A Face in the Crowd

One sees her in retrospect as an icon of fallibility, bravely attempting to overcome an edgy uncertainty, her words lost in the strain of their delivery.

But if one listens carefully, it is possible to apply a key word to the positions she takes and stands by in the worst of times. The word is honor.

I sing today of Kathleen Brown for that reason, because whatever else she might have been in the failure of her campaign against Pete Wilson, she refused to compromise her beliefs for the sake of political expediency. That counts.

It really doesn’t matter at this point whether you agreed or disagreed with her stances against Proposition 187 and capital punishment.

What does matter is that Brown declined to tailor her beliefs to fit the public fashion, while understanding that the price of one’s convictions is often mockery, and ultimately defeat.

“It’s important to stand for things,” she told me later, and it is that standing for things that causes me to say today that if there is a person of the year for me, it is Kathleen Brown.

To say that I reach this conclusion without bias would be untrue. I opposed Proposition 187 from the beginning, and I have hated capital punishment since the time, as a reporter, I watched three people die in the gas chamber.

Also, I have been an admirer of the Brown family, even quirky Jerry, back to when Pat Brown was governor. They stood for things, every one of them.

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As a class, politicians are not a wholesome lot. They’ll run for cover whenever the battle heats up, abandon issues when they become unpopular and avoid positions likely to elicit negative response.

“What-I-really-meant-was” has become the battle cry of shifting stances, practiced by those to whom victory, not honor, is the ultimate achievement.

Kathleen Brown knew as her lead in the polls eroded that the reason for the erosion was her unwillingness to back away from her beliefs, especially her opposition to a measure denying social benefits to illegal immigrants.

“When I read 187, I knew right away it was an issue I could not philosophically support,” she said the other day. “When the incumbent governor embraced it, the election was decided.”

That kind of epiphany early in a campaign is the light that will lead most politicians away from whatever deeper convictions they might have. Brown saw the light and ignored it.

“There was pressure on me not to talk about 187,” she said, “but that was ridiculous. The tradition of politics I believe in is one where you stand for things. That’s the way I was raised.”

I had tracked her down in New York and was interviewing her by telephone. Her voice was strong and sure, unlike many times in the campaign when she seemed faltering and uncertain.

But what seemed uncertainty was a manner of delivery, not ambiguity. “I was never tempted to soften my stand, even when I slipped in the polls,” she said without hesitation. “I wanted to give people a sense of standing up, of being counted. Let that be my legacy.”

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The mockery she faced because of that position was never clearer than in the final days of the campaign when she appeared on Geraldo Rivera’s show to speak against Proposition 187.

She was pelted with catcalls in a hateful demonstration of animosity to such an extent that Rivera was prompted to observe, “This is a debate, not a rumble.”

I reminded her of that time. “I understood their frustration,” she said, referring to those who oppose illegal immigration. “They were people who worked hard and played by the rules. Seeing others break the rules and getting benefits was more than they could take.”

Political humorist P. J. O’Rourke once observed that if you want the tooth fairy to come, you’ve got to put something under the pillow.

What Kathleen Brown says she put under the pillow was hope. What she refused to put under the pillow was hatred.

“I tried to be a promise,” she said. “I wanted to leave a sense of higher purpose.”

By not altering her positions on either Proposition 187 or capital punishment, even when the portent for political disaster became clear, she left that sense of higher purpose in an election that saw few moments of distinction.

Although she is proud of the example she set in the campaign, losing is a lonely place to be. You don’t run for office not to win.

But in terms of adherence to honor, the woman who challenged entrenchment with dignity may have been the biggest winner of all.