of your speeches that I've been
reading, you've made a number of speeches on the increase in
negative campaigning and the need to provide for some voluntary
standards for campaign behavior?
Brown: Over the years, the perception of public office holders
individually has declined, favorable to unfavorable. The
perception of the institution, favorable to unfavorable, whether
it be the legislature or the executive branch, Congress, the
Senate, has dramatically declined. Part of that decline is rooted
in the utterances by politicians running against the institutions.
But a substantial proportion of it has been by the technique of
getting elected to public office by attacking your opponent in the
campaigns and in most cases on a non-substantive basis, or on a
half-truth basis. Or sometimes on a total lie basis.
And that is an absolute article of faith for most political
consultants in what they use. They do negative research. The
invest as much on negative research of the opponent as they do on
positive research on their candidate. They spend a little more on
positive research. Again, they may discover the negatives on
their candidate too.
But they spend lots of money on negative research in an
effort to figure out how to define in the most unfavorable way
their opponent to the constituency that they are both competing
for. That has contributed substantially to the decline in
favorable perception of the government as an institution and
particularly for the individuals. I don't think that is healthy
for the system.
Morris: Why has that kind of campaigning become so much more extensive?
239
Brown: In part because of the change in the nature of campaigning.
Campaigning was done strictly by amateurs, by people who did not
use Madison Avenue techniques and marketing techniques. The
science of marketing has only within the last twenty, twenty-five
years been applicable to political campaigns on a wholesale basis.
There were no great political consultants before then, certainly
not as many as there are now. Every unemployed journalist is a
political consultant.
Morris: But there used to be people like Don Bradley who may not have had
the professional training that some folks do now but who certainly
had many years of experience.
Brown: Except that they just kind of ran campaigns. They didn't spend a
lot of time investing efforts to determine what your problems
were. People didn't talk about your age. People didn't campaign
on the basis of your health. People didn't campaign on the basis
of whether or not you might play around. Those things were not
utilizable. The media didn't print that kind of stuff either. It
was not an acceptable way in which to evaluate the appropriateness
of a person holding public office. The anonymous source was not a
great place in which to read a story.
There was, I think, kind of a same-club relationship between
members of the Fourth Estate and those seeking public office. A
combination of those things just literally eliminated the kind of
negative campaigning that has come with the growth in the number
of and the quality of the political consultants and the technique
of reaching the public for political purposes.
Morris: Is some of that a factor of now we have computerized data banks?
There is a lot of data you can now get at.
Brown: Absolutely. You have information systems. Just the ability to go
to a newspaper morgue and in thirty seconds scan thirty years of
news coverage. The fact that it is catalogued alphabetically
under Morris or Brown or whomever and you just go in and you hit a
button and all of a sudden every clipping that's ever been done
and every story that's ever been written is in front of you. You
couldn't do that easily twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five years
ago. It just wasn't fair. The fact that you can do it in your
own home now using your own PC [personal computer] is even more
frightening. And it provides for the application of every
technique of propaganda to be employed in a political campaign.
It is being in fact employed and that in part has
contributed to the nature of negative campaigns.
240
Morris: Were you in support of Jerry Brown's political reform initiative1?
Brown: No, I was not. In 1974 Jerry Brown ran and caused Proposition 9
to be enacted into law. I think there were maybe two politicians
in the state of California who opposed Proposition 9, or at least
two state officials: Willie Brown and Jack Knox. We were the two
people who said that proposition has no place because of its
incredible potential for mischief and abuse, because it was not
designed frankly, not effectively at least, to regulate and keep
out those persons who should not be public office holders. The
nature of the information it supplied is strictly subject to being
used in only one fashion.
The fact that you file your statement of economic interest
annually if you are an elected official in this state, and all of
that information is excerpted for First Amendment-protected
attacks or stories and the results are that it causes questions to
be raised about the appropriateness of your holding public office,
yet your record clearly reflects that your decisions have always
been in the public interest, your votes have always reflected
that, there is no evidence whatsoever that there has ever been
crossing of the lines of any conflicts or what-have-you. Yet
politicians are held up to suspicion and ridicule based upon
information they supplied.
It's gotten so gross now under the Proposition 9
requirements, no one ever says when they print the story, that the
information comes from your under-oath revelations required by
Proposition 9. They don't say that any more. They don't even
tell the source, which would obviously place a different light on
any negative interpretation if a reader knew that the place where
this information came from was you.
Morris: The candidate himself, herself?
Brown: Correct. If you say, "I own 3,000 shares of IBM and I have
consistently disqualified myself from any votes on matters
affecting IBM"--well, that isn't the way it is written. You have
supplied that information under Proposition 9 requirements. The
news story talks about how you own 3,000 shares of IBM and how IBM
is the biggest contract supplier of computer equipment and digital
equipment and data equipment to the state legislature, a body of
which you are a member.
Now your voter reads that and concludes--
'Proposition 9, June 1974, creating the Fair Political Practrice
Commission.
241
Morris: Says, "Oh, my goodness."
Brown: Proposition 9 clearly should have simply said, "Under penalty of
perjury, you must declare that you have no conflict and that where
you do have a conflict, as defined by the statutes, you will
recuse yourself." Then the responsibility becomes [the
legislator's]. If someone wishes to accuse you of having failed
to recuse yourself, you have to provide all the factors that
should [disprove a] conflict; that's one method.
But when you have to reveal all the information [in
advance], and then that information is used to suggest the
possibility of conflict, without any supporting data and without
any conduct triggering that story, it creates a perception problem
and it creates fuel for a negative perception problem. And that
was in part the basis on which I opposed Proposition 9.
I also opposed Proposition 9 because I thought it absolutely
inappropriate to dictate what people can or cannot spend, how
people can or cannot spend their money. If you, the University of
California, wish to have a series of seminars on the issues
affecting fees—you want to bring those elected officials in for a
weekend to roll through all of the things that drive the fee
decision, and an elected official wishes to accept that—you
should be able to do that. It should not be a requirement that
you can't spend more than ten dollars on that official. The
question ought to be that if that official wishes to expose
himself for whatever you've expended, he ought to have to take the
heat. All that should be required is that you have got to report
on what you spent and on whom you spent it and let the public draw
its own conclusions about whether or not that was appropriate.
But to put an artificial limit on that on the basis that somehow
you're not influenced if it is $10 but you are influenced if it is
$11, there seems to be something wrong with that.
Morris: Did you talk to Jerry Brown and his folks when they were writing
that?
Brown: No, they didn't talk to anybody.
Morris: Really?
Brown: No.
Morris: Wasn't the word going around that that was what he was working on?
Brown: Yes. But Jerry Brown was holier than thou. Jerry Brown was above
the mere conversing with mortal human beings. As a result of that
Jerry talked only to Mother Teresa or whomever. [laughter]
242
Morris: That's the way people felt about him then, in 1974, when he was
secretary of state and running for governor?
Brown: Yes. Because he had run for the secretary of state's office by
running against politicians, the same way he is doing for the
presidency now. In 1974 he got elected to the governorship on
that basis. He had run against politicians consistently. Over
the next eight years, the public went from being fascinated with
this man of moral persuasion, with this man of standards that no
other public official could meet or wished to meet; they had
become disenchanted because of his lack of clear administrative
skills, lack of handling major issues, like the Medfly
[Mediterranean Fruit Fly], on a rational basis, the transportation
system with Gianturco doing whatever she was doing with Caltrans,
all of those things contributed to the public's disenchantment
with what originally had been a fascinating standard-bearer for a
new standard for public trust.
They had become disenchanted with him and were more critical
of those things that he advocated. If that had been the case in
1974, almost every elected official would have been where I was on
the issue. But most so feared being accused of trying to protect
their ability to exploit the system for personal gain that they
were unwilling to speak up.
Morris: To exploit the campaign situation for personal gain?
Brown: They feared being accused of opposing reforms that would throw out
the thieves in the political arena, in the public policymaking
arena. They didn't want to be on the side of someone suggesting
that you didn't need a limit on what someone could spend on behalf
of a politician. They didn't want to be on the side of opposing
all of these absolutely ludicrous reporting requirements; the
reforms, so to speak, as advocated by Jerry Brown indicating that
you were honest and if you were opposed, then you were dishonest.
You were trying to protect your ability to keep making a buck at
the expense of the public.
From 1974 on, more politicians began to develop courage to
speak out against such proposals. Whenever they put the next one
one--I think it was [Assemblyman] Ross Johnson who put the next
one on, it was defeated in a vote statewide. It was one that
would have restricted spending; it would have done some public
financing; it would have done a number of things that the public
was unwilling to accept. Most politicians were negative on that
proposition.
Then I think Mr. [State Senator Joseph] Montoya (who is
currently in jail on a political corruption probe in Sacramento),
243
Morris :
Brown:
Quentin Kopp and Ross Johnson put something together called
Proposition 73.' [Attorney General John] Van de Kamp and his
friends put together something called Proposition 68. Both of
those propositions were designed to amend the original Proposition
9 that Jerry Brown had put in place, expanding the duties of that
commission created by Proposition 9 and placing some spending
limits and some definitions of trust on what politicians could do
with the money they had collected for campaign purposes and new
reporting requirements, all those things were there. Proposition
68 was soundly defeated. Proposition 73 barely passed.
Proposition 73 has since been tested in the courts and has been
found to be unconstitutional and it has been thrown out within the
last two years.
So the modification by popular vote has either been defeated
at the polls or has been thrown out by court interpretation. That
was not the case with Proposition 9. When Proposition 9 came
down, the courts sustained it; the Rose Bird court sustained the
constitutionality of the key provisions of Proposition 9 and the
politicians were unwilling to join in a concerted effort to block
its passage.
Did the court's action in upholding that have anything to do with
Rose Bird's also falling from public esteem?
No. The fact that she, or her court, upheld the challenges to
Proposition 9 in most cases had nothing to do with her own
confirmation problems.
Anti-Government Legislative Cavemen
Morris: A couple of times, you've mentioned the coming of the caveman to
California politics. I wondered if you could define that; maybe
what you see as the hazards of the caveman mentality.
Brown: Well, the cavemen were a group of politicians elected to office as
part of the Proposition 13 swing in 1978. They were all
Republicans, all conservative, reactionary Republicans, and they
were Republicans who basically were running against government.
They were people like Ross Johnson, Pat Nolan, Phil Wyman,
Richard Mount joy. They were really conservative people.
'Propositions 73 and 68, June 1988, both passed, providing conflicting
messages on the subject of campaign spending.
244
Bill Baker,
government.
They all had one thing in common: they were anti-
As a matter of fact, they had many things in common. They
were anti-choice. They were anti-racial minority programs. They
were anti-environmentalists. They were pro-business from the pure
free-enterprise standpoint.
Morris: What's good for business is good for--.
Brown: The world. They set about to vote only in a manner consistent
with those positions. Over the years, because of this two-thirds
vote requirement for things like budgets and taxes and
appropriations, they have consistently held the whip hand as
minority elected types. That has cost the state of California
dearly in its previous role as number one in almost everything.
The deterioration that we are still experiencing is directly
related to the advent of the cavemen and Proposition 13 and their
protection of Proposition 13.
Morris: They campaigned on Proposition 13?
Brown: They campaigned for Proposition 13 and took good credit for
Proposition 13. They believed in the two-thirds vote requirement
for any new taxes at any level and for the passage of bonds. You
know that a two-thirds vote requirement strictly places the
majority at the mercy of an organized minority. They are an
organized, effective minority.
Morris: That was supposed to be part of the checks and balance system that
was supposed to be good for the American political system.
Brown: No, it wasn't then and it isn't now.
Morris: Not?
Brown: Not good for the system. A majority ought to work by majority
vote. Period. That means everybody's vote is equal. Now you
have a two-thirds requirement. You have an imbalance in the
equality of my vote and their vote.
Morris: That gets into the property connotations, doesn't it?
Brown: Absolutely.
Morris: That it looks after the interests of those who--?
Brown: Already have.
245
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris: From your position, working on a lot of campaigns and keeping an
eye on the political structure, was this caveman group part of
some kind of a statewide effort? Was their some coordination of
their campaigns or backers or financiers?
Brown: I don't think so. Not at that time. I think that they did
subsequently develop a statewide network but at the time, there
was no such thing. At the time, there was no such thing. Reagan
had tried a similar tax proposal in 1973 and had been defeated.
The Jarvis-Gann cells were not organized, didn't exist until after
Proposition 13.
I'm thinking more of the kind of organization that was put
together that elected Reagan governor.
That had nothing to do with it.
Not a Republican party effort?
No. As a matter of fact, the Republican party has consistently
found it difficult to accept the caveman mentality. That's been
the internal struggle within the Republican party for control of
the Republican party. They have invariably attempted to elect
those conservatives as party leaders and they have been
unsuccessful. In many cases, they are so rooted in just doing
their own thing that it contributes to the ability of Democrats to
dominate both houses of the legislature, because invariably they
will nominate one of these right-wing nothings in the Republican
primary and that doesn't sell in the general election. True
conservative Republicans and moderate Republicans will tend either
not to vote for that right-wing zealot or they will vote for the
Democrat.
Morris: This is in legislative races?
Brown: In legislative races.
Morris: Has the same kind of behavior happened within the legislature? In
other words, have they proposed really conservative people perhaps
as a challenge to you as speaker?
Brown: No. Strangely enough, the conservatives are such purists that
they really don't want to pursue the leadership slot unless they
have a majority. They would rather cut a deal with whoever has
the majority, in this case Democrats. That's how I got elected.
It was the conservatives who stepped up and supported me for
speaker.
Morris: So there is some practical political know-how?
246
Brown: Absolutely. They are very skilled. They don't vary from their
philosophy. But they are very skilled at insider politics and so
they have consistently controlled the leadership role and the
leadership slots on the Republican side of the aisle. Pat Nolan
took the crown away from Bob Naylor in 1984. They kept it until
1991. It went from Pat Nolan to Ross Johnson. So in the history
of my speakership, from 1980 to the present day, the conservatives
on the opposition side have controlled the Republican operation
from 1984 until 1991, so seven of the twelve years, it has been in
the hands of the conservatives.
Insider Politics; FBI Corruption Investigation, 1985-1988
Morris: If they were ant i- government candidates, how did they get to be so
skillful in the internal workings of the--?
Brown: They are political survivors and they love to use the resources of
government. They hire their own; they do everything. They use it
to the max[imum]. In the investigations in our house involving
political corruption, it was the conservatives who have developed
the computer—comparative relationships, contributions between the
Republicans and Democrats, and publish it and say to contributors,
"You have to give me the same thing you gave to the Democrats."
That's the way they allegedly would start out discussing
legislation with special-interest groups.
That resulted in the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]
being able to tape those conversations. Where they may have
thought they were going after Democrats and particularly
Democratic leadership, they bagged in our house the Republican
leader and two of his counterparts. The only person on the
Republican side of the aisle indicted so far has been the chief of
staff of the Republican leader Pat Nolan, and she has pleaded
guilty and agreed to turn state's evidence. But because this is a
Republican-controlled investigation, that's been put on the back
burner. This woman two years ago pleaded guilty in return for
turning state's evidence against her superiors. You've not heard
of her since. She is in a witness protection program some place.
She clearly cannot testify against Democrats. The only people
they've been prosecuting are Democrats.
Just an interesting little corollary and I think it's
eventually going to make for a good movie. I can see Oliver Stone
in years downstream coming back to the political sting operations
inspired in the sixties under the leadership of the U.S. Attorney
General, and I think you will find they were singularly directed
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at Democratic officeholders all over the country and that they
were literally orchestrated the same way that Stone suspects that
the Kennedy assassination was orchestrated.
Morris: When did you become aware that there was a corruption
investigation being mounted?
Brown: When they swooped in and went into the capitol offices. They went
into the capitol offices of the Republican leader Nolan. They
went into capitol offices of the Republican leader [Frank] Hill.
They did so after they had had seven hours of inquisition—they
call it questioning; I call it a seven-hour inquisition—with
Nolan's chief staff person.
Morris: But they didn't come to your office?
Brown: No. There is no reason to come to my office. She was telling
them about Nolan. Their investigation had led to Nolan and their
sting operation.
Morris: The preliminary investigations, no word of that going around the
capitol?
Brown: No. This was the third year of their effort before it became
public that they were doing it. They had come into the capitol
back in 1985. They had caused a phony bill to be introduced in
1985. They had allowed all of us to vote on that phony bill.
They had taken George Deukmejian into their confidence.
Morris: Really?
Brown: Yes. Let me tell you something. There is a story that defies
description. Who in Washington participated in the discussion
about how we go into the state capitol in California, we put in a
totally phony bill, we set up this whole phony operation, we
create the bill, we take the governor in our confidence, a
Republican governor, and we tell him what we are doing. We hire
lobbyists, we make campaign contributions and we take a bill that
people would ordinarily be for. Then we have them all to vote on
it. We take it through both houses of the legislature, through
all the committees, and we put it on the governor's desk. Who
made that decision and based upon what previous factors that would
have prompted that operation? When you don't in a certain
measured period of time succeed in coming up with anyone who was
making their decisions based upon your sting operation, you
continue it for three years.
Morris: Because you want to catch somebody?
248
Brown: You want to create the opportunity for somebody to become crooked.
Who made the decision to do that and what were the factors that
were so overwhelming that you didn't go in just on a straight
investigation? You do not start to investigate Gabrielle Morris
on somebody's allegation that she is dealing dope. You don't do
that in this so-called system. You don't come into The Bancroft
Library and set up a whole operation, tell the president of the
University of California, "We are going to set up a sting project.
We are going to set up a phony oral history project. We are going
to solicit contributions for this oral history project because we
are trying to trap Gabrielle Morris whom we believe--"
Morris: Is up to bad things.
Brown: Correct. When we have done this for three years, and there is no
evidence that Gabrielle Morris has done anything wrong, now we see
there are hundreds of other people connected with The Bancroft
Library; we now decide we are going to check them all. We are
going to give each one of them the opportunity to become corrupt
based on the government's decision to make the offer.
Morris: That there is some corruption.
Brown: Correct.
Morris: Is this the kind of thing that could tie into the Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration?
Brown: Could very well, but we don't know where it comes down because no
committee of government has ever held a hearing.
Morris: At the federal level.
Brown: On the federal level or the state level. Unlike the CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency] that has some oversight, who is the
oversight? Who is the civilian oversight? Who do they go to?
What collection of elected officials do they go to and make their
case. You can't even get a search warrant without making a case
to somebody. If you are the local district attorney, you cannot
initiate an investigation of the archdiocese on your own. You
can't create a phony cardinal. You can't create a phony papal
paper and you cannot get the Vatican to sign off on this phony
papal paper because you are trying to find out which ones of the
priests are not following their sacraments. You can't do that
without some civilian control.
But that is what has in fact occurred. Then when it
develops a partisan flavor, a decidedly partisan flavor--.
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Morris: But it sounds as if it boomeranged?
Brown: Absolutely. You see, what they did is they clearly focused on
racial minorities, officeholders. The bill that they created
would address the question of assistance to minority-based
business firms for economic development. They went to units of
government similarly situated. The bill they drafted did exactly
that. The idiots didn't understand that on principle racial
minorities would be supporting that bill. So you don't need to
give them campaign contributions for that purpose. They are
already for that bill.
The entire history of racial minorities holding office has
been for those set-asides, for those programs. If you were trying
to trap racial minorities into doing something that was not
naturally their bent, you ought to be out there with an S&L
[savings and loan] package. We don't do S&L stuff. So you ought
to be going to racial minorities to get them to support exempting
S&Ls in certain categories. Or authorizing junk bonds. We don't
do that stuff either. Then we would be on unnatural turf, and
maybe you could convince us to do it by some contribution-related
[thing] .
But no, they went for what was a natural thing for racial
minorities to do. They found it almost impossible to get
sufficient facts to go after a racial minority on that basis.
What they did find was Republicans opposed it, and the way to get
it through, since it was an appropriation, you had to get those
who opposed it. And that's who they had given the money to. And
it turned out to be the Republicans.
So now they've got a real problem. That's not who they
wanted. They aren't going to get the authority in Washington to
prosecute a Republican if they have to get a sign-off. So now
they have to go back and start all over. Lo and behold, what they
found were people who were not naturally supportive of those
programs, those were the only ones they could bribe or attempt to
bribe, or those were the only ones that would extort them.
So they investigated one racial minority in that sting
operation, [Assemblywoman] Gwen Moore, and they have already
announced that she is clean. They have already announced that she
is clean.
Morris: So it is just going to vanish.
Brown: No, I don't think so. I think they will spend the rest of their
lives just to find--. They must have spent millions of dollars.
And they normally don't back off until they somehow justify those
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millions of dollars in budgetary appropriations that have no
oversight. Some congressional committee over the last six or
seven years should have stepped in, but the fear of being
investigated, if you initiate--.
It's almost like the [Senator Joseph] McCarthy years. The
reason that it took so long for any congressional voice to be
heard in the McCarthy era was because of the reprisals generated
against you by McCarthy and by the McCarthy mentality. If you
said, "Wait a minute. Shouldn't McCarthy show us the
documentation?" your name went on the list of being a suspected
communist .
Morris: He used to wave a paper and say, "I have a list here with 187
communists . "
Brown: Correct. And no one would say, "Let's see the list." Because if
you said, "Let's see the list," you automatically went on the list
allegedly and the press carried it and everybody carried it. You
were suspected and your voters would turn you out because we were
at the outset of the cold war. We are now similarly situated on
the corruption probe side. If you raise questions about whether
or not the authorities ought to be doing this, the IRS [Internal
Revenue Service] pulls your return, the Fair Political Practices
pulls your return. It's just one after another of public agencies
that have law enforcement power.
