Brown takes aim at GOP front-runner a day after launching his bid for California governor

Brown takes aim at GOP rival in Calif. gov race

OAKLAND, Calif. — California needs an elder statesman who can broker deals to lead it out of its current fiscal morass, not an autocratic CEO who is used to giving orders, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown said Wednesday.

A day after launching his campaign, Brown took aim at former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, the front-runner in the GOP race who is running on her corporate record.

He said CEOs are used to hand-picking their employees, but a governor must confront an independent and sometimes hostile state Legislature and deal with public employee unions and courts that are constantly second-guessing their decisions.

“The political process is about civic engagement, not autocratic executive decision-making in the corporate suite. The two have virtually nothing in common,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press at his campaign headquarters in a converted warehouse in Oakland.

Whitman also has promised to eliminate 40,000 state government jobs, a proposal Brown called “consultant-created fairy tales.” Whitman is facing state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a multimillionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur, in the Republican primary.

Brown, the state’s attorney general, is seeking to reclaim the office he held from 1975 to 1983, an era before term limits. He said he would work to restore what he described as the more collegial atmosphere of that time, when Republicans and Democrats worked together to solve the state’s problems.

A spokeswoman for Whitman, Sarah Pompei, said Whitman’s many years in the private sector were a strength, not a hindrance. She also predicted that California voters would look for fresh leadership and reject Brown’s “failed policies of the past.”

“They’re looking for someone who’s created jobs, who’s balanced budgets and provided leadership that comes from the private sector,” she said in a telephone interview. “Meg Whitman will go to Sacramento, change the status quo and bring in badly needed commonsense leadership.”

Brown, who will turn 72 next month, said he has learned to be introspective and patient during a diverse public life that included three failed bids for the Democratic presidential nomination and a run for U.S. Senate.

Brown dated celebrities and earned the nickname “Governor Moonbeam” for his then-outlandish ideas as California’s youngest governor. But he has also studied to be a Jesuit priest, practiced Zen Buddhism in Japan and worked with Mother Teresa. Brown also served eight years as mayor of Oakland.

If elected in November, Brown would be the state’s oldest governor.

Many of his positions have also shifted since he last held the office, moving closer to those of the Republicans running for governor than those espoused by progressive Democrats, such as his promise not to raise taxes without voter approval and to trim state government.

Brown refused to be classified politically, though.

“I don’t fit into the mold of knee-jerk member of one party or another. I’m an independent … I see the world from many different angles,” he said.

He also declined to commit to serving just one term as some pundits have suggested he should.

“No, my wife has said don’t commit to one term. Even though I’m sure she would love me to have one term. Look, I’ll be even older in four years than I am today. Looking out four years is highly speculative,” he said.

Brown’s wife, former Gap Inc. general counsel Anne Gust Brown, whom he married in 2005, is one of his main confidants for campaign strategy.

By all accounts, Brown is a skilled and thrifty politician, but he has never faced a campaign like the one unfolding this year. Whitman has already given her campaign $39 million and her campaign has said it could spend as much as $150 million. Poizner also has contributed $19 million to his bid.

He acknowledged Whitman’s ability to air television ads every day until next November is a challenge.

“How to overcome that, that’s going to take more than the third day of the campaign. I’m going to have to really think about that,” he said. “By the time we get to November, I think people will have enough information to decide what they want. And whatever they decide, that’s fine with me.”