Jerry Brown says he offers ‘insider’s knowledge’ and an ‘outsider’s mind’

Saying the antidote to California’s problems is “someone with an insider’s knowledge but an outsider’s mind,” Jerry Brown, the Democratic state attorney general, announced his candidacy for governor Tuesday in a video on his website.

“Our state is in serious trouble, and the next governor must have the preparation and the knowledge and the know-how to get California working again,” Brown, 71, said in the taped message. “That’s what I offer.”

Brown, who was the state’s governor from 1975 to 1983, attempted to contrast himself with his Republican opponents, particularly Meg Whitman, the former EBay chief who has never held public office. He also sought to use voters’ frustration with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former actor who came into office in the 2003 recall, to argue against repeating that pattern with Whitman or one-term state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

“Some people say that if you’ve been around the process, you can’t handle the job, that we need to go out and find an outsider who knows virtually nothing about state government,” said Brown, who has also been California secretary of state and Oakland mayor. “Well, we tried that, and it doesn’t work. We found out that not knowing is not good.”

Brown was light on specifics, and the ideas he offered were not so different from what Republicans are saying. He vowed that, “in this time of recession . . . there will be no new taxes, unless you the people vote for them” -- leaving open the possibility of more taxes when the economy mends.

Like Whitman and Poizner, he called for smaller government and more power for local officials and school districts. And he said he would try to ease Sacramento’s “partisan paralysis.”

Even before Brown announced, Whitman released a “Voter’s Guide to Jerry Brown” with a list of “fiscal failures” from his record on taxes and spending. In a statement, she contrasted her private-sector experience with Brown’s “40-year career in politics which has resulted in a trail of failed experiments, undelivered promises, big government spending and higher taxes.”

Poizner said the state needs “bold, new conservative solutions” and “cannot fall prey to the same high-tax policies and special interest-run government that has led our state into a fiscal disaster.”

michael.rothfeld@latimes.com