In the process, they leak to the press. The press gets the
story of you being investigated. Then you are held up to ridicule
for being investigated. No charges, no allegation, but "sources
say". Then you have to explain that. It is a terrible thing that
has occurred.
Morris: Going back to your comment that there has been a growing feeling
that government is not what we want it to be and our elected
officials are not what we want it to be. Recalling the saying
about "where there is smoke there is fire", how does one determine
where there is wrongdoing, or is it purely a matter of perception?
With all the elected officials there are, how does one know that
there isn't somebody lining his or her own pocket?
Brown: People are not perfect. In every facet of our lives, there is
always somebody who is trying to cut corners.
Morris: Yes. Or cut a deal.
Brown: But to assume that elective office is an automatic deal-cutting
arrangement and then to use the police services to prove it is
inconsistent with a democracy. There ought not to be any
251
Morris:
Brown:
investigation of anybody without an under-oath allegation of
specific acts of misconduct. There should be absolutely no public
revelation. The penalty for revealing the existence of such an
investigation should be equal to the penalty for the substantive
results of that investigation on the negative side, and there must
be absolute, strict review and control. Only if you had those
standards—because no person's career should be tarnished if there
is no justification and no charge imposed. Dwight Eisenhower
warned this nation about the power of the military-industrial
complex exceeding that of the elected authorities. Here was the
personification of a product of the military-industrial complex
warning this nation.
Well, I'm telling you that this nation must add to that
collection of folk the prosecutorial complex. The law enforcement
authorities in this nation are threatening democracy. The
absolute abuse and misuse of that authority that goes on on a
daily basis. There are very, very few folk in the prosecutorial
system who would sit around the table and say, "Wait a minute, the
First Amendment requires us to do this; the Fourth Amendment
requires this; the Fifth Amendment requires this; the Sixth
Amendment requires us to do this. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth
require us to do this and we aren't doing it."
You cannot start out with the assumption that Gabrielle
Morris is a crook and we are going to prove it. You cannot start
out using the prosecutorial arm to examine Gabrielle Morris'
conduct without a sworn allegation. Then you take that sworn
allegation to a referee, i.e., a judge who has been examined by
his colleague as being the most fearless, as having the best grasp
and understanding of the Constitution and the protection of
individual rights. That person has absolute authority to say yes
or no [as to] whether you proceed with the investigation, and
there must be measured time to report. That investigation must be
aborted at any time those steps are not leading toward--.
We aren't talking about a crime that has been committed.
There is a difference in an investigation where there is a crime
that has been committed--.
A body exists.
That's right. Or there is an allegation of crime that has been
committed and you check the allegation out, including the
allegator, before you proceed to pursue the facts, and you only do
so under those very controlled circumstances,
way the prosecutory arm ought to be employed.
That's really the
252
Morris: You mentioned the courts too. There has been some literature in
recent years suggesting that the courts may not be as objective as
one thought they once were.
Brown: That is correct. That literature is accurate. In Sacramento,
it's a very small town so people in and about the capitol, in and
about the downtown area, with a few places to eat, invariably will
end up in the same restaurants. Three federal judges were in a
restaurant and a guy who delivers packages from one building to
another stopped in the same place to get some food. He is seated
at the counter and at the table just opposite the counter are
these three guys. He has no clue who they are. They are sitting
there discussing what an awful person a certain member of the
legislature is, that he has this terrible reputation, et cetera,
et cetera. No facts. These are three judges discussing. He
overhears the name Garcia and one other and he comes back and
reports to me and says, "This is what I overheard these guys
saying. I don't know who they are but one of them named was
Garcia and the other one's named--."
So I said, "Give me the description. No. Let me give you
the description." I described Garcia, I described the guy Lee and
I described Friedman. I knew who were the three guys who go to
lunch together. He said, "How did you know those guys?" I said,
"Those are three federal judges. Now, tell me exactly what they
said." These guys sitting on a case, they are supposed to do
objective judgment.
Morris: They are a three- judge panel?
Brown: No. They are sitting in three different cases, and there they are
discussing the cases. Talking about the folk and how much we've
got to get those guys. "We've got to get those guys. They do
those things. If they didn't do them, nobody would accuse them."
These are three federal judges! He said, "Hey, you know, if you
want to do something about it, I would be prepared to testify." I
said, "Well, no, you can't." "Why?" "Because you would lose your
job. I wouldn't be able to protect your job. Nothing would
happen with these three bastards. They would be three words
against yours. Their word against you, and they would swear that
they were discussing--."
Morris: And that's hearsay, isn't it?
Brown: Yes, they would swear they were discussing cases that have already
been decided and they were referencing previous opinions. They
were just shop-talking and not talking about anything actively out
there. And no, they don't have any opinion about people in the
capital. They don't have an opinion about particular legislators.
253
They should have to disqualify themselves for sitting in judgment.
Ordinarily, that kind of thing would get them disqualified. They
couldn't sit in judgment. But they are so dishonest.
Morris: As the speaker, do you have a role or an opportunity to comment on
this kind of behavior?
Brown: I do, and I do it full-time. I don't know why they haven't taken
me out, because I am highly critical. I don't base the criticism
on emotion. I cite them the facts. I say, "Why did George
Deukmejian get taken into the confidence of the Justice
Department? Was he so clean?" "Well, you know--." "Wait a
minute. At the time you went to him, Fair Political Practices was
investigating George Deukmejian for contributions connected with
some solid waste facilities in Southern California." The L.A.
Times had printed a major story, [chuckles] "And you elected to
go confide in him about a sting operation you were about to
initiate."
Then I raised questions about how could they violate the law
of contributions. "You the giver are supposed to give me your
correct name, your correct occupation--."
II
Brown: "And you know I'm going to use that to file a document under oath
and you deliberately did that. You have violated the law. And
you have put me in a position where I too have violated the law.
I say that that is absolutely wrong." "No. That's the only way
we could get this thing going. That's the only way we could do
good law enforcement." "So now, when I discover who you are and
that you gave me phony information, I have to amend my returns to
reflect that. So my opponents who want to criticize me for having
failed to comply with the Fair Political Practices requirement can
cite this circumstance as an example. I'll have to explain it and
it's a good explanation, but in the meantime, the damage is done."
So how did we get in a system where you can violate the law
in pursuit of a catching a lawbreaker? You can't do that. You
can never violate the law to catch a lawbreaker. You shouldn't be
permitted to violate the law to catch a lawbreaker. You shouldn't
be permitted to violate the law to catch a lawbreaker.
Morris: That's the end justifies the means.
Brown: Totally. And you know how easy it is to slip over into gross
violations of the law. That's a minor violation of the law. But
it's easy to slip. You take the next step and the next step and
254
the next step because it's all justified on the basis that I will
eventually get this person who is so destructive.
Morris: Did that same process of one step leads to another sometimes
indeed catch legislators unaware?
Brown: I'm sure it does. I'm sure that Joe Montoya who was convicted, or
Paul Carpenter who was convicted, or Alan Robbins who pleaded
guilty, didn't start out with a major step. I don't think they
started out by saying give me a bribe. I think they found it
comfortable to ease in that direction. I don't even think they
realize they were going there. I just think they kept carefully
coming close to the edge and then the edge kept shifting.
1991 Reapportionment ; Privacy of Court Deliberations
Morris: One more question on the matter of the courts. Since we are again
in a reapportionment mode and this will be the third
reapportionment that's been decided by the courts. If the panel
of judges is appointed by a court which is seen to have a more
conservative tone than the court ten years ago, is that likely to
effect how the panel of judges will see the reapportionment?
Brown: Absolutely. In the 1970s, Donald Wright was the chief justice.
He had on that court several carryovers who had been appointed by
Pat Brown. That may have been the most objective time on any
reapportionment issue.
Morris: Objective?
Brown: Objective, handled by the courts, because you had the chief
justice appointed by a Republican and one other justice on the
court at that time who was steeped in Republican lore, and you had
two Democrats serving on that same panel. So the combination of
those four of the seven justices made the majority and they had a
balanced reapportionment plan.
In 1982, when the reapportionment was done, that which was
done by the legislature was sustained by the courts. You could
contend that because it was a Rose Bird-dominated court, there
were mostly Democrats on that court and you could be subject to
the criticism of having embraced their views. I don't think it
was, because subsequently Republican federal courts, including the
U.S. Supreme Court, tested it and found it to be consistent with
all the rules and regulations, whether the Constitution, state
constitution, or the Voting Rights Act. And it was tested during
255
Morris ;
Brown:
the entire decade of the eighties. The Republicans stayed in
court all the way through 1989 trying to get that reapportionment
program thrown out.
Now we are in 1992 and this court is clearly a decisively
Republican-dominated court and a conservative Republican-dominated
court and a court that is not held in high esteem by legal
scholars. The court is beginning to reflect the political winds.
The first thing the court did when Malcolm Lucas and his group took
over, within thirty days, they literally moved to reconsider a
whole host of decisions previously made by the Bird Court. Without
any allegations of new evidence, without any allegations or any of
those things, they just unilaterally and [in an] almost self-
generated [manner] moved to reconsider many of those decisions.
Ordinarily you wait for the next opportunity or challenge--.
Figuring that somebody will bring it up.
Correct. They moved—and it is a story that was not even covered
by the press. That court has consistently continued down that
political road since its first seating. We're now down to one
Democrat on the court, Stanley Mosk. Most of the decisions are
six to one.
In our system of government one of the most amazing things,
that no one ever seems to address, the legislative body, and all
legislative bodies are required to do their entire business in
public. You cannot hold any private hearings. You cannot have
any secret sessions. You cannot have any unnoticed sessions. The
courts, however, are permitted to do all of their deliberations in
secret. They offer no explanation for why they did what they did.
There are no opportunities--.
Morris: Their written opinions?
Brown: There are written opinions, but that's the same thing that we do
in terms of a bill. But we have to explain to you, the public,
why we voted. I have to explain every vote that I cast. If
anyone asks me about it, I have to explain it. No judge is
required to explain any vote. No vote at all. No judge is
required to reveal the deliberations that judges engaged in in the
room. As a matter of fact, juries are discouraged to discuss the
deliberations in the jury room. The deliberations in the jury
room are in secret. The grand jury is in secret.
Morris: They are privileged.
Brown: In secret! How is the privileged relationship there any different
from the privileged relationship in the committee where we are
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deliberating the same way. We deliberate on whether or not a
particular law ought to be passed that may ultimately be
interpreted by the court. We have to do our deliberations in the
fishbowl. They do their interpretations in private. They aren't
required to report who participated in those deliberations. They
aren't required to report anything, who said what, what supporting
information was supplied, what analysis a particular staff person
working for the court gave them, they are not required to do any
of that. None of that.
The only branch of government that is people-driven and
people-exposed is the legislative branch of government.
Morris: What do judges say when you ask them that question?
Brown: "That would impede our honesty. That would impede our candor.
That would make us like you, the peoples' elected representative.
We don't want to be like you."
Now, also, the executive branch is similarly protected. The
president can hold all of his cabinet meetings in secret. What is
said in a cabinet meeting is embargoed. Even participants aren't
permitted to be interviewed. If they are, they are ostracized.
They are kicked out of the cabinet.
Morris: Except that the planned leak has become a significant part of--.
Brown: Planned leak! Why planned leak? I can do planned leak too. I
would love nothing better than to have our legislative
deliberations secret and let me do the leaking. Then you would
never get any criticism of me. You would never get an objective
view, or a different view of the program. But we are the only
branch of government that is subject to open and complete
inspection at every stage of the development, cannot cast one vote
in secret, period. It must supply explanations as to why and must
stand to be investigated. All of our papers, all of our documents
are subject to inspection.
You cannot under the Freedom of Information [Act] get any of
the recommendations made by the clerk to the judge. You cannot
get the analysis supplied. I cannot even do it under discovery
motions. I have to make a motion in court to seek documents and
I'm barred from most documents. Internal documents by agencies
I'm barred from.
Morris: Really?
Brown: Absolutely.
257
Morris: Then as a defense attorney you don't have access to all the
relevant information in the case?
Brown: Absolutely. Information that I maintain could or could not be
relevant. I don't know. I don't have that information. I don't
know whether it's relevant until I see it.
Morris: If you consider that the attorney population in California is
probably reasonably balanced between Republicans and Democrats,
does the bar association speak to these questions of the court?
Brown: Very few of us really have, or are willing to participate in the
Founding Fathers' original dialogue on establishing this
democracy. Most of us just kind of go along with the program.
Morris: But over the years, hasn't the bar association sought fairly
vigorously an increasing say in how judges are screened and
selected for nomination?
Brown: Not really. Not really.
Morris: Really? Because it used to be that the governor did it, as you
say, under his hat.
Brown: It was not the bar association that changed that. It was
politicians who changed that. The politicians are the ones who
wanted to get in on it. So they began to set up all these
standards. It was usually the opposition politician saying that
you were appointing your relatives and your friends and people who
are not qualified, so we are going to--.
Morris: Because we legislators might wish to be--.
Brown: Right. The bar would tell you you got a better quality judge
under the old system.
Morris: Really?
Brown: You got a better quality judge under the old system. Invariably,
you selected a political supporter or political friend, which means
that individual had participated in the process. Now you get only
prosecutors. You get only persons from big law firms with these
steps, the Jenny [Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission]
commission and all the approval process, all the evaluation, all
the inspection and all the recommendations you have to get. You
can only become a judge if you've played the game.
Morris: But you still also have to meet whatever the governor's litmus
test is this year.
258
Brown: Of course you do, but the governor does not look among those
individuals who maybe cannot get through the commission. So he
starts with predeterminations that he is not going to be second-
guessed by a collection of people. So already you have restricted
the number of people. Whereas before, he could have just
appointed a supporter and a crony, [now] a supporter and a crony
may not hold membership in the country club, a supporter and a
crony may not have been on the bar association board of directors,
a supporter and a crony may not have been a prosecutor in San
Francisco, so he can't appoint them.
Morris: Contribute to my party.
Brown: That's right.
Morris: But the observable evidence at the moment is, as you said, we have
six out of seven supreme court justices who have been appointed
by--.
Brown: Republicans.
Morris: Yes. Two relatively conservative Republicans.
Brown: Correct.
Morris: So the effect is a fairly strong ideological bent.
Brown: Correct.
Morris: Would they have been more conservative or less if Pete Wilson and
Deukmejian could just have appointed their old law school buddies?
Brown: They probably would have been less.
Morris: Really?
Brown: Because they would have tapped old friends who had been helpful to
them and neither one of those two guys were from the conservative
wing of the party. They were from the moderate to liberal wing of
the party. Pete Wilson was not a caveman; George Deukmejian was
not a caveman.
Morris: Even though he had a reputation in the state senate of carrying
fairly strong law-and-order legislation?
Brown: He was a death-penalty person. Remember, this was the guy who
signed the anti-apartheid legislation. This is the guy who signed
the AIDS-research legislation. So you are not talking about
somebody who is so right-wing. This is a guy whom the right wing
259
criticizes. This is the guy who signed the gun-control bill, the
Mike Roos automatic-weapons bill. See, you are not talking about
a real right-winger. Pete Wilson is not a real right-winger.
Morris: But as governors they both have been--.
Brown: More conservative in their court appointees than they would have
been. George Deukmejian did appoint his law partners. Malcolm
Lucas was his law partner. [Marvin R.] Baxter was one of his
first campaign supporters when he lost the governorship on two
previous occasions. And he is also Armenian: Baxtersarian. He
changed it to Baxter. Armand Arabian may be the only right-winger
George appointed directly to the court as a result of the right-
wing faction. This woman [Joyce L. Kennard], she may not be a
right-winger. She votes like a right-winger but she may not be a
true right-winger. She comes out of San Diego. That may have
been his concession to the women's movement. [Edward J.] Panelli
is not a right-winger; he is a moderate Republican out of Santa
Clara County, and he was a fairly decent appellate judge. This
Jewish guy [Ronald M. George] that just got put on was a big
contributor to the Republican party. His family may be the major
Jewish contributors to the Republican party in the state.
Morris: That sounds like, individually, the present people on the court
may not be as conservative as some of the decisions coming down?
Brown: That's not true. No, they are as conservative as their decisions.
But what's more important, they are political, which means that
they would interpret the current winds of change on the
conservative side and they vote that way.
Morris: Are you affected by the conservative winds of change? Do you feel
like you've lowered some of your expectations of the political
process?
Brown: No, I may be the victim ultimately of it but none of my views are
altering themselves or adjusting themselves to reflect the
existence of that wind.
Morris: So some of the things that you say may be more affected by
conservative issues out there.
Brown: May prompt my having to say them.
Morris: 1 see. Very instructive.
260
XXII PUTTING DOWN THE GANG OF FIVE, 1988-1989
Ambition and Expediency
Morris: I would like to go back to some of the challenges that you've
dealt with within the Democratic party. I think most noticeably
the Young Turks of the Gang of Five.
Brown: They were not so young. That's a misconception that most people
have. These were people we elected in 1982. I guess maybe the
oldest of the group was maybe fifty-five, fifty-eight, and the
youngest of the group was probably thirty-eight. So they were not
Young Turks. The Young Turks were the people like those guys
under thirty-five. The guys under thirty-five were all for Willie
Brown.
This was just a group of ambitious members of our house who
were more conservative than most of the members of the Democratic
caucus and who were disappointed in their own lack of dominating
me personally. They all had great titles and great jobs but
wanted more. They wanted somehow for me to forego and dump
Vasconcellos . They wanted me to change the chairmanship of the
Rules Committee. They wanted me to change the chairmanship of the
Health Committee. They had an agenda that defied description.
They wanted me to change the chairmanship of the Committee on
Finance and Insurance to one of them. They were not overly
talented. It was not like they were the second coming and being
shunted aside for a lesser breed. In many cases, the people who
held the jobs were equal if not better.
Morris: I was wondering what their objection was to John Vasconcellos?
Brown: They don't like John Vasconcellos, period. They just dislike John
Vasconcellos personally.
Morris: Even though he has got seniority on--.
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Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Doesn't mean anything to them,
wanted that job.
They wanted that job. One of them
Morris;
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Morris :
Why did he think he was entitled to it?
He just thought he had a better understanding of where the body
politic was in the state of California. He thought John
Vasconcellos was out of step. He thought John Vasconcellos was
still rooted in the hippie era and as a result of that he wanted
to move the Democratic party to the mainstream and he thought the
best way to do that was to replace the Neanderthals who were the
problem. And that John was one of them.
What was it about the hippie idea that should not be advanced?
They didn't like the idea that John would concentrate on the
pursuit of the self-esteem initiative versus trying to expand the
death penalty.
They were conservative in their--.
Not philosophically. It was practical with them. They thought
that the Republicans had been dominating the airwaves (not winning
elections because it was clear that they hadn't been winning
elections) but they thought the Republicans had been dominating
the airwaves because they thought the Republicans better
interpreted what the public mood was, and that the public mood was
for increasing the death penalty. They would show you the polls
to evidence that. Getting hard on drug dealers, expanding the
number of crimes you could put people to death for, that's the
attitude that they exhibited.
In other words, it was a matter of expediency rather than their
personal convictions?
Absolutely. They thought that my letting a bill like A.B. 101 out
of committee was burdensome for reelection purposes. They were of
the opinion that protecting the welfare recipients as they
described it was burdensome for reelection purposes and that the
Democratic party ought to be headed in a different direction. And
that while I was not personally the problem, not at the moment,
anyway, my lieutenants were and they wanted me to change my
lieutenants.
Am I right that you would have had some personal, noisy
discussions in your office or offstage before this reached the
media? Or did they challenge you on the floor of the house?
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Brown: No, it went just as you said in the first part of your question--.
They came to see me on two occasions, all five of them, and I
informed them. They had had challengers all during the course of
the year, first and foremost.
Morris: They had challenged you?
Brown: No, not me. In caucus, they challenged the membership. They
became abusive to some of the members, and the membership was
about to go into revolt to do something about these five guys.
I'm one for believing you can take care of yourself in the
competition place on public policy. They could never dominate it.
They wanted to give back rebates and they wanted to do all those
kinds of things. Most of the Democrats in the caucus didn't want
to do that. So there were major debates, major confrontations
inside of the caucuses.
They had become unpopular, unacceptable to many members of
the caucus just by virtue of their conduct. So much so that
collections of caucus members had come to me to say, "You are
really showing favoritism to this collection of assholes. You
really ought to do something about it. You've got to crack down.
We know you don't like to do it."
Morris: In other words, you thought that the members should fight these
things out--.
Brown: At peer level. That's right. Peer-level control. I finally sat
them down near the end of the year and informed them they had
pretty much overstepped the bounds and they really ought to back
off, et cetera, that I don't want to have to get involved, I don't
want to have to discipline anybody or attempt to discipline
anybody. That was foolish because once you do that, you exercise
the ability to throw somebody off. All you're doing is seeding
discontent among some person who maybe can be straightened out and
become a good contributor to the process.
Well, they didn't take that too kindly. They had a golf
tournament for one of them, a fundraising golf tournament in
Riverside. They invited me to fly down and they had a summit
meeting, the five of them and me. I did not know I was going to a
summit meeting. But they laid down the gauntlet: "You get rid of
these guys, you get rid of these guys and this is the way you do
it. If you don't and there are reprisals on us, you attempt to
discipline us, you are going to have to do it for all of us.
We're not going to let you just pick one of us."
"So, I see. I'll think about what you guys said," and I
went home back to San Francisco.
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Power of the Speaker
Morris: Did you have somebody with you?
Brown: No. I never travel with anybody [except my driver]. I chatted
with one or two of our members and told them about the incident
and kind of chuckled about it. Then I scheduled an appointment
with these fellows for my Sacramento office in January.
Morris: As a group.
