“She certainly started off with a bang. Having run for president myself three times — she’s certainly doing better than I was doing.”
— Former California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), quoted by the Palm Springs Desert Sun, on Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) presidential campaign rollout.
California Sunday Magazine: “Written off in his youth as a New Age dilettante, Brown now finds himself the wise man of American politics… On the defining issue of our time, climate change, he has assumed the mantle of alt-president, traveling to Europe and Asia, insisting the United States will not abandon its commitments.”
“He leads an unabashedly liberal state, whose high taxes, government activism, embrace of immigration, and thriving economy serve as a rebuke to the current occupant of the White House.”
“Yet he refuses to align himself with the anti-Trump resistance… He never has fit neatly into any camp, but never before has he commanded so much influence.”
“For the past two years, California Gov. Jerry Brown has been aggressively recruiting other state and local governments to sign on to their own, sub-national climate pact,” Politico reports.
“But that campaign has taken new urgency under President Trump, who announced Thursday that he’ll withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. It’s a reflection of the roiling conflict between the president and the nation’s most populous state, but also the ambition of a governor who, after a lifetime in politics, is seizing an unexpected opening on an international stage.”
Washington Post: U.S. states and major companies break with Trump’s decision to exit climate deal.
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California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) isn’t ruling out out running for president in 2020, The Hill reports.
Said Brown: “I’d be 82 then. Don’t rule it out.”
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has tapped House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (D-CA) to be the next attorney general of California, the Los Angeles Times reports.
He will succeed Kamala Harris, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November.
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who feuded bitterly with Bill Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign, endorsed Hillary Clinton in an open letter, calling her nomination the “only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump,” the Sacramento Bee reports.
“If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country. By the way that is a joke. We don’t like walls, we like bridges.”
— California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), quoted by the Sacramento Bee.
“Now I’m kind of surprised that I’m still here and three more years to go. That is, unless I take my surplus campaign funds and put a ballot initiative on the November ballot to allow fourth-term governors to seek a final, fifth term. Heh heh.”
— California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
“All I would say is, ‘Don’t smoke marijuana when you’re using your gun.'”
— California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), quoted by the San Jose Mercury News, refusing to comment on two potential ballot propositions.
“The email thing, it has kind of a mystique to it. You know, an email is just an utterance in digital form. But it has some kind of dark energy that gets everybody excited… it’s almost like a vampire. She’s going to have to find a stake and put it right through the heart of these emails in some way.”
— California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), speaking to NBC News about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State.
“Running against Hillary is like running against Jerry Brown in California.”
— California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), quoted by the Washington Post.
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) “will almost certainly never be president of the United States, a fact that disappoints no one so much as Jerry Brown himself,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“The main reason is his age: 76. If Brown were, say, 10 or more years younger, he would doubtless be in the thick of speculation over the 2016 contest and a serious contender for the Democratic nomination.”
“When Jerry Brown first served as governor of California, he set out to reshape the powerful California Supreme Court by appointing its first female chief justice. But his pick, Rose Bird, had never served as a judge before and came to be perceived as a liberal ideologue,” the New York Times reports.
“Ms. Bird, along with two other judges Mr. Brown named to the court, was recalled by voters in an election in 1986.”
“Nearly 40 years after he made that selection, Mr. Brown is again seeking to remake a court that to this day is viewed by legal scholars as among the most influential in the nation, with one study proclaiming it the state court most followed by other appellate judges. And once more, the ever-unconventional Mr. Brown is roiling the waters with a series of head-snapping, if decidedly more applauded, choices for this tribunal.”
Huffington Post: Brown issues 105 pardons
“It might have been the neatest political trick of this election season — Gov. Jerry Brown’s ‘non-campaign’ for a historic fourth term that wasn’t really a non-campaign at all, yet managed to hide all the trappings of a traditional political run,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
“From Brown’s TV spots for a pair of Mom-and-apple-pie ballot measures to his lone, low-key debate with Republican opponent Neel Kashkari, the plan by a team of veteran San Francisco strategists was to push the governor as ‘the reasonable father figure’ rising above the divisive politics that engulfed the rest of the nation.”
“Less than two weeks after winning a fourth term,” California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) “plans to collect more money for his reelection committee Monday at a Sacramento reception with lobbyists and their clients,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“The event is unusual. Typically, candidates who continue to raise money after being elected do so to retire campaign debt. But Brown, who coasted to reelection, appears to have none to repay. As of Oct. 18, the governor still had nearly $21 million in his reelection account, according to the committee’s most recent finance statement.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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