After pulling up to his campaign headquarters Wednesday afternoon, Jerry Brown greeted his wife, Anne Gust, on the Third Street sidewalk near Oakland's Jack London Square. He was looking trim in a purple-tinted dress shirt and tie and turned around to let Gust prop a copy of his book "Dialogues" on his back and sign it.
Journalists were waiting in the spacious, former warehouse, but that didn't stop Brown, who was already 30 minutes late, and campaign manager Steve Glazer from disappearing down Third Street for a walk and talk. Brown returned minutes later gesturing briskly as he spoke to Glazer.
The headquarters itself felt more like a tech start-up than a gubernatorial campaign office. Wooden furniture -- including a long table made entirely of recycled wood, Brown pointed out -- filled the space. The walls were covered with photos of Brown at different ages and stages of balding, his father the late Gov. Pat Brown, his mother and sisters, John F. Kennedy, Gust and others.
Near the front door hung a poster for the California Conservation Corps, which Brown started during his first stint as governor. A vintage-looking cabinet with wide drawers stood against a wall -- full of campaign signs from Brown's attorney general race. And there was the black bar fixed under a second-floor landing on which the 71-year-old did his much-reported pull-ups.
Before sitting down with a Bee reporter, Brown flipped through a packet of news releases, growing frustrated as he tried in vain to find mention of the late anti-tax activist Howard Jarvis supporting him in the 1970s. "It's not there," he sternly told a press aide. Brown finally calmed when the aide found the page with the mention.
With a few people pecking away at computers around him, Brown spoke briskly during his interview with The Bee, repeating some lines he used with other reporters that afternoon -- particularly digs at Republican candidates Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner for supposedly seeking to run California like a company.
When asked about what he had learned from his two terms as governor, he said, among other things, "The personalities of the Legislature are critical. You have to listen to what they have to say. And there's different points of view."
Brown said building those relationships with legislators would be crucial to getting past partisan gridlock in Sacramento.
"My father used to have wonderful dinners at the old mansion," Brown said. "And I would do that again. Now I have a wife so we have a first lady that would entertain. We'll have good social hours with Democrats and Republicans. That's a very important part of how the Legislature works. And I'm going to bring that back."
Brown said he still knew the owner of the apartment near the Capitol where, during his first stint as governor, he had famously slept on a mattress on the floor. He said he would nonetheless spend the nights of his third gubernatorial term, if elected, at his house in the Oakland hills but added, "Wrestling this budget to the ground, I'll spend a lot of time in Sacramento so I'll have a place to lay my head at night."
Brown refused to take stands on Proposition 14, which would allow a form of open primary, or the $11.1 billion water infrastructure bond on November's ballot. But he did call for allocating more state money for education and supported creating more public schools focused on particular trades such as construction.
"I have a sympathy for the underdog," Brown said when asked what distinguished him from his Republican rivals. "I've lived in downtown Oakland. I lived in an area where most people were below the poverty line in downtown Oakland. I saw two armed robberies in the apartment building that I lived in. There was a guy shot in the street one night, 27th and Telegraph. I know the gritty quality of urban life, and I'm sympathetic to people who are struggling."
PHOTO CREDIT: Democratic candidate for governor Jerry Brown, Oakland, March 3, 2010. Hector Amezcua/Sacramento Bee
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