"No. Your father's doing it," Dee says. "Let's go
over what you'll say." She hands him an outline. Jerry scans
it. "I will look at these things, but I'm not gonna follow it."
Jerry almost never uses notes, cards or plans a talk in advance.
"Make sure you say it's great to be back, with the party. You're
the golden boy coming home."
"I have a problem with that language," Jerry says.
"Never mind the language. It's a feeling. Positive. Joyous."
Jerry turns to her. "Dee, the whole point is that the 500 people
meeting in that room are not connected to the 20 million people out
there who are not participating."
Jacques Barzaghi, Jerry's friend and mentor—dressed in black,
with shaved head—intervenes. "People keep asking you to
start a third party and you say no. You want to work through this
party."
Dee adds, "There are new faces at the convention. The grass-roots
fund you started, all the things you did as chairman to democratize
the party are continuing."
"OK," Jacques says, squeezing Jerry's shoulder. "After
Maine, New Hampshire, it's good to be home." Jerry punches his
fist in the air.
Home. I have been following Jerry Brown's presidential campaign—one
of the strangest, most chaotic and creative political journeys in
memory—since January of 1991. My friend Jodie Evans invited me
to a meeting when Brown was beginning to plan what was then a race
for the Senate, a race she'd been asked to manage. I was not a fan
of Brown, but I am a student of human dramas and I went to the meeting
with the idea that I might chronicle how a politician plots his course.
In the 18 months that followed, I watched Jerry Brown go from dark
horse to luminous contender, then be slapped down into a black hole
only to emerge, now, on the eve of the California primary, on a road
with an even more ambitious and seemingly impossible goal: the establishment
of a grass-roots movement that will transform the way politicians
are elected and government governs.
Many of Brown's proposals have been adopted by his rivals—term
limits by President Bush, "taking back the country" by Bill
Clinton, the 800 number by Ross Perot. But when lie began developing
them, they seemed tentative and fuzzy, if not loony.
On that first night in January, 1991, I found Jerry and eight advisers
sitting in the family room of Jodie's home, a sprawling, warm Spanish
house in Santa Monica tilled with art and comfortable furniture. Everyone
was wearing jeans, sweaters, sneakers, except Jerry, who wore a brown
suit and tie and brown loafers.
Jerry said he wanted to build a grass-roots campaign that would draw
new people and get them "excited and alive." The key, he
said, was to limit campaign contributions to $100. He was met with
startled looks. "With telemarketing," he said, "we
get 10,000 people to donate a hundred dollars each. That would raise
a million."
The room exploded with people objecting: It won't work. You're tying
your hands. You'll never raise enough. You can't win an election on
a million dollars. One man said, "The government already limits
contributions to a thousand. The difference between a hundred and
a thousand is not that significant."
Another man said, "You'll be beholden to more people—to
every schmuck who gave a hundred dollars, instead of a thousand. You
can be had for less." Everyone laughed.
Jerry said, "That's kind of cynical."
Jacques said, "This is a joke. Jerry."
They went on to discuss which of the two vacant Senate seats he should
try for. The consensus was that Jerry could beat the field in a primary
but not take the general. "I don't see a liberal strategy succeeding,"
one consultant said.
Jerry said that would not deter him. He wanted to speak out, stir
up debate. "If I don't run, what do I do? Go back to Japan?"
He'd heard of a politician in Minnesota who drove around speaking
from a battered bus. "Maybe," he said, loosening up, "I
get a high-tech bus with a dish on top that says 'Moonbeam.'"
I went home that night and put my notes in a drawer. I found Jerry
remote and his ideas out of touch with reality. The race he was planning
had all the earmarks of a lost cause, and I was wary of investing
my time.
Jodie began the campaign from her house, using her own phone and
fax machine. It was not her first time out: She had worked on Jerry's
campaigns since 1973 and ran his office for a year when he was governor.
She invited me to fund-raising parties and meetings for volunteers,
which looked like Birkenstock Nation—women in flowing dresses
and men with ponytails. I kept my distance.
