Newsom jabs at Brown as state Democrats meet

Gavin Newsom taunted rival Jerry Brown on Saturday by framing the Democratic race for governor as a choice between “a stroll down memory lane” with a man who held the job in the 1970s and a “sprint into the future” with San Francisco’s mayor.

Newsom avoided mentioning Brown’s name in remarks to several thousand Democrats at a party gathering. But it was lost on no one that he was jabbing the 71-year-old attorney general who hopes to reclaim the job of governor that he first won in 1974.

“We’re not a state of memories,” said the 41-year-old mayor, who on Tuesday formally declared his candidacy in the June 2010 primary race. “We’re a state of dreams. We’re Californians. We’re not content to relive history. We’re going to keep making it.”

In a speech a short while later, Brown spurned Newsom’s bait, apart from saying it was difficult, in the setting of a party convention, to “use words that express not cliches and bombast and empty rhetoric, but really speak the truth.”

A former Oakland mayor who ran for president three times, Brown reminded the crowd that he was not yet campaigning openly for the 2010 election, then went on to joke about his decades in California politics.

“I’ve run for more offices than any other candidate that still is alive, or is around, but there’s a time and place for everything,” said Brown, who has been waging a full-scale campaign for governor behind the scenes for months while remaining coy in public.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the third likely major contender for the Democratic nomination, skipped the gathering to tend, he said, to the city’s budget crisis. But in an opening shot at Newsom, who markets himself as the rage of social networking websites, a Villaraigosa advisor told reporters last week that the Los Angeles mayor would not “Twitter while Rome burns.”

Newsom, in turn, called on Villaraigosa to tone down the rhetoric.

“Candidly,” Newsom said in an interview, “I wanted to call him, honestly, and say, ‘What was that? No need for that.’ I’m his friend, not an enemy.”

The three-way sparring was the main backdrop of the state party’s first convention since Democrats recaptured the White House and expanded their control of Congress in November.

That did not stop California Democrats from reverting to their 8-year-old custom of trashing former President George W. Bush. State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, for one, joked that Bush and his treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., should star in a movie called “Dumb and Dumber.”

Others stuck to hailing President Obama for ruling out torture of terrorism suspects and for changing the country’s policies on healthcare, the environment, abortion and a panoply of other issues. On worker rights, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, a former San Gabriel Valley congresswoman, drew a roar of applause when she called herself the “new sheriff in town” at her agency.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer used the occasion to kick off her campaign for a fourth term. With “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” blasting through the convention hall, Boxer walked slowly through the cheering crowd, with hundreds of supporters in tow waving yellow “Boxer 2010” signs.

“Please know that I want to stay in the Senate to get our country back on track,” said the senator, whose volunteers were peddling “Barkers for Boxer” dog scarves and “Babies for Boxer” bibs.

For all the celebration, a major rift is likely to erupt today before the convention’s close, as the 2,250 delegates decide whether to take a stand on the controversial budget measures in the May 19 special election.

A party committee recommended endorsement of the measures, Propositions 1A through 1F. But labor unions are sharply divided, leaving the legislative leaders who are pushing the measures simply hoping the party will stay neutral.

“It wouldn’t be as good as an endorsement, but it would be fine,” said state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).

On Saturday, though, the main conflict was between Newsom and Brown.

Democrats leapt to their feet when Newsom, whose blue-and-yellow campaign signs carried Twitter and Facebook logos, vowed to fight for “marriage equality,” a nod to his effort to legalize same-sex weddings in San Francisco five years ago.

After a long description of San Francisco as a model for California on efforts that include expanding health coverage and protecting the environment, Newsom looked ahead to the gubernatorial primary.

“Will we offer the voters of California a stroll down memory lane or a sprint into the future?” asked Newsom, whose pregnant wife, Hollywood actress Jennifer Siebel, joined him on stage at the end of his speech. “Will we nominate candidates who know Sacramento? Or leaders who know how to change it? Will we embrace the past? Or will we embrace the future?”

Unabashed, Brown not only trumpeted his energy policies of the 1970s (along with his more recent crackdown on mortgage fraud as attorney general), but also looked back to the accomplishments of his father, Pat Brown, who was governor from 1959 to 1967.

“Downtown Oakland has come alive with 10,000 people, and restaurants and art galleries,” Brown told the crowd.

“Why? Because there was a governor named Brown in 1966 that passed the first bond issue for BART. And making that transit subway system come all over the Bay Area we [could] revitalize Oakland 40 years later.”

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michael.finnegan@latimes.com