Jerry Brown

In 1974, Brown ran in a highly contested Democratic primary for Governor of California against Speaker of the California Assembly Bob Moretti, San Francisco Mayor Joseph L. Alioto, Representative Jerome R. Waldie, and others. Brown won the primary with the name recognition of his father, Pat Brown, whom many people admired for his progressive administration.[14] In the General Election on November 5, 1974, Brown was elected Governor of California over California State Controller Houston I. Flournoy; Republicans ascribed the loss to anti-Republican feelings from Watergate, the election being held only ninety days after President Richard Nixon resigned from office. Brown succeeded Republican Governor Ronald Reagan, who retired after two terms.

Jerry Brown selected two frugal 1974 Plymouth Satellites from the state motor pool for his use in Northern California and Southern California. This is one of them, on display at the California Automobile Museum.

After taking office, Brown gained a reputation as a fiscal conservative.[15] The American Conservative later noted he was "much more of a fiscal conservative than Governor Reagan".[16] His fiscal restraint resulted in one of the biggest budget surpluses in state history, roughly $5 billion.[17] For his personal life, Brown refused many of the privileges and perks of the office, forgoing the newly constructed 20,000 square-foot governor's residence in the suburb of Carmichael and instead renting a $275-per-month apartment at 1228 N Street, adjacent to Capitol Park in downtown Sacramento.[18][19] Rather than riding as a passenger in a chauffeured limousine as previous governors had done, Brown walked to work and drove in a Plymouth Satellite sedan.[20][21][22] When Gray Davis, who was chief of staff to Governor Brown, suggested that a hole in the rug in the governor's office be fixed, Brown responded: “That hole will save the state at least $500 million, because legislators cannot come down and pound on my desk demanding lots of money for their pet programs while looking at a hole in my rug!”[23]

As governor, Brown held a strong interest in environmental issues. He appointed J. Baldwin to work in the newly created California Office of Appropriate Technology, Sim Van der Ryn as State Architect, Stewart Brand as Special Advisor, John Bryson as chairman of the California State Water Board. Brown also reorganized the California Arts Council, boosting its funding by 1300 percent and appointing artists to the council,[13] and appointed more women and minorities to office than any other previous California governor.[13] In 1977, he sponsored the "first-ever tax incentive for rooftop solar", among many environmental initiatives.[24] In 1975, Brown obtained the repeal of the "depletion allowance", a tax break for the state's oil industry, despite the efforts of lobbyist Joe Shell, a former intraparty rival to Richard M. Nixon.[25]

In 1975, Brown opposed Vietnamese immigration to California, saying that the state had enough poor people. He added, “There is something a little strange about saying ‘Let's bring in 500,000 more people’ when we can't take care of the 1 million (Californians) out of work.”[26][27]

Brown strongly opposed the death penalty and vetoed it as governor, which the legislature overrode in 1977.[28] He also appointed judges who opposed capital punishment. One of these appointments, Rose Bird as the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, was voted out in 1987 after a strong campaign financed by business interests upset by her "pro-labor" and "pro-free speech" rulings. The death penalty was only "a trumped-up excuse"[29] to use against her, even though the Bird Court consistently upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty.[30] In 1960, he lobbied his father, then governor, to spare the life of Caryl Chessman and reportedly won a 60-day stay for him.[31][32]

Brown was both in favor of a Balanced Budget Amendment and opposed to Proposition 13, the latter of which would decrease property taxes and greatly reduce revenue to cities and counties.[33] When Proposition 13 passed in June 1978, he heavily cut state spending, and along with the Legislature, spent much of the $5 billion surplus to meet the proposition's requirements and help offset the revenue losses which made cities, counties, and schools more dependent on the state.[17][33] His actions in response to the proposition earned him praise from Proposition 13 author Howard Jarvis who went as far as to make a television commercial for Brown just before his successful re-election bid in 1978.[33] The controversial proposition immediately cut tax revenues and required a two-thirds supermajority to raise taxes.[34] Max Neiman, a professor at the Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California, Berkeley, credited Brown for "bailing out local government and school districts", but felt it was harmful "because it made it easier for people to believe that Proposition 13 wasn't harmful".[24] In an interview in 2014, Brown indicated that a "war chest" would have helped his campaign for an alternative to Proposition 13.[35]

