That Was Zen, This Is Now

By Richard Lacayo

During two terms as Governor of California and two failed bids for the presidency, Jerry Brown, to some, symbolized visionary political leadership. To others, unmoved by his fascination with Buckminster Fuller's visions of the future and the small-is-beautiful theories of E.F. Schumacher, Brown was a weirdo they called "Governor Moonbeam." After losing a 1982 run for the Senate to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson, he dropped out of politics and set off on the political equivalent of a penitent's sojourn in the desert. He went to Mexico to learn Spanish, studied Zen meditation in Japan and worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. "I had such a negative reputation that every time I stood up someone would call me Moonbeam," Brown explains. "I felt I had to absent myself for a while, expiate for my political sins."

Brown's journey has led him to an altogether worldly destination: a furniture warehouse in Sacramento, where he has a temporary office as the newly elected chairman of California's state Democratic Party. As Governor, Brown often feuded with party regulars and was never known for the organizational skills that are badly needed by California Democrats, who last delivered the state for the party's presidential nominee in 1964. Yet just the sort of politicos he once disdained backed his campaign for the chairmanship, swayed by his promise to build a no-nonsense organization that could provide Democratic office seekers with workers, polltakers and money. Says Brown, 50, whose father Edmund was also a two-term Governor of California: "I understand politics. I've been around it since the day I was born."

The seeming mismatch between the party's needs and Brown's temperament has politicians guessing about his prospects. "Depending upon how he handles it," says a longtime friend, "it could be the rehabilitation of Jerry Brown and of the Democratic Party in California. Or it could be the return of the flake." The greatest fear is that his election will undermine Democratic candidates by giving Republicans a chance to dredge up his Moonbeam past. Brown thinks otherwise. "I can become the media black hole that absorbs all the negative feedback," says he. "I can absorb a lot of flak that would otherwise go to our candidates." The most organized opposition to Brown came from women's groups concerned about abortion rights. A pro-choice Governor, the former Jesuit seminary student did an about-face after working for Mother Teresa. Last year he told an interviewer, "The killing of the unborn is crazy." He also wrote a letter to Florida penal authorities urging the release of a jailed antiabortion crusader. During the campaign, Brown tried to defuse the issue by reassuring pro-choice opponents that whatever his personal feelings, he supported the right of women to choose for themselves.

Though he may no longer have his eyes on the moon, most observers are sure that Brown is aiming for higher things -- and he has told friends that gaining the chairmanship is the first step in a plan to gain party support for another tilt at the presidency. Brown even jokingly acknowledges the speculation about his motives. If he can create an effective Democratic Party, he says, he might run for office. "I would have earned it!" he says. Then he adds, "If I don't do it, I'm going back to the monastery."

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Sacramento