Jodie was unfailingly positive. Jerry had switched his goal, in August
of '91, from the Senate to the presidency, and hit the road. While
the press dismissed or ignored him, she said, when he spoke to groups
of people, they responded strongly. "Whatever happens, we win,
because we're touching people with our message."
Then Brown began to win — in Maine and Colorado — until
the Democratic field was down to two and Brown beat Clinton in Connecticut
in March. I remember waking up after his victory feeling awed by what
they had accomplished. In the face of ridicule and dismissal, of general
agreement that Brown had no chance, they had, as one volunteer put
it, "played an impossible game with the intention of winning."
Some great wind was blowing, Jerry had caught it and I kicked myself
for not having seen it. I had been offered a window seat on a presidential
campaign and had not taken it. I telephoned Jodie and asked if it
was too late to come to the party.
APRIL 4. Three days before the New York primary. Swarms of jerry's
friends, family and advisers have flown in: Tom Quinn, a media consultant;
Kathleen Brown, Jerry's sister and California's treasurer; Patrick
Caddell, a pollster who worked for Jimmy Carter; Richard Goodwin,
who wrote speeches for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
All agree that New York is "make or break." Goodwin says,
"If he gets New York, he gets the nomination. If he loses, he
can still go on, but . . . ." He shakes his head.
An afternoon rally draws 10,000 people to the Upper West Side. Jerry
is in peak form, plunging into the crowd with no Secret Service agents,
no escorts except Jacques and a couple of staff members.
Jerry gives the crowd his speech about "We the People—taking
back our country" and lashes out at Clinton as a "bobbing,
weaving target that has no moral compass."
When he leaves the stage, the press flies at him like a swarm of
bees. Jerry will speak into any microphone. His staff can't control
him, so he zigzags down the street, taking the swarm with him, while
his friends shout in vain, "Governor! This way!"
The Brown campaign is run largely by volunteers, which leads to chaos
and disorganization that are legendary. Schedules are improvised at
the last minute. Vans get lost. The candidate gets lost. Supporters
are stood up, which makes them quit in a rage. Some of the top staff
members have refused to vote before, let alone work in politics. When
people call Jodie to complain that "these are amateurs,"
she responds: "Right. That's what Jerry wants."
In New York, Don Lesser, an attorney from San Francisco, has been
flown in to take charge of the schedule. Late on Saturday, he is still
conferring with staff about Sunday. "I think we should do the
debate with Clinton in the morning. It's our last chance to get in
a killer blow."
Joyce Hamer, a black volunteer from New York, says, "We gotta
go to church. We got to." A volunteer from Georgia agrees. "Sunday
is always reserved for black churches."
Hamer starts calling preachers in Harlem, but Lesser is considering
whether Jerry should skip church to rest and prepare for the debate.
"We've got him running all over the state Sunday. He's gonna
die. He's gonna look like s--- on TV."
Don McDonough, a pollster, says, "There's two days to go! Give
him some makeup."
Lesser has another idea. "Feel free to crap on this, but I'd
like to see Jerry teach a high school class. Talk to children about
what 'We the People' means to them and their future. I think it could
be magical."
People start proposing schools and dates, but one of Jerry's advisers
from California interrupts, "Let's wait on that. I'm concerned
about this event tonight— with the rabbi."
Jerry is set to observe the Sabbath with Meyer Fund, a Hasidic rabbi
who has a small shul in Brooklyn. The adviser wants it taken off the
schedule, because of tension in the Jewish community over Brown's
naming Jesse Jackson as his running mate. "It looks like pandering
now, and it opens us up to hecklers. Wouldn't he be better off going
to Little Italy? It's safe."
Lesser shakes his head no. "Jerry's willing to go to areas that
aren't safe."
Two hours later, in Brooklyn, Jerry is wearing a yarmulke, standing
in Meyer Fund's wood-paneled dining room, humming and clapping as
the rabbi plays a Hasidic melody on guitar. Relatives and followers
fill the house, which glows with the unnatural brightness of TV lights.
"Dear friends," says Fund, who wears a black coat and beard.