Brown: All five of them. They came in and I informed them that I had
listened to what they said and that I was impressed and I know
that they thought it true, et cetera. But I wasn't going to do
any of what they said and, as a matter of fact, I was considering
doing just the opposite, that one or two of them, their
assignments were going to be changed if they did not straighten
out and that I was going to have to do it that way. Otherwise the
membership was going to revolt.
They said, "You know if you do that, we will have to reply
in the same way. We will reply with reference to you."
So I said, "Will you excuse me for a moment? Just a minute,
guys. I need to delay these other people that I need to see be
cause I only thought this was going to be a ten- or fifteen-minute
meeting. Now that you've said what you've said, we are going to
take a little time to talk about this." So I left them in my
office, I walked out and I called my chief of staff [Bob Connelly]
over and I said, "Go to the desk and terminate [Gary] Condit as
chairman of this." I went right through the list. "Take x, y off
of Ways and Means, et cetera, and get it done immediately."
These were the guys who were sitting in the room. I'm
giving the orders to take all their jobs and what have you.
Morris: You can just do that by sending out the word?
Brown: Oh, yes. That's my authority. That's right. I name a new
chairman of this committee, a new chairman of that committee. 1
took people off of Ways and Means or whatever, didn't even tell
them. Then I came back in, closed the door, and I sat there and
talked to them for an hour. Of course, at the end of the hour,
they said, "Well, what are you going to do?" I said, "You'll get
notice." "Okay, just remember what we said." "Fine." I got up,
they opened the door and every press person in the world was
standing there because when we make changes, it immediately goes
to the speaker's desk. And any action at the desk is immediately
264
picked up by the press. And the press, of course, had known of
this simmering displeasure--. Members of my caucus had been
talking to the press over the last several months telling them
about these bad guys and that 1 wasn't doing anything about it.
When the press saw that I had taken all of these steps to
eliminate people, throw people off of Rules, throw people off of
Ways and Means and what-have-you, they knew there was obviously
going to be a major war. So when these guys got up to leave my
audience, all the press people in the world were standing out
there.
Efforts to Vacate the Chair
Brown: What they didn't know is that I knew that they had had a meeting
before coming to my office with the Republican leadership. They
went to the Republican leadership and said, "Are you guys
interested in a deal? Either one of us for speaker?" They said,
"No, we're not interested in either one of you for speaker." "How
about, let's just move to vacate the chair? Will you support a
motion to vacate the chair?" The Republican leadership said,
"Well, you know, I don't think we could get all of our people to
support that and we clearly would need all of our people to
support that. But we'll check around."
The next appointment these guys had was to be in my office.
As they were leaving the Republican leadership, the Republican
leader called me and said, "You have five guys who came to us to
try to get us to support a motion to vacate the chair. We will
not support such a motion."
Morris: Well, well.
Brown: "We have a commitment to you. We will not support such a motion
and you ought to be warned." So when they got there I already
knew and I had already begun to formulate what I proposed to do.
Mine was all a sham. Now they were a sham too, but they didn't
know I knew what their real game plan was. So when I did what I
did, it was not my initiating the action. I dropped a nuclear
bomb on someone who had gone to try to buy one.
Morris: The Republican leader then was--?
Brown: Pat Nolan was the Republican leader at the time.
Morris: And the two of you were on good enough terms that you would each
honor a commitment?
265
Brown: Totally. So this was January. I did what I did like that. They
were just out. They were clean. Fired the staffs. I mean, I
wreaked havoc.
it
Brown: So the reporters are there asking, "What's your reaction to your
being kicked off Ways and Means?" They turned to me and I just
shrugged my shoulders, closed my door and called my caucus, called
all the other Democrats together in the caucus and informed them
that the war was on, that these guys are going to the Republicans
for purposes of trying to dump me and that the Republicans have
turned them down, that I didn't know how long the Republicans
would be able to take the heat because there were two or three
Republicans who would like to dump me and that I'm sure these guys
are smart enough to go organize, these Republicans, to make the
motion on the floor.
Morris: Go beyond the Republican leadership.
Brown: Of course, make the motion on the floor. Then P. R. -wise, in
individual Republican districts, since they have been running
against Willie Brown for years, this becomes a problem politically
in that we had to change our whole method and mode of operating
and that I had to make sure that I had my four or five Republican
votes permanently who would never vote against me because I knew
the Republican leadership would eventually cave.
Morris: If there was enough noise from the members of their caucus?
Brown: No, if there was enough from their constituency out there, they
would have to cave. A chance to get rid of Willie Brown, the
most-hated Republican basher in the state, et cetera, so this is
it. This is where we go after him. I knew we would escalate to
that because I wouldn't get to the press. The Dan Walterses of
the media had been waiting to get Willie Brown for years.
Well, lo and behold, we did go to war and they did get up on
the floor and they found a Republican named Trice Harvey from Kern
County who had been maybe one of the biggest Willie Brown-bashers.
He stands up on the floor as a freshman and makes a motion that
the chair be vacated. He got maybe four votes other than the
members of the Gang of Five.
Morris: They didn't make the motion themselves?
Brown: No, they didn't have the courage to make the motion. But they
made a motion to vacate. Trice Harvey made the first motion to
vacate and that obviously went down the tubes because Ross Johnson
266
pulled up his mike and opposed it. Periodically they would remake
that motion. They finally gave up after a few weeks of trying to
make that motion and they started making motions to pull bills out
of committees, bills that Republicans would want to vote on like
death-penalty measures, choice measures, parental consent on
abortions, things of that nature, because the Republicans would
have to vote for those. They knew that it was unacceptable by me
for anybody to vote for a motion to withdraw. That was tantamount
to a motion to vacate.
I said, "Hey, you're right. That is tantamount to a motion
to vacate but only when I have the majority. When I no longer
have the majority it is not tantamount to a motion to vacate. A
motion to vacate will rise or fall on its own. I'm not going to
hang my membership out on these phony motions to withdraw. Any
member who wants to vote for the bill, let's not vote for the
motion to withdraw. Let's find a vehicle on the floor and you
Republicans amend the vehicle on the floor,
to committee."
I won't send it back
So I devised a method by which to spike that challenge. It
was consistent. Every session I had to outsmart them. And I did.
Finally, by June—this was a six-month thing on the floor of the
legislature in 1988--the Republicans had arrived at the point. I
knew that the Gang of Five couldn't bring themselves to vote for a
Republican for speaker. I devised a method by which Republicans
no longer had to oppose the motion to vacate. They would amend it
to elect a Republican as speaker. So they started amending it or
making a substitute motion and the Gang of Five, because they came
from Democratic districts, would be thrown out if they voted for a
Republican speaker. So they couldn't vote for a Republican
speaker.
Primary Election Skirmishes; Republican Disharmony
Brown: But I knew that also was going to evaporate eventually because
there were some primary challenges. Democrats lined up to oppose
one of those guys in his primary. We could have beaten him but we
had the wrong Democratic candidate. We had a Mexican candidate in
a white district in a primary. We came within a hair ' s-breadth of
defeating this guy. But I wasn't involved. It was not an
organized district, except maybe six or seven, or ten of our
members helped out, trial lawyers helped out and a few other
people because this was--.
Morris: Going into the districts where these guys were running?
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Brown: Yes, in the primary. Going into the district after this guy in
the primary. That clearly would give them license now to step
over if they won. They won that primary and they then started
calling the Republicans on the primary day, knowing that they were
going to win, to say, "I think we would be prepared tomorrow to
vote for a Republican for speaker."
So now the Republicans are in the position where--. They
don't know but I still have four Republicans who will never vote
for a Republican for speaker, for their guy for speaker. Never.
But it would create a real problem because all of a sudden it
would be thirty-six or thirty-seven people saying Willie Brown
ought to go. Lo and behold, on the morning after the primary in
Sacramento, 8:05 or so a.m., I get a call at my home. It is the
wife of a very conservative Republican from Orange County who
informs me that her husband died ten minutes ago.
Morris: Oh, my heavens.
Brown: There is no way they can get to forty-one now matter what they do.
So that death destroyed any effort that they could make at doing
anything. So they ceased to make motions to vacate. They ceased
to do any of that. They ceased to make motions to withdraw
because they could not succeed anymore. They couldn't get forty-
one votes for anything. Nor did we have forty-one votes at that
stage of the game. But we don't need forty-one because we already
have the job. You can only throw me out with forty-one but we are
looking at November. In November, we've got to have forty-one
votes to win the speakership back. I'm not going to get any one
of their five. So I now have to get a minimum of forty-six
Democrats elected so that I can be sure I have forty-one. If I
don't have forty-one, somebody else may win the speakership. We
had to win a net of three new seats. No, we had to win a net of
two new seats at the outset.
Morris: You had already one that special election after the guy died?
Brown: No, that election had not been held. We had to win two seats
because there were forty-seven Democrats. October 10, one of my
votes died which means now I have to win three seats because there
will now only be forty-six, forty-five Democrats, whatever the
numbers were. Anyway I was going to be down by one. So we had to
win three seats. We won exactly a net of three seats. We won the
Willie Murray seat, the Ted Lempert seat and the Bob Epple seat.
We won the Epple seat on a recount. We won the speakership by
exactly the required number of votes.
The Republicans ran Ross Johnson; they ran Chuck Calderon--
they actually nominated Chuck Calderon. My Republicans wouldn't
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vote for Chuck Calderon. It was a major confrontation on the
floor. The Republicans put together a recall operation against
Norm Waters. It really got bitter. It really turned into a very
bitter dispute. The Republicans got really angry because we had
netted three Republican seats, of Republicans who had been helpful
for keeping the Gang of Five from succeeding. I beat three of
them and so now the Republican leadership was madder than hell
because they were embarrassed.
Morris: This is what we get for helping you.
Brown: The Republicans dumped Pat Nolan because it had been Pat who had
been of assistance to me. They didn't really dump him; Pat
voluntarily stepped down because he lost a net of three seats. He
stepped down. Ross Johnson stepped up to the plate and became the
new leader. He was on the conservative wing as well and the war
was on. They tried everything in the world to figure out how to
keep me from being speaker again.
We retaliated in kind. We dumped all the Republican vice-
chairs. We stripped them of staff. We did very nasty things to
the Republicans. They tried to engage in [the unbecoming] conduct
of recalling members of our caucus. It got to be really ugly for
three or four months. Then it settled down. The members of the
Gang of Five gave up. They knew they could never succeed in
dumping me and the war was all over. It lasted maybe a period of
fourteen months.
Morris: Calderon had been part of the Gang of Five.
Brown: Charles Calderon, Gary Condit, Steve Peace, Gerald Eaves, and
Rusty Areias.
Morris: Condit and Calderon left the legislature.
Brown: In the fall of 1989, Condit got elected to the Congress. Shortly
thereafter, Condit 's replacement got elected and he was a
supporter of Willie Brown's. Calderon got elected to the state
senate.
Morris: So they didn't leave politics. They were not--?
Brown: Joe Montoya got convicted and resigned. Calderon ran and got
elected for the state senate seat. So two of them departed.
Morris: With your blessing.
Brown: Oh, yes. With my blessings. They had been punished. We had
moved them over to the Republican side, gave them seats on the
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Republican side in the back of the room, stripped them of all
their committee assignments, took their offices. We didn't treat
them kindly. We treated them like traitors should be treated.
Morris: All of that takes an awful lot of time.
Brown: A lot of energy and a lot of time. But we did it right. My
membership stayed together. When we won the net of three seats,
we were in better shape than we had ever been. They knew that and
that ended it. The Republicans knew it and it was over. Many
Republicans started making book with us. That was about the time
that we started fomenting disharmony with the Republicans.
Morris: Did you?
Brown: Yes, to help them change their leadership. And they ultimately
did. So it's payback. But all of that was part of the process.
We finally settled the house down in mid- 1989. Since then, there
has been nothing except peace and harmony. All of the
disagreements have been rooted in philosophy, not membership
politics. Proposition 140 came along; we settled 140 without any
rancor. You didn't see partisan confrontations over 140. All of
that was done in the spirit pre-1988. Until 1988, things ran the
way they are running now.
Morris: Now it is troublesome again?
Brown: No, not at all. There are disagreements with the governor and
that sort of thing, but that doesn't have anything to do with
anybody challenging the speaker. No one is challenging the
speaker.
Morris: Within the legislature.
Brown: Reapportionment obviously presents a problem because if they win
the majority, we lose. So we are at war with that. But that is
not internal politics. There are no daily disruptions. There are
no motions to vacate. There is no withholding of consent. There
is no withholding of fifty-four votes.
270
XXIII NATIONAL DEMOCRATRIC POLITICS; RUNNING JESSE JACKSON'S 1988
CAMPAIGN
Early Acquaintance
Morris: You were at war with the Gang of Five at the same time that you
were chairman of Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign, weren't
you?
Brown: Correct.
Morris: How did you manage the two?
Brown: There was no problem, no problem. They tried to suggest that I
was not focused on reelecting the membership of my house. The
results proved to be just the opposite. I picked up a net of
three seats. Then the Jackson operation provided great resources
for voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns.
Morris: In the state of California.
Brown: And [Michael] Dukakis came within 2 percentage points of defeating
George Bush in California. All of those resources assisted us
mightily in getting the house back under my total control.
Morris: How did you and Jesse Jackson get to be close enough that you
became chairman?
Brown: We were friends since 1962.
Morris: Really?
Brown: Oh, sure. Friends and good confidantes since 1962.
Morris: Okay. At a convention?
Brown: Young Democrats convention.
271
Morris: Tell me what happened.
Brown: It was 1962 or 1963, I can't remember which. But there were only
about five black Young Democrats attending. This was before it
was politic to be doing that stuff. Jackson came in as part of
the South Carolina group, I think. Harold Washington came in as
part of the Chicago group. The only other group were the
Calif ornians, two Calif ornians . So there were five or six of us
there and we naturally got to know each other. We supported the
resolutions and the things that each of us were doing. That
started a friendship. So few of us were operating in the
political world.
That started a friendship that has lasted to today. Jesse
Jackson is coming in here. I am going to open my campaign
operation this coming Friday and Jackson is coming in to do it.
Morris: And make an announcement that he is for Willie Brown?
Brown: Oh yes. Sure.
Morris: He was a preacher at that point, in 1962?
Brown: No, he was just a kid. He was still in college. I was out
practicing law but he was still in college. So he became a
minister while working under [Martin Luther, Jr.] King's direction
and he just graduated into the ministry.
Morris: Political life was something that he saw as important?
Brown: Absolutely. Martin saw it as important.
Morris: And was grooming Jesse to run for office at some point?
Brown: I can't tell you that. I don't know that part of it. If he did,
it certainly wasn't the presidency. And that's what Jackson ran
for. He has never run for anything else.
Primary Strategies
Morris: How did your strategy develop to the point where you and he
thought it was time for him to run for the presidency?
Brown: He made that decision himself in 1984. I was not a supporter of
his in 1984. I was the chair of the [Alan] Cranston campaign for
president, along with Harrison Wofford, the current U.S. Senator.
272
Morris :
Brown:
We were the two national co-chairs of the Cranston campaign in
1984. That campaign obviously hit rough seas early on, I think in
New Hampshire, and Cranston pulled out. I did not embrace any
other candidacy. I started pumping Mario Cuomo in 1984 by the
time of the convention but 1 didn't push any other candidacy. I
didn't endorse Gary Hart, I didn't endorse Walter Mondale and I
didn't endorse Jesse Jackson.
From 1984 to 1988, there were lots of conversations with
Jackson and many other people. I became convinced that the
Jackson candidacy was a viable one and that it would serve the
Democratic party well because it would bring lots of new voters
and that it needed the respectability of a main-line, prominent
Democrat at its helm. Jackson sought my chairmanship for that
purpose. And not co-chairmanship. He asked me to be the
chairperson for his campaign. I accepted that assignment in
October of 1987 and put together a group of people in October of
1987 in Los Angeles. It was the day after the [stock market]
crash on the 19th of October. The 18th was the crash, I believe,
or the 19th, whatever it was. The day after the crash we put
together that meeting.
We starting looking for a campaign manager. I found Jerry
Austin in Ohio and had Jerry Austin meet me in Tampa. I was
making a speech in Tampa a month or so later and I signed him up.
Actually, the contract was written in my handwriting. It signed
Jerry Austin to run Jesse Jackson's campaign. We put the
operation together and proceeded to have monthly meetings of the
committee. We had a committee made up of twelve or fourteen
people, all of whom had prominent status in some state: Percy
Sutton in New York; Ron Brown out of D.C. was on the committee;
Reggie Lewis, the financier, was on the committee; Maxine Waters,
of course, was on the committee--she was the state chair of
California for the Jackson campaign. We had people in all
connections on that committee. Prominent people.
People you had already worked with before in other--?
Or I knew. We tried to meet often at the Hyatt at the airport in
Chicago because every one of us could get in there from all over
the country. We would meet at the Hyatt. Sometimes Jackson would
attend those meetings; sometimes he would not. We gave general
direction to the campaign, money raising. Austin would attend
those meetings and the field directors would attend those
meetings .
We really ran a very good campaign, a real good campaign.
On occasions I would get on the plane and fly with Jackson. We
leased a plane. We had a real first-class campaign. We had a
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real first-class campaign. We had an entire press corps
travelling with us on the airplane. It was a fun campaign.
Morris: Where were the resources coming from?
Brown: We raised the money.
Morris: But where was the money--?
Brown: All kinds of people. We had lots of labor organizations assisting
Jackson. We had lots of stars assisting Jackson. The farm aid
people were of great assistance to Jackson. The peace movement
was of assistance to Jackson. The women's movement — the feminist
movement—was of assistance to Jackson. So we had lots of money
resources. Blacks really donated to Jackson's campaign.
Morris: More than they had been asked to do--.
Brown: Absolutely.
Morris: Had they donated in previous campaigns?
Brown: No. People come and participate in most cases based on the
personality and their commitment to the candidate. They don't
participate generically.
Morris: I know there is a lot of money that comes in related to a specific
candidate, but sometimes it stays. Was it Austin or the committee
as a whole that came up with the Rainbow Coalition?
Brown: No, it was Jackson himself. Austin had nothing to do with the
Rainbow Coalition. That preceded us both.
Morris: It was already--.
Brown: In place.
Morris: What was the possibility that he would have gotten the nomination
instead of Dukakis?
Brown: It was a long shot. We played it well, but the campaign--. We
didn't get an operation going in Ohio like we needed. We didn't
get the operation going in Pennsylvania like we needed. New York
was not as good as it should have been. We should have beaten
Dukakis in New York. So we had some rough spots that didn't pan
out well.
Morris: Was Cuomo not coming along--?
274
Brown: No, he did not. We were great in Michigan, as you will recall.
We were great in Wisconsin, we were great in Minnesota. We had
some great places. We didn't fare as well in the South as we
wanted to. We won portions of it, but we should have done better
in Texas, three or four other places. We should have been the
favorite son of the South.
Morris: What got in the way of that?
Brown: Racism more than anything else.
Morris: Even though you were bringing lots more minority people into the
coalition, into the campaign?
Brown: Absolutely. But still the Democratic party didn't want to really
embrace us and the news media never did give Jackson the full
benefit of being a true contender. No matter how much we would
win, they would still say, "What does Jackson really want?" We
kept responding, "He wants the nomination." "No, that's not
really what you want. What do you really want."
Morris: What did the media think he wanted?
Brown: I don't know. They never said. They just kept running those
stories, and that created lots of discontent in our operation.
They would always ask, "Practically, he can't win it. You know he
can't win. Why don't you tell us what your real agenda is? What
will you settle for." We kept pressing, "This guy is trying to
get the nomination. He is just like everybody else."
Dukakis's Fall Campaign
Morris: What kind of impact do you think that Jackson's candidacy had on
Dukakis as the final nominee? Were there some ideas that carried
over into the fall campaign?
Brown: No. Dukakis' operation never--. They blew a seventeen-point lead
in thirty-five days. That operation never got on track.
Morris: So that none of your organization went into the Dukakis
organization?
Brown: Some of the people who worked for Jackson went to work for the
Dukakis operation. But that was a sop. It was not where they
could do what they could do effectively.
275
Morris: In other words, the Dukakis people didn't welcome them in after
the convention?
Brown: Or take the structure in those places where Jackson dominated. I
would have just said to my people, "You have to join the Jackson
people in Michigan, you have to join the Jackson people in
California." That's what I would have done had I been Dukakis.
Instead, he tried to do the reverse. He tried to set up an
operation in Michigan. Well, why do you want to set up an
operation if you've lost Michigan?
Morris: It's already going.
Brown: You lost Michigan! Handsomely! So clearly you aren't talented
enough to win it and your people weren't. But that isn't what
they did. They did just the opposite. They hated the Jackson
people, they hated Jesse, they didn't want to use Jesse and they
didn't use Jesse effectively.
Morris: They did not?
Brown: No, no. And Jesse made some demands. Jesse wanted a full
contingent of presidential apparatus as if he were still a
candidate. He wanted to move around the country and select his
spots, and he was right. He should have been able to select his
spots .
He wanted to help out in that regard. No way. They wanted
it differently, so they kind of put him on ice and sent him to the
out-of-the-way places. They tried to make sure he was never on
prime-time coverage and they didn't have him as one of the focal
points, because the Willie Horton stuff was out there. They
really feared the racial backlash in this country instead of
recognizing that the racial backlash was there and the only way to
offset was to excite new people to participate in numbers
sufficient to offset the backlash and only Jackson could do that.
They didn't fully understand and appreciate that and did not
utilize it.
And then the campaign was never focused. Dukakis1 campaign
never got focused. He never defined Dukakis or any of that kind
of stuff. So the results were a disaster, a disaster. We in
California virtually overcame that. We came very close to
knocking Bush off in California. A few more days and we could of.
