Decision ’94 / SPECIAL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA’S ELECTIONS : Governor’s Race : THE DEMOCRAT: KATHLEEN BROWN

KATHLEEN BROWN, Democrat

* Born: Sept. 25, 1945, San Francisco

* Residence: Los Angeles

* Current position: State treasurer

* Education: Bachelor’s degree, Stanford University, 1969; law degree, Fordham University, New York, 1985.

* Career highlights: Member of the Los Angeles Board of Education, 1975-80; attorney, 1985-87; member of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, 1987-89; state treasurer, 1991-present.

* Family: Married to television executive Van Gordon Sauter; children Hilary Armstrong, Sascha Rice, Zeb Rice; stepsons Mark Sauter, Jeremy Sauter. Three grandchildren.

Background

Every other decade, the Brown family dynasty deposits one of its own in the corner office that is the seat of power for California’s governor. First there was Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr., the shopkeeper’s son who rose in 1958, by dint of hard work, to be the 32nd governor of the vast state.

Then came Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. who rode into office in 1974 on a wave of voter desire for new faces and reform. Now comes Kathleen Brown, daughter of Pat and sister of Jerry, propelled by a pragmatic ideology that mixes her father’s lust for building and her brother’s sense that government can supply some hammers but not do all the construction.

The youngest of the four Brown children--she came along more than seven years after closest sibling Jerry--she had only the passing knowledge of her father’s profession that is rested upon all youngsters. She describes her youth as somewhat apolitical, but it took a life-altering turn in 1975 when she ran for the Los Angeles school board.

There she found both a lust for political life and the political albatross that would continue to hang around her neck for the next 20 years. To her supporters, she was someone confident enough to question her own beliefs and on occasion change her mind. To her opponents, and there were many in the heated days of forced busing, she was a woman without a political compass, changing her views from day to day at the whim of internal and external forces.

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When she entered the governor’s race 19 years later, she was the candidate of Democratic dreams--youthful and vigorous, handsome and well-connected, possessing by dint of the dynasty a golden luster that attracted moneyed supporters and national media attention. She also seemed to corner the market on hopefulness, a sentiment in short supply in California of late. She talked endlessly of restoring the California dream, and oddsmakers laid good numbers that she would be the state’s first woman governor.

But the path toward Election Day has been anything but smooth. Early on, there was the question that haunted her from the school board: Just what does she stand for? Brown issued reams of detailed policy positions to quell the criticism. She took a hard line on crime, immigration and welfare, as though the race was already boiling down to a contest of toughness. The problem, even her allies suggested, was that Brown was in danger of becoming in voters’ minds the “me too” candidate, strategically fighting on Pete Wilson’s turf instead of staking out her own.

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Symbolically, there has been no issue tougher than the death penalty. Brown spent months refusing to explain her beliefs, then decided to spell out what most had guessed: That her opposition to capital punishment rested on her religious views and experience she had gleaned at her father’s knee as he wrestled with it during his governorship. But, she said, she would enforce it anyway.

Whatever the troubles, Brown has cornered the market on miles spent in pursuit of her goal. For more than a year, she has circled California, campaigning by car, plane and bus, touting her experiences as state treasurer. For several months, Brown ran on the moniker of “America’s Best Treasurer,” a claim she based on record bond sales and earnings. According to Brown’s campaign, she saved taxpayers $350 million by cutting waste and streamlining the bureaucracy. And she earned a record $4 billion on the state’s investment fund.

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Brown also points to other approaches she used in the treasurer’s office that could apply in the governor’s suite: encouraging state investments in California firms, buttressing small business and providing tools for families to save money for college educations.

Throughout the campaign, Brown has insisted that the race was about more than the problems of the present, that it was about California’s future, both economically and culturally. She sought to make it a referendum on the unpopular Wilson, gibing incessantly that he was “Rip Van Wilson,” a man who slumbered as the ship of state hit the rocks and woke up only to ensure his own reelection. She released a 62-page economic plan that covered her views on job creation, education, immigration, crime and government mismanagement.

Now 49, Kathleen Brown is a mother and a grandmother, a woman who simultaneously raised her children and went to college, divorced and remarried, who went back to school and got her law degree at age 40. She has the boundless enthusiasm of one who was raised in a California where anything was possible, and her test by Nov. 8 is to convince voters that she has the stuff to lead a foundering California back to that gloried place.

