Brown Speech Ignores Clinton, Rips Bush, Perot

While his quixotic quest for the presidency met its inevitable end Wednesday night, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. accomplished his personal goal of speaking to the Democratic National Convention on his own terms.

The former California governor did not specifically endorse presidential nominee Bill Clinton, although he did express support for the Democratic Party cause and he took solid shots at both President Bush and prospective independent candidate Ross Perot.

With that tack, Brown seemed to be trying to walk a line between not appearing a traitor to the principles of “change” and “political reform” that had attracted 4 million voters to his cause while not being viewed as a pouting poor loser refusing to help his party oust the Republicans in November.

He clearly succeeded at the former, but there could be controversy about the latter.

Of Perot, he simply said: “There’s no such thing as a billion-dollar populist.”

And referring to Perot’s plan to finance his own campaign--refusing to use federal funds because, the Texan says, the taxpayers can’t afford it--Brown asserted: “Mr. Perot, we can afford to pay for our own democracy. We don’t need you to lend it to us.”

Regarding Bush, Brown declared that he “gives us government of, by and for the privileged.”

Brown’s speech had a defiant, sermonizing tone--typical of his style on the stump--and the only gracious comments were directed at his father, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown. The elder Brown was home in Los Angeles in ill health and was missing his first convention in 50 years.

Jerry Brown seemed near tears as he noted that his father had defeated Richard M. Nixon in a 1962 gubernatorial race and “in my view, (is) the greatest Democrat in this country.”

“Dad, thanks a lot,” Brown said.

Always the showman, Brown asked a 15-year-old girl--rather than a well-known politician, as is traditional--to give a seconding speech after his name had been placed in nomination by his campaign manager, Jodie Evans.

The girl, Kelly Aldrich of Seattle, Wash., had come to Brown’s attention after she praised his candidacy in a political essay contest sponsored by Scholastic Magazine, writing that he was “the man I most admire in America.” One of only 12 winners in the contest entered by 7,000, the high school freshman is attending the convention as a member of the “Kid’s Caucus.”

Immediately after the girl placed his name in nomination, Brown took a second highly unusual step by marching to the podium to deliver the speech he had fought to deliver, using the time normally set aside for seconding remarks.

“He’s nominating himself, seconding himself and then accepting himself,” commented former President Jimmy Carter, who himself was harassed by Brown during the 1976 and 1980 presidential races. But Carter added that Brown lent “a little excitement to the Democratic convention and I think no harm is being done.”

If the maverick Californian had promised to support the party ticket, the Clinton camp and Democratic Chairman Ron Brown would have granted him a prized prime-time slot in which to speak. But Jerry Brown insisted to the end that, as he said Tuesday, “I should not have to buy or make some quid pro quo deal in order to address the delegates when 4 million people have voted to send me here.”

“Let Jerry speak” had become a rallying cry for Brown delegates all week. And the losing candidate milked the controversy for more attention than his aides could have imagined, with TV crews and reporters swarming around him as if he were a rock star. In effect, Brown forced his way onto the podium, crashing Clinton’s party on the night of his nomination by taking advantage of an obscure rule in the convention nominating process.

Although Brown gave the assembled delegates and--more importantly--TV viewers reasons not to vote for Perot and Bush, he offered them no specific rationale to vote for the Democratic ticket.

Still, a sigh of relief might have been breathed by Clinton, who had been called “the prince of sleaze” by Brown during the vitriolic New York primary, the campaign’s turning point. Then, Brown contended that Clinton was “a fraud who will destroy the Democratic Party” and “a Humpty Dumpty candidate who has fallen down into 1,000 pieces.”

After his lopsided defeat in New York on April 7--Brown’s 54th birthday--there was general skepticism that he could “go all the way to the convention,” as he was promising. “I’m going to conduct this campaign for as long as it takes to galvanize the moral energy to rededicate this country to economic and social justice,” he vowed.

The always-quotable Brown survived to the convention because, unlike traditional candidates, he could bounce from state to state on relatively few dollars with the help of dedicated volunteers.

Using his 800-number to generate maximum contributions of $100, Brown finished the primary season in the black and flush with cash, having raised roughly $5 million by June and qualifying for nearly $4 million in federal matching funds. Going into the convention, his campaign had more than $500,000 in the till, according to spokesman Mark Nykanen.

At the convention, Brown pushed his new “humility agenda,” calling for the rollback of congressional pay raises and imposition of congressional term limits.

Brown also wanted to take the party’s delegate-selection rules back to the “reforms” of the George McGovern era, allowing more ordinary citizens and fewer professional politicians to attend conventions. Party leaders in recent years have attempted to insert more seasoned pols, including office holders, into the delegate mix in an effort to instill more political expertise.

In keeping with his campaign’s non-conformist style, some of the delegates that Brown chose to assist his unsuccessful fight on the convention floor Wednesday for political reforms included several from outside traditional political circles. Included were Oliver Stone, director of the movie, “JFK,” and Lamount Bolden, a black teen-ager from the New York City projects. The reforms were soundly defeated on a voice vote.

Throughout the long campaign, Brown received solid support from his family, despite their misgivings in its latter stages about what his failing candidacy would do to the positive image he had established with victories in the early contests.

“My God, he went the distance,” said California state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, who had supported her brother but now will endorse Clinton. “I admire his guts and I admire his staying power. This was about ideas, about his passion to reform the political process and the Democratic Party. And, from his perspective, he had to go to the end.”