This was the kind of campaign that should have been conducted
everywhere in the country. But it wasn't and we lost. We lost,
and Jackson wasn't handsomely utilized.
276
1986 Senate Victories
Brown: Jackson's worth was proven by virtue of the fact that in 1986 we
won the U.S. Senate back. And we won the U.S. Senate back
directly because of the Jackson vote from 1984. The people we put
on the rolls showed up in 1986 and voted in Alabama for Richard
Shelby. They voted in North Carolina for Terry Sanford. They
voted in Georgia for Wyche Fowler. They voted in Louisiana for
John Brough. There was one other place in the South where they
voted and the margin was about 38 percent white vote and about 80-
85 percent black vote for those candidates. That turned out to be
the margin of victory and that also turned out to be what turned
the Senate back to being Democratically controlled. The only
white candidate that came close like that was Cranston in
California and he won by just over 100,000 votes against Ed
Zschau, and he will personally tell you that the voter-
registration campaign he conducted and Jackson conducted was the
difference in his being a U.S. Senator.
Morris: Really? He might have done better to have--.
Brown: To have lost.
Morris: --retired gracefully before--.
Brown: --the long knives got him.
Morris: There was some talk that you were being considered for chairman of
the Democratic National Committee.
Brown: No. Not so.
Morris: Not true. Why did the rumor float?
Brown: Well, they just said, "Brown," and they naturally thought Willie
Brown because he was the chairman of the Jackson campaign, when in
fact, it was Ron Brown who managed the campaign at the convention.
Austin managed the campaign up to the time Jackson didn't get the
nomination. The Jackson convention activities were managed by
Brown. I gave the speech to make the nomination of Dukakis
unanimous. You don't remember that but I was on that cellular
telephone number--.
Morris: Actually it was Jesse's speech I remember.
Brown: Jesse's speech was made two nights before.
277
Morris: And that was very dazzling. Did you stay involved with Harrison
Wofford?
Brown: Yes, I did. I helped Harrison.
1992 Campaign Preliminaries
Morris: Has the group that worked with Jesse stayed together since 1988?
Brown: No, not really. I tried to get Tom Harkin to endorse Jesse in
1988. I sat in his office for two hours trying to convince him to
endorse Jesse Jackson. It would be standing him in good stead
today. He didn't do it.
Morris: Therefore Jesse has lost interest in who runs for president?
Brown: Jesse hasn't lost interest, but he doesn't owe a debt and he would
have owed a debt to Tom Harkin and his supporters would have owed
a debt to Tom Harkin.
Morris: Were those obligations useful to Mr. Wofford in his Senate
campaign? Did he call in some of his chits?
Brown: No. Wofford was not the co-chair of the campaign. It was
Cranston I co-chaired the campaign with for Wofford back in 1984
when he wanted me to do that. But, yes, Wofford does have a call
on that relationship. That's how he got me.
Morris: Where did he get this James Carville, who I gather has hit the
ground running as a political consultant?
Brown: I have no idea. But James has been around a long time. He's lost
a lot of elections.
Morris: He's lost a lot of elections?
Brown: Oh, yes, and he'll tell you he's lost a lot of elections.
Morris: But he won this one or events were right?
Brown: He says events were right. Many of us think it was his strategy.
Morris: Am I right that you brought him out to California?
Brown: Twice.
278
Morris: Does he have some ideas that apply to California politics?
Brown: Good training of the people who are going to run our campaigns.
He told them so--.
II
Morris: Would you care to share some of those ideas?
Brown: He just talked about how basic you really have to be. For an
example, he says that we get hung up on playing around with the
budget, that we really ought to get the budget out of the way so
that is not an issue. Hence we are trying to fast-track the
budget. He says that the business of defending welfare is stupid.
You ought to defend people, not welfare. When somebody accuses
you of being soft on welfare, say, "No, I'm not soft on welfare.
What I do bleed for, there is this woman with three kids, one of
whom is blind and one of whom is lame and what have you, and I'll
always vote to help her out." At that stage of the game, your
opponent who is accusing you of protecting welfare is reduced to
saying, "Well, yes, I want to help her but..." But he says by
then it's gone, he's lost the argument. So those are the kinds of
things. They are very simple things, they are obviously not
earth-shaking.
Morris: In terms of visualization and--.
Brown: Absolutely, and reaching the constituency. He cited examples of
campaigns that accuse people of doing certain things and how the
person who was accused simply ripped the heart right out of his
accuser in a manner that turned it around and caused it to be
either a non-issue, caused it to be an issue that required further
explanation for it to work. He said that any time you can force
your opponent to have to come back and explain further why it's a
negative, you've already got him on the run.
Morris: Is this somebody with a lot of technical training in political
management or is he just a seasoned hand?
Brown: I really don't know. I would suspect that most people you think
are seat-of-the-pants are better prepared than the best-prepared
professional person you've ever met. Because I would love people
to think I do everything off the seat of my pants when I don't do
any of it that way.
Morris: Are you saying that it's instinct or that it's careful
preparation?
279
Brown: No, it's adequate and careful accumulation of facts and evidence
and an understanding of previous history and previous positions
and then formulating. What I may say may come instantly, but it
is rooted in a thorough understanding of the issues and the
problems and the facts surrounding it.
Morris: That sounds like a very good rule one for political success. How
come somebody from out of state like Carville can get a hearing
for these ideas instead of going with somebody like Richie Ross
who's been presumably grounded in California campaigns and has
worked with you--?
Brown: Because the nature of appealing to the voters is no longer limited
by geography. A concept applicable in New York is equally as
applicable in California, in many cases. You love to hear those
concepts because the public-opinion polling shows that voters are
reacting in a similar fashion. Voters rejected David Duke, but
the same utterances that David Duke used to communicate are being
used by Pete Wilson. Same words, same concepts. Blaming the
problem on immigrants; blaming the recession on the unemployed and
the poor. That's the stuff David Duke talked about; same stuff
Pete Wilson is talking about.
Morris: Doesn't sound like Pete Wilson.
Brown: What doesn't sound like Pete Wilson?
Morris: He comes from San Diego where they have been dealing with
population from across the border for generations.
Brown: But his public-opinion polls show that it is a good idea. He is
living on those polls.
280
XXIV TRACKING SOLUTIONS AND PROBLEMS
Voter Responses Nationwide; Welfare & Job Linkages
Morris: So the California problems are the same as they are elsewhere?
Brown: New Jersey has got the same--. With the recession, you tend to
have a similarity of issues facing government. When you have a
recession as broad-based as it currently is and as deep as it
currently is, it tends to affect areas in a similar fashion.
Morris: Are there some new ideas, aside from suggesting that it is the
fault of all these immigrants, for getting a handle on providing
the human services that are needed?
Brown: No, there are no new ideas. The government lost a great
opportunity a long time ago to address the welfare issue when
they came up with the idea of GAIN, the employment program that
would be associated with welfare. Everybody said, "Yes, that's a
great idea," then nobody supplied the resources. Tom Bates
pointed out to me the other day that welfare offices really ought
to have been right next to the employment offices. The person who
comes in who is able-bodied, what-have-you, you ought to divert
him immediately to the employment office, but you ought to give
them an incentive. You ought to say, yes, you are certainly
eligible but the only thing we are going to give you until you
exhaust the employment opportunities is we are going to give you
health care and we are going to give you child care. We are going
to pay that directly to the vendors in each case. But only if you
go over here and register and enroll and get a job. We don't care
what the job pays. Then we are going to the employer and tell the
employer we will carry your health-care costs for a year and your
child-care costs for a year. It is a hell of a lot less costly to
us than giving you a whole grant. In the meantime, you become a
working taxpayer. That's a diversion program.
281
That ought to be part of the welfare operation. And the
same application you fill out for welfare could be the application
that also is for a job. And it just goes immediately into the
computer and the job office picks it up and starts dogging you for
employment purposes. If they in fact have a job to offer you and
you don't take it, then you ought to be disqualified. Those are
the kinds of things we ought to be doing; but we don't do that.
Morris: That sounds as if it is related to Assemblyman [Bruce] Bronzan's
integrated services concept?
Brown: Correct. It is. No question about it.
Morris: Is that looking favorable enough for the legislature that you are
going to encourage it to expand or continue?
Brown: Yes.
Morris: It's getting some reasonable responses?
Brown: It is. It is getting some reasonable attention.
Morris: That seems to have evolved from some of the works that Art Bolton
has done over the years?
Brown: Art Bolton, Art Agnos, Delaine Eastin.
Morris: Are the Delancey Street Foundation people part of the idea too?
Brown: Yes.
Morris: So there is some input from out in the nonprofit community. Do
you think that approach is something that is going to politically
fly?
Brown: I think in this environment, yes. We will be able to substitute
legitimate, workable, humane proposals for all of this hostility,
because we won't vote for the hostility and they won't vote to
maintain the status quo. If we can step forward with what is a
product that has predictable results and measurable results, I
think that will be a good place to land on a compromise.
Tieing Health-Care and Worker-Compensation Coverage; S.F. Mayor 'i
Race. 1992
Morris: That sounds as if it feeds into the health-insurance problem too.
282
Brown: Correct. And the workers' compensation] problem, because you
could take the workers' comp and make the treatment portion of the
workers' comp covered by the universal health insurance coverage.
If you mandate the universal health insurance coverage or put it
in such that everybody has the coverage, at least everybody who
has an employment relationship because those are the only people
connected under workers' comp--if you eliminate the separate dual
medical coverage under workers' comp and say, "If you are hurt or
injured or you're sick, everybody gets treated under the same
health insurance policy," you will cut the cost of workers' comp
35-40 percent. You could begin to finance lots of things and it
could become a very attractive alternative if you did that. That
is a major workers' comp reform.
Morris: It is going to fly?
Brown: Oh, yes. It will fly eventually.
Morris: Yes. Eventually. I've heard it said that most major legislation
takes two or three times to get passed. Is that--?
Brown: With term limits, I think we'll shorten it. Because you won't be
around by the time that it incubates. It would have to start all
over so no major legislation would ever be passed if you stayed on
the same time line that we previously had.
Morris: Does Frank Jordan's election as mayor make a difference in terms
of your own strategies?
Brown: No, not at all. Who's mayor doesn't have anything to do with what
we do at the state level.
Morris: Well, does it say something about politics in San Francisco--?
Brown: Not at all.
Morris: --that relates to, "You have to run for reelection like everybody
else."
Brown: Not at all. Agnos ' defeat was a personal defeat. Simultaneously
when Agnos was being defeated, I put a measure on the ballot in
this town to impose a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax for
schools. Fifteen hundred more people voted in that tax measure
than voted in the mayor's race.
Morris: In the mayor's race? That's unusual.
Brown: Thank you. And it passed, handsomely.
283
Morris:
Brown:
Morris :
Brown:
Yes.
Which means that that was a liberal progressive issue on the same
ballot. Where they were giving Frank Jordan plurality by 6500
votes, we won the tax measure by about 25,000 votes.
That's fascinating. There has been some heat on the subject of,
if Agnos got dumped as mayor, how come he got such a handsomely
paid appointment to a state board?
Politicians tend to appoint their qualified friends to positions.
Just as Pete Wilson names Bill Duplissea to a state board, just as
he names Chuck Imbrecht to the Energy Commission, just as he gave
Matthew Fong Paul Carpenter's job. Matthew Fong lost to Gray
Davis and he surfaces with a $95,000 a year appointment to the
State Board of Equalization. There isn't a difference. The
difference is, however, that Willie made the appointment. Willie
is subject to criticism where all the other politicians are not.
Frank Jordan is appointing people to jobs at city hall who were
his campaign workers: Hadley Roff, deputy mayor; Gene Harris,
political activist to a $95,000 a year job as his representative
and liaison to the gay community. Nobody criticized Frank Jordan
for giving the jobs to those people. Why criticize Willie Brown?
It's a double standard.
Morris: Is there more heat on that subject in the current economic hard
times when $90,000-plus looks like an awful lot of money to people
who are making a lot less, if they're lucky enough to have a job?
Brown: No, it's only directed at me. Because Jordan is doing the same
thing. Jordan is appointing people to $95 ,000-a-year jobs,
$100,000-a-year jobs. Pete Wilson is naming people to judgeships
that pay $100,000. And nobody is saying a word.
Morris: I've got about fifteen minutes left on the tape. What I would
like to ask you is what kinds of issues have been important to you
that we haven't talked about?
Brown: Can't think of any.
Hazards of Term Limits
Morris: We've covered an awful lot of California government and politics.
You've been right in the middle of it. What do you see happening
next?
284
Brown: Well, the business of term limits is going to place a different
view on what we do and how we do business in California. What
next? How do we structure government made up of two kinds of
people: newcomers and lame ducks. How do we structure government
dominated by the bureaucracy and the special interest
organizations plus the influence of the news media. The only
people who will be at risk and at a distance will be the elected
representatives .
There are no limits on how long you can keep your lobbyists,
no limits on how long a bureaucrat can stay in place, and no
limits on how long a particular reporter can cover the
legislature. Those three categories of people are three-fourths
of the decision-making process, formally and informally. The
elected representatives are the one collection of people who are
now totally and completely handicapped by virtue of no
institutional memory and limited experience and no opportunity for
career options to be exercised based on performance or desire or
luck; everybody in there is on his way out. From the day they get
there, they are on their way out.
As a result of that, there is going to be a different blend
and a different thrust. That is going to play havoc, in my
opinion, with public-policymaking in California, particularly when
it's a life-time ban. If you are thirty years old and you get
elected to the state assembly, you are allowed to serve six years.
Then you are banned for life. You could go become a U.S. Senator,
a governor, a president, and at fifty-eight years of age decide
you want to run for the state assembly again because you've
completed all that other work. You are not eligible.
Morris: Can you run for the state senate?
Brown: You can run for the state assembly for six years and you can serve
eight years in the state senate, and then you're life-time banned.
But that's not an option.
Morris: Could you run for state treasurer?
Brown: You can run for any other office.
Morris: You could go on the bench.
Brown: You could run for any other office but those are not practical
options. If you learn, as Byron Sher has learned, to be the best
person on the environment handling the timber issue, that doesn't
translate into being the treasurer of the state of California
necessarily. The opponent for you for treasurer could be the
president of Coopers and Lybrand or could be the professor of
285
economics from Stanford who came up with the new theory that
replaces Milt Friedman's ideas. So you are not in a world where
your experience and your skills that have been honed by figuring
out answers to environmental problems can ever be used again and
you've only been there for six years. You may not want to ever do
it. That's my fear. You may never want to do it. If you are
forty years of age and you are in the middle of a cycle that gets
you on a career ladder and you are raising a family, why would you
stop and go for six years to be a member of the state assembly?
At forty-six you start looking for a new profession, a new job, a
new opportunity? How many forty-six year-old professionals are
people looking for these days?
Morris: Forty-six is when you've got lots of energy, intelligence and
dynamics. A lot of people at forty-six have a mid-life crisis and
exactly what they want to do is to pick up and do something else.
Brown: That may be their option. It should not be forced. There are
also those who might want to continue doing what they are doing.
As a matter of fact, I would guess that there are more who want to
continue what they are doing than there are who want to pick up.
That's just my guess.
Morris: Your judgment is that the review of the term-limit initiative that
has been passed is going to be upheld.
Brown: Probably, and I have to get out of here because I'm hosting a
Super Bowl party.
Morris: I'm leaving right now. Okay. What do you think?
Brown: I would think that the political court will not overturn term
limits. If it becomes a true evaluation of the issue in this
democracy, I do not believe you could ever sustain a life-time ban
for public office unrelated to something morally wrong with the
applicant.
Morris: Do you see yourself going on the bench? Running for the Senate?
Brown: No, no, no. I don't know what I'm going to do after 1996. It's
too far distant.
Transcribed by Christopher DeRosa
Final Typed by Shannon Page
286
TAPE GUIDE- -Willie Brown
Interview 1: October 19, 1991
Tape 1, Side A 1
Tape 1, Side B 12
Tape 2, Side A 23
Tape 2, Side B 35
Tape 3, Side A 45
Tape 3, Side B 55
Interview 2: November 12, 1991
Tape 4, Side A 58
Tape 4, Side B 69
Tape 5, Side A 80
Tape 5, Side B 93
Tape 6, Side A 107
Tape 6, Side B not recorded
Interview 3: November 16, 1991
Tape 7, Side A 119
Tape 7, Side B 130
Tape 8, Side A 143
Tape 8, Side B 154
Tape 9, Side A 167
Tape 9, Side B not recorded
Interview 4: December 17, 1991
Tape 10, Side A 178
Tape 10, Side B 189
Tape 11, Side A 200
Tape 11, Side B 213
Interview 5: January 26, 1992
Tape 12, Side A 223
Tape 12, Side B 233
Tape 13, Side A 243
Tape 13, Side B 253
Tape 14, Side A 265
Tape 14, Side B 278
APPENDIX
A List of Speeches 287
B "One on One with Willie Brown," James Richardson,
California Journal, August 1998 316
287
APPENDIX A
SPEECHES BY ASSEMBLY SPEAKER WILLIE BROWN, JR. AND
RELATED MATERIALS, MAY 1984-OCTOBER 1991
As background for interviewing Willie Brown, his speechwriter and
researcher, Joanne Murphy, in August 1991 provided a number of helpful
materials that illustrate the varied responsibilities of a legislative
leader. These include summaries of all bills introduced by Brown, by
Assembly session, from 1973-1974 through 1990, and a list of speeches the
Speaker made between 1984-1991, noting organizations addressed and date
delivered. A listing of videos of Brown taped from local and network
television between 1984 and 1990 was also provided by Michael Reese, then
the Speaker's press officer.
In addition, Murphy provided copies of seventeen speeches she felt
were particularly important for which duplicates were available, many of
which were her own work. Some were fully written texts, others were notes
in outline form; often information on the audience, sensitive aspects of
the topic discussed, and sources of data and ideas presented are included.
They are interesting for the consistency of the ideas expressed with
Brown's comments on similar topics in the oral history and the indications
that Murphy and other members of his staff were fully conversant with
Brown's position on the matters at hand.
The list of speeches is included here and suggests the range of
groups that the Speaker addressed during this period as well as the topics
on which he focused. AIDS, Black empowerment, Black- Jewish relations,
California 2000 plans and problems, freedom of choice, health care, and
other title recur often enough to suggest that a basic speech would have
been reworked and adapted to appeal to various audiences, and updated as
the dialogue on the issue developed.
Titles marked with a star are available in The Bancroft Library; they
are catalogued separately from this oral history and may be found under
Willie L. Brown, Jr., along with Brown's legislative bill summaries.
Although not included in this list, the following items provided by Murphy
are also deposited in The Bancroft Library: notes for Brown's acceptance
speeches for reelection as speaker in 1986 and 1990, a raw transcript of a
press availability session and three separate question-and-answer periods
on January 3, 1991, the opening day of the new session; and notes for a
speech on "The Public in Politics" given to the City Club of San Diego on
October 3, 1991.
Gabrielle Morris
Interviewer /Editor
288
SPEECH GIVEN TO:
(First Column is Alphabetized) * Starred titles are available in The Bancroft Libr
A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to 1988
A lurch to the Right
(speech only)
AB 1173 - Summary of Provisions
AB 2200
AB 2200 - Summary of Provisions
Abbott laboratories
Acceptance Speech for New Term
as Speaker
ACLIJ Pro-Choice Rally <
AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO Rally
African Student Assn.
AFSCME Conference
AFSCME Conference
AFSCME, Michigan Council 25
AIDS Antibody Testing
AIDS Informational Hearing
AIDS and Minorities
A Funny Thing Happened on the ?
Way to 1988
A Lurch to the Right ?
(speech only)
AB 1173 ?
AB 2200 Testimony 5/25/87
AB 2200 - Summary of Provisions 1987
HIV Symposium 10/23/87
Acceptance Speech for New Term ?
as Speaker
California — The Brightest Point 1/22/90
of Light
Post-Industrial Age: Will 12/7/85
Organized Labor Survive?
1988: The Year of Labor 10/26/88
1988: The Year of Labor 10/11/88
Cal-OSHA 2/10/87
1988: The Job is Not Done Yet 10/22/88
Next Step: Putting the Pieces 9/2/88
Together
1989 - Year of Challenge 5/22/89
Political Climate of California 3/21/88
King's Legacy and the Future 1/13/89
of Black America
AIDS Antibody Testing 1988?
AIDS Informational Hearing ?
AIDS and Minorities 1987
spch
- 1 -
8/19/91
289
AIDS: A National Agenda
AIDS: The Public Policy
Imperative
AIDS Task Force
Alamo Park High School
Camel-cement
Alaska Black Caucus
Alpha Phi Alpha
Alpha Phi Alpha
Alpha Phi Alpha Convention
(cover only)
Alpha Phi Alpha, Zeta Beta
lambda Chapter
American Association of Port
Authorities (cover only)
American Council of Life Ins.
(cover memo only)
American Electronics Assn.
American Electronics Assn.
American Hotel & Motel Assn.
American Institute of Real
Estate Appraisers
American Israel Public Affairs
Committee
American Jewish Conf . Dinner
American League of Financial
Institutions (ALFI)
Analysis of Prosition 73
AP Editors Meeting
AP Managing Editors
AIDS: A National Agenda 1988?