Brown at the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York City

Cesar Chavez nominating Brown at the 1976 Democratic National Convention

Brown began his first campaign for the Democratic nomination for president on March 16, 1976,[36] late in the primary season and over a year after some candidates had started campaigning. Brown declared: "The country is rich, but not so rich as we have been led to believe. The choice to do one thing may preclude another. In short, we are entering an era of limits."[37][38]

Brown's name began appearing on primary ballots in May and he won in Maryland, Nevada, and his home state of California.[39] He missed the deadline in Oregon, but he ran as a write-in candidate and finished in third behind Jimmy Carter and Senator Frank Church of Idaho. Brown is often credited with winning the New Jersey and Rhode Island primaries, but in reality, uncommitted slates of delegates that Brown advocated in those states finished first. With support from Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, Brown won a majority of delegates at the Louisiana delegate selection convention; thus, Louisiana was the only southern state to not support Southerners Carter or Alabama Governor George Wallace. Despite this success, he was unable to stall Carter's momentum, and his rival was nominated on the first ballot at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Brown finished third with roughly 300 delegate votes, narrowly behind Congressman Morris Udall and Carter.

Brown won re-election in 1978 against Republican state Attorney General Evelle J. Younger. Brown appointed the first openly gay judge in the United States when he named Stephen Lachs to serve on the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1979.[40] In 1981, he also appointed the first openly lesbian judge in the United States, Mary C. Morgan, to the San Francisco Municipal Court.[41] Brown completed his second term having appointed a total of five gay judges, including Rand Schrader and Jerold Krieger.[42][43] Through his first term as governor, Brown had not appointed any openly gay people to any position, but he cited the failed 1978 Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban homosexuals from working in California's public schools, for his increased support of gay rights.[40] The Governor also signed AB 489, The Consenting Adult Sex Act, which decriminalized homosexual behavior between adults, adding to this reputation. He also signed AB 607, which banned homosexuals from receiving civil marriage licenses, in 1977.

Brown championed the Peripheral Canal project to transport water from near Sacramento around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta into the Central Valley Project and export it to southern California. It was submitted to the voters for approval as a ballot proposition in 1982, but was turned down.[44]

In 1981, Brown, who had established a reputation as a strong environmentalist, was confronted with a serious medfly infestation in the San Francisco Bay Area. The state's agricultural industry advised him, and the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), to authorize airborne spraying of the region. Initially, in accordance with his environmental protection stance, he chose to authorize ground-level spraying only. Unfortunately, the infestation spread as the medfly reproductive cycle out-paced the spraying. After more than a month, millions of dollars of crops had been destroyed, and billions of dollars more were threatened. Governor Brown then authorized a massive response to the infestation. Fleets of helicopters sprayed malathion at night, and the California National Guard set up highway checkpoints and collected many tons of local fruit; in the final stage of the campaign, entomologists released millions of sterile male medflies in an attempt to disrupt the insects' reproductive cycle.

Ultimately, the infestation was eradicated, but both the Governor's delay and the scale of the action have remained controversial ever since. Some people claimed that malathion was toxic to humans, as well as insects. In response to such concerns, Brown's chief of staff, B. T. Collins, staged a news conference during which he publicly drank a glass of malathion. Many people complained that, while the malathion may not have been very toxic to humans, the aerosol spray containing it was corrosive to car paint.[45][46]

Brown proposed the establishment of a state space academy and the purchasing of a satellite that would be launched into orbit to provide emergency communications for the state—a proposal similar to one that was indeed eventually adopted. In 1979, an out-of-state columnist, Mike Royko, at the Chicago Sun-Times, picked up on the nickname from Brown's girlfriend at the time, Linda Ronstadt, who was quoted in a 1978 Rolling Stone magazine interview humorously calling him "Moonbeam".[47][48] A year later, Royko expressed his regret for publicizing the nickname,[49] and in 1991 Royko disavowed it entirely, proclaiming Brown to be just as serious as any other politician.[50][51]

