For Brown, an Issue With a History

Decades ago, former Gov. Pat Brown advised his son Jerry: “In California, you don’t mess with a man’s guns.” When Jerry became governor, he amended that counsel to include “a man’s car.” Now, daughter Kathleen seems to have quietly adopted this paternal guidance for “the death penalty.”

You don’t mess with something that’s favored by three-fourths of all voters and two-thirds of your own party, even if you find it morally repugnant. You try hard not to even talk about it.

This is why Treasurer Kathleen Brown, the Democratic front-runner for governor, says only that she’ll enforce the death penalty and insists that’s really all voters want or need to know. Her reasons for opposing it--on religious grounds as a Catholic and its questionable value as a deterrent--are “irrelevant,” she contends.

What is not irrelevant, she knows from close-up observation, is the firestorm this issue can ignite if it is not handled delicately. She was a young teen-ager when her father briefly stayed the execution of “Red Light Bandit” Caryl Chessman--at Jerry’s urging--and then led an unsuccessful fight to abolish capital punishment.

“My family was booed in public,” Pat Brown later wrote in his autobiography. “My political stock fell so low that there was talk of a recall.” During her father’s two terms, Kathleen watched him agonize as he sent 36 people to the gas chamber and commuted the sentences of 23 others to life imprisonment. The issue “seriously damaged my political future,” he recalled.

*

Kathleen Brown later saw her brother irreparably injure his career by appointing Rose Elizabeth Bird as chief justice of the California Supreme Court. Bird’s continual overturning of death penalty sentences prompted her ouster by angry voters.

So, based on her own family’s experience, Brown believes this is an issue to avoid.

If she’s upfront and says it’s her belief that the state doesn’t have a moral right to kill, then--she suspects--some reporter next will ask about the morality of government waging war or financing abortions.

If she asserts that capital punishment is not a deterrent to violent crime or maintains--as her father did--that it also clogs the courts and is enforced unfairly, this will provide ammunition for her political opponents, she figures.

And she’s probably right. But there is no escaping this issue, especially for a Brown.

By stonewalling when pressed by reporters to be more forthcoming about her views, she may be aggravating the damage already caused by being on the “wrong side” politically. She is adding to the debate an unnecessary aura of mystery.

She is licensing political adversaries such as Darry Sragow, campaign manager for Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, to proclaim: “Refusing to say why she’s opposed to the death penalty makes this a character issue. Voters don’t expect to always agree with elected officials, but they expect them to have the courage to deal with an issue straight-on.”

Character and courage are premium political buzzwords.

*

After last week’s televised debates, Sragow conducted a poll and concluded that Brown is most vulnerable on the death penalty. So he is staking Garamendi’s slim chance for victory in the Democratic primary on a TV ad attacking Brown’s position.

What happened next puzzled many political pros. Brown’s campaign manager, Clint Reilly, countered with a TV ad bashing Garamendi for his handling of the failed Executive Life Insurance Co.

Brown had virtually ignored Garamendi until this point, targeting instead Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. She had been playing a “November strategy.” And the question was: Why now use up $500,000 to attack Garamendi when she’s comfortably ahead by 12 points among likely voters, according to the latest Times poll.

The conventional wisdom is that Reilly is taking no chances; an upset loss could end Brown’s career and certainly play havoc with his. But this ad strategy has as much to do with November as with Tuesday’s election.

Reilly sees Wilson and Garamendi as surrogates. The governor’s TV ads attacking Brown have benefited Garamendi, who stands to reap the benefit in votes. Wilson was a surrogate campaigner for Garamendi, Reilly theorizes, and on Tuesday Garamendi will be a surrogate recipient of potential Wilson votes in November. Reilly doesn’t want Democratic voters to get into the habit of voting for any gubernatorial candidate except Brown.

There also are two other reasons for hitting Garamendi, in Reilly’s view: He deserves it for beating up on Brown, and it sends a message to Wilson that any attacks will be returned.

Now Wilson is waiting his turn to attack Brown on the death penalty. She may find that her best remedy is a dose of candor.