Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,519

This is the grave of Pat Brown.

Born in San Francisco in 1905, Edmund “Pat” Brown grew up in a middle class family. He was a very patriotic young man and the nickname hit in middle school, when he was selling World War I Liberty Bonds with such fervor that people compared him to Patrick Henry after he said “Give me liberty or give me death” to close his speeches. Hoo boy. Well, anyway, it was a different time. Although his father was Irish Catholic, his mother was German Protestant, so some of this might have been trying to sell himself as an American. He graduated from high school in 1923 and even though he did well at school, he worked at his father’s cigar store, which was really a front for a gambling operation. Nice. He went straight to law school at night, even though he didn’t have a college education, getting his degree in 1927 from San Francisco Law School, which I guess still exists as a law school for working people needing to take classes at night.

As a young man, Brown was a good Republican and even ran for the state legislature in 1928 as one. But like many Americans, he turned his back on the Republicans due to the Hoover administration’s complete failure to handle the Depression, not to mention that being a Republican was not so good for an ambitious young man’s political career in an immigrant-heavy city such as San Francisco. So in 1934, he became a Democrat and never looked back. He was a good internal party man, with one more failed effort to win office, losing a district attorney of San Francisco race to a long-time incumbent named Matthew Brady in 1939. But he won an anti-crime crackdown in a 1943 rematch, surprising seemingly everyone but Brown.

Brown was the DA in San Francisco for the next 7 years and enjoyed quite a bit of bipartisan support from Republicans, including from Earl Warren, who was governor during some of his term. Brown’s big move was to crack down on illegal gambling and corruption and he managed to get his name in the papers a lot during the process. Incredibly ambitious, he ran for attorney general in 1946 and lost, but won reelection as DA in 1947. Then in 1950, he took another stab at the AG job and this time won. This was a Republican period in California and for much of his time in the job, he was the only statewide elected Democrat in California. He won reelection in 1954 as well.

After his two terms as AG, Brown became the Democratic nominee for the governor of California. His core base was the labor movement and central to the campaign was the issue of right-to-work, the misnomer anti-union forces have used to undermine organized labor for decades. Brown’s Republican opponent was William Knowland, from Oakland’s Republican political machine that had been Enemy #1 for organized labor in California for some time, having been the target of that city’s 1946 general strike. Not only did Brown win, but the anti-labor ballot measures Republicans had placed on the ballot all lost, and Democrats nearly swept the state.

As governor, Brown’s big program was building infrastructure. Of course the 1950s was the era when California was growing by leaps and bounds and huge amounts of roads, sewers, water systems, and everything else was needed to feed the endless suburban expansion in much of the state. Given the lack of consistent water in California, even before climate change, intensive infrastructure was at the top of the agenda. Given how much this would help organized labor, this only built him support among his base. He was a moderate, but called himself a liberal, which helped him at that time (imagine that today). But also it wasn’t very political at the time to engage in massive infrastructure projects so you could be just about whatever if you were good at managing this and people would vote for you. And especially on water, with the California State Water Project that was his baby, Brown was a real master at this.

Brown was pretty good on civil rights too. He created a Fair Employment Practices Commission that did a lot on employment. Later in the term, it’s true he didn’t have a great answer to the Watts riots and that was a bigger problem among liberals generally. But one connection we can make that doesn’t make Brown look super great, although the issue is bigger than him, is that the postwar infrastructure boom was a specifically white infrastructure–suburbs for white families to leave the cities, freeways for white families to go to the city to work and shop and then go home, water and sewer systems to make this all happen, etc. In short, almost none of this went to the Black communities in places such as Watts, leaving them behind and creating a younger generation furious with what they saw. That California was the home of the Black Panther Party should hardly surprise us either, since Brown had no real answers for Black Oakland either.

Brown did create the California Master Plan for Education, which vaulted that state into having probably the best system of public higher education in the world. Initially the idea was to provide tuition to all students, but later, under the vile Ronald Reagan, the plan would change and the practice of charging tuition began. It has not ended.

Brown kicked Richard Nixon around a whole bunch in 1962, leading to Nixon’s famous quip that “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Alas. But Brown did get that second term. The second term was a combination of the continued water development and dealing with the difficulties of California at that time–Watts, the Free Speech Movement, etc. By 1966, the state had changed. Brown had pledged not to run for a third term, then he did. That opened the door to challengers as now he looked like a career politician who lied like the rest of them to keep power. Brown barely beat Sam Yorty in the Democratic primary and then, very sadly, Ronald Reagan defeated him that fall. Sigh. Thanks California.

Mostly Brown stayed out of the spotlight after his defeat, though of course the rise of his son Jerry into the governorship was deeply satisfying for him. His daughter Kathleen’s rise, although she never became governor, no doubt made him happy too. Nixon actually considered naming Brown as a special counsel during Watergate, which is fascinating, but Elliott Richardson rejected it out of hand.

Brown died in 1996 after many years of poor health. He was 90 years old.

Pat Brown is buried in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, Colma, California.

If you would like this series to visit other 1960s era governors, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. John Swainson is in Manchester, Michigan (ok, maybe not the mitten’s most famous governor) and Edwin Mechem, who is actually a pretty key figure in postwar New Mexico history, is in Albuquerque. Plus I’m really desperate for green chile, so let’s send me to New Mexico. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.