The Inland Empire Liberal Faces His Last Stand--Again

Like frustrated big-game hunters, Republicans are again reloading their political guns to bag a trophy they’ve had in their cross-hairs for years: venerable Rep. George E. Brown Jr.

In his increasingly conservative Inland Empire congressional district, Brown is an endangered species: an old-time liberal Democrat whose days in the House go back to the John F. Kennedy administration.

No one in California’s 52-member House delegation--half Democrat, half Republican--has served longer.

Brown has deflected Republican attacks even as his 42nd Congressional District--anchored by San Bernardino, Fontana, Colton, Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario--has changed its political colors.

The region, historically draped in blue collars, is today a tableau of affordable bedroom communities made up of new, younger voters, refugees of the Los Angeles Basin who have brought their young families and conservative politics with them.

Indeed, each of the congressional districts surrounding Brown’s have been sending Republicans to Washington for years; although Democrats still hold a 51%-37% registration lead, voting patterns suggest the district is a toss-up, if not Republican.

The GOP is not only smarting that Brown has reigned untouchable for all these years, but it covets his seat to retain the House majority captured with the class of ’94.

Similarly, Democrats are hoping that despite the district’s growing conservatism, Brown will survive yet another Republican attack, thanks both to President Clinton’s popularity in California and Brown’s own local stature.

Supporters say Brown’s tenure is testimony to his advocacy for science and technology development, jobs and tenacious service to local constituents who would rather reward him for his attention to their parochial needs than rebuke him for sake of the bigger political picture in Washington. Still, his base of support has been insidiously slipping since the 1980s.

In 1992 and 1994, confident Republicans drafted Brown’s political obituary but couldn’t get it published; this time, the GOP says, it is throwing everything it can into the election to oust Brown.

The Republicans could not have come up with a fresher candidate to stand in contrast against Brown--a wing-tipped, cigar-smoking, 76-year-old lifelong politician who wears his rumpled suits like a badge of honor. Opposing him this year is a Superior Court judge, 39-year-old Linda Wilde, a brassy political upstart who articulately champions the most conservative of Republican causes.

She was 7 years old when Brown was first elected to Congress--from the 29th district in Los Angeles, before he moved inland to the 42nd. She earned her law degree in 1980 and worked in private practice for 12 years. A law office researcher and appellate briefs writer who never personally argued a case before a judge, she surprised the judicial establishment by running for the bench in San Bernardino County in 1992--and defeating an 18-year incumbent.

Two years ago, the Republicans nominated businessman Rob Guzman to run at Brown, believing he could tap the district’s cross-over conservative Latino vote; indeed, he outpolled the district’s Republican registration by 12 points. Still, Brown--whose wife, Marta, is Latina--prevailed with 51% of the vote and survived.

Republican strategists later mused that Guzman didn’t campaign aggressively enough, gambling poorly that his surname would carry him to victory.

This year, the GOP is ecstatic to have the hard-driving Wilde as its nominee. With Brown topping its national hit list, the Republican Party has delivered House Speaker Newt Gingrich and party Chairman Haley Barbour to local fund-raisers. They lobbed broadsides at Brown as the antithesis of the new, Gingrich-crafted Congress.

“I don’t know of another race in the country that offers a clearer choice between old-time liberalism and where this country is now going,” Gingrich said at a Wilde fund-raiser here recently. He said Brown’s liberalism “fossilized around 1972.”

Brown is unfazed. He had run for U.S. Senate in 1970, lost, sat out of politics for two years and remembers his political obituary. “Time magazine asked, what’s a 50-year-old, worn-out, left-wing politician going to do, now that he’s reached for the gold ring and missed it and is unemployed and has no future?”

In 1972, Brown moved to the Inland Empire, ran for the 42nd and hasn’t lost since. He voted to oppose the Vietnam War, he voted to oppose this country’s involvement in the Gulf War; he’s consistently championed civil rights legislation and voted against the welfare reform embraced by this Congress and his own president, saying the shift of the welfare burden to the states would cost California too much.

All the while, Brown--who has a degree in physics and did graduate work in nuclear engineering--has cast himself as Congress’ visionary for science, technology and the environment. He refers sarcastically to Wilde’s assertion that she wants to bring the nation into the 21st century; his sponsorship of legislation 20 years ago--promoting solar energy, electric-powered vehicles and other sciences--”shows that I’ve been ahead of the curve and that I’ve been a futurist from the beginning.”

Wilde credits Brown for much of his work but says the district is ready to embrace her conservatism. The wife of an Ontario police officer, she--as well as Brown--has secured various law enforcement endorsements.

“The best thing I have to offer is my background as a judge and my ability to bring different sides together to settle their differences fairly,” she said, in an interview.

Both sides differ on how the presidential contest in California between Clinton and Bob Dole will play out in the local district. Democrat strategists predict a lethargic Republican turnout that will hurt Wilde locally; Wilde predicts a closer race in the district and a sizable GOP turnout.

Political scholars in the 42nd District say part of Brown’s success has been in downplaying his broader ideological views while trumpeting his local pork-barrel successes.

“Brown has survived on that basis and his reputation for excellent constituency services, even though his district is now more conservative than he is,” said Linda Norman Denno, a political science professor at Cal State San Bernardino.

“The question before voters is: Do I vote for someone who as a congressman will bring me immediate, personal benefits when I call his local office, or someone who will cast just one of 435 votes in Congress on larger issues?” Denno said. “I teach classes on Congress, but I can’t say when the last time was I looked up his voting record in Congress. And who really does?”

David Lanoue, political sciences department chairman at UC Riverside, said Wilde’s biggest challenge is in dismantling the nonpartisan goodwill that Brown has cultivated with his constituents over the years.

“Most attentive voters are aware he’s on the liberal end of his party,” Lanoue said. “But he has the image as the grand old man of Inland Empire politics--not in a pejorative sense, but one of endearment.”

Washington observers aren’t sure what to make of the race.

“He’s probably the most vulnerable Democrat congressman in California,” said Elizabeth Wilner, managing editor of the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan monthly newsletter. “And we’ve been writing that every two years since the late 1980s--that he could lose his seat because his district is not that favorable for him. And every time, he wins.

“Linda Wilde is a very credible and attractive candidate; she’s rather conservative, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her. She’s very credible.

“So this year, we are writing again that this could finally be it for George Brown.”