Early Steps in a Dance Marathon

The dance has begun for Kathleen Brown. The state treasurer has begun to take the first tentative steps toward a candidacy many Californians consider inevitable. She has begun to run for governor. Of course, she cannot admit this just now, with the election two years away. An official declaration at this point would be both bad form and bad politics.

What she can say is that California Democrats keep telling her it is time for the third member of her family, and the first of her gender, to become governor, and that this talk “has begun to take on a larger importance. I am at a stage now where I acknowledge I am definitely thinking about it.”

Definitely thinking about it was enough last week to draw 1,200 supporters to a fund-raiser in the ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel. It was a sparkling affair: pink salmon, California whites and Warren Beatty, all beneath the high chandeliers of a Nob Hill landmark. The crowd heard Brown recap her successes as state treasurer and then cut to what she called, coyly enough, “a little peek around the corner, into the future.”

She spoke of “the crucial elections of the 1990s,” a need to ensure that “the restoration of California is not squandered on those who lack the vitality to serve, the authority to lead, the imagination to reinvent the California Dream.” It was, in short, the oratory of someone about to vault beyond the world of general obligation bonds and Moody’s ratings. It was the oratory of a candidate for governor.

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Brown--mother of five, grandmother, lawyer, a politician who worked her way up from the bottom--is her own woman, but her campaign for governor will turn in part on comparisons with three men who preceded her in the job. Her dance partners, if you will.

First is her father, Pat Brown. The old man seems to have gained stature during California’s hard times--a living totem to a time when California was still rich, still ambitious, still worked, a time when big things were built. Brown is helped by comparisons to her father. And she invites them, reminding audiences how 30 years ago “Pop” rejected doomsday prophecies of business fleeing to low tax states--”this counsel of fear,” he called it--and pressed forward with his dams and freeways and universities.

“I, too,” her speech proceeds, “have too much faith in California to accept the counsel of fear.”

Comparisons with a more famous brother are trickier. Brown cannot allow herself to be branded Sister Moonbeam, but cannot afford to alienate his supporters either. So she praises big brother for his achievements, and in wry, winking tribute sprinkles conversation with ‘beamisms like “less is more.” But she also makes a point of concentrating on the nuts and bolts of treasuredom, not wanting to seem flighty or unfocused--a rap on her brother. She doesn’t shun, as he did, the backslapping, baby-kissing, fund-raising conventions of politics: No 800-numbers on Nob Hill.

Last on the dance card is Pete Wilson. His biggest weakness plays to Brown’s best strength. Wilson not only has accepted the counsel of fear, he has adopted it as a political agenda, becoming lead spokesman for the many complaints of big business. Brown also concentrates on economic issues--endorses workers’ compensation reforms even--but gives it all a wholly different pitch. And she can rhapsodize about the California Dream, make a case that the best days are still ahead, without sounding callous to current hardships.

“More than anything else,” she said Wednesday, “California needs to restore the confidence and the optimism of its people. Californians know that is a difficult task. They are smart. But our people have always responded; they have time and time again. What is required is what George Bush called ‘the vision thing.’ ”

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Two years is a long time at the political ball. Toes get stepped on, bandwagons turn into pumpkins. Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi could make a tough primary opponent, and the general election will be no waltz. No matter how battered Wilson seems now, incumbents never fade away; they kick and scratch and scream to the end.

Brown, I believe, does begin with one advantage. Her message of hope--founded in a native daughter’s faith in California, tempered with a recognition of hard work ahead--should resonate in a state grown weary of bashing from outsiders and even its own leaders. If so, her competitors will be forced to put aside workers’ comp and auto insurance, their issues, and engage Brown on the political high ground of California’s future--of reinventing the dream. She will have set the debate on her issue, where she is at her rhetorical best.

In politics, as in dance, that’s called leading.