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Los Angeles Times Interview / The Governor’s Race : Kathleen Brown : A Candidate Seeking to Carry on the Family Legacy

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<i> Bill Stall is a political writer for The Times</i>

There is a touch of regal bearing about Kathleen Brown, fitting since she now carries the torch of what is being called the Brown political dynasty of California. Her father, Edmund G. (Pat) Sr., was governor 1959-67, in a booming, building California that matched his expansive political spirit.

Then there was gloomy brother-governor, Edmund G. (Jerry) Jr., in office 1975-83, the rebel who rejected the trappings of power, said less was more and is remembered mostly for satellites and diamond lanes.

Now comes Kathleen, 48, always Pat’s favorite who--Brown family observers insist--got all the best genes: mom’s smarts and poise and dad’s political touch. Brown served on the Los Angeles Board of Education 1975-80, moved to New York with her new husband, television executive Van Gordon Sauter, went to law school, became a Wall Street bond counsel, rubbed shoulders with the Brokaws and Rathers, returned to Los Angeles, a political tuneup on the Board of Public Works and then state treasurer. Fulfilling the Brown destiny, they say, she is favored to win the June 7 Democratic primary. If she does, she would go against Republican Gov. Pete Wilson in the fall.

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Perhaps never has a California politician enjoyed such sudden national star status as Brown, grandmother, housewife-turned-lawyer and then pol, touted by national glamour magazines as a potential President of the United States, while still not fully tested on the statewide political stage. She and Sauter, who ran CBS network news and now heads Fox News, are at home on Los Angeles’ Westside or New York’s West Side, or in their Idaho mountain getaway.

They are somehow symbolic of an improbable modern marriage, or a mushy old-fashioned fairy tale. She is an intense Democrat with strong liberal roots, with lean, hawkish, sharp-featured good looks, a conciliator, mother of three grown children from an earlier marriage and now doting grandmother. Sauter is a roly-poly, bearded man with a quick, throaty laugh; an argumentative, opinionated, Republican conservative working in a high-stakes, high-risk industry, with two children of his own.

Brown’s treasurer’s office in the Bradbury Building on Broadway seems to perfectly reflect the candidate: rooted in California history, but restored and decorated in smart, efficient modern style. Never really comfortable giving stand-up speeches, Brown prefers just to talk, as she did on a recent morning.

Question: Why do you want to be governor?

Answer: I think frustration, anger at the direction that my state is headed under the leadership of Pete Wilson. I have seen everything that I grew up to believe was special about California--whether it was the opportunity for good jobs, the opportunity for a good education, whether it was the quality of life--being destroyed, job by job, and school by school, and element by element. And I want to do something about it. And that’s why I’m running for governor.

Q: You could have run for reelection without a problem and then for governor four years from now without an incumbent running. Was that a consideration?

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A: I learned from my dad that timing is everything and that you ought not let opportunities and moments go by. And what this man (Wilson) has done to our state in terms of fiscal mismanagement--and I speak specifically of the summer of 1992 and the IOUs--and what he has done to damage our state’s credibility in the marketplace . . . .

But it is beyond just fiscal mismanagement. California is a state that is built on its people and our people are diverse, and our people are entrepreneurial, and our people have always had kind of a grit and determination to overcome all the different crises that have beset the state . . . . What this man has done is to divide our people unnecessarily, provocatively divided them, purposely divided them for political ends. And I just think that’s wrong . . . .

I think there’s a new California that is brighter and better and more prosperous than the California before. And this man is standing in the way of that new California from emerging. So I’m not going to sit there in the treasurer’s office and continue to fight against his fiscal mismanagement, continue to fight against his lack of vision. I’m going to go out in the marketplace and let the people decide which vision they want.

Q: When Pete Wilson was deciding whether to run for governor in 1990, some advisers urged him not to because they thought California was ungovernable. Did you have any such concerns?

A: No. I did not. This is a great job. I’ve got to tell you, this is a great state to sell. There’s a lot of problems--lots. And people are leaving by the vanloads. But people are coming, too. And people will stay if they are given a reason to stay. And I can’t imagine a more extraordinary opportunity in life than to try and put California back on track to be the state that sets the mark for the nation, the state that celebrates its diversity, celebrates its at-times oddities, celebrates its uniqueness, or eccentricities. Because those are the productive creativity of the state.

The approach that I took was: Can governors make a difference? I looked at other states around the country, because so many states have experienced the kind of fiscal upheaval that California has. In looking across the country, I saw conditions weren’t that different, but that who was in charge, and what they did and how they did it, did make a difference.

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Ann Richards has made a huge difference in the way the people of Texas feel about themselves . . . . And Mario Cuomo, for all his wide array of different reviews about his administration, has always made the people of New York believe in their future. So you never have the kind of malaise in New York that you have in California.