"I have nothing to do with endorsements. I'm beyond it. My wish"
— he turns to jerry — "is that God should give you
the strength to make the world more beautiful."
Jerry says, "We are very divided, but there is a way to bring
it together…"
"Rebbe! I'm surprised at you!" shouts a man who has come
in from the street. "How could you have him here? He's for Jackson.
A man calls you a Hymie, let him go to hell!" He turns and storms
outside, where a dozen men start chanting, "Say no to Jackson!"
The women in Fund's home are embarrassed by the outburst. One says,
"I like Brown's attitude. He's got vision, integrity. But Jackson
kills it. He'd have my vote, except for that."
Jerry has been told by everyone who can get his ear that naming Jackson
was a political mistake, a gesture for which he got nothing in return,
but Jerry will not renege. "I see Rev. Jackson as a powerful
leader who inspires and draws people to vote who've never been involved."
As to the Hymie remark. Jerry says, "He's apologized. He feels
terrible." But that apology has not been heard in Brooklyn.
It is 1 a.m. when Jerry and Jacques arrive at the East Side apartment
of writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. Since the start of
the campaign, Jerry has slept every night in the home of a volunteer,
friend or at some institution like a church or homeless shelter. I
cannot fathom this: being a perpetual guest, having to make chitchat
after a grueling, 20-hour day. It also seems a logistical nightmare.
I ask Jacques, "Who sees that he has a clean shirt? That his
underwear is washed?" Jacques smiles. "God."
Neither of the Dunnes is registered to vote, but they have been friends
with Jerry since the '70s and offered their home as a base. Last December,
they gave a lunch for Jerry at which they assembled a formidable group
of publishers and writers, which included Calvin Trillin, Carl Bernstein,
Barbara Epstein of the New York Review of Books and the editors of
Esquire, Foreign Affairs, the Nation and the Village Voice. Most of
the guests were "patronizing," Dunne says. Three months
later, after Brown won Connecticut, several called Dunne and said,
"What did you know?"
Dunne laughs. "What I knew was that Jerry rubs people the wrong
way. He drives them truly around the bend. They get rabid, and it
tickles me."
What is it about Jerry that so disturbs and infuriates people and
can also prompt them to abandon their course and follow his? He is
not like any politician we normally encounter. He is a wild card,
a former Jesuit, an ascetic who lives his principles to the point
of being a pain. While he can be brilliant, biting and funny in debate,
he is awkward and self-conscious with small talk.
He is criticized for changing his mind, for not following through
and for being a flake, but this often stems from his having ideas
ahead of his time. He got the nickname "Gov. Moonbeam" in
the '70s, when he wanted to buy a satellite for state communications.
It sounded loony then, but today, use of such satellites is common.
Jerry is an attractive man who has never been a householder, never
lived with a woman, though for two years, he has been dating an attorney
in San Francisco. Late one night, I ask if he made a conscious choice
not to have children.
"No. It's just the way it's turned out. Is turning out. Can
you tell me how you do that and do this?" He swivels around in
his seat. "Politics is a life that absorbs you. A traditional
wife could handle that. But you get a professional wife, and you really
cause problems for your kids."
In the absence of a wife and family, Jerry has maintained close friendships,
particularly with Jacques Barzaghi. Jacques, 54, was born in France,
is Jewish, has worked in film production, lived in a rain forest,
been married three times and had seven children. He met Jerry at a
party in the '70s and joined his staff. When needed, he is at Jerry's
side, and he has a leavening effect on him. He owns no home or car.
"I float. My path is a life of service."
People who work with Jacques find that he is wise, astute and can
cut to the quick of a matter and discard what's not essential. Many
feel the surest way to get a result from Jerry is to go through Jacques.
On the road, though, his persona can be that of the trickster. Jacques
is a master of the pregnant silence. When asked a question, he will
stare a long moment, during which the words you've just spoken seem
to ring with foolishness. Then he will utter a cryptic remark, like,
"Don't sell the skin of the bear before you shoot the bear."