* AIDS: The Public Policy 1988
imperative
AIDS Issues/Legislation 5/12/88
"Perspectives on Youth: Peace 6/16/88
and Justice Nationally and
Internationally
Alaska: Land of the 6/20/87
Midnight Sun
Rebellious Dreamer 1/13/85
* Rebellious Dreamer 1/15/87
Constitution of Black America 7/26/87
Two Black Americas 3/8/87
(cover only)
Ports 9/12/88
Insurance Reform 11/17/86
Environment, Taxes, etc. 3/10/87
Environment, Taxes, etc. 2/3/88
The California Phenomenon: 6/23/87
A Profile of the Golden State
* Legislation: The Art of 10/19/90
Tasting Compromise
* Black Jewish Relations 3/7/85
Black Jewish Relations 10/23/84
Politics in America: The 11/10/90
Fairness Doctrine
Analysis of Proposition 73 6/9/88
Calif. 2000: Gridlock in 3/14/88
the Making
Mass Media and Politics 10/29/86
spch
- 2 -
8/19/91
Apartment Assn of LA
AROO Enployees Civic Action
Program
AROO Management Meeting
AROO Products
Arthur Page Society/AT&T
Asian-Pacific Bar
(cover only)
Asian-Pacific Bar
Asian-Pacific Demo caucus
Assembly Democrats' Campaign
Seminar
Assn of Black Women Physicians
Association of California
Ccramunity College Administrators
Association for CA Tort Reform
Association of California
Insurance Companies
Assocation of Physical Fitness
Centers
Association of Trial Lawyers
Atlanta University Commencement
Austria
Baker & McKenzie
BAPAC
BAPAC Convention
BAPAC - Lang Beach
BAPAC - L.A. Awards Dinner
290
Rent Control 11/3/86
Calif. 2000: (cover only) 2/29/88
Svmmary of 1987 Legislative 10/12/87
Session
Not While I'm Here 10/16/89
In Whose Interest? 9/26/89
California 2000 9/24/88
Growing Political Force 6/8/88
Prop 63 - AB 2813 9/14/86
Assembly Democrats' Campaign 9/88
Seminar
Two Black Americas: Separate 10/11/86
and Unequal
Background Data 3/1/91
Tort Reform 1/27/88
Insurance Initiatives 10/12/88
The California Phenomenon 2/16/89
Campaign Reform 7/12/87
Honorary Degree 5/23/88
Briefing Memo 8/9/87
Pacific Rim Real Estate Conf . 2/7/90
Brpowerment in the 1990s and 1988?
Beyond
Enpowerment in the 1990 's 10/15/88
and Beyond
Unity and Victory in '88 4/8/88
Brrpowerment in the 1990 's 9/24/88
and Beyond
spch
- 3 -
8/19/91
BAPAC - Monterey
BAPAC - San Diego
BAPAC - San Fernando Valley
Calif. Politics — Planning 6/26/88
for the Year 2000
Empowerment in the 1990s and 9/9/88
Beyond
Unity and Victory in 1988 5/28/88
BAPAC Convention
BAPAC State Convention
Bay Area Coalition for Soviet
Jews
Bay Area Council for Soviet
Jews (cover only)
Bay Area MLK Celebration
Bay Area Nonpartisan Alliance
Bay Area Pro-Choice Coalition
Rally
Bay Area Public Affairs Council
(cover only)
Black America: Public Policy,
Public Consensus
Black America - At the
Crossroads of Political
Enpcwerment
Black Jewish Relations
Black Jewish Relations
King's Legacy in a World
of Peace
AIDS: The Politics of an
Epidemic
Freedom of Choice: It mist
Be (Xir Right
California 2000
Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP The Power of Expectations
Beyond the 1990s: A Look at
California's Future
(four versions)
Black Advocates in State
Service (BASS)
Black Alumni of Lena Linda
University
Black Culture Day VIP Event
Black Jewish Relations
(speech only)
Black Prosecutors Assn
Beyond the 1990s: A Look at
California's Future* (four
versions)
Vfelcoming Remarks
Empowerment in the 1990 's and
Beyond
Black Culture: A Legacy For
All Americans
Black Jewish Relations
(speech only)
Violent Crime in America
10/17/87
10/7/89
12/6/87
10/21/84
1/15/90
1/31/86
4/2/89
3/11/87
2/23/91
1988
10/11/90
2/16/89
9/3/88
8/3/89
spch
- 4 -
8/19/91
Black Radio Exclusive
Convention
Black Student Alliance, CSUS
Black Methodists for Church
Renewal
Black Women's Forum
Black/Jewish Clergy
Blue Cross of CA & The King's *
Fund, London Int'l Conference
Booth, Alan (Time Magazine
article)
Boston's 19th Annual MLK
Breakfast
Breakdown of Insurance
Initiatives (fact sheet only)
292
The State and Future of
Black America
Black Empowerment and American
Foreign Policy
Enduring Institutions: Black
Family, Black Church
Impact of Budget on Blacks
Black Jewish Relations
Health Care in CA: Our Crisis
— Everyone's Future
Continuity and Change
King's Legacy and the Future
of Black America
Breakdown of Insurance
Initiatives (fact sheet only)
Bronzan, Bruce, Insurance Forum Solutions to Uncompensated Care
Brookins Community AME Church *
Brown, Willie L.
Caring for Our Own: Black
Institutions, Black Strengths
Nelson Mandela and the
Divestment Movement
Brown, Willie L. , Introduction Introduction for Speaker
Brown, Willie L. , Toxics
Reorganization Bill Facts Sheet
Caen, Herb
CAL-PAC North Scholarship Fund
Banquet (cover only)
CAL-PAC South Scholarship Fund
Banquet (cover only)
CAL-PAC State Convention
(cover only)
California Administrative
Service Organization
Brown, Willie L. , Toxics
Reorganization Bill Facts Sheet
Roast of Herb Caen
Background memo
Background memo
Constitution and Black America
Involvement Revisited
California Applicants' Attorneys Workers' Camp
5/28/88
2/1/89
3/18/88
1/24/87
9/18/84
9/27/90
4/21/86
1/16/89
1988
3/8/89
9/16/88
6/28/90
12/5/88
?
9/21/90
5/29/87
5/15/87
8/27/87
6/30/89
7/8/88
spch
- 5 -
8/19/91
California Applicants' Attorneys
Workers' Compensation: A
System in Need of Reform
California Applicants' Attorneys Transcript, WLB
California Applicants' Attorneys
California Applicants' Attorneys
Seminar
California Assn of Bilingual
Education
California Association of
Black Correctional Workers
California Assn of Black lawyers
California Assn of Collectors
California Assn of Highway
Patrolmen
California Assn of Life
Underwriters
California Assn of Rehab
Professionals
California Assn of Tobacco &
Candy Distributors
California Association of
Black Correctional Workers
California Attorneys for
Criminal Justice
California Automatic Vendors
Council
California Bankers
California Beer Industry
California Beer and Wine
Wholesalers
California Broadcasters Assn.
California Center for
Education in Public Affairs
Labor and the Legislature:
The View from 1987
Labor
AB 37
Enduring Institutions: Black
Family, Black Church
AIDS and the Minority
Community
Involvement Revisited
Historical on CHP
Health and Life Insurance
Sheltered from the Storm
History of Workers' Oomp
Litter
Enduring Institutions: Black
Family, Black Church
Reality: Therapy from
Sacramento
Litter (cover only)
1987 Legislation
Excise Taxes
AB 1500
Politics and the Press
Sandel article
6/28/86
12/12/86
8/21/87
12/12/86
1/30/87
6/11/88
4/25/87
3/13/90
10/17/90
5/30/87
9/18/86
11/15/86
6/11/88
9/24/88
3/7/87
2/19/87
4/27/89
4/30/87
2/18/87
2/26/88
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8/19/91
California Chamber of Ccrmerce
California Clean Air & New
Technology
California Coalition for
California Coin Dealers
California Conference of
Machinists
California Conference of
Machinists
California Correctional Peace
Officers Assn
California Council for
International Trade
California Demo Council
Endorsement Convention
California Demo Party
Convention Lunch
California Demo Party
Legislative Leadership
Luncheon
California Demo Party '88
Victory Committee
California Demo Party Convention
California Demo Party Convention
California Demo Party Convention
California Democratic Council
California Dept of Forestry
Employees Assn
California Disposal Assn
California Pocus
California Grocers Assn
294
Medina's Speech Notes 2/22/89
Remarks 10/16/90
Trucking Deregulation 11/18/87
Trucking Deregulation
AB 2557 (Pawnbrokers) 6/19/87
Reapportionment — Is There 4/23/90
Need for Reform?
Labor Issues (cover only) 3/11/88
November Election/December 12/2/88
Session
Omnibus Trade Legislation 4/8/87
Future of the Democratic Party 3/15/86
Future of the Democratic Party 1/26/85
Reapportionment: Is There a 4/7/90
for Reform?
Unity and Victory in '88 5/6/88
Unity and Victory in '88 3/19/88
1986 Elections 1/31/87
Countdown to Victory 1/11/89
1986 Elections 4/24/87
CDFEA Background 12/5/86
Roast of Sam Arakalian 12/2/87
Ross Johnson Roast 1/23/90
The Legislative Session: 3/15/89
Reflections of Popular Concern
California Hotel & Motel Assn California 2000 (cover only) 6/16/87
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8/19/91
California Hotel & Motel Assn
California Hotel & Motel Assn
California Hotel & Motel Assn
California Housing Council
California Junior State
Convention
California labor Federation
Conference
California Labor Federation
California Manufacturers
California Manufacturers Assn
California Market Data
Cooperative (Real Estate
Appraisers)
Calilfornia Medical Assn PAC
(CALPAC Reapportionment)
California Municipal Utilities
Convention
California Optometric Assn
California Phenomenon: A
Profile of the Golden State
California Politics: Planning
for the Year 2000
California Professional
Firefighters
California Radio and TV News
Directors
California Retailers Assn
California Seniors legislative
295
Search for Excellence
Legislative Accomplishments
for 1987 (cover only)
Beyond the 1990's — A Look at
California's Future
Housing Issues
The American Dream: Illusion
or Reality?
Health Insurance for All Cali-
fornians: Cur Plan for the
Future
1989 - Year of Challenge
Calif. 2000: Gridlock in the
Making
Involvement Revisited
Legislation: The Art of
Lasting Conpromise
California Medical Assn Conf . AIDS Testing
Reapportionment: The Ultimate
Dividing Line
Calif. 2000
Future of Health Care
in California
California Phenomenon: A
Profile of the Golden State
* California Politics: Planning
for the Year 2000
History and Background
California Politics — Summer
of '88
Retailer Legislation
Long-Term Care: A Public
10/27/86
3/1/88
10/7/88
6/30/89
4/17/88
4/25/90
5/22/89
4/21/88
6/13/89
3/6/89
4/6/88
3/2/90
2/24/88
2/17/90
1987?
1988?
10/13/88
6/22/88
9/9/87
5/17/89
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- 8 -
8/19/91
Rally
California Senior Legislature
California Sheet Metal & Air
Conditioning Assn
California Special Districts
Association
California Society of Certified
Accountants
California State Conference of
Painters
California State Council of
Machinists
California State Council Service
Employees Intl. Union
Calif. State University
Fresno
California State University,
Long Beach
California Teachers Assn Staff
Meeting
Calif. Teamsters/Mtg of State
wide Officials
California Trucking Assn
California 2000
California 2000: Briefing Memo
California 2000: The Elderly
California 2000: Preschool
Recommendations
California 2000: Press Conf.
California 2000: Toxic
Dump Sites
California: A Changing
Political Climate, a New
Century
296
Policy Imperative
California Senior Legislature 10/5/88
1987 Session/Tort Reform 11/11/89
(cover only)
Local Government and the 9/2 1/90
Challenge of Growth
Involvement Revisited 5/31/89
Reapportionment — Is There 5/24/90
A Need for Reform?
A Full Agenda 4/1/91
The 1990 's: Labor Renaissance 3/14/89
Academe: Crucible for Cultural 4/5/90
Diversity
Commencement Speech 5/28/87
1988 Ballot Initiatives 12/8/86
Reapportionment: Is There a 4/6/90
Need for Reform?
California 2000: Gridlock 11/17/88
in the Making
California 2000 ?
Transportation 3/14/88
The Elderly (speech only) ?
California 2000: Preschool ?
Recommendations
California 2000: Press Conf. 6/17/86
California 2000: Toxic 8/4/86
Dump Sites
California: A Changing ?
Political Climate, a New Century
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8/19/91
California: The Emerging
Superpower
California YMCA Model
Legislative & Court
California Young Democrats
Canpaign Finance Reform
Can Out-of -State Attorneys
Appear in CA Courts?
Annual Meeting
Celebrity Introductions
Center for Real Estate &
Urban Economics
Central California BAPAC
Central City Assn of LA
Cerrell's Political Science
Class
Cerrell's Political Science
Class
Cerrell's Political Science
Class (cover only)
Cerrell's Political Science
Class
Cerrell's Political Science
Class
Cerrell's Political Science
Chanter of Commerce Convention
Chart of Institutional
Characteristics for Major
California Ports
City of Seattle
297
California: The Emerging ?
Superpower
Young Leadership & California's 2/16/90
Future
Young Democrats — 4/29/89
California's Tomorrow
White Paper 1987
Can Out-of-State Attorneys ?
Appear in CA Courts? (no cover)
Air Quality—The Next Environ- 12/10/89
mental Hurdle
Misc. Celebrities 1988
California - An Uncertain 10/13/89
Future
The Power of Expectations 3/1/91
Election Results, etc. 6/15/88
Mass Media and Politics 4/30/85
Raising Money for California 10/27/87
Politics
Mass Media and Politics 4/21/87
1988 Elections: A New Low? 11/1/88
Analysis of the 1986 Elections ?
Political Parties, Campaigns, 12/12/89
and Elections
Health Insurance/Workers 3/28/89
Compensation
Chart of Institutional ?
Characteristics for Major
California Ports
The California Experience: 2/23/90
Managing Growth, Adapting to
Change
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8/19/91
Claremont University
coalition of Medical Providers
Colorado Civil Rights
Cotrnission
Oconunity College of Jewish
Studies
Conoordia Argonaut Forum
Conflicts of Interest/
Legislative Ethics
Congregation Beth Shalom
CCNPAC "48 Hours in Motion"
298
Foreign Policy and Black
America
Worker's Compensation: The
Aftermath of Reform
King's Legacy and the Future
of Black America
Black Jewish Relations
1987-88 Session
Campaign Reform
Independence of the Judiciary
Beyond the 1990's — A Look at
California's Cloudy Future
Constitution and Black America * Constitution and Black America
(three versions) (three versions)
Cooperative of American
Physicians
Health Care in California —
A Status Report
C.O.P.S. Endorsement Convention Law Enforcement Issues
Coro Fellows
California's Political Climate/
The Year 2000
Corporate Counsels of California Tort Reform
Corporate Counsels of California Insurance Crisis
CSAC
Trial Court Funding, etc.
CSEA Board of Directors Meeting Involvement in Political Process
CTLA
CTLA Convention
CTTA Convention
CTLA Initiative
(no cover)
CTLA Reception
Tort Reform
California 1988: Initiative
Warfare
Tort Reform
CTLA Initiative
Tort Reform
Data Processing Management Assn Information and Automation:
2/25/88
2/21/90
1/20/89
5/24/84
9/13/88
?
9/6/86
9/14/88
1987?
11/3/90
4/28/88
3/21/88
10/21/86
10/21/86
4/13/88
9/12/87
11/7/86
11/12/88
11/8/87
?
3/11/87
5/2/86
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8/19/91
Davis, Sammy Jr.
Delta Sigma Theta
Delta Sigma Theta
(cover only)
Demo Club - Various
Demo Foundation of San Diego Co.
(cover only)
Demo Women's Assn of the Desert
(cover only)
Democratic Convention - Orange
County (covers only)
Democratic leadership Dinner
Democratic National Committee
— Democratic Business Council
Deputy Legislative Counsel Assn
Detroit Assn of Black
Organizations
Desert Demo Club/Antelope Valley
Dia De La Bi-National Conference
Donahue, Phil Appearance
Drew, Charles R. School of
Medicine
Effects of Governor's Proposed
1987-88 Budget
18th Annual Seniors Rally
Elks Club
(cover only)
Klmhurst United Methodist Church
Enpcwerment in the 1990s and
Beyond (speech only - two
versions)
299
a Future of Mixed Blessings
Eulogy 5/17/90
Background Memo 7/9/88
Constitution of Black America 3/16/87
Campaigns 6/87
1988 Elections 9/9/88
California 2000 10/30/87
1988 Campaigns 1/30/SS
The Importance of Partisanship 9/10/89
1992 - Business as Usual? 8/2/91
Leg Counsel Deputies' Role 3/4/87
in the Legislature
The Condition of Black America 2/23/86
Today
Demographics/Background 6/28/87
The New Horizon 10/13/89
"For Women Only" 10/25/85
Commencement Speech 6/3/90
Effects of Governor's Proposed 1987
1987-88 Budget
Long-term Care and AARP 5/25/88
America in the 1980s 5/11/85
Enduring Institutions: 8/14/88
Black Family, Black Church
Empowerment in the 1990s and
Beyond (speech only - two
versions)
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- 12 -
8/19/91
Energy in the Year 2000
England, Ireland, Spain
Overview
Ervin, CQhen & Jessup
Essence Magazine Awards Dinner
Eta Phi Beta
Fat, Wing
Federal lax Reform Act of 1986
(speech only)
300
Energy in the Year 2000 1987?
England, Ireland, Spain 2/4/88
Overview
The Business of California 11/7/89
Is . . .?
Essence Magazine 11/21/87
Unity and Victory in '88 4/16/88
Coro Roast of Wing Fat 3/13/90
Federal Tax Reform Act of 1986 ?
(speech only)
Federalism in Insurance Reform Federalism in Insurance Reform 11/10/86
Federalism: A New Dimension
(speech only - five copies)
Federalism: The New
Ferrari Owners Club/Bay Area
54th Assm Dist/CC Demo Club
Filipino Demo Clubs
Flexible Packaging Institute
Florida Demo Party Conference
Florida Demo Party Conference
Floyd, Dick
Foreign Policy & Black America
(speech only)
Foreign Policy, International
Trade and the Budget Deficit
(speech only)
Federation of Retired
Union Members (F.O.R.U.M.)
FOXPAC
Friedman, Murray
Federalism: A New Dimension
(speech only - five copies)
History of Ferrari Automobiles
1986 Elections
1986 Elections
California: Politics on a
Grand Scale
Future of the Democratic Party
The Winning Team
Leg. Counsel Opinion, etc.
Foreign Policy in Black America
(speech only)
Foreign Policy, International
Trade and the Budget Deficit
Retirees: The Key to Politics 2/27/90
in the 1990's
Involvement Revisited 2/9/90
Black and Jewish Relations: ?
The Civil Rights Revolution
3/14/87
1/29/88
1/24/87
6/10/87
11/16/85
12/2/89
6/18/88
1988?
- 13 -
8/19/91
Freilich, Stone, et. al.
Friends of Richard Polanco
Gandhi Manor ial International
Pcundation
Gang Violence in California:
An Overview
Gangs and Drugs — an Overview
General Electric Gcvt Relations
Seminar
General Instrument Corp.
Gilliam, Earl B. Bar Assn
of San Diego
Glass Packaging Institute
Glass Packaging Institute
Golden State Minority
Foundation
Golden West Nutritional
Foods Assn.
Good Morning America Interview
Governor's Budget Response
Greater Erie Community Action
Coranittee
Greater San Diego Chairiber
of Commerce
Hannigan's Capital Forum
Breakfast
Harlem Renaissance Cultural
Event
Harris County Black Caucus
301
Local Government and the 10/5/90
Challenge of Growth
Polanco Labor Breakfast 2/2/90
Gandhi Background 10/3/88
Gang Violence in California 1988
An Overview
Gangs and Drugs — an Overview 1988
Workers compensation, etc. 4/20/88
Lottery 12/15/86
Keynote Speaker 11/3/90
Toxics/Recycling 7/12/87
Recycling/Waste Management 3/12/89
Pursuit of Excellence 1/29/87
Effectiveness in the Legislative 2/14/88
and Political Arena
The Reagan Civil Rights Record 8/11/88
Governor's Budget Response 7/9/87
Lost Causes: Black and Poor, 9/4/87
Reagan's America
Ports/Trade 3/16/85
California 2000: Gridlock in 5/12/88
the Making
Art in Black America 1/20/88
Black America: Public Policy, 10/8/87
Public Consensus
Harvard Law School Forum
Hastings College of Law
* Politics and the Press 10/2/86
African-Americans: Meeting 2/1/90
the Challenges of a New Decade
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8/19/91
Hawthorne Elementary School
Hayes, Thomas W.
Heron, Burchette
Hispanics Organized for
Political Party Equality
History of legislative Reform
and Reorganization in California
(briefing paper only)
Honda Executives
House Rules & Administration
Howard University
Howard University
Hundred Black Men of America
HWU Joint Legislative Conf .
IIMJ Legislative Conference
HWU Dedication Ceremony
Independent Insurance Agents
Independent Insurance Agents
of San Francisco
Indian-American Business
Leaders Function
Indian Dental Assn of CA
Industry Manufacturers Council
Information Industry Assn
302
Legislative Process
Memo re Thomas Hayes
1988 Elections
1990 — The Year of the Woman
Legislative Reorganization
8/3/88
9/15/88
8/18/88
11/2/90
1988
International Academy of
Trial Lawyers
International Association of
Credit Card Investigators
International Assn of Political
Consultants
1987 Legislative Accomplishments 1/21/BB
(cover only)
Legislative Reorganization 1988
Black Executives: A Triple 11/20/87
Challenge
Charter Day Award 4/1/89
State & Future of Black America 5/28/88?
