Capitol Portrait Gallery Enters Brown Period

The portrait of power has changed once again in the state Capitol.

Nearly a year ago, in one of his first moves, newly installed Republican Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle rearranged the Capitol’s portrait gallery and placed a picture of GOP icon Ronald Reagan at the main entrance to the state Assembly chamber.

Now, Pringle’s Democratic successor, Cruz Bustamante, as he settled into the speaker’s office this month, removed Reagan’s smiling portrait and replaced it with one of his own political inspirations: former Democratic Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Sr., who died in February.

Democrats said some Republicans had been betting that Bustamante, the first Latino speaker, would prefer a portrait of Romualdo Pacheco, the first California-born governor and the only chief executive of Spanish ancestry.

But Dan Eaton, Bustamante’s chief of staff, said Tuesday that the Fresno lawmaker had warm memories of Brown’s eight-year tenure in the 1950s and the 1960s.

“When he was growing up, that was his governor, the governor who was able to make things happen. Cruz had seen the accomplishments of Pat Brown, and it wasn’t meant to be disrespectful to any of the other governors.”

For more than 100 years, portraits of former governors have been hung in the Capitol. To make way for Brown, Reagan’s 1974 portrait was moved to a wall under a stairwell near the Capitol’s main entrance and across from one of his celebrated GOP predecessors, Earl Warren.

Brown’s portrait shows the bespectacled, blue-suited Brown with a thin smile standing next to an American flag and holding a sheaf of papers.

In contrast, the portrait of Brown’s son, Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., was done in an expressionistic style that sparked controversy when it was unveiled. It remains in a remote corner of the Capitol outside the Senate.

In a 1995 book on the gubernatorial portraits, Bernice Brown, Pat’s wife, is quoted as recalling that his official portrait had to be done from a photograph because the state’s 32nd governor didn’t like to sit still for long.

She felt that it did not capture her husband’s natural expression, and at the unveiling she could manage only an innocuous comment.

Still, the placement of the portrait symbolizes the Democratic comeback after two years as the Assembly’s minority party.

The move had a touch of irony: With Bustamante’s help, Brown finally got the better of Reagan 30 years after the actor-turned-politician defeated the Democrat in his 1966 bid for a third term.

As one Assembly sergeant-at-arms said to a reporter: “Pat’s back.”