Some notable figures were given priority correspondence access to him in either advisory or personal roles. These included United Farm Workers of America founder Cesar Chavez, Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard, labor leader Jack Henning, and Charles Manatt, then-Chairman of the California State Democratic Party. Mail was routed as VIP to be delivered directly to the governor. However, it is unclear as to exactly how long this may have occurred.[52]

In 1978, San Francisco punk band the Dead Kennedys' first single, "California über alles", from the album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, was released; it was performed from the perspective of then-governor Brown painting a picture of a hippie-fascist state, satirizing what they considered his mandating of liberal ideas in a fascist manner, commenting on what lyricist Jello Biafra saw as the corrosive nature of power. The imaginary Brown had become President Brown presiding over secret police and gas chambers. Biafra later said in an interview with Nardwuar that he now feels differently about Brown; as it turned out, Brown was not as bad as Biafra thought he would be, and subsequent songs have been written about other politicians deemed worse.[53]

Brown chose not to run for a third term in 1982, and instead ran for the United States Senate, but lost to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson. He was succeeded as governor by George Deukmejian, then state attorney general, on January 3, 1983.

Brown in 1978

In 1980, Brown challenged Carter for renomination. The press had anticipated his candidacy ever since he won re-election as governor in 1978 over the Republican Evelle Younger by 1.3 million votes, the largest margin in California history. But Brown had trouble gaining traction in both fundraising and polling for the presidential nomination. This was widely believed to be because of the more prominent candidate Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Brown's 1980 platform, which he declared to be the natural result of combining Buckminster Fuller's visions of the future and E. F. Schumacher's theory of "Buddhist economics", was much expanded from 1976. His "era of limits" slogan was replaced by a promise to, in his words, "Protect the Earth, serve the people, and explore the universe".

Three main planks of his platform were a call for a constitutional convention to ratify the Balanced Budget Amendment; a promise to increase funds for the space program as a "first step in bringing us toward a solar-powered space satellite to provide solar energy for this planet";[54] and, in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, opposition to nuclear power. On the subject of the 1979 energy crisis, Brown decried the "Faustian bargain" that he claimed Carter had entered into with the oil industry, and declared that he would greatly increase federal funding of research into solar power. He endorsed the idea of mandatory non-military national service for the nation's youth. He suggested that the Defense Department cut back on support troops while beefing up the number of combat troops.

Brown opposed Kennedy's call for universal national health insurance and opposed Carter's call for an employer mandate to provide catastrophic private health insurance labeling it socialist.[55] As an alternative, he suggested a program of tax credits for those who do not smoke or otherwise damage their health, saying: "Those who abuse their bodies should not abuse the rest of us by taking our tax dollars."[55] Brown also called for expanding the use of acupuncture and midwifery.[55]

As Brown's campaign began to attract more members of what some more conservative commentators described as "the fringe", including activists like Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and Jesse Jackson, his polling numbers began to suffer. Brown received only 10 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, and he was soon forced to announce that his decision to remain in the race would depend on a good showing in the Wisconsin primary. Although he had polled well there throughout the primary season, an attempt to film a live speech in Madison, the state's capital, into a special effects-filled, 30-minute commercial (produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola) was disastrous.[56]

As attorney general, Brown represented the state in fighting death-penalty appeals and stated that he would follow the law, regardless of his personal beliefs against capital punishment. Capital punishment by lethal injection was halted in California by federal judge Jeremy D. Fogel until new facilities and procedures were put into place.[83] Brown moved to resume capital punishment in 2010 with the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown after the lifting of a statewide moratorium by a California court.[84] Brown's Democratic campaign, which pledged to "enforce the laws" of California, denied any connection between the case and the gubernatorial election. Prosecutor Rod Pacheco, who supported Republican opponent Meg Whitman, said that it would be unfair to accuse Jerry Brown of using the execution for political gain as they never discussed the case.[85]