CAL-QSHA 5/4/87
1989 - Year of Challenge 5/8/89
Harry Bridges 7/29/89
Insurance Reform 11/11/86
Public Policy and the 5/19/89
Business of Insurance
Involvement Revisited 4/7/90
Involvement Revisited 3/10/90
1987 Session Summary 9/16/87
California's Future: Growth 5/9/90
vs. Green
California Legislative Agenda 2/20/87
California — Recession Proof? 8/8/90
Jackson Candidacy and the 11/12/88
Future of Ethnic Politics
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8/19/91
International Assn of Wiping
Cloth Manufacturers
International Council of
Shopping Centers
International Fitness
Consultants
International Trade & Industrial
Development: The Role of the
(two versions)
Ireland Trip Briefing Memo
Irvis, K. Leroy, Retirement
Dinner
Isenberg Capitol Breakfast Club
Jackson, Jesse, 1984 Election
Results
Japan/Hong Kong Briefing Book
Japanese-American Bar Assn.
(cover only)
Japanese-American Citizens
League
Jewish National Fund of America
Jewish Public Affairs Committee
Joint Council of Teamsters
No. 42
303
Pursuit of Excellence
Involvement Revisited
The California Phenomenon
3/9/87
6/15/89
5/19/90
International Trade & Industrial
Development: The Role of the States
States (two versions)
Ireland Trip Briefing Memo
4/7/87
The Reagan Years: Retreat from 10/24/87
Civil Rights
Beyond the 1990s: A Look at
California's Future
Jackson, Jesse, 1984 Election
Results
Japan/Hong Kong Briefing Book
Tort Reform
Internment Background
Tree of Life Award
Budget Shortfall
Reapportionment: Is There a
Need for Reform?
12/6/88
4/9/87
9/24/87
1/15/88
6/30/88
9/19/87
5/24/88
3/30/90
Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue
Jones Memorial Church "Laity
Sunday"
Jones Memorial Church
Jordan, Barbara, Demo Women's
Caucus
Judicial System - Historical
Perspective
Tort Reform/Insurance Crisis 9/16/87
The Fire of the Spirit; Zeal 6/17/90
of the Faithful
The Plight of Black Children - 5/21/89
35 Years After
Future of the Democratic Party 10/17/85
Judicial System - Historical
Perspective
- 16 -
8/19/91
Junior Statesmen Simmer School
Kantor Luncheon
(cover only)
Karabian Group
Karabian, Wally
Kronick, Moskovitz, Workshop
Langston Bar Assn
(cover only)
Langston Bar Assn
Langston Bar Assn
Leadership America
Leadership Visalia
Legislative Reorganization Memo
Legislative Reorganization
Legislative Task Force Memo
Legislative Speakership
Leslie's Representatives
Roundtable
Life Magazine
Life Magazine
Life on the Water Drama
Presentation
London Trip Briefing Memo
Long-Tenn Care: A Public Policy
Imperative (speech only)
Los Angeles County Bar Assn,
Corporate Law Dept Section
Lost Causes: Black and Poor
in Reagan's America
304
Public Service/Career Options 8/2/88
Tort Reform 11/24/87
Search for Excellence 1/9/87
Bachelor Party 5/18/88
Implications of Prop 63 11/17/86
Constitution and Black America 2/28/87
Renewing the Struggle: Black 7/8/89
Men and the Law
Racial Equality and the 4/7/90
Changing Role of the Judiciary
Leadership in a Frontierless 11/1/90
Society
Making Policy, Making Law 4/20/89
Legislative Reorganization Memo 9/27/88
Legislative Reorganization Memo 11/18/88
Legislative Reorganization 8/17/88
Historical Overview 1988
Campaign Finance Reform 8/25/87
History of the Civil Rights 11/18/87
Movement
Voters in the New South 3/2/88
Zora Neale Hurston 4/9/88
London Trip Briefing Memo 8/9/87
Long-Tenn Care: A Public Policy 1988
Imperative (speech only)
Local Government & the
Challenge of Growth
Lost Causes: Black and Poor
in Reagan's America
11/2/90
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8/19/91
Louisiana-Pacific
MALDEF Press Conference
Mar in County Democrat Lawyers
Martin Luther King Awards
Luncheon
305
California's Timber Industry
English as Official Language
New York Primary Results
Rebellious Dreamer
Martin Luther King's Birthday Martin Luther King's Birthday
Martin Luther King's Birthday
Celebrations
McDonald's Restaurant Operators
MECLA 10th Anniversary
Memorial Day Speeches
Table of Contents (cover memo)
Memorial Health Services
Merritt College
Mid-Cities Independent
Insurance Agents
Milwaukie Times "Black
Excellence" Awards
Minority Area Metro Employees
Minority Economic Resources Corp
Mission National Bank
Moore, Gwen - Black History
Month
Morrison, Toni
Multicultural Prevention
Resources Center
Municipal Bond Ins. Assn.
NAACP - CA State Conference
Review of Parting the Waters;
Mississippi Burning
Involvement Revisited
AIDS: The Politics of an
Epidemic
Table of Contents (Cover Memo)
Budget Issues
Commencement address
Public Policy and the Business
of Insurance
Enpowerment in the 1990s and
Beyond
Empowerment in the 1990s and
Beyond
Rebellious Dreamer
Involvement Revisited
Foreign Policy and Black
America
Review of "Beloved"
AIDS Interview
Reagan's Fiscal Policy
Beyond the 1990s: A Look at
California's Future
12/15/88
5/11/88
4/21/88
1/10/86
1/15/88
1/13/89
6/6/89
5/9/87
5/28/88
6/9/89
6/13/86
4/13/89
2/17/89
7/30/88
1/12/85
6/2/89
2/25/88
4/6/88
1987
11/12/85
10/29/88
NAACP - Elmira Corning Branch * Two Black Americas: Separate 11/8/85
spch
- 18 -
8/19/91
NAACP - Ermis Branch
NAACP - St. Paul
NAACP - 35th Anniversary
Brown vs. Board of Education
NAACP - West Coast Region
NAACP Salt Lake City
Naral Rally
National Assn of Fleet
Administrators
National Assn of Hispanic
Publishers
National Assn of Minority
Engineering Program Admin.
National Assn of Real Estate
Brokers
National Bar Association
(cover only)
National Bar Assn
National Black Caucus of
State Legislators
National Black Staff Network
National Conference of Black
Mayors
National Conference on State
Legislatures
National Council of Negro Women
National Council of Negro Women
306
and Unequal
Two Black Americas: Separate 11/28/86
and Unequal
Bork, Robert 10/15/87
Anniversary - Brown vs. 5/17/89
Board of Education
Equality Through Unity 12/3/87
Two Black Americas: Separate 10/18/85
and Unequal
California — The Brightest 11/12/89
Point of Light
California Opportunities 5/2/88
The Changing Face of CA 8/3/88
Educational Equality - The 11/17/89
Equality Imperative
The Power of Expectations 2/22/91
Two Black Americas 3/28/87
Racial Equality and the 8/2/89
Changing Role of the Judiciary
November 7th. . .Black Tuesday? 12/1/89
Reagan Years: Retreat from 2/26/88
Civil Rights
Black Mayoral Races 4/7/89
Insurance Reform 12/12/86
Enduring Institutions: 4/30/88
Black Family, Black Church
Caring for Our Own: Black 3/11/89
Institutions, Black Strengths
- 19 -
8/19/91
National Council of Teachers
of College English
National Hampton Alumni Assn.
(cover only)
National Medical Enterprises
National Nutritional Foods Assn
National Review Article
National Urban League
Conference
New York Stock Exchange
Briefing Memo
Nowaday
Newsweek
Nolan's 41st District Club
Nolan's 41st District Club
Northern California Black
Women's Physicians
Northern California Psychiatric
Society
Ohio Black Caucus
Op-Ed for LA Times
Operating Engineers Local 3
Orange Co/Gardena Valley
Demo Club
Oregon State Party Dinner
(cover only)
Overseas Educational Foundation
Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn
Pacific Presbyterian
Center Video Conference
307
American Education: Neglect 11/21/87
of Literacy
Constitution and Black America 8/1/87
Health Care Issues 1/22/88
Diet and Health Issues/ 7/15/89
Legislative Involvement
Federal Deficit/World Peace 12/14/88
Speech Notes 7/23/86
Governmental Use Bonds and 2/18/88
Private Use Bonds
Voter Participation 1988
Canpaign Reform Fraud 7/13/87
Education Reform Movement 8/10/88
Challenges to California 9/1/87
Black Women's Physicians 11/13/87
Resolution
Mental Health Legislation 3/14/87
1988: Our Diversity is Our 6/17/88
Strength
Campaign Reform Initiatives 5/11/88
Reapportionment — Is There 5/19/90
a Need for Reform?
Deirographics/Background 6/25/87
Future of the Democratic Party 1/26/85
Chalker, Maryann 4/17/88
California: The Importance 2/26/88
of Trade
Medical Issues 4/22/88
spch
- 20 -
8/19/91
Pacific Telesis Group
Pasadena City College
Perm Workshop on Litter/
Recycling
Penninsula Sun Times - OPED
Personnel and Industrial
Relations Assn.
Phi Alpha Delta
Phi Delta Epsilon
Phi Delta Phi
Phi Delta Phi
Politics and the Press
(speech only)
Port Report - Conclusions
Professional Insurance Agents
of California
Proposed Reccmnendations of the
the Assembly Select Committee on
Insurance (fact sheet only)
Proposed California Legislative
Approach to Combat Gang Violence
and Drugs
308
Election Issues (Nov. 6, 10/19/90
1990 Election)
View From the Summit 10/11/89
Litter 5/21/86
Initiative Process 9/14/89
Involvement Revisited 6/1/89
Courts and Public Opinion 9/24/87
Health Care Issues 1/19/88
Supreme Court Elections 4/23/87
California's Confirmation 4/23/87
System
Politics and the Press ?
(speech only)
Port Report - Conclusions 1988
Art of Lasting Compromise 2/8/87
Proposed Recommendations of
Assembly Select Committee on ?
Insurance (fact sheet only)
Submitted to the House Select (?)
Committee on Narcotics Abuse
and Control
Public Policy Forum
Raising Money for California
Politics: The Argument for
Campaign Reform
Randolph, A. Phillip
(cover only)
Randolph, A. Phillip, Institute
Dinner
Randolph, A. Phillip Institute
Prevention of Substance Abuse 5/3/86
Raising Money for California ?
Politics: The Argument for
Campaign Reform
1986 Elections 5/7/87
Unity and Victory in '88 9/17/88
Hail to the Chief: The Life 3/18/89
and legacy of A. Phillip
Randolph
spch
- 21 -
8/19/91
Rather, Dan, Panel
Reagan Years: Retreat from
Civil Rights
Reapporticnment Conf.,
laguna Niguel
Redvrood City Rotary Club
Reelection to the Speakership *
Rent-A-Judge Program
Request for NCSL Funding
Resources for Independent
Living — Comedy Night
Retinitis Pigmentosa Dinner
309
Press and the Presidency 5/13/87
Reagan Years: Retreat from ?
Civil Rights
Reapportionment 7/16/89
Close of '88 Session 9/20/88
ReelectiQrL±o the Speakership 12/5/88
USofc 1 1990 ACCEPTANCE SPEECHES ALSOJ
Memo re Rent-A-Judge Programs 1988
Logitudinal Bilingual Study 5/1/86
Jokes 4/4/88
Robinson-Swartz Marriage
Rose Institute
Rotary Club of IA
Rules of the US House of
Representatives
Russell, Mark, Introduction
Sacramento Black Chamber of
Commerce
Sacramento City College
Cctnmencement
Sacramento County Day School
Sacramento Democratic Coalition
(cover only)
Sacramento Seminar Luncheon
Sacramento Press Club Luncheon
San Bernardino Black Culture
Foundation
San Diego Appearances
Retinitis Pigmentosa History 9/8/88
and Treatment
Marriage Ceremony 10/4/89
* A Rose by Any Other Name 6/3/89
UATINO POWERMENT)
California 2000 1/30/87
Legislative Reorganization 2/17/88
Russell, Mark, Introduction 1/6/87
Empowerment in the 1990s and 5/24/89
Beyond
Learning to be Free 6/9/89
Pursuit of Excellence 2/9/87
1986 Election Results 5/31/87
Health Insurance, Prop 103, etc. 3/3/89
2/25/88
California: The Importance
of Trade
Small Things; Close to Home 8/23/90
Health Insurance, Prop 103, etc. 3/10/89
spch
- 22 -
8/19/91
San Diego Chanter of Ocomeroe
San Diego Gas & Electric
San Francisco do. Dano Party
San Francisco Links
San Francisco Press Club
San Francisco Rotary Club
Election Day Luncheon
San Francisco Rotary Club
San Francisco Society of
Professional Journalists
San Joaquin Bar Assn.
San Mateo County Economic
Development Assn, Inc.
Sandel, Michael J.,
SB 241 Agreement
Search for Excellence
(speech only)
Send the Families to Korea
Shiley Management
Should English be the Official
Language of the US? (article)
SHOW Coalition
Smokeless Tobacco Council
Society of Insurance Brokers
Society of the Plastics Industry
Software consultants & Brokers
Solano County "Friends for
Jackson"
310
California: The Importance 3/16/88
of Trade
Close of '88 Session 9/9/88
Federalism & American Politics 4/28/89
1988 Elections 11/6/88
Campaign Reform 4/23/87
1990 Elections (Nov) 11/6/90
1986 Elections 11/4/86
Politics & the Press: A 4/19/90
Critique
Access to Justice 5/1/89
Regional Issues Require 4/4/90
Thinking: Seven Reasons Why
"A Public Philosophy for ?
American Liberalism"
SB 241 Agreement ?
Search for Excellence ?
Olympic Press Event 9/3/88
California 2000 10/20/88
Should English be the Official ?
Language of the US? (article)
Calif. Politics - The Action 9/19/89
is Here
What's Going on in California 11/8/89
Public Policy and the Business 2/23/89
of Insurance
California 2000 3/25/87
Federal Tax Laws 5/7/87
1988: Our Diversity is Our 5/20/88
Strength
spch
- 23 -
8/19/91
South Carolina Black Caucus
Southern California
Rehabilitation Exchange
St. Paul Hen's Day
St. Phillips College
(cover only)
State Bar Board of Governors
(cover only)
State Board of Education
State of the State
State Legislative Leaders
Foundation
Sterling's Capital Caucus
Luncheon
Stephen Wise Temple School
Stern, Robert M.
Stockton-San Joaquin Black
Chamber of Commerce
Stonewall Gay Demo Club
Sutter Community Hospital
(cover only)
Summary of 1987 Leg Session
Super Conducting Super Collider
Supreme Court Decision Memo
Tacoma City Assn of Colored
Women's Clubs (cover only)
Task Force House Rules and
Administration
Taxi Cab-Paratransit Assn
of California
311
South Carolina Politics 4/23/88
Survival of Rehabilitation: ?
Impact on Society?
The Plight of Black Children — 6/18/89
35 Years Later
Constitution and Black America 2/26/87
Overview of California Politics 3/7/88
Education issues 3/9/88
State of the State 1/2/86
Risk Assessment v. Risk 10/5/89
Free Society
California: A Cloudy Future 9/9/88
Legislative Membership Info 5/10/88
The Birth of a Loophole: 7/18/89
Why the 1974 Ethics Law
Exempted Legislators
Black America in the 1990s 1/20/90
— A Deadlilne Decade
The AIDS Epidemic Policy vs. 10/3/88
Politics
Medical Issues 2/2/88
Summary of 1987 Leg. Session 1987
(speech only/two copies)
Super conducting Super Collider ?
Abortion 7/10/89
Two Black Americas 5/8/87
Legislative Reform ?
California: A Changing
Political Climate, a New Century
spch
- 24 -
8/19/91
Technologylinic Symposium
Tenple Isaiah
Therapeutic Ocnnunities
Convention
Time Magazine
Time Newsmaker luncheon Series
Tobacco Institute
Tort Refornv'Insurance Crisis
Town Hall of California
Town Hall of California
Toxics
(speech only)
TransAf rica Forum
True Vine Missionary Baptist
Church
Tucker, Curtis
Tulane University & Amistad
Research Center Civil Rights
Conference
312
High Tech Legislation 9/16/87
Jesse Jackson 5/23/84
Substance Abuse 9/6/85
Interview with Toni Morrison 5/22/89
California 2000 3/6/87
Risk, Fear and American 8/8/89
Public Policy
Tort Reform/Insurance Crisis ?
(speech only)
California 2000: A Look to 4/27/90
the Future
South African Divestment 7/21/87
Toxics ?
Black Foreign Policy 6/5/87
The Power of Expectations 2/17/91
Eulogy 1988
Racial Equality and the 11/13/89
Changing Role of the
Judiciary
Turner, J. L. Legal
Association
Two Black Americas: Separate
and Unequal (six versions)
Tyson, Mike, and King, Don
U.C. AIDS Briefing
UC Berkeley
U.C. Berkeley
Racial Equality and the 5/4/91
Changing Role of the Judiciary
(8/2/89 spch to National Bar
Assn)
Two Black Americas: Separate 1987?
and Unequal (six versions)
Biographical info 4/4/89
AIDS 1/16/85
A Changing World: No One 9/7/85
Escapes the Impact
Political Science Graduation 6/20/7
— Speech Notes
- 25 -
8/19/91
UC Davis African-American
Graduation
UC Davis, Public Policy Forum/
Prevention of Substance Abuse
UC Santa Barbara Minority
Scholarship Luncheon
UC San Francisco
UC Student Association
UCLA Center for Afro-American
Studies (cover only)
UCLA School of Law: Seminar
on Law and the Political
Process
United Black Men of Fresno
Awards Banquet (cover only)
United Democratic Campaign
"Harambee — Making the
Journey"
6/17/89
United Democratic Club
of Inglewood
United Domestic Workers Union
United Domestic Workers Union
United Food & Commercial Workers
United Transport. Union Board
Unity and Victory in 1988
(two versions)
University of CA Student
Affirmative Action Conf
University of Michigan MLK
Symposium
University of Nevada, Black
Student Organization (cover only)
University of Nevada — Reno
Public Policy Forum/Prevention 5/3/86
of Substance Abuse
Uniformity in Education 9/17/88
King's Legacy in a World of 1/19/90
Peace
Educational Equity For All — 4/23/90
University in Crisis
Foreign Policy Speech 4/8/88
Proposition 140: Politics 2/22/91
and the Constitution
United Black Men of Fresno 4/25/87
Background memo
Campaign Kickoff 9/15/88
1992: Year of Challenge 3/30/91
Home Health Care 3/11/87
California: A Changing 3/16/88
Political Climate, a New Century
Labor Into the 1990s ?
CAL-OSHA, etc. 4/12/88
Unity and Victory in 1988 ?
(two versions)
Educational Equity - The 9/7/89
Equality Imperative
King's Legacy and the Future 1/15/89
of Black America
Two Black Americas 2/28/87
The Changing Role of the 1/19/89
American University
spch
- 26 -
8/19/91
University of the Redlands
Unruh, Jesse
Unruh, Jesse
Update of Media (Harvard) Speech
Urban Land Institute
Urban League of Cleveland
(cover only)
U.S. News and World Report
Vallejo-Benicia Demo Club
Valley Industry & Commerce
Association
Viewpoint Interview
Voters in the New South
(speech only)
Washington, DC Briefing Book
Washington, DC Briefing Book
Water Resources Issue Paper
Water: Sumnary of
Recommendations
Waters, Maxine, Black Women's
Forum
Waters, Maxine, Champions Dinner
Waters, Maxine, Champions Dinner
Weber State College
Wesley United Methodist Church
West Coast Black Publishers
314
Black Foreign Policy
Eulogy
Dedication of Memorial
Hearing Room
2/18/88
1988
1/7/88
Update of Media (Harvard Speech) ?
The National Political Outlook 11/4/88
and California's Future
Western Assn of Educational
Opportunity Personnel
Two Black Americas 4/5/86
Dan Quayle 1988
The Knights of the Rose 5/26/89
and the Dreaded Gerrymander
Health Care in CA — A Status 10/18/90
Report & Article
AIDS 10/24/85
Voters in the New South ?
Washington, DC Briefing Book 4/87
Washington, DC Briefing Book 4/21/89
Water Resources Issue Paper ?
Water: Summary of ?
Recommendations
The Jackson Candidacy and the 12/16/88
Future of Black Politics
Celebrity Background 4/25/90
Celebrity Background 4/13/88
America in the 1980s 5/9/85
Do All the Good You Can 1/10/88
Black America: Public Policy, 10/22/87
Public Consensus
The California Phenomenon 3/6/89
spch
- 27 -
8/19/91
315
Western Burglar and Fire Alarm
Assn.
Western Burglar and Fire Alarm
Western Mobilehone Assn.
Wilberforoe University
Will, George
Wilson, William Julius,
Briefing Memo
Wonen In Action
Women's Political Summit
Women's PAC Summit Meeting
Workers' Compensation Memo
Workers' Compensation Update
(no cover)
World Federation of Right-to-
Die Society
World Trade Commission
Wrong Tribe
(speech only)
Yolo County Demo Club
Young Presidents Organization
(cover only)
Youngstown Area Urban League
(cover only)
33rd District PTA
1986 Agenda
1987 Legislative Session Summary
(five versions)
1988: Our Diversity is our
Strength (speech only - two
versions)
1987 Legislative Accomplishments 12/18/87
(cover only)
California's Changing Political 12/1/89
Process/Involvement Revisited
Summary of 1987 Session 11/10/87
Education and Black America 8/5/88
Dan Quayle 1988
The State and Future of Black 3/7/89
America
Dreaming the Dream 6/4/89
Reapportionment — Is There a 3/17/90
Need for Reform
1990— The Year of the Woman 8/18/90
Workers' Compensation Memo 8/11/86
Workers' Compensation Update 7/8/88
Right-to-Die Initiative 4/8/88
California: The Emerging ?
Superpower
Wrong Tribe ?