Promises / Goals

If elected governor, Kathleen Brown has vowed to:

* Rebuild the state’s economy with a combination of tax credits, tax moratoriums and bond issues that would spur growth among emerging businesses, help retrain defense workers and put California companies first when it comes to government contracts.

* Manage the state’s multibillion-dollar government, reforming it through targeted performance reviews and cutting back on unnecessary government agencies.

* Help make California safer, through her support of a “three strikes” law for violent offenders and a “one strike” law for rapists and child molesters. Although she opposes the death penalty, she says she would carry it out as governor. She also supports several measures intended to get wayward youth back on track, from anti-drug programs and curfews to a statewide system of boot camps for nonviolent offenders.

* Freeze fees for higher education, which have risen sharply in recent years, and provide low-interest student loans. She would also develop a master plan for kindergarten through 12th grade, modeled after the higher education master plan shepherded by her father in 1960.

* Stop the flood of illegal immigration by increasing penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants, and create a tamper-proof Social Security card that every employee must show to gain employment.

The Speech: In Her Own Words

* Excerpts from a speech delivered on Oct. 6 to supporters at Santa Monica College.

Californians up and down this state cannot afford four more years of Pete Wilson because Wilson’s a career politician. Wilson will stop at nothing, he will say anything, he will do anything to get votes. He has done it before and he is at it again.

Let me tell you, he’s got a record of catering to the right wing of his Republican party and he’s got a record of catering to the moneyed and special interests while he taxes the middle class and balances his budget on higher education and sticks it to you, the students, and we can’t afford four more years.

Let me tell you what he is good at. What he is good at is he is the master of the 30-second spot. Watch his spots and you’ll see the same thing you’ve seen every four years. He plays on your fears, he plays on your anger, he taps into the cynicism and draws on the worst of our emotions, instead of reaching out and challenging us, instead of reaching out and calling upon the best of California and trying to inspire our confidence and our hope for a better future. No, not our Pete. He likes to divide, he likes to bully, he likes to blame, he likes to bash everybody, from kids to immigrants to the President of the United States, and I’m here to say he’s got to stop and he’s got to stop now.

I say, give Pete Wilson a pension, give him a parade but get him out of town.

The other thing I ask you to examine, I ask you to examine in all these months of campaigning, in all the millions of dollars that Pete Wilson has spent, he has not laid out a plan, a vision, a strategy for California--not one word, not one line, not one idea. He wants to ride back into that governor’s office on his broken promises and his slick 30-second spots. It will not happen. The people want better. They want change.

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I call him Rip Van Wilson, the ghost governor who wakes up once every four years with his election year rhetoric and his election year lies. What California needs is a governor from Day 1, a governor with a plan and a vision and a strategy to rebuild this state and that is what I offer to you today. You see it right here. I’ve done something maybe unusual in this world of telecommunications and 30-second spots. I’ve taken my plan, I’ve put it in a book. I’ve put in writing. I’ve put it on the Internet. And I put it in libraries up and down this state and I am calling on voluntary street soldiers to take this campaign door-to-door and take this plan door-to-door, to take it to the people of California who deserve to have a governor who knows where she’s going, who wants to take the people with her, who wants to rebuild this state. . . .

The people of California are taking this state back by reading this plan and seeing what our future can be about. Because this has to become a people’s campaign, a people’s campaign to take our state back from the special interests, take it back from the right wing of the Republican party and take it back from Peter Barton Wilson. . . .

I was a non-traditional student before it was cool or necessary or imperative to be a non-traditional student. It took me 7 1/2 years to get my college degree. I didn’t get a law degree until I was 40 years old. I raised a family, I worked, I went to school like so many of you are doing and I know how hard it is. But I have to tell you what I also know: I know that without this college education, you won’t have the chance to be the fully realized citizen and taxpayer that I want you to be.

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So I’m here to say you are our future. We have got to invest in you and you have got to invest back in our state and in our communities, so read my plan. It’s my blueprint for our future, it’s my blueprint for your future. Read it, check it out, give me your ideas. You’re not going to agree with everything in it, that’s OK. If you did, you should be running for governor, not me. But the idea is you need to have a governor who’s got a plan that will take us somewhere from this place that we have been locked in, of fear and bullying and bashing and blaming.

Get involved. Use your voice, use your voice and use your vote. If you don’t use it, you are going to lose it. . . .

Make a choice, because it is your future that is at stake and you have got a choice in this election. You have got a choice between politician Pete, who’s got a plan for his own reelection, and Kathleen Brown, who’s got a plan to rebuild California for you.