Q: You have been glamorized in the national magazines with so many articles setting high expectations. Has that been a problem?

A: I think there have been expectations, issues that I have to contend with. But I’m pretty fortunate to have those kinds of articles written about me, if I’m interested in running for governor. If the pictures are good and they spell my name right, by and large, it’s OK, my mother says. Because most people don’t read those long stories. I know that when there’s a really bad one, and they say, “Great article, Kathleen.”

Q: Here in California, you were the assumed front-runner and had raised all this money and people started questioning: What does she stand for? Then you did your policy speeches, and they were criticized. What was your reaction to that? Damned if you do and damned if you don’t?

A: Yeah. A bit of the damned if you do and damned if you don’t. But mostly knowing from an internal compass that there is a path that you travel to achieve a goal. It’s the difference between a marathon runner and a sprinter . . . . I raised the money. That was the first thing that I did, because you can have the best candidacy and the best message and if you don’t have the money to get you through the tough times and to buy the media and to build the reputation--I am sorry, the way it is today, you don’t win . . .

I didn’t want to be a candidate for governor who was ill-informed, so I took the time to do my due diligence. And in pulling together that information and pulling together those issues and weighing them in the context of my vision for California, the agenda for California began to emerge for me.

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And they were rolled out in incredibly boring speeches. But life isn’t perfect, you know. They were hard to give, because I thought that they were really boring. That’s one of the reasons I gave them so fast . . . . I did that and I feel very good about it. Because I go back and I read those speeches now, and they’re very solid. And they fit together with the continuum of values that I think I bring to this race and will bring to the office of governor.

Q: What role does your husband have in your campaign and what role would he play in a Brown Administration?

A: Oh, he’s been asking my mother. My mother would say, “Well, Van, here’s what I think you should be called: First Mate--First Mate.”

Well, in the campaign, there is no one who is more supportive than Van Gordon Sauter. And we differ on lots of political issues. So I’m much better in any debate as a consequence of arguing with him, the issues. But he is like a ballast of strength and support. And he’s been through his own campaigns, as it were, in life--and so there is a kind of camaraderie that we share. He’s just remarkably supportive.

What role would he play? He has a job of his own that is important to him. But I think he would be an asset--is an asset, in terms of any role that I would want him to play in selling the state of California, marketing the state of California, providing whatever leadership in whatever area. It’s kind of uncharted.

Q: Are there any silver bullets out there as solutions to California’s problems ?

A: I don’t think that there are a lot of silver bullets. The only silver bullet there might be is the recognition that we can’t go back to what we were. The acceptance of a new economy, a new California, a new opportunity: That is a silver bullet. That’s where I think leadership is important. Governors don’t solve problems. People solve problems. What governors do is they identify a strategy that has a logic to it, and value to it, and then they identify opportunities and empower people to take advantage of those opportunities. You put things together and things begin to happen.

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Q: Do you ever think about how you would like California to be at the end of the second term of a Kathleen Brown governorship?

A: A million new jobs--that’s at the end of the first term. I do think about it. It is very definitely a vision of a California that believes in itself again, that has kind of--not a swagger--but a lift to the step, because you’re from California. That, I want to be able to see again in the people of this state. I want to see us be a leader again.

And then I would like to see, in sort of concrete terms, I would like to see the Alameda Corridor done. That is something concrete. I think it is important not just to have ideas, not just to have notions be a part of one’s legacy, but I am firmly in the belief that the building of things becomes a measure of the legacy.

I’d love to see some aspect of the Los Angeles River revitalized. We just came from San Jose, where we walked yesterday morning, and what they’ve done with the Guadalupe River--you see what it brings to the sense of community.

I would like to see a university of a different kind. Not another UC, but a Ft. Ord model, the conversion of a major military base--CSU and UC and the community colleges working together collaboratively. Let’s have it be a model.

I want to see every classroom in every school wired for the 21st-Century technology.

Two other things that are really important to me. Don’t know how to do it yet, but many pieces of it are there. Some kind of state commitment to nurturing and developing a mentorship program for youth at risk. It’s not the state throwing money, because all these programs are out there. It’s more people being committed to other people . . . .

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Along with that, teen pregnancy is an issue that is both the heart and soul of the welfare problem, the poverty problems, the family problems we have today.

I was nearly a teen-age mom. It was four days after my 20th birthday that I had my first child. And I had lots of support. And yet it was the loneliest, scariest, most terrifying experience of my life. I was 20 years old, and I had two years of college, and I had graduated from high school and I was married--and had a good marriage and a good family. And it was just absolutely overwhelming.

And to think of these children--at age 13 and 14 and 15 and 16--having kids. It’s wrong. And as governor, I want to be able to talk about that and want to be able to do something about that . . . .

I think I can speak to that issue with a sense of purpose and connectedness that might make a little difference.*

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