(speech only)
Future of the Democratic Party 10/11/85
California 2000 5/19/88
Two Black Americas 3/28/87
CA 2000 3/12/87
1986 Agenda 1935
1987 Legislative Session Summary
(five versions)
1988: Our Diversity is Our ?
Strength (speech only - two
versions)
spch
- 28 -
8/19/91
316
APPENDIX B
Illustration h\ Sandra H
One-on-one
with Willie
Brown
30
CALIFORNIA JOURNAL
317
San Francisco's
mayor has been
on the job now for
two years. How
does he size up
his performance?
by James
Richardson
Editor's note: He served as speaker
of the Assembly longer than any
other legislator in history. But that
was another life. Now, as mayor
of San Francisco, Willie Brown
must call upon a whole different
set of management skills. It h. isn't
been a smooth ride, and he hasn't
been as roundly beloved a.s he-
might have wished. Let's just say
that, in the City By the Bay, with
its informed and savvy electorate,
the kind of deal-making Brown
indulged in as Top Cat of the Capi
tol doesn't go down so well.
As ruler of The Dome, for ex
ample, Brown may have tucked
dozens of feathers like Treasure
Island into his natty cap. But in
San Francisco, try a simple thing
like build a power monopoly and
take care of your friends and what
do you get? Exposes, outrage, back
lash, barbs from the press and, of
all things, a wrist-slap from a civil
grand jury that says the mayor
needs more oversight. Such a dis
play of blasphemy would have
been unimaginable in Sacra
mento. But enough about that. On
this particular day, in a sit-down
interview with biographer James
Richardson, Hizzoner discusses
the less treacherous aspects of his
relatively new role in government.
In a wide-ranging chat, Brown
talks about his city, his role in the
Bay Area region, his relationship
with Dianne Feinstein and his dis
dain for campaign financing re
form. The interview took place in
May 1998 in Brown's temporary
office across the street from City
Hall. It was interrupted once — by
a visit from Arnold Palmer.
James Richardson: Hun da \<>n
irhiil it mis like l<> /*• xf
Willie Brown: It's far easier being
speaker of ihe Assembly than being
max or of this lily, anil I suspect ol
.ilinnsi .my oilier cilv Hut particularly
lliis cily Thi.- level ol political mvolve-
meni In even, person who take-- a
bivaih ol life in this city is jusi increil-
ihle I suspei'l that at birth. insieaJ ol
receiving a Social Security number.
nevvlv>rns receive membership in a
political oigani/aiion or neighbor! looil
club. Anil ihey are expected to begin ii >
participate when they enter their 1'irsi
organi/eil sdi<x>l activities. Anil ii makes
for a great, great challenge. Your skills
anil management anil cajoling people
inio consensus is much more dillicult
anil much more challenging in San
Francisco than it ever was in the Legis
lature.
You also have a lot less flexibility
builuei-vv isc. You cannot pay people
AUGUST 1998
31
what they're worth. and you cannot
reduce people who are not worth it it
they are already at a certain level You
cannot assign people to jobs that are
comparable and consistent with their
talent, nor can you remove people
who. if they preceded you. are not
talented. Tenure is the most important
factor for consideration in assignments
and employment in city government.
And so that presents a major challenge,
because many times you are operating
or attempting to operate government
and do jobs and services with the
wrong players in positions. And that
makes for a great challenge. So overall.
it is a far more difficult task, it is a far
more challenging task. But it is also
equally as enjoyable.
JR: Are yon fn isl 'rated icitb it*
WB: On some days, of course
you're frustrated. When you see things
that you ought to be able to change
overnight and you cannot, it is annoy
ing as hell.
One example: the municipal trans
portation system. You would want to ...
correct it overnight, but it takes three
years to get one new rolling stock, one
new bus. That's how long the produc
tion process takes. It's not like there's a
bus parking lot down in San Mateo
County where you can go bring them
right in. Nobody carries an inventory of
buses, so if the bus system has been
denied its replacement on a regular
basis, you inherit that and it could take
up to three years to replace just one of
318
those vehicles. In the mean
time, you have to live with
this inadequate, old, anti
quated, unreliable equip
ment as you go about try
ing to change the system.
And that's very frustrating.
It's the same when you
attempt to change the per
sonnel, the training mecha
nisms, just the selection pro
cess It takes sometimes up
to six months to get people
through the labryrinth of
the civil service system, to
get people on for employ
ment. It's no wonder [that]
you carry more than a hun
dred vacancies in the pub
lic transportation system
alone, simply because you
can't fill [them]. And when
you do commence to fill,
you can only do "x" num-
IXT of persons for training purposes at
a time. That makes for an annoyance.
And the same goes in almost every
other category of city government. But
again, if you really are in this business
to l>e a problem-solver, you know that
it was a Cakewalk at the state level
versus almost impossible at the city
level.
JR: As'! watch from afar, it almost
seems like death by a thousand cuts,
tfith welfare recipients screaming, as
you mention, ereryone is politicizing
the city . . .
WB: It could be if you would let it.
If you would commence to bleed on
each one of these disappointments ...
you would have a problem. But I don't
take that stuff with me, and as a result,
it's of no great concern to me that the
welfare folk would be out there scream
ing, because they're wrong. And as
long as I'm comfortable that they're
wrong, I'm prepared to debate with
them on any circumstances.
Just as challenging, for example,
the taxi cab drivers will be around
screaming today. They don't want any
more taxis on the streets when obvi
ously, everybody alive knows that you
do need more taxis on the streets of San
Francisco.
JR: You still have a lot of friends in
the Legislature. John Burton 's the Sen
ate president pro tern. Seems that you
still have a lot of influence.
WB: I talk to them almost every
day. I talked to John yesterday, I talk to
[Assembly Speaker] Antonio
iVillaraigosa). I talk to everybody up
there. I talk to [Assemblyman] Kevin
Shelley [D-San Francisco]. I even talk to
Republicans. I owe [Assemblyman] Pe
ter Frusetta [R-Tres Pinos] a return call
from Friday. I talk to [Assemblyman]
Curt Pringle [R-Garden Grove], I talk to
[Senate Minority Leader] Ross Johnson
[R-Fullerton]. I talk to [Senator] Jim
Brulte [R-Rancho Cucamonga]. I talk to
members regularly. Because the city
has issues in Sacramento that have to be
dealt with. I talked to [Senator Charles)
Calderon [D-Whittier] yesterday.
JB: How are you using your influ
ence as a major state leader?
WB: I'm doing the best I can on
behalf of my city. I'm not doing any
thing else, frankly, statewide. Occa
sionally the League of California Cities
will ask me to become involved in
something, and I readily agree. But
otlienvi.se, I'm really confining my ac
tivity to the needs of this city and the
region.
JR: What are you doing in the
region'
WB: \Vell. because of all the trans
portation issues yesterday I spent rwo
hours with CalTrans discussing the Bay
Bridge design and the timetable for
implementation I had [Metropolitan
Transportation Commission] here as
well. Two weeks ago, I journeyed
down to San Jose to participate in a
regional conference about water trans
portation and about the prospects for
ferry systems. Last week, I met with
some representatives of Bay Trade and
the Bay Council on the question of
petitioning the Department of Com
merce for some additional money to be
used on a regional basis for interna
tional trade. So I'm very much involved
in regional activities.
JR: Is San Francisco resented by the
rest of the region? Do you have to cut
through a certain amount of static to be
able to be present, or is being Willie
Brown enough?
WB: You got to do the politics. And
I've been doing the politics, particularly
with [Oakland Mayor] Elihu (Harris] and
[San Jose Mayor] Susan Hammer and
the mayor of Half Moon Bay. In Millbrae,
I do the outreach. I spend time with the
BART Board of Directors, doing what I
used to do in Sacramento. I talk to them
32
CALIFORNIA JOURNAL
319
colleague-to-colleague. I'm not yet as
successful as I want to be, because I've
not yet gotten the ports really talking to
each other about what ought to be
common for them. I haven't gotten the
airports really talking to each other
about what ought to be common to
them. But you do have to ... remove
some of the crust of opposition to San
Francisco that's been there for a very
long time.
We also have persons who repre
sent both Marin County and San Fran
cisco in the Legislature and persons
who represeni San Mateo County and
San Francisco in the Legislature. And
many times those agendas conflict and
confuse them. Particularly on transpor
tation issues, and that makes for tension
when you don't have your legislative
delegation on the same page Ix-cause
of their need to Ix- independent on
behalf of others they represent
JR: An- YOU able l<> bridge sunn1 of
that'
WB: So far. yes. I've Ix-en success
ful at it.
JR: Is San Francisco, hyriiiueofits
history, its economic engine, is it really
ibc place' that />r/> to lead the Hay Arc-it
for the Bay Area to gel WMMt'MvfvJV.*
WB: In some things, but I don't
think San Francisco, with its small popu
lation base, can command that I think
performance may entitle us to it on
some occasions, particularly with refer
ence to the current makeup ol the
\Vhite House. San Franci.sco has a link-
more clout because both Dianne
Feinstein and Barbara Boxer make San
Francisco the center ol then activities
And when the president and vice presi
dent come in. they literally go only two
places — San Francisco or Silicon Val
ley. And in many cases, the Silicon
Valley people actually live in San Fran
cisco.
JR: Speaking of Dianne Feinstein.
you had some tension uitb her in tin-
test couple of years. Has that cleared
up?
WB: I try to work with Dianne
Feinstein. She is still a little bit distant
because she supported my opponent
[Frank Jordan], and 1 think she would
have preferred the opponent and I'm
not sure she's changed her mind in that
regard. This office works closer though
with Barbara Boxer simply because
there's a commonality of philosophy
and activities. But we don't take a
backseat to anyone in Dianne's office.
We've [also] got Nancy Pelosi, who
is like a dynamo, period. We have
almost like a staffer in Nancy, whether
it's the new federal building or money
for the light-rail system on Third Street
or for the ramps and the transbay
terminal. Nancy has been the point
person doing all of that. Barbara has
been the point person trying to get ... a
legitimate amount of money for [re
pair of earthquake damage at] City
Hall.
JR: I find your current relationship
ii'ith Feinstein interesting in that she
really started on your ticket. You u>ere
itith her in her goivrnor's race ...
WB: The very first. I was the very
first person holding an elective office to
have endorsed Dianne Feinstein [inl
1969. and she won the right to head the
Board of Supervisors with my system.
And when Clint Reilly dumped her ...
while she was still in the hospital when
he was her campaign manager in the
1990 governor's race, in a meeting held
with the late Duane Garrett. Dick Blum.
Dianne Feinstein and me at Harris'
Steak House on Van Ness Avenue, we
talked her back into the race, and then
I proceeded to get even one of the
members of the Legislature except
maybe two or three to endorse her
candidacy against [then-Attorney Gen
eral John] Van de Kamp I got the trial
lawyers to buy Dianne Feinstein's can
didacy.
In 1992. 1 was equally as involved
in Dianne's race. I'm the one thai put
together thai statewide group ol [house!
parties. \V'e tried to put a thousand
house parties together throughout the
stale of California all at the same hour
on (he same day for the purpose of
raising money and raising conscious
ness of Dianne Feinstein's existence. I
don't frankly know why at this stage of
our political careers, we're not as close.
JR: VC^hat do you think of the recent
primary?
WB: Politics is becoming the place
where a young person coming out here
from Texas seeking public office could
not run if this were 30 years ago with
the same set of circumstances; 1 could
noi run. The combination of all this
political reform on the fund-raising side
and the caps on expenditures and the
justifiable suspicions about anybody
who takes great dollars from any single
source — all that has contributed to the
poisoning of contributions. The Clinton
1996 campaign didn't help matters at
all, the stuff they did to collect money
and the aftermath of that and all the
investigations. It's destroyed giving to
candidates as a proper way to partici
pate in the political process. We evolved
to where only Bill Gates and Bill Gates
types can run for public office. And
that's a scary thought.
Gray Davis was the best prepared
candidate in the [gubernatorial primary),
including Lungren. Yet, he was the
least-financed candidate. He has no
money of his own. He has never done
anything in life but run for public office
or hold a public office or work in the
public capacity. He has not married
[wealthy!, and he didn't put together a
merger of some airlines and walk off
with slock options People who ... are
able to spend [millions from their own
pockets] obscure the process and the
images so badly that they become the
only eligible, viable candidates I'm
praying that Gray reversed that.
JR: />; }*>u lhi nil campaign- ft nance
lairs need to kind of l>e repealed'
WB: They ought to Ix- scrapped.
The requirement ought to Ix- you. Willie
Brown, a candidate for public office,
have 10 report every nickel you receive
and report how you spent even.' nickel
And it should be a forfeiture of office il
one nickel of that is spent for personal
purposes or inaccurately reported
JR: And /list leai'e it at thai'
WB: And leave it at that and let the
public draw conclusions about you
taking huge sums of money.
JR: One final (jueslion Yon told
California Journal some years back ibai
Willie Brown is like a cat. and a cat
tuivr jumps higher than a cat can
jump Hotrhigb are you going tojump'
WB: You may write the second
version of your book. And it would Ix-
called "The Mayor."
James Kicbardson covered Capitol
politics in Sacramento for The River
side Press Enterprise and The Sacra
mento Bee. His unauthorized biogra
phy of Willie Brown was published by
The University of California Press in
1996. He currently is a divinity student
at the University of California, Berkeley
You may e-mail Mr. Richardson c/o
editor@statei iet.com fa
AUGUST 1998
35
320
INDEX- -Willie L. Brown
ABAC (Association of Bay Area
Governments), 226
abortion, and politics, 187, 221,
234, 244, 266
acupuncture, 146
Adams, John, 27, 71
African Americans, 1-23, 27-28,
45, 126, 219
in the assembly, 127-128, 148-
151
black power movement, 108,
197, 200-201
and business, 76
and discrimination, 55-57, 66,
95
fair housing, 65
and politics, 35-38, 69-73,
78-80, 93, 109, 129, 141,
158, 189-196, 217, 220, 271,
273, 274-276
aging, 34, 46, 93, 145
Agnos, Art, 173, 195, 205, 208,
211, 213, 216, 281, 282
agriculture, 105
AIDS
funding for, 230-232
legislation, 258
organizations, 196
Air Quality Control District, 226
Alameda-Contra Costa County
Transit District, 226
Alameda County, 227
Alatorre, Richard, 211, 218
Alice B. Toklas Political Action
Committee, 196
Alioto, Angela, 195
Allen, Don, 108
Alpha Phi Alpha, 27, 30-32
Alquist, Alfred, 119
apartheid, legislation, 258
appointments, 38, 79, 92-93, 283
judicial, 44, 218, 220
Arabian, Armand, 259
Areias, Rusty, 183, 268
Arguelles, John, 219
Armenians, and politics, 154
Ashcraft, Hale, 105, 139
Asian Americans, 36, 57, 66, 191-
192
immigrants, 83-84
and politics, 79, 93, 154, 283
Assembly, California, 38, 47, 206
Agriculture Committee, 105
and candidates, 88, 109-110
Criminal Justice Committee,
222
Democratic Caucus, 99, 127-
128, 166
freshmen, 104-105
Education Committee, 148
Finance and Insurance
Committee, 129, 260
Government Efficiency and
Economy Committee, 119-121,
127
Government Organization
Committee, 127
and the governor's office, 187
Health Committee, 148, 260
Human Resources Committee, 180
Housing and Urban Develpment
Committee, 180, 185
Judiciary Committee, 150
Legislative Representation
Committee, 119, 121
Local Government Comittee, 142
Office of Research, 117
organization, 212, 216, 260-
269
outreach, 174-177
Public Utilities and Commerce
Committee, 121
Reapportionment Committee,
149, 218
Revenue and Taxation Committee,
146, 156, 158, 216
Rules Committee, 124, 129,
149, 150, 260, 263
Social Welfare Committee, 155
321
Assembly, California (cont'd.)
Speaker's office, 41, 87, 101-
104, 106, 127-130, 147-148,
154-155, 165, 208, 213-215,
217, 222-225, 246, 263, 267
staff, 115-118, 135-136,
137, 155, 183-184, 185-
186, 196, 214, 217
and redistricting, 72, 119
Transportation Committee, 148,
180
Ways and Means Committee, 124,
129, 132-140, 142-143, 149,
150, 155, 216, 263.
See also Legislature
Atkinson, George, 50
Austin, Jerry, 272, 273, 276
automobile safety, 64, 168;
insurance, 1883
Auto Row demonstrations, 95
Bagley, William, 105, 135, 137,
139
Baker v. Carr, 107
Baker, Bill, 244
ballot measures, 243. See also
propositions by number
Bane, Tom, 124
bar association, 257, 258
BAPAC, 69-70
BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit
District), 225
Bashford, Wilkes, 170, 171-172
Bates, Tom, 170, 186, 280
Baxter, Marvin R., 259
Bay Area Pollution Control
District, 226
Bay Guardian, 77, 162
Bay Vision 2000, 225
BCDC (Bay Conservation and
Development Commission) , 226
Beaver, Jefferson, 65, 76
Bee, Carlos, 129
Beeman, Joe, 35
Bergson, Marian, 195
Berkeley, politics, 130-131
Berman, Howard, 148, 149, 152-
153, 154, 205
try for speaker, 208, 209-
212, 214, 216
Berman, Jack, 96, 125
Berman, Michael, 153, 154, 210
Beverly, Bob [ck] , 155
Biddle, Craig, 104
Bierman, Arthur, 80
Bierman, Sue, 35, 80, 90
Bird, Rose, 220, 243, 254
Black Caucus, 109, 148, 150
Black Leadership Forum, 196
Black Muslims, 198
Black Panthers, 108, 198-199, 201
blacks. See African Americans
Blake, Bill, 70
boat people. See immigrants
Boatwright, Dan, 155, 157-158,
178-1798
Bolton, Art, 281
bootlegging, 5
Bradley, Tom, 190, 219
Brand, Frank, 35, 80
Brand, Joan Finney, 79
Brandon, Everett, 56
Brian, Earl, 138
Bridges, Harry, 34
Britschgi, Carl A. [Ike], 102
Bronzan, Bruce, 281
Brough, John, 276
Broussard, Allen, 218-219
Brown, Al, 45
Brown, Blanche [nee Vitero, wife],
55-56, 68, 79-80
Brown, Edmund G., Jr. [Jerry],
54, 141, 145-146, 240, 241-243
as governor, 181, 196, 202-
203, 218-219, 220, 232
Brown, Edmund G., Sr. [Pat], 38,
67, 102, 106, 108, 113-114, 121
144, 254
Brown [Willie] family, 1-30
Brown, Lewis, [father], 5
Brown, Ron, 272, 276
Brugmann, Bruce, 77
budget, state, 116, 139, 140-141,
143, 180
appropriations, 145
322
budget, state (cont'd.)
deficits, 187-188, 234
trade items, 231-232
Burke, Yvonne Brathwaite, 108,
109, 127, 128
Burns, Hugh, 205
Burton, Bob, 32, 34
Burton, John, 32, 34, 35, 36, 39,
44, 68, 71, 124, 152
election to assembly, 92, 94
as assemblyman, 101, 104, 105,
107, 113, 129, 133, 135-136,
149-150, 185, 222
and Democratic Caucus, 128
and politics, 155, 210
Burton, Mrs. John, 94
Burton, Phil, 33, 34-35, 36, 74,
104, 125
and appointments, 92-93
as assemblyman, 38-39, 71,
137
and redistricting, 72, 153-154
and elections, 73, 75-76, 79
strategies, 110-113
Burton, Sala, 35, 69
Bush, George, 115, 174, 214, 275
business, and government, 161-
162, 168-169, 176
and minorities, 249
and politics, 41, 58-59, 63-
64, 112, 225, 234, 236, 244,
280
Bussey, John, 32
Busterud, John, 79
Butler, A.B. , 31
Caen, Herb, 170-173
Calderon, Chuck, 267-268
California Democratic Council,
67-68, 87, 124-125
California Department of
Transportation [Caltrans], 89-
91, 100, 242
California Highway Commission, 91
California Highway Patrol, 51-52,
221
California Medical Association
[CMA], 63
California Transportation
Commission, 182
campaign finance, 47, 58, 74-75,
88, 93, 94, 105, 112, 204;
expenditures, 210, 238, 241
contributions, 127, 132, 166,
175, 253, 259, 273
reform, 243
reporting, 39-42, 164-165, 242
campaign consultants, 80, 238-
239, 277-279
campaign reform, 41, 240-242
candidates, 210
development, 88, 194-195
Carpenter, Paul, 254, 283
Carroll, Tom, 108
Carville, James, 277-278, 279
Catholics, in San Francisco, 36,
70
Chacon, Peter, 129
Chappell, Charlie, 108, 139
children's services, 100, 116,
137
Chinese, in San Francisco, 66
Christopher, George, 35
civil rights, 55, 88, 220
as campaign issue, 95
legislation, 120, 198
trials, 96-98, 199
coalition politics, 93
Collins, Anna Lee [Mo 'dear,
grandmother], 1-7, 11-14, 19-
20, 22, 29, 36
Collins, Minnie Boyd [mother], 1-
2, 12-14, 19, 22-24, 29-30
Collins, Rembert [Itsy, uncle],
2, 18-21, 24-25, 29
Collins, Richard [Baby], 18
Collins, Ruby, 19, 25, 29
Collins, Son, 18-19, 30
Colored Methodist Episcopal Church
[CME], 7, 12
Common Cause, 165
community input, 91, 99, 173-176,
233, 234-237
computers, 153, 239
Conant, Marcus, 231
Condit, Gary, 263, 268
323
conflict of interest, 162, 163,
175n, 240-241
Congress, U.S., 250, 268
Connelly, Robert, 115n, 135, 137,
263
Conrad, Charles, 123, 139
conservatives, 34, 70, 105, 123,
137, 167, 200, 205-206
right-wing, 114, 137, 138-139,
177, 243-246, 259
constituents, 137, 143, 178, 183,
188-189, 206, 278
Constitution, 251
consumer issues and organizations,
64, 100, 120-121, 220
Contra Costa County, 245
CORE [Congress on Racial
Equality], 189
Coro Foundation, 110
corruption, investigation of,
246-254
Cory, Ken, 129-130, 136
Council for Civic Unity, 65, 67
courts, 159-162, 188, 190, 193,
219, 236, 243
and politics, 220-221, 251-
252, 254, 258-259, 285.
