Narrowly defeating Republican gubernatorial nominee Houston Flournoy in 1974, Edmund G. (“Jerry”) Brown, Jr., son of former Governor Pat Brown, ushered in a more progressive variant of the politics of limits. If Ronald Reagan evoked the materialistic, cowboy image, Jerry Brown’s persona by contrast was that of a self-denying, Zen philosopher who rather than living in the governor’s mansion resided in a rented room, with his bedding on the floor. Instead of being chauffeured in a Cadillac like his immediate predecessor, he chose a Plymouth sedan. Unlike the folksy, parochial, detail-averse Reagan, Brown was an aloof cosmopolitan - having graduated from UC Berkeley in classics and from Yale Law School - known for his impressive command of policy matters. A former Jesuit novitiate, the new governor was a bachelor and public intellectual, who had served on the Los Angeles Community College District board of trustees, and then as California’s secretary of state.
A pragmatic political liberal and independent thinker, Brown understood that the times called for reducing public spending and maximizing the use of limited resources. Wide-ranging in his reading, he thought highly of British economist E. F. Schumacher’s book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973). The volume was a minor classic, persuasively making the case for reducing consumption of goods, buying locally produced foods and other products, and for economies serving residential communities rather than profit-focused corporations. Fortunately for Brown, as he went about implementing his approach of enlightened austerity, Democrats enjoyed majorities in both houses of the state legislature and in California’s congressional delegation. They also held most of the higher administrative offices in Sacramento. In short, the governor could count on considerable support for his policies from the apparatus of government.
Policy-wise, Brown’s first term was more progressive than his second. The Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 provided safeguards for the United Farm Workers Union. To ensure enforcement, Brown appointed Rose Elizabeth Bird to the Agricultural Labor
Figure 13.2 Edmund G. ("Jerry”) Brown, at his 1961 UC Berkeley graduation, being congratulated by his father, Governor Edmund G. ("Pat”) Brown. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
Relations Board. In 1977 he installed her as chief justice of the state supreme court, making Bird the first woman to serve on that tribunal. He appointed more women, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans to high state office than any other governor in California history. Business leaders balked when Brown placed conservationists on the Air Resources Board and the Energy Commission. To maintain wilderness areas and provide young unemployed workers with jobs, Brown established the California Conservation Corps. Though implemented without tax increases, the governor’s policies did not solve the stubborn problem of unemployment in California, driven as it was by a nationwide recession.
Brown’s attempt to gain the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 failed, as he won primaries in only a few states. He tried again in 1980 but President Jimmy Carter’s incumbent status posed an insurmountable barrier.
Meanwhile, Brown had won reelection to the governorship in 1978, handily defeating state Attorney General Evelle Younger by more than a million votes. In response to conservative critics, Brown appointed pro-business people to a number of commissions and
Departments. To increase California’s share of the burgeoning Pacific Rim economy, Brown traveled to Japan, Canada, and Mexico. Envisioning an economic windfall from satellite technologies, he urged a major role for aerospace and electronics companies in planning for space colonization, for which Chicago journalist Mike Royko dubbed Brown “Governor Moonbeam.” Royko later apologized publicly for so caricaturing Brown. Regarding the criminal justice system, Brown approved bills meting out harsher penalties for those convicted of violent crimes. Like his father, however, he opposed capital punishment while reluctantly agreeing to follow the law regarding its imposition. The governor’s 1977 veto of a bill reinstating the death penalty was trumped a year later by voters’ passage of an initiative reestablishing it. State funding for public higher education, including community colleges, more than doubled during his governorship.
During Brown’s second term California’s public sector was hit by a taxpayers’ revolt, of far-reaching consequences. In 1978 Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann founded the United Organization of Taxpayers to place an initiative on the ballot - Proposition 13 - aimed at preventing property tax increases. The measure limited taxes on both residential and commercial properties to 1 percent of the assessed value, and restricted tax increases for both types of properties to 2 percent per year, using 1975 valuations as the baseline for assessments. Reassessments could occur only in the cases of improvements or sale, and any new taxes would require a two-thirds vote in the state legislature rather than the then required simple majority. The proposed constitutional amendment easily qualified for the ballot. Brown and many other officeholders opposed the measure when it was introduced, warning that it would benefit those possessing apartments and other businesses more than homeowners, undercut government services, force layoffs of state workers, and result in severely underfunding public education at all levels. Later developments, after Brown left the governorship, proved the validity of many of these warnings, especially after per-pupil spending in the K-12 system declined dramatically and the state’s physical infrastructure began to deteriorate. With a well-publicized $3.5 billion surplus in the state treasury, accumulated by Brown’s austerity, voters felt that funds were more than adequate to pay for state services, such as public education, maintaining highways and bridges, staffing parks, and carrying out numerous other functions. After Proposition 13 passed overwhelmingly in 1978 and became law, the governor found favor with it, acknowledging that it was compatible with his “era of limits” thinking. The two-thirds super-majority required to increase state taxes would remain a contentious political issue for decades afterward.
In addition to the taxpayers’ revolt, Brown’s second term was dogged by a controversy regarding the use of chemical pesticides to combat an infestation of Mediterranean fruit flies that threatened commercial crops in the Santa Clara Valley. Initially, the governor sided with residents fearful of the health effects of aerial spraying and supported ground spraying as an alternative and the use of sterile fruit flies to block reproduction. At this point, President Ronald Reagan imposed a quarantine on all California produce, thereby forcing Brown to resume aerial spraying. The fruit fly controversy damaged the governor’s standing with both the public and business interests in California.
Another battle shaping up during Brown’s second term was waged over affirmative action, that is, the policy of government agencies giving preferential consideration, often through quotas, to underrepresented minorities in admission to public universities, hiring,
And letting contracts. Allan Bakke, a white student, was twice rejected when applying to UC Davis’s medical school though each time minority candidates with grade point averages and test scores below his were admitted. This was due to the university’s policy of reserving 16 percent of its seats for incoming students for underrepresented minority applicants. Seeing this as reverse racial discrimination, Bakke sued and won at the state level and in the U. S. Supreme Court decision, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), resulting in his admission. While not prohibiting the university’s use of race as a factor in admissions, racial quotas were outlawed. Brown kept a low profile in the controversial Bakke matter, which some voters saw as an indication that leadership in the governor’s office was lacking.
World History