In June 2008, Brown filed a fraud lawsuit claiming mortgage lender Countrywide Financial engaged in "unfair and deceptive" practices to get homeowners to apply for risky mortgages far beyond their means.[86][87] Brown accused the lender of breaking the state's laws against false advertising and unfair business practices. The lawsuit also claimed the defendant misled many consumers by misinforming them about the workings of certain mortgages such as adjustable-rate mortgages, interest-only loans, low-documentation loans and home-equity loans while telling borrowers they would be able to refinance before the interest rate on their loans adjusted.[88] The suit was settled in October 2008 after Bank of America acquired Countrywide. The settlement involved the modifying of troubled 'predatory loans' up to $8.4 billion.[89]

Proposition 8, a contentious voter-approved amendment to the state constitution that banned same-sex marriage was upheld in May 2009 by the California Supreme Court.[90][91] In August 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Proposition 8 violated the Due Process and the Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[92] Brown and then Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger both declined to appeal the ruling.[93] The state appeals court declined to order the governor or Attorney-General Brown to defend the proposition.[94]

Brown at a campaign rally in Sacramento two days before the election in 2010

Brown announced his candidacy for governor on March 2, 2010.[95] First indicating his interest in early 2008, Brown formed an exploratory committee in order to seek a third term as governor in 2010, following the expiration of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's term.[96][97]

Brown's Republican opponent in the election was former eBay president Meg Whitman. Brown was endorsed by the Los Angeles Times,[98] The Sacramento Bee,[99] the San Francisco Chronicle,[100] the San Jose Mercury News,[101] and the Service Employees International Union.[102]

Both Whitman and Brown were criticized for negative campaigning during the election.[103] During their final debate at the 2010 Women's Conference a week before the election, moderator Matt Lauer asked both candidates to pull attack ads for the rest of the election, which elicited loud cheers from the audience.[103] Brown agreed and picked one ad each of his and Whitman's that he thought, if Whitman would agree, should be the only ones run, but Whitman, who had been loudly cheered earlier as the prospective first woman governor of the state, was booed when she stated that she would keep "the ads that talk about where Gov. Brown stands on the issues".[104]

The Los Angeles Times reported that nearly $250 million was spent on the Governor's race.[105] At least two spending records were broken during the campaign. Whitman broke personal spending records by spending $140 million of her own money on the campaign,[106] and independent expenditures exceeded $31.7 million, with almost $25 million of that spent in support of Brown.[107] Despite being significantly outspent by Whitman, Brown won the gubernatorial race 53.8% to Whitman's 40.9%.

Brown was sworn in for his third term as governor on January 3, 2011, succeeding Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger who had been term-limited. Brown was working on a budget that would shift many government programs from the state to the local level, a reversal of trends from his first tenure as governor.[108]

On June 28, 2012, Brown signed a budget that made deep cuts to social services with the assumption that voters would pass $8 billion in tax increases in November 2012 to close California's $15.7-billion budget deficit. Brown stated: "We need budget cuts. We need the continued growth of the economy for a long period of time. We're suffering from the mortgage meltdown that killed 600,000 jobs in the construction industry. ... We're recovering from a national recession slowly—over 300,000 jobs [gained] since the recession. We've got a million to go. That needs to continue, but that depends not only on Barack Obama and the Congress and the Federal Reserve, but also on [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, China, the European Union, and the self-organizing quality of the world economy."[109]

In September 2012, Brown signed legislation sponsored by California State Senator Ted Lieu that prohibits protesters at funerals within 300 feet, with convicted violators punishable with fines and jail time; the legislation was in response to protests conducted by the Westboro Baptist Church.[110]

Brown and President Barack Obama discussing the drought in California with farmers, 2014