He wears black jeans and shirts, wire-rimmed glasses and a beret,
which he adopted in New Hampshire because "it was cold, and it
made it easy for Jerry to spot me." In New York, after one of
Jerry's debates with Clinton, the Arkansas governor walked up to Jacques
and said, "All my life, I've wanted to wear a beret and I never
had the guts. I congratulate you."
Jacques said, later, with a laugh, "That remark came from contempt."
APRIL 7. Election day, and Jerry Brown's 54th birthday. At 9 p.m.,
500 volunteers are waiting in the auditorium of the Drug, Hospital
8c Health Care Employees Union, Local 1199, which endorsed Brown.
Jerry is on the seventh floor, watching returns in the office of
Dennis Rivera, the union president. The networks are calling Clinton
the winner and Brown second in all four states:
New York, Wisconsin, Kansas and Minnesota. Outside Rivera's office,
Jerry's family and friends sit in somber groups, whispering. The Dunnes
are there, as are two of Jerry's sisters. Pat Caddell is scowling.
"I hate politics. I hate election nights. I hate 'em when they're
good."
Jerry walks out. "So, here we are," he says. Joan Didion
extends both her arms to him. He takes her hands, squeezes them, turns
to another friend. "Lot of people downstairs?"
"Yes."
"Good." He punches his fist in the air. "Now I gotta
get ready to say something."
A tall, dark-haired man wearing a yarmulke, Dan Greer, steps out
of the elevator and hurries to Jerry. They hug. "Thanks for coming,"
Jerry says. Then he goes back into Rivera's office and shuts the door.
Greer was Jerry's roommate at Yale Law School. He has taken the train
down from New Haven, where he practices law and leads a small congregation.
"I feel very badly," Greer says. "He could have won.
Then all the concerns about Gov. Moonbeam would have vanished."
Greer thinks the loss is due to Jerry's endorsement of Jackson. He
shakes his head sadly. "There's a saying in the Talmud: A person
can acquire the world in one moment, and can lose the world in one
moment."
Jerry comes out of Rivera's office and heads for the elevator. Five
minutes later, he's on the stage, telling his volunteers to take heart
and keep going. He is, as a friend puts it, "attractive in defeat,"
and for the first time, I feel close to him.
He congratulates Clinton and Paul E. Tsongas, who, in the latest
tallies, is pulling ahead of Brown, even though he has withdrawn from
the race.
"Paul, wherever you are, you do very well, even in your absence,"
Jerry says.
The crowd boos.
"Wait a minute. This is not a time for mean spirits. This is
a time for generosity." Jerry says real change doesn't happen
quickly, "and if you stumble, you stand up."
Hours later, the New York staff gathers for drinks at the Royal ton
Hotel. Late results confirm that Brown has placed third, behind Tsongas.
Dennis Rivera, a spirited man with laughing eyes, says, "Our
exit polls this morning were bad, but this is worse." He signals
the waitress. "I'm gonna drown my depression in alcohol."
Kevin Connor, the field director, says, "I'm pissed. We got
off the message." Others feel that Jerry's attacks on Clinton
were too shrill, and his proposal for a flat tax too easy to attack
and difficult to explain. Don Lesser, wearing a bright red jacket,
says, "This is an experiment. No one's run a campaign before
on a hundred bucks a person. The other candidates have all dropped
out and we're still here. That's the bottom line."
The impact of the loss hits Jerry a day later. Jodie says, "When
things go badly, he rises to the occasion and pumps everyone else
up. Then later, he feels it."
Between Connecticut and New York, Jerry and his staff had been dazzled
by the spotlight. As Jerry put it, "We got too excited."
What was not understood was that as long as he was a dark horse, a
vote for Brown was a vote against all the others. It was a statement:
They're rotten, throw them out. But when he became a front-runner,
people voted against him also, even for a candidate who was inactive.
The fall was like a belly flop.
APRIL 9. Jodie is holding a staff meeting at national headquarters
in Santa Monica, sitting on a green velvet settee nicknamed "the
Queen's chair," with her natural red hair falling over her shoulders.
