Sergeant Foley
Well-known member
......"After the 1982 Midterms and especially the humiliating defeat in the California US Senate election, political observers and analysts assumed that Brown's political career was over.
They had good reason to think so: Deeply unpopular two-term Democratic Governor of California with dreadful approval ratings for obvious reasons. Chaotic budget shortfall and the massively depleting budget surplus in the final years of the Brown Governorship plus violent crime escalating across the Golden State. It also didn't help Brown immediately campaigned for the Presidency in 1976 which annoyed majority of Californians when he campaigned for the 1976 Democratic Party presidential nomination....only to lose the nomination to Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace, Jr., who went on to get destroyed by Rockefeller in the November general election that year.
Brown's quirky politics drove many inside the California State Legislature completely nuts as well: he was overridden on multiple areas such as education, transportation, agriculture, public safety and the like. Unlike previous California Governors, who glad-handed the Legislature in personal contacts, Brown simply ignored them or only showed up for his State of the State Addresses during his first eight years in Sacramento.
Nobody knows what Brown's next move was going to be once he left the Governorship on January 3, 1983. Many thought he would launch another campaign for the Presidency in 1984 or 1988, but blowing the Senate seat in California doomed those plans. For now, Brown would have to venture into the private sector for awhile in the midpoint of his political career."
-"Governor Moonbeam: Dominance in California Politics"
Excerpt from the autobiography of Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr.,
34th and 39th Governor of California
6 January 1975 to 3 January 1983
3 January 2011 to 7 January 2019
They had good reason to think so: Deeply unpopular two-term Democratic Governor of California with dreadful approval ratings for obvious reasons. Chaotic budget shortfall and the massively depleting budget surplus in the final years of the Brown Governorship plus violent crime escalating across the Golden State. It also didn't help Brown immediately campaigned for the Presidency in 1976 which annoyed majority of Californians when he campaigned for the 1976 Democratic Party presidential nomination....only to lose the nomination to Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace, Jr., who went on to get destroyed by Rockefeller in the November general election that year.
Brown's quirky politics drove many inside the California State Legislature completely nuts as well: he was overridden on multiple areas such as education, transportation, agriculture, public safety and the like. Unlike previous California Governors, who glad-handed the Legislature in personal contacts, Brown simply ignored them or only showed up for his State of the State Addresses during his first eight years in Sacramento.
Nobody knows what Brown's next move was going to be once he left the Governorship on January 3, 1983. Many thought he would launch another campaign for the Presidency in 1984 or 1988, but blowing the Senate seat in California doomed those plans. For now, Brown would have to venture into the private sector for awhile in the midpoint of his political career."
-"Governor Moonbeam: Dominance in California Politics"
Excerpt from the autobiography of Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr.,
34th and 39th Governor of California
6 January 1975 to 3 January 1983
3 January 2011 to 7 January 2019