Party Faithful Rally Round for Look at New Jerry Brown

It was certainly a partisan crowd, but then again, Jerry was telling that same crowd that the word “partisan” sounded negative these days, although it really shouldn’t.

And since this did seem to be Jerry’s crowd, maybe Jerry wouldn’t have described them that way, negatively that is.

But these were Democrats in Orange County, who are not only partisan but almost clannish, outnumbered as they are by others of a different political persuasion.

Jerry was what everybody was calling the guy with the grayish sideburns who was signing autographs and then posing for snapshots and then schmoozing with the Democratic faithful between mouthfuls of tortilla chips that he had scooped with buffet fare.

Jerry was the new Jerry Brown, former California governor and Mother Teresa assistant and Jesuit seminarian and student of Zen Buddhism and escort to Linda Ronstadt. And Jerry Brown, new at the age of 50, was campaigning Tuesday evening for the chairmanship of the state Democratic Party at the north Tustin home of attorney Michael G. Balmages (who, incidentally, was himself campaigning for chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party).

“Didn’t you used to be Jerry Brown?” asked a tall, smiling man with an outstretched hand who strode up to the man who was Jerry Brown.

“Aren’t you still Tom Bradley?” asked a smiling Jerry Brown of the mayor of Los Angeles.

The answer to both questions was yes, of course, but both these guys, Brown and Bradley, knew that anyway. They were engaging in witty repartee.

There seemed to be a lot of that going around at the Balmages home, a rather huge abode with hardwood floors and Oriental rugs that were trampled upon by about 150 or so Democrats, or presumed Democrats.

One couldn’t be too sure about that because there was at least one ringer in the crowd, Don Cinocco, 44, a video producer in Buena Park.

Cinocco, a registered Republican, had come with his mother, Icey Cinocco, a die-hard Democrat, because they were both dying to get a look at the new Jerry Brown, or maybe even the old Jerry Brown.

Don Cinocco likes Jerry Brown and Icey Cinocco loves Jerry Brown.

“I’m a closet Buddhist,” said Don Cinocco, “so I support him on a different level.”

Icey Cinocco, meantime, got all fired up about Brown’s much publicized 3-week tour of duty with Mother Teresa caring for the dying of Calcutta.

“He went right into the nitty gritty of India, the poverty,” she said. “He feels it and he knows that it is a moral obligation to take care of the poor. When they make fun of him, they don’t realize that this man has been involved, involved . It’s not just tokenism.”

That too was the message that Brown wanted to spread among Orange County Democrats, that his campaign to be state chairman wasn’t just a token gesture, that he intended to serve all 4 years of the term beginning in February, and that just because his campaign had come out of nowhere didn’t mean that he was still nowhere.

“We need a shot in the arm, some energy,” Brown said, surrounded by people who were surrounding the buffet table.

Then Brown migrated toward the stairs, waited for his cue and started his stump speech by announcing that he intended to build the most powerful Democratic Party in America.

“There was a moment when Orange County was Democratic, a very brief moment, when I was governor,” he continued, “and I have not given up hope that it will be again.”

This idea apparently excited a lot of the assembled Democrats, because loud whoops filled the packed anteroom leading to the stairs on which Brown was standing.

“The Democratic Party is the party of dreams, ideas, the environment, and we will once again be the majority party in Orange County!” Brown bellowed over the cheers of the crowd.

And just a few seconds earlier, this same crowd gave Brown more hearty applause when he offered a public mea culpa on his gubernatorial record on transportation, an issue he realized was close to the heart of Orange County residents.

“And if you say, ‘You didn’t do anything for transportation!’ ” Brown said, “I say to you, ‘You’re right!’ And I owe up to that mistake! (Gov. George) Deukmejian is following the same mistaken policy I did. But he hasn’t owned up to it!”

Steve Westly, the San Francisco investment banker who was considered a shoo-in for the state chairmanship before Brown entered the race, was scheduled to address the same gathering but never did make it because of fog at the airport.

However, Chauncey Alexander of the Democratic Club of West Orange County spoke some words to the crowd on Westly’s behalf. (Spokesmen for Brown and Westly each say that their candidate is running ahead of the other.)

“Jerry Brown has spent 6 years hibernating, finding himself, which I think is fine,” Alexander said, “while we have been working to build the party. . . . He’s a charismatic character. That’s fine. But I think we need somebody like Steve Westly.”

Those remarks, however, didn’t exactly shake the roof. There appeared to be only two people who clapped among the multitude, a large percentage of whom were wearing red-and-white “Brown” pins that were being passed out at the door by Tim Carpenter, Brown’s organizer in Orange County.

“It’s not a hard sell,” Carpenter was saying about his lobbying efforts among the county’s 165 Democratic delegates to the state party convention. “He’s done a very good job of shedding the Gov. Moonbeam image.

“This will pretty much cinch his campaign” in Orange County,” Carpenter said. “Jerry generates a lot of activity. There’s a real buzz.”

Democrat John Simon, milling among the crowd with a drink in hand, put it this way: “You see people lined up outside, waiting for (Brown’s) car to pull up. You won’t see that with Steve Westly.”

And as for the Gov. Moonbeam stuff, Democrat delegate Howard Kieffer, a marketing consultant in Newport Beach, had this to say: “He’s got some dirty laundry, but it’s out there on the line.”

Not that that was good enough for all of those at Tuesday’s soiree, with several people saying they just hadn’t made up their mind who to support.

Esthel Stern, who edits the party’s newsletter in Orange County, said she had “mixed feelings” about the man.

“He left on a cloud as Gov. Moonbeam,” she said.

But Richard McWilliams, an aerospace engineer, said that he had met Westly and found him “very cold.”

Jerry Brown, on the other hand, “is a very intelligent, educated man,” McWilliams said.

“And anybody who says that he is a kook, especially people in the Democratic Party who say those things, I think that’s kind of sick.”