Back to His Moonbeam? : Jerry Brown: Setbacks in the Democratic Party indicate that he hasn’t made the transition to nuts-and-bolts leader.

Party officials called it “cost-efficient,” but the collapse of the California Democratic Party’s highly touted voter-registration field operation, nurtured and pushed by state chairman Jerry Brown, raises new questions about the political future of the former governor. The operation was at the core of Brown’s party revitalization efforts. Its demise comes at a time when Democratic registration has slipped below 50% for the first time in 56 years.

Opponents of Brown’s bid to become party chairman worried that his charisma and fund-raising skills could never compensate for his weak administrative abilities. Could he really re-invent himself, they asked, as a nuts-and-bolts leader?

Brown insisted that he could. So confident was he that he tied the success of his party-building efforts to his political ambitions. Just months ago, he was quoted as saying that his role had changed from “moonbeam to machine. We’re no longer into metaphysics; we’re into mechanics.”

But the abrupt end of the party’s field program is a tacit admission by Brown that he badly miscalculated the price tag of remaking the party. With the operation’s monthly payroll at $250,000 and with only $100,000 in the bank, Brown will have to settle for local registration drives partly funded with party cash.

In a fund-raising letter last November, Brown said that the party needed to take greater responsibility for voter registration, voter identification and get-out-the-vote efforts. He bragged about a new campaign strategy used in a special congressional election in September. “We combined modern computer technology with old-fashioned grass-roots organizing.”

With the end of his field operation, Brown has lost his “machine.” Metaphysics, anyone?