She wears a black dress with roses, black tights and ballet slippers.
As is her style, Jodie finds a way to see events in a positive light.
"You guys," she says. "This campaign is going all the
way to the convention and beyond!"
One staffer says, "I'm confused about our goal. Are we going
for the White House, hell for leather, or are we building a movement
to change America?"
Both, Jodie says. Jerry will continue to campaign hard, and "the
more delegates we pick up, the stronger we'll be at the convention."
But the focus is shifting. In the corning weeks, she says, Jerry
will be working up a platform to present at the convention, which
will include a simple and fair tax plan, universal health care, a
family bill of rights and an aggressive environmental-protection program.
The campaign will also focus on a longer view: building a grass-roots
organization that can fight for change after 1992.
Today, though, a crisis is developing with ABC, which is about to
run a story charging that Jerry, while governor, had parties in his
home where marijuana and cocaine were used.
"It's outrageous," Jodie says. "I worked with Jerry
then, and you knew, if you were around Jerry, you didn't smoke marijuana
or you were gone."
She phones state police who served as Jerry's drivers, to enlist
them as witnesses, and asks an attorney to put ABC on notice that
the allegations are false.
When the charges are aired on "Nightline," Jerry tells
Ted Koppel: "It didn't happen. I never saw drugs used in my house.
If you support me and think we oughta fight back, call 1-800-426-1112."
The number is swamped with callers who pledge money.
APRIL 11. Jerry sits in the front seat of Jodie's red Land Cruiser,
ready to pull away from the California Democratic Party convention.
A man leans in the window and says, "You realize you're in a
Japanese car?"
Jerry snaps his head. "What? This is a Toyota? We shouldn't
be riding in it."
Jerry's driver pulls into the street. Jerry turns to Dee Hansch.
"This is a real screw-up! In California, we don't think about
it. But in Michigan, it's a big deal."
They're approaching the ramp to the freeway.
"Stop," Jerry says. "I'm getting out."
"Jerry, wait . . . ."
The driver honks, to get the lead car's attention, and both pull
over to the shoulder of the on-ramp. Jerry gets out and, trailed by
five people, hurries to the other car, a dented Chevy wagon owned
by a volunteer.
Mariachis are playing when the Chevy arrives at Dolores Mission Church
in East Los Angeles. "This is what's fun, right?" Jerry
says. Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit who heads the mission, takes Jerry
on a walk through the streets, where a 4-year-old girl was shot and
killed the night before. "I've buried 26 kids in the last three
years," Boyle says.
"Gangs?" Jerry asks.
Boyle nods. "What will quiet the bullets is jobs. If you give
them jobs, the drug problem goes away."
Jerry adds, "Jobs that give people a wage they can live on.
No one wants to hear how simple it is."
A lowrider pulls up with two young Latino men. Boyle says to Jerry,
"Come here and meet two homies."
Jerry sticks his head in the window and says, flat-footed,
"Are you in a gang?"
The young men don't answer.
"We shouldn't ask," Boyle says. "We're all in the
human race."
"Right," Jerry says, and makes a thumbs-up gesture.
In the afternoon, Jerry returns to Jodie's house for a meeting with
what Jacques calls "the round table" — a floating cast
of advisers which, today, includes Tom Quinn and Pat Caddell.
At 4 p.m., when I join them for the evening events, they're discussing
whether Jerry should sue ABC for libel. Jerry is furious at the people
accusing him. Caddell is taking practice swings with a baseball bat.
"No presidential candidate has ever sued a network. It shows
he's innocent and so outraged he's gonna strike back."
Quinn agrees, "If he doesn't, he looks guilty. And it will smoke
out who's behind this."
Jerry says, "You know what it's like to wage a lawsuit. It becomes
your life."
Later, driving to a benefit, he asks to stop at a drugstore. "I
feel a cold coming on."
"It's that conversation," Jacques says, "It does the
same thing to me."
"You don't agree with Pat on how to handle this?" Jerry
says.
