It’s called star quality, and it’s likely to make Jerry Brown Oakland’s next mayor. Never mind that he’s lived here for only three years, or that he’s the only white candidate in a largely black city. Never mind that he can’t stop talking about glo bal warming and has no specific proposals for what to do about, say, the empty storefronts along Broadway. ““I don’t want to announce plans at this moment,” Brown tells a group of contractors, ““but I see a people-friendly downtown with a lot of shops, a nd a lot of people being there.” Well, OK. What really matters is that Oaklanders are forever living in the shadow of the city across the bay, San Francisco, which has its own larger-than-life mayor, Willie Brown. Now they’re hoping that their Brown–the guy who once dated Linda Ronstadt–can actually make this industrial city hip.
Jerry Brown’s name is usually followed by what he calls the ““obligatory list of adjectives”: flaky, dreamy, idiosyncratic. The late columnist Mike Royko dubbed him ““Governor Moonbeam” for, among other things, proposing that California launch its own satellite. But even critics concede that Brown is a visionary. In his eight years as governor after Ronald Reagan in the ’70s and early ’80s, Brown, the son of another popular governor, was among the first to champion the green movement and affirmati ve action. He also lost two bids for president and a Senate election. Out of office, Brown went from pol to mystic. He worked with Mother Teresa and studied Zen before re-entering the presiden-tial ring as a New Age insurgent in 1992.
Then, in 1995, Brown left his San Francisco home and built a three-story, tin-plated loft in the heart of Oakland’s deteriorating waterfront. He founded We the People, turning his home into a cultural center with lectures, tai chi classes and a stu dio for his radio show. It’s also a commune for friends and drifters (among them Jacques Barzaghi, Brown’s baldheaded ““spiritual adviser”). Dressed in black, collarless shirts, the 59-year-old Brown seems like a guru living on the set of ““The Real Worl d.” Some close to Brown have told him that the mayor’s job is beneath him, but they know he’s never been able to resist the lure of a campaign for long. Brown points out that cities are now where the action is–and it can’t be lost on him that some of th e biggest stars on the political scene now, such as Willie Brown and Rudy Giuliani, are in city halls.
Running for mayor, of course, will be a lot easier than running the city. Oakland’s crippling debt is rising by $1 million a month. The schools are in ruins; the average grade in college-prep courses is a D-plus. Brown’s platform? He wants the city to fight greenhouse gases. Asked which mayors he might learn from, Brown shrugs: ““There are a lot of mayors around.” His discourse on rebuilding urban neighborhoods is like an ongoing seminar, jumping from Aristotle and Lenin to Herbert Hoover and FDR.
Oddly, though, Brown might be just what Oakland needs. There’s already a city manager to sweat the details. What’s missing is high-profile leadership to break the impasse between racial and political factions. A recent straw poll among black minist ers showed that Brown is the clear favorite over several African-American candidates. And white business leaders are well aware of what Brown brings to the table. ““He could probably visit any president anywhere in the world and be received with open arm s,” says Joseph Haraburda, president of the chamber of commerce.
All of which seems a little unfair to opponents like Ed Blakely, a renowned urban planner and professor. Blakely admits that his only chance is to finish strong enough in June to force a runoff. ““This race is going to turn on program or personalit y,” Blakely says with a sigh. ““I’m program, and he’s personality.” That’s a choice Jerry Brown can live with.