See also judges
Cranston, Alan, 271-272, 276
Crawford, Frank, 21
criminal justice, 200
Crown, Robert, 127, 128
Cuomo, Mario, 272, 273
D'Agostino, Carl, 210
Davis, Gray, 283
Dearman, John, 35, 53-55, 68
death penalty, 221, 222, 258,
261, 266
Deddeh, Wadie, 211
Delancey Street Foundation, 83,
281
Dellums, Ron, 130
Democratic National Committee,
276
Democratic party, Democrats, 33-
37, 54, 68, 189
caucus, 88-89, 126, 129, 150,
155, 211, 262, 263, 265
conservative, 102, 125, 128,
129, 130, 148, 154, 260-261
county central committee, S.F.,
70, 80
and elections, 113, 124, 147,
190, 209-210, 269, 272
and the governor's office, 203
Green Caucus, 58
in the legislature, 87, 103,
123, 135, 148, 178, 204,
216, 222, 245
liberals in, 71, 125, 129, 131
old guard, 70
platform, 67-68
and Republicans, 246, 257
and the speakership, 155, 215-
216, 260-269
state central committee, 92,
195.
See also Young Democrats
demonstrations, civil rights, 95-
98, 201
dentists, dentistry, 64, 122
Department of Transportation, CA,
89, 90-91
Deukmejian, George, 141, 219,
231, 232
as governor, 247, 248, 258,
259
diversity, 108, 217, 220
Dixon, Julian, 150
Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 114
Downtown Association, 37
Dukakis, Michael, 270, 273, 274-
275, 276
Duke, David, 211, 279
Dunlap, John, 127
Dunleavy, Hal, 80, 94
Duplissea, Bill, 283
Dymally, Mervin, 109, 125, 190
earthquakes, Loma Prieta (1989),
90-91
Eastin, Delaine, 281
324
Eaves, Jerry [Gerald], 183, 268
economic development, 76, 82, 249
education, 7-9, 14-15, 17, 21,
25-27
finance, 143-144, 145
and public policy, 116-117,
198, 233-235
election campaigns, 39, 155, 196,
261
1956, 33-34
1960, 34, 114
1962, 71-73, 78-81, 114
1963 mayoral, 36
1964 assembly, 81, 89, 90-97,
1001, 103
1966, 71, 78, 109
ballot measures, 108
1970, 113, 129
1972, 152
Democratic convention, 59
1974 gubernatorial, 147, 179,
240
1978, 243
1980, 208-211
1982, 216, 260
1984, 271-272, 277
1986, 276
1988, 266-268, 270, 272-276
1992, 271, 283
fundraising, 204, 246, 262
techniques, 70-71, 75-76, 80-
81, 93, 153-154, 210
volunteers in, 90, 209,
See also propositions, by
number
Elliott, Ed, 108
employers, 224, 280
employment, 280-281
discrimination in, 65, 95
state, 182, 193-194
Energy Commission, 283
Environmental Protection Agency,
California, 117
environmental issues,
organizations, 81, 89, 93,
141-142, 183, 224, 226, 234,
244, 284
Epple, Bob, 267
Equalization, Board of, 283
Erickson, Betty, 35
Erickson, Bob, 35, 80
fair employment, 65, 126
fair housing, 65, 126, 190
Fair Political Practices
Commission, 117, 175n, 250,
253-254
Farrell, Douglas, 109
Federal Bureau of Investigation,
246-247
federal government, loan
guidelines, 82-83
election law, 113
funding, 145, 226
investigations by, 246-250
Feinstein, Dianne, 117
Fenton, Jack, 103, 128, 129, 133
Field, Mervyn, 173
Filipinos, 122
finance, state revenues, 145-146
Finance, Department of, 133, 134
fire protection, 60-63
Flournoy, Huston, 105, 139
Fong, Matt, 283
Foran, John, 155
Fowler, Wyche, 276
Francois, Terry, 47, 65, 76
Freedom in Information Act, 256
freeways, 81, 89-91, 95, 100
Fleming, Tom, 76, 78
Free Speech Movement, 97-98, 108
Furth, Fred, 50
Gaffney, Ed, 72-73, 87, 89, 95,
101
gambling, 19-20
Gang of Five, 260-270
gay community, 196, 283
Garrett, Niles, 79
get-out-the-vote campaigning, 81,
270
Gianturco, Adriana, 182, 242
Gilliam, Earl, 45
Garry, Charles, 96
George, Ronald M. , 259
325
Gibson, D. G. , 130
Gillick Brothers [builders], 66-
67
Goff, Charles E., 51-52
Goggin, Terry, 222
Golden Gate Transit System, 225
Golden State Warriors, 160
Goldwater, Barry, 114, 137
Gonsalves, Joe, 128, 129, 148
Goodlett, Carleton, 65, 75-78
Goosby, Zuretta, 36, 76
governor, governor's office, 91,
138-139, 140, 203, 256-258, 269
Grodin, Joe, 220
Greeks, in San Francisco, 36
Green, Leon, 46
Greene, Bill, 108, 109, 125
Greene, Leroy, 209
Griffin, Herman, 72
growth management, 224-230
Haines, Frederick Douglass, 37,
65
Harkin, Tom, 277
Harris, Gene, 283
Hallett, Carol, 214, 215, 216
Hallinan, Vincent, 55
Hallinan family, 34
Hannigan, Tom, 174
Hardy, George, 35, 71
Harris, Elihu, 60, 212
Harvey, Trice, 265
Health, State Department of, 231
health care, 10-11, 63-64, 122,
137, 138, 138, 145
insurance, 281-282
legislation, 183, 230
universal, 223-224
Hicks, Al, 72
Hill, Frank, 247
Hispanic Americans, 191
and politics, 93, 103, 149,
217-218, 220, 266
Honig, Bill, 80
Horn, Clayton, 53, 65
Horton, Willie, 275
House UnAmerican Activities
Committee, U.S., 96
housing, 82
affordable, 224, 228
discrimination, 55-57, 65-68
Howden, Ed, 65
Hu, Jackson, 79
Hu, Wayne, 79
Huff, Jesse, 232
human services, 84-86, 123, 221
Hunter, Jim, 2
insurance
auto, 100
health, 224
ILWU (International Longshoremens
and Warehousemans Union), 57,
71
Imbrecht, Charles, 283
immigrants, 83
Internal Revenue Service (IRS),
250
Irish, in San Francisco, 35-36,
70, 154
Isenberg, Phil, 116-117, 125,
135, 137
issue politics, 139
Italians, 125, 154
in San Francisco, 35-36
Jackson, Jesse, 270-279
jails, 224, 227
Japanese, in San Francisco, 66
Japantown, 57
Jarvis-Gann. See Proposition 13
Jewish community, 65, 66, 122,
150, 152, 154, 171, 259
Johnson, Lyndon, 114
Johnson, Ross, 176, 214, 216,
242-243, 246, 265, 267, 268
Jones Methodist Church, 29, 54
Jordan, Frank, 150, 173, 282, 283
judges, 45, 48-49, 161, 162, 221
appointment of, 218-219, 257-
259
and the legislature, 144, 252-
253, 256
mass civil rights trials, 96-
98. See also courts
326
Judicial Nominees Evaluation
(Jenny) Commission, 257
Junior Achievement, 110
Justice Department, 253
Kahn, Doris, 35, 80
Kahn, Jacob, 35, 80
Kailatha, Frank, 35
Kaiser, 80
Karabian, Walter, 107, 129, 133
Katz, Richard, 183
Kaus, Otto, 219
KDIA, 128
Keene, Barry, 148
Kemp, Jack, 139
Kennard, Joyce L. , 259
Kennedy, John F., 114
Kennedy, Joseph [Judge], 32, 37-
38, 71
Kennedy Kelly, Susan, 35
Kent, Roger, 80
Kern Coounty, 265
King, Don, 70
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 271
KNBR, 80
Knox, John, 127, 128, 141, 142,
150, 204, 240
Kopp, Quentin, 122-123, 162, 177,
243
Kortum, Karl, 35, 80
Kortum, Jean, 35, 80
KSOL, 128
Kuchel, Thomas, 137
labor unions, 34-35, 36, 37, 39,
66, 76
building trades, 70
and housing, 57
and legislation, 100, 179, 184
and politics, 71, 73, 80, 93,
112, 210, 273
Lanterman, Frank, 123, 139, 141,
142, 145, 186
law, lawyers, 26, 45-55, 109-110,
199, 219, 257
legislators' law practice,
158-165
and politics, 266
pro bono work, 54, 95-98
law enforcement, 221-222, 247-
248, 250-251, 253
leadership, 31-32, 59, 60, 66,
69, 109, 115, 120, 133
legislative, 178, 203, 204,
221, 246, 263, 269
legislative analyst, office of,
133, 134
legislature, legislation, 67,
100, 105, 113, 136-137, 142,
161, 182, 183-185, 200-201,
224-225, 248-249, 258-259, 266,
281-282
bipartisanship, 123
and courts, 220, 255-256
hearings, 143
and local government, 60-63,
74, 174, 175, 228
organization, 87-89, 178-182
reform, 176
staff, 174, 179, 246-247, 265
and state budget, 91.
See also Assembly
Lempert, Ted, 267
Lewis, Reggie, 272
liberals, 58, 93, 105, 124
left, 100
Livingston, Don, 139
lobbying, lobbyists, 36, 63-64,
119, 184-186, 188, 193, 284
local government, 141, 143, 146,
174, 224-225, 227-228, 237.
See also San Francisco
Los Angeles County, 218-219, 229
City College, 23
politics, 149, 262
and redistricting, 107
schools, 235
Los Angeles 2000, 229
Los Angeles Times, 168, 253
Lucas, Malcolm, 219, 254, 259
327
Maddy, Ken, 155, 22
Malone, Bill, 33, 34, 70
Manuel, Wiley, 218
Marino, Johnny, 103
Maritime Union, 57
Manuel, Wiley, 45
Marguth, Gil, 209
Marin County, 225, 227
Marks, Milton, 71, 72
marriage, and politics, 68
McAteer, Eugene, 144
McCarthy, Joseph, 250
McCarthy, Leo, 70-71, 148, 154,
213
election campaigns, 211
interest in higher office,
204, 216
as speaker, 155-156, 178, 180,
197, 203, 205-207, 212
McMillan, Lester, 120-121
Meade, Ken, 108, 155
Medfly, 242
media, 37, 56, 74-78, 106, 119,
128, 154, 229, 232, 239, 250,
261, 274, 284
opposition from, 162-170, 175
press, 253, 255, 263-264, 265,
273
radio and television, 176-177,
275
Medi-Cal, 79, 137-138, 145, 187
Meese, Ed, 199-200
Meharry (medical) College, 77
Men of Tomorrow, 70
mental health services, 145, 186
Metropolitan Transportaton
Authority, 226
Miller, John, 108, 109, 128-131,
150, 155
minorities, 122
in the legislature, 88, 103,
108, 249
set-asides for, 249
and politics, 273, 274
Mockler, John, 115-117, 121, 135,
144
Monogan, Robert, 105, 139
Montoya, Joe, 177, 242, 254, 268
Moore, Gwen, 249
Moretti, Bob, 103-104, 107, 124-
127, 132
campaign for governor (1974),
147-148, 154-155
election as speaker, 127-130
as speaker, 133, 136, 138,
141, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155
Morrison, Jack, 34, 35, 36, 80,
94
Morrison, Jane, 35, 80, 94
Mo's Kitchen, 171
Mori, Floyd, 209
Moscone, George, 35, 36, 71, 92,
117, 154
Mosk, Stanley, 92-93, 255
Murphy, Frank, 105
Murphy, Joanne, 115, 183, 229,
230, 231
Murray, Willie, 267
NAACP, 66, 189
National Rifle Association, 201,
234
Naylor, Bob, 215, 246
negative campaigning, 95, 114,
238-243, 278
Nixon, Richard M. , 114, 138, 195
Nolan, Pat, 246, 264-265, 268
Noll, Chuck, 50
Nothenberg, Rudy, 79, 116-117,
153
Oakland, California, 201
1991 fire, 60-61
freeways, 90
Oakland Raiders, 49-50, 160
Oakland Tribune, 168
O'Connell, John, 72
Orange County, 195, 229-230, 267
Panelli, Edward J., 259
Papan, Lou, 129, 155
Pattee, Alan, 108
Peace, Steve, 268
peace movement, 273
328
Peninsula Housing Coalition, 67
Peripheral Canal, 209
Perot, Ross, 214n
Petris, Nicholas,
philanthropy, 84, 110, 171
Pittsburgh Steelers, 49-50
political consultants, 80, 238
political corruption, 242
polling, 80, 94-95, 173-175, 261,
279
Poole, Cecil, 38, 160
poor people, 57, 58, 83, 84-86,
138, 144, 145
port authorities, 227-228
Porter, Bill, 80
Post, A. Alan, 133
Priolo, Paul, 155
Proposition 1 (1973, tax
limitation) , 124
Proposition 9 (1974, legislative
ethics), 162, 240-241, 243
Proposition 13 (1978, tax
limitation), 62-63, 123, 146,
216, 236-237, 243-244
Proposition 14 (1964, fair
housing) , 190
Proposition 68, 243
Proposition 73 (1988, campaign
spending reform), 177, 243
Proposition 98 (1988, public
school funding), 233-234
Proposition 140 (1990, legislative
operating costs), 89, 269
progressive politics, 77
prostitutes, in court, 52-53
public accommodations act, 88
public employees, 100
public right to know, 40
public trust, 242
Public Utilities Commission, 226
Quinn, Frank, 65
race relations, 67, 126
racial discrimination, 122, 258
racial minorities, 34, 35, 36-37,
193
and politics, 71, 128, 195,
218, 244, 249, 275.
See also African Americans
racism, 66, 102, 274, 275
radical politics, 79, 130, 139
Ralph, Leon, 109, 149, 151, 155
Reagan, Ronald, 108, 113-114,
121, 123-124, 137-139, 140,
144, 145, 173
as governor, 187, 198, 214
and elections, 147, 195, 243
as president, 232
real estate industry, 66-67
reapportionment . See
redistricting
redevelopment, 82-83
redistricting, 38, 72, 103, 194,
216, 217, 254, 269
1966, 107-108
1970-1972, 113, 153-154
1974, 179
regional government, 141, 223-
224, 225-230
religion, 29, 36, 54, 57, 65, 70
and government, 184
religious right, 114
Republicans, Republican party,
71, 80, 137-138, 195, 257, 259
in the assembly, 103, 105-107,
123, 127, 135, 139, 186, 261
and elections, 88-89, 147,
190, 209, 266, 267-268
conservative, 144, 243-246,
258
in the legislature, 111, 179,
222, 232, 245, 249
and the speakership, 126, 155,
204-205, 211-216, 263-266,
268-269
support for education, 233
Reynoso, Cruz, 220
Richardson, H.L., 201
Richmond, California
politics, 158, 178
port of, 228
schools, 235
Riles, Wilson, 190, 198
329
Robert!, David, 107, 232
Roberts, Bill, 114
Robbins, Alan, 254
Roff, Hadley, 283
Rollins, Ed, 214-215
Roos, Mike, 212
Ross, Ritchie, 279
Rumford, Byron, 32, 109, 130
Sacramento Bee, 197
Sacramento State University, 230
St. Anthony's Dining Room, 58,
59, 81-84
San Diego, 229-230, 259, 279
Sanford, Terry, 276
San Francisco, 18, 20, 172, 225
Bayview district, 67
board of supervisors, 70-71
city hall, demonstrations at,
96
politics in, 33-38, 39-40, 54,
58, 73, 154, 173, 187, 195
fair housing ordinance, 55-57,
65-67
Fillmore district, 57, 67
Forest Knolls district, 66
Golden Gate Park, 81, 89-90
Haight district, 67
Hunter's Point district, 57,
67
Ingleside district, 57, 67
mayor's office, 117, 282, 283
Municipal Railway, 226
Pacific Heights, 80
Sunset district, 67
schools, school board, 36-37,
282
transportation, 226-228
San Francisco Call-Bulletin, 37
San Francisco Chronicle, 37, 75,
168
San Francisco Examiner, 37, 75,
175
San Francisco News, 37, 75
San Francisco State College, 25-
33, 44, 54, 66, 139, 199
veterans at, 29, 31
San Mateo County, 225
Santa Clara County, 225, 259
Santana, Charlie, 2090
Schuman, Adolph, 58-59, 84, 92
Schuman [Silver], Jo, 84
secrecy, in government, 255-256
self esteem, 261
Senate, California, 107-108, 119,
205-206
Senate, U.S., 276
Serrano v. Priest decision, 143-
144
SEIU [Service Employees
International Union], 35, 71
Shelby, Richard, 276
Shelley, John, 36
Sher, Byron, 186, 222, 284
Short, Alan, 123
Sieroty, Alan, 127
Sierra Club, 81
Silbert, Mimi, 83
Simon, Bunny, 80
sit-in demonstrations, fair
housing, 55-56, 66-67
Smokeless Tobacco Council, 175n
Solomon, Gabe, 45
Solano County, 227, 228
Sonoma State [California State
University, Sonoma], 28
southern California, 141-142,
143, 205
special interests, 179, 182, 183-
184, 284
Spencer, Stuart, 114
Spencer, Vaino, 69
Stanford University, 23-24
Stanton, William F., 101
state government, funding, 91,
282
Stone, Oliver, 247
student-protest movement, 130
Sullivan, Ray, 135
Sun-reporter, 76-78
Sutton, Percy, 272
Tatum, Jack, 50
330
taxation, 137, 145-146, 182, 232,
282
equalization, 144, 236
limitation, 244-245
term limits, 282, 284-285
Texas, 46, 66
Dallas, 12-15
Mineola, 1-17, 19, 21, 23, 27
Prairie View A&M College, 21-
22
SMU [Southern Methodist
University], 22-23
Thai community, 83
Third AME Church, 65
Thomas, Clarence, 115
Thompson, Steven, 115-117, 121,
135, 137
Thurman, John, 211
Thurman, Nate, 160
tobacco industry, 175
Torres, Art, 211
transportation, 141, 224-226,
227-228
Transportation, Department of,
100, 182, 193
Travis, Benjamin, 43, 44, 45
Tucker, Curtis, 211, 214
Umberg, Tom, 195
University of California
admissions, 190-192
Berkeley, 28, 31, 44, 77, 97-
98, 199
employment, 193
Hastings Law School, 39, 43-
46, 83
Regents, 197
San Francisco, 231
Unruh, Jesse, 73, 74, 87, 101-
103, 104, 106-107, 109, 136
as speaker, 112-113, 119-121,
124, 132
and Democratic party, 125
gubernatorial campaign, 1970,
126, 148
urban issues, 137, 144, 145
Urban League, 189
Van de Kamp, John, 243
Vasconcellos, John, 107, 212,
260-261
Veneman, John, 105, 137, 139
Viacom, 176
Vietnam community, 83
volunteers, in politics, 90
voter registration, 70, 73, 81,
84, 94, 270, 272, 276
voting patterns, 75, 113, 206,
279
Waldie, Jerome, 123
Walters, Dan, 265
Warren, Charlie, 32, 127
Warren, Earl, 220
Washington, Harold, 271
Washington, T.J., 32
waste management, 226-227
Watergate, 147, 179
Waters, Maxine, 193, 212, 218,
272
Waters, Norm, 268
Waxman, Henry, 148, 149, 153, 210
welfare, 139, 233, 261, 277, 280-
281
Williams, Cecil, 171
Williams, Joseph, 76, 79
Williams, Sam, 218-219
Wilson, Lionel, 32
Wilson, Pete, 105, 111, 173, 191,
230, 233, 234, 235, 258-259,
279, 283
Wofford, Harrison, 271, 277
women, and politics, 68-69, 111,
176, 196, 209, 220, 273
in government, 182, 183, 246-
247, 249, 259
workers compensation, 282
World War II
shipbuilding, 18
veterans, 2, 19, 31
Wright, Donald, 220, 254
Young Democrats [clubs], 54, 68,
87, 125, 270-271
331
YMCA [Young Mens Christian
Association] , 30
Z'berg, Ed, 155
Zenovich, George, 126
Zschau, Ed, 276
Gabrielle Morris
Graduated from Connecticut College, New London, with
additional study at Trinity College and Stanford
University.
Historian, U.S. Air Force. Research, writing, for
University of California, Bay Area Council of Social
Planning, Joint Center for Political Studies, Berkeley
Unified School District, others. Coordinator, California
State Archives Government History Project, University of
California, Berkeley, component, 1986-1990.
Project director, Bay Area Foundation History Projects
(1974-1977, 1986-1995), UC Black Alumni Project (1984- ),
Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Era Project (1979-1990),
Volunteer Leaders Series (1978- ), Cutter Laboratories
Project (1972-1974).
Interviewer-editor, Regional Oral History Office, 1970-
present. Specialist in state government history, Bay
Area community concerns; focus on key participants'
perceptions of selected administrative, social, economic,
and political issues in California 1938-present.
Consultant, Women's Suffrage 75th Anniversary Project,
League of Women Voters of the Bay Area. Author, Head of
the Class: An Oral History of African-American
Achievement in Higher Education and Beyond, Twayne
Publishers, 1995.
8272B
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