"I always have a problem with you going on the attack,"
Jacques says. "That's the lesson of New York. People don't like
to see you in the gutter."
We find a drugstore and get out of the car. Jacques adds, "In
the samurai code, if you pull out your sword, you've already lost
the battle." He takes a breath and stands up tall. "You
stop it by who you are."
Inside, Jerry heads for the cold remedies. He starts reading labels,
trying to see the difference between a name brand and a generic cough
syrup. "They should tell you what it is—it's part of the
disempowerment," he says.
In the car, he opens the boxes of medicine he's bought and unwraps
bottles. "Look at this packaging mess," he says, holding
up a plastic bag full of cardboard and paper. "It adds to the
landfill."
I sigh. Doesn't he ever shut it off? But his fixation with the environment
is contagious. The following day, at a market, I find myself refusing
a bag for the one item I purchase.
APRIL 19. I am driving with Jodie and several friends to Burbank
for a sweat lodge conducted by a Muskogee Cree medicine man. Bear
Heart. This is the only time I have been able to pin her down for
an interview.
Jodie has planned this outing with an efficiency that is her trademark.
If she invites you to go somewhere, she will assemble a group, make
reservations, get directions, drive, arrange for delicious, healthful
food and if a check comes, she will grab it.
She is the first woman to run a presidential campaign who is also
a single mother, raising two sons, 7 and 12. She is invariably calm,
quick to laugh, and yet, she says she struggles daily with a sense
"that I'm totally inadequate."
Jodie, now 37, met Jerry when she was 19 and remembers feeling, "Here
was somebody who believed what I did." When he was governor,
she says, "I got to watch things actually change. Jerry brought
new people in — women, blacks, gay men and lesbians, farm workers,
Indians, Koreans."
We arrive at a small house in the flats of Burbank, walk around to
the back yard and we're in a different world, which seems a hallucination:
There's a white tepee, a fire pit and a black, domed structure made
of willow, covered with tarps—the sweat lodge. We change into
bathing suits and, along with a mixed group of Indians and Anglos,
crawl into the black hut.
Bear Heart, who is called "grandfather," lets down the
door and the hut becomes pitch black. He suggests that we give a prayer
of thanks "for the most difficult thing that happened in your
life. Because of the lesson it taught, the lesson you couldn't learn
any other way." Then he pours water onto hot rocks and scalding
steam fills the hut. People beat drums, play flutes, women chant and
great beads of water form on our skin.
Afterward, cooling off, Jodie says, "Don't you feel open and
clean?"
"Renewed," I say.
She smiles. "Whenever the campaign gets stuck, I try to do something
like this. It reminds me how we've lost our way and need to come home."
APRIL 30. Jerry abandons his campaign schedule and flies to Los Angeles
as riots are spreading through the city after the announcement of
verdicts in the Rodney G. King case.
In interviews, Jerry says the riots are a terrifying illustration
of his message. "This is a warning sign. All this stems from
despair—over lack of jobs, lack of opportunity." He calls
for an immediate program to rebuild the inner cities, employing people
who live there.
He spends the night in the home of a black carpet installer, Oliver
Brown, near Pico and La Brea, where stores have been burned to the
ground. Oliver and his wife, Geraldine, were asked an hour earlier
by their son, who volunteers for Jerry, "You want to have the
governor stay the night?"
"Get outta here, he's not coming," Geraldine said. "The
house isn't ready!"
But just before midnight, Jerry appears, alone except for two aides
and me, instead of the press corps of 40 who followed him at the height
of the New York campaign.
Oliver and Geraldine serve him a late dinner of chicken and rice,
and walk him to the comer where a dozen neighborhood men are guarding
a 7-Eleven.
The street is smoky, ghostlike. Jerry says he's inspired by the neighbors.
"It's the American spirit—people coming together to raise
the bam again after it burned down." He adds, "I've got
nothing else on my calendar, except to keep pushing on until we work
real change."
They walk back to Oliver Brown's and watch the news. Then Jerry,
continuing his maverick journey as the unexpected guest, goes to sleep
on the sofa bed.