In the November 2012 general elections, voters approved Brown's proposed tax increases in the form of Proposition 30. Prop 30 raised the state personal income tax increase over seven years for California residents with an annual income over US$250,000 and increased in the state sales tax by 0.25 percent over four years. It allowed the state to avoid nearly $6 billion in cuts to public education.[111]

In 2013, Brown proposed a large, $25 billion Bay Delta Conservation Plan[112] (later renamed the California Water Fix and Eco Restore project) to build two large, four-story tall, 30 miles (48 km) long tunnels to carry fresh water from the Sacramento River under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta toward the intake stations for the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.[113] Unlike his earlier Peripheral Canal project, the two tunnels are to be funded by the agencies and users receiving benefit from the project and do not require voter approval.[114]

In July 2014, Brown traveled to Mexico to hold meetings with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and other Central American leaders about the ongoing children's immigration crisis.[115]

On September 16, 2014, Gov. Brown signed a historic package of groundwater legislation. The plan will regulate local agencies and also implement management plans to achieve water sustainability within 20 years.[116]

Brown meeting with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in April 2017

Brown announced his bid for re-election on February 27, 2014. On June 3, he came first in the primary election by over 1.5 million votes. He received 54.3% of the vote and advanced to the general election with Republican Neel Kashkari, who took 19.38% of the vote.

There was only one gubernatorial debate. When asked to schedule another, Brown declined.[117] During the debate in Sacramento on September 4, 2014, Kashkari accused Brown of failing to improve California's business climate. His leading example was the Tesla Motors factory investment, creating 6,500 manufacturing jobs, going to Nevada rather than California. Brown responded that the cash payment upfront required by the investment would have been unfair to California taxpayers.[118] A range of issues were debated, including recent legislation for a ban on plastic bags at grocery stores that Brown promised to sign and Kashkari thought unimportant.[119]

Brown said that if he were elected to a fourth and final term, he would continue transferring power to local authorities, particularly over education and criminal justice policy, and would resist fellow Democrats' "gold rush for new programs and spending".[35]

In the general election, Brown was re-elected by 3,645,835 votes (59.2%) to Kashkari's 2,511,722 (40.8%). His stated goals for his unprecedented fourth term in office were to construct the California High-Speed Rail, to create tunnels to shore up the state's water system and to curb carbon dioxide emissions. He still had $20 million in campaign funds to advance his ballot measures in case the legislature didn't support his plans.[120]

In October 2015, Brown signed off the California End of Life Option Act allowing residents of California who fulfilled strict criteria to exercise the right to die by accessing medical aid in dying. During the sign off he took the unusual step of adding a personal message indicating his dilemma regarding the consideration of the ethical issues involved and stating that he felt unable to deny the right of choice to others.[121][122]

On December 18, 2015, Brown moved into the Historic Governor's Mansion, now part of Governor's Mansion State Historic Park.

In 2016, Brown vetoed a bill to exempt feminine hygiene products from state sales taxes, at the same time that he vetoed other bills which would also have exempted diapers, saying that collectively, these exemptions would have reduced state revenues by $300 million annually, and stated “As I said last year, tax breaks are the same as new spending – they both cost the general fund money.”[123]

In the 2018–19 budget plan that Brown released on January 10, 2018, the Governor proposed spending $120 million to establish California's first fully online community college by fall 2019.[124]

Legislative accomplishments in Brown's final term include passing California Sanctuary Law SB 54, which prevents police from complying with most requests by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hold illegal immigrants for deportation; California Senate Bill 32, which requires the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, extending the state's cap and trade system (which had originally been outlined by the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006) to achieve this goal; and passing the Road Repair and Accountability Act. Brown has opposed the Proposition 6 ballot measure to repeal the Road Repair and Accountability Act,[125] and endorsed Gavin Newsom to succeed him.[126]

Brown has been criticized for his links to the oil and gas industry, notably for contributions from, and his family ties to, Sempra Energy.[127]

By September 2018, Brown had granted more than 1,100 pardons since returning to office in 2011; more pardons than any California governor in recent history.[128][129] Brown commuted more than 82 sentences, the highest number since at least the 1940s.[129]