Good reminder of how our governors over the past several years have not kept up with infrastructure needs, for some reason still mysterious though we try to solve it as it relates to dams, in our 2006 research report on our website www.arpps.org .
Dan Walters: Democrats shunning Pat Brown
By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PST Monday, January 15, 2007
Democrats have occupied the California governorship for just 25 years since 1900 and, in the main, their four governorships were somewhat lackluster.
The first of the four, Culbert Olson, was the only 20th-century governor to be denied a second term, losing in 1942 to Republican Earl Warren. Jerry Brown (1975-83) had a well-deserved reputation for flakiness and policies that were wrong-headed in the extreme (such as stopping highway construction). Brown's gubernatorial chief of staff, Gray Davis, was risk-averse and was recalled in 2003 after five years in office, having presided over energy and budget crises.
That leaves Jerry Brown's father, Pat, who was elected in 1958 and was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1966 while seeking a third term. Pat Brown is clearly the class of the four, having demonstrated admirable vision and courage in championing massive public works investments to meet the demands of a fast-growing population (a legacy that son Jerry largely shunned, oddly enough).
It's no wonder, then, that when Democratic politicians cite the Democratic governors they most admire, the list begins and ends with Pat Brown, which is why his portrait hangs in a place of honor outside the state Assembly chambers while that of son Jerry is in a rarely visited corridor of the Capitol.
Pat Brown's name and his legacy of public works investment are invoked frequently by the Capitol's politicians, and not just by Democrats. Given that tendency, isn't it a little odd, even hypocritical, that the Capitol's Democratic politicians are almost unanimously opposing a revival of Brown's most important public works project, the State Water Plan?
