Ever a wild card, Brown runs for top cop post - Political horizons have always lured Oakland mayor

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 5/15/6 | Jim Herron Zamora

[SmithL]

Editor's note: This is the first of two profiles on the Democratic candidates for state attorney general.

He's served as California's governor and secretary of state, run for president three times and gone from political insurgent to Democratic elder statesman and back over the past 32 years. So why -- at age 68 -- does Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown want to be California attorney general?

The official answer is that Brown wants a bigger bully pulpit, along with 1,000 prosecutors to fight crime -- a topic he has become all too familiar with as Oakland's mayor since 1998.

But the more complicated answer is that Edmund G. Brown, the scion of the state's best-known political family, still loves politics and public policy and has no desire to give it up, even at an age when most Americans are retiring. The subject of three biographies by the time he was 40, Brown is ready to write a new chapter.

"I'm seasoned," Brown said. "I've seen a lot. I've lived a lot. I understand this state better than just about anyone. I have a lifetime of experience in government to bring to the job of attorney general."

If Brown is able to win the June 6 Democratic primary against Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, the mayor will face state Sen. Charles Poochigian of Fresno, who is unopposed in the Republican primary. No member of the Brown family -- including Jerry; his sister, former state Treasurer Kathleen Brown; and their father, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown -- has ever lost a Democratic primary election.

Brown's career has been a long, strange trip with many twists and turns. He has been ridiculed by the Dead Kennedys -- in the 1979 hit "California Über Alles" -- and supported by members of Green Day,

[SmithL]

Just what California needs, an anti-death penalty Attorney General, and a moonbeam, at that.

[edpc]

"I'm seasoned," Brown said.

....and baked...and done.

[SmithL]

Moonbat Moonbeam

THAT just rolls off the tongue, huh? If he gets elected, will the title be "AGee Moonbeam" or "General Moonbeam"?

[TexasCajun]

I thought for a minute the story was about Lee P . Brown, the Affirmative Action Poster Boy!

[edpc]

Overall, Oakland's crime rate has dropped on Brown's watch but homicide increased 50 percent in 2002 and has stayed high ever since -- despite several policing schemes.

Easy to claim crime is down when all of the hard criminals are killing the petty thieves.

[newzjunkey]

I wish him luck. He's nuts but respectable for a Dem.