How To Beat A Billionaire

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By Clint Reilly

Now that California Attorney General Jerry Brown has made his candidacy for governor official, does he have what it takes to beat back his likely Republican foe, billionaire Meg Whitman?

Sixteen years ago, I managed the gubernatorial campaign of Brown’s sister, then-State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, who was soundly defeated by incumbent Governor Pete Wilson.

Jerry was a quiet bystander during that campaign, contributing only $150 to his sister’s cash-starved campaign as a protest against the power of money in politics.

Now Jerry must raise tens of millions to beat Whitman, an adversary with unlimited personal wealth who is anxious to paint him as an over-the-hill 1970s retread.

He should also take note of critical lessons from his sister’s failed quest in 1994. Like “Jerry 2010,” “Kathleen 1994” faced several major obstacles.

First, it was an overwhelmingly Republican year. Bill Clinton’s first midterm election turned out to be one of the most disastrous political cycles in history for Democrats.

Second, polls clearly showed that voters still had not purged their negative feelings about Jerry’s two terms as governor.

They saw Kathleen’s opposition to the death penalty as a sign that she was a weak-on-crime liberal in the tradition of Jerry’s state supreme court appointee Rose Bird, who was drummed out of office in a harsh law-and-order referendum by an angry electorate.

Third, Wilson diverted attention away from his responsibility for California’s grinding recession by scapegoating illegal immigrants.
California voters blamed Democrats exclusively for the recession, even though Wilson and his predecessor, George Deukmejian, had managed the state for the previous 12 years.

Fourth, Wilson dramatically outspent Kathleen by adroitly manipulating the power of incumbency to compile what was a massive war chest for that era.

Even though 16 years have elapsed, Jerry Brown confronts many similar problems. 2010 promises to be a bruising year for Democrats. Barack Obama and the Democratic leaders in Washington are in the same precarious position that Bill Clinton and his party faced in the 1994 midterms.

Voters blame a dysfunctional government and a bad economy on the party in power. Jerry must decouple his campaign from Obama and the Democratic Congress.

Jerry’s life has been a modern odyssey. He has transformed himself over a 40-year career and played myriad roles.

For most voters, memories of Governor Moonbeam, Linda Ronstadt and Rose Bird have been replaced by images of a common sense mayor of Oakland, his attorney wife Anne Gust and today’s law-and-order attorney general. Brown can’t allow himself to be defined by Whitman’s media strategist Mike Murphy, who will run against the “Young Jerry.”

Today’s attorney general is a pretty damn good ballot designation for governor – good enough to elect both his father Pat Brown and Deukmejian.

Nor can Brown allow Whitman to manufacture false issues that change the subject on her flaws. In an era where business leaders squandered trillions and taxpayers bailed them out, Whitman shouldn’t be allowed to wear her billion-dollar net worth as a sign of accomplishment, virtue and extraordinary competence.

Jerry must eviscerate the “run government like a business” mantra of executives who nearly toppled capitalism with their profligacy and amorality.

Finally, Brown will certainly be outspent. Whitman has already burned $38 million and the campaign hasn’t yet begun. She is on course to become the biggest spender in history.

Jerry must tie Whitman to the generation of CEOs and corporate chieftains who nearly bankrupted America. He must attack the phony stock options and over the top pay packages that made executives like Whitman insanely rich without them investing a dime of their own money or taking one iota of risk.

Pete Wilson used his fundraising advantage as governor to make the 1994 campaign a referendum on Kathleen Brown. Today, Jerry Brown must turn the tables and make the governor’s race a referendum on wealthy executives who use their ill-gotten gains to buy power and pervert public policy.

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Clint Reilly was a leading political consultant for 26 years. His clients included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and former California State Senate President Pro Tem Dave Roberti.  More recently, Reilly led a battle to preserve media competition in the Bay Area via two landmark anti-trust lawsuits (Reilly v. Hearst and Reilly v. MediaNews, et. al.). This article first appeared on www.clintreilly.com and is republished with his permission.