To Be or Not to Be a Candidate

Poetry and politics do not naturally mix, but Shakespeare penned some lines that have inspired many a politician. And now they clearly are tugging at state Treasurer Kathleen Brown.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” scribbled the Bard, long before such a noun choice might be considered sexist.

Shakespeare also advised that “we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

Brown’s venture is to become the third member of her family to be elected governor. There is a strong current running in that direction. And this is looking like her flood tide: It’s the “decade of women” in politics, there’s a Democratic surge led by President Clinton, she’s riding high and Gov. Pete Wilson is near drowning.

The latest statewide survey by pollster Mervin Field finds her running comfortably ahead of Wilson by 16 points, 53% to 37%, in a hypothetical 1994 general election race. Brown also leads state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi by 18 points, 48% to 30%, in a Democratic primary matchup.

Among men, Brown and Garamendi run virtually even. But among women, Brown outdistances him by 5 to 2. And women constitute 56% of the Democratic electorate, according to Field.

It is almost to the point where if Brown does not run for governor next year, she will appear timid and lose credibility as a rising star. If not 1994, when? True, Wilson’s unpopularity appears to have bottomed out and he may well be in better shape politically next year than this, but she probably never will have a better shot at the office. And at age 47, such a course would leave her maneuvering room for a future presidential bid.

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Brown recoils from such talk, at least publicly.

Asked whether she is running for governor, Brown insists “not now. . . . I’m just not going to make that decision until the end of the year. I am pretty focused on being treasurer.”

But she obviously has decided to get into position to run.

In the manner of any astute politician eyeing higher office, Brown last year earned personal IOUs by helping several legislative and congressional candidates, most of them women. She wrote $150,000 in checks from her own campaign kitty for 25 candidates, 21 of whom won. She also generated $50,000 from her own donors for a dozen candidates. And she spent hundreds of hours at tedious campaign events from Palm Desert to Modesto to Eureka.

“She made a lot of friends out there,” notes her press secretary, Michael Reese.

After the election, Brown hired fund-raiser Ann Hollister, who had produced millions for Mel Levine’s losing Senate primary race. Then in December, she held six major fund-raising events and wound up the year with $2.1 million in the bank--while Wilson’s campaign committee was showing $473,000 in red ink.

Now, Brown has signed up Susan Kennedy, executive director and chief grass-roots organizer for the state Democratic Party, to be her political director.

These are not the moves of someone planning to run for reelection as state treasurer.

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Brown also has been out giving “the speech”--an upbeat vision of the future from a proud, fourth-generation Californian who talks about restoring the state’s greatness with investments in education and public works and, above all, new leadership.

She can be a captivating orator. She is telegenic. And she is a charmer. At last week’s economic summit in Los Angeles, Brown received a standing ovation--before she spoke.

The rap on her from Wilson’s office is that she lacks specificity. “She’s bright, personable and media-genic, but ultimately she’s going to have to take policy positions,” says the governor’s communications director, Dan Schnur.

But for the present, Brown is being as specific as she needs to be, given her office, and even more so than many politicians in Sacramento.

For example, she has taken a stand on one of the Capitol’s hottest issues, whether to extend the temporary half-cent sales tax increase scheduled to expire in July. She favors extending it until the budget is balanced.

A former Los Angeles school board member, Brown supports breaking up the giant district.

She advocates eliminating the two-thirds vote requirement for passage of local bonds to finance public works. In fact, Brown will talk about bonds and finance all day to anybody who cares to listen.

But with her closest intimates, she will be assessing the political tide, which can be tricky. She also may be aware of Lord Byron’s paraphrase of Shakespeare: “There is a tide in the affairs of women which, taken at the flood, leads--God knows where.”