Pat Brown California Governor
March 8, 2012 by staff · Comments Off on Pat Brown California Governor
Pat Brown California Governor, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown
1959 – 1967
Significant Facts
Born:April 21, 1905 in San Francisco, California
Died: February 16, 1996 in Beverly Hills, California
Married:Bernice Layne on October 30, 1930 in Reno, Nevada
Political Party: Democrat
Biography
As a boy growing up in San Francisco, Brown earned his own money by delivering two newspapers-the Call and the Chronicle. After graduating from high school, Brown studied law at the San Francisco College of Law, where he graduated first in his class. While he was in law school, he worked for Milton Schmitt, a blind attorney. After he graduated from law school, Brown continued to work for Mr. Schmitt and upon Schmitt’s death, Brown took over the practice.
On January 8, 1944, Brown was sworn into office as San Francisco’s District Attorney, a post he held until 1950 when he became the state’s Attorney General. He served two terms as California’s Attorney General.
In 1958, Brown was elected Governor, winning by more than 1 million votes. Four years later, Brown defeated Richard Nixon to serve a second term as Governor. While in office, Brown achieved a statewide water plan and improvements in higher education. Brown also ended the practice of cross-filing for political candidates, and backed the use of computers in state government. His most controversial move was when he granted a 60-day reprieve to Caryl Chessman, who was convicted of rape and kidnapping with bodily harm (and eventually executed).
Governor Brown died as a result of a heart attack. He was 90 years old.
Jerry Brown’s Wife
March 8, 2012 by staff · Comments Off on Jerry Brown’s Wife
Jerry Brown’s Wife, After Gov.-elect Jerry Brown wrapped up his first post-election news conference Wednesday, TV crews and reporters swarmed California’s future first lady, Anne Gust, to discern what role she will play in her husband’s administration.
Gust, who played fundraiser and helped manage Brown’s gubernatorial campaign, said she hadn’t figured out how she would fit in yet.
“I know my role will be unpaid, whatever it is,” she told reporters. “But I assume I’ll continue to advise him and help him in whatever way is best, that he feels best.”
She has been a key political confidant and advisor to Brown since her departure five years ago from Gap Inc., where she served first as general counsel to the clothing retailer and then chief administrative officer.
She managed Brown’s campaign for attorney general in 2006 and made the transition into a de facto chief of staff in that office for Brown’s first two years.
On Tuesday night, before delivering his victory speech, Brown called his wife “the most important person of all, who really ran the whole show and kept me on track. I don’t need a plan when I have such a good planner at my side all the time.”
On Wednesday, Gust said she enjoys working in government. “Government involves such important issues,” she said of her time in the attorney general’s office. “Almost everything we dealt with was in the paper every day and very important to California. So it’s very inspiring that way when you wake up every day and know you’re really dealing with important issues.”
Asked whether she would advocate for any particular causes, Gust said, “There’s a lot of important issues that will face California, and wherever I can be most helpful is where I’d like to be.”
Wives Of Politicians
March 8, 2012 by staff · Comments Off on Wives Of Politicians
Wives Of Politicians, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has acknowledged having an extramarital affair with Callista , then a congressional aide and now his third wife, while he was married to his second wife.
Political wives have been at the top of the news this week.
There’s Maria Shriver and her husband’s infidelity; Callista Gingrich, the third wife of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich; and Cheri Daniels, the politically reluctant spouse of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels who, years ago, divorced her current husband, married another man, then came back.
It’s striking, really, considering it wasn’t so long ago that the private lives of politicians were considered off limits, and even protected by the media.
Not so today. The question is asked every election: What right to privacy does a candidate’s family have – and what’s fair game?
Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, watches as her husband, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, gives his victory speech after being elected senator in 2006.
Jamie Rose/Getty Images
Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, watches as her husband, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, gives his victory speech after being elected senator in 2006.
‘A Mere Appendage’
“There is no definition of ‘fair game,’ ” says Republican political consultant Mary Matalin. “So whatever you think it is, you can disabuse yourself of any of that notion.”
Matalin has worked with some of the most powerful politicians in the country. She says being the wife of a high-profile candidate – along with the accompanying media exposure and the combing through your past – is just awful.
“It’s unfair, it’s irrational, it’s pain that’s relentless,” she says. “And if you can develop a defense for yourself, you can never develop a defense for your loved ones.”
When a nasty campaign hurts the family’s children, says Matalin, even the most steeled political wife breaks down.
There is no definition of ‘fair game.’ So whatever you think it is, you can disabuse yourself of any of that notion.
– Republican political consultant Mary Matalin
Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and for the past seven years, the wife of Ohio politician Sherrod Brown.
“I was not prepared for morphing into a mere appendage of my husband’s campaign,” she says.
Schultz campaigned with her husband when he ran for the Senate in 2006. She says young staffers, or even just bystanders at political events, would tell her to cut her hair, wear other clothes or act differently onstage.
Schultz thinks this is, at least in part, plain old-fashioned sexism. “I wanna buy tickets to that show if anyone thinks they’re going to start lining up husbands and telling them how to behave,” she says.
Schultz believes that it’s up to the individual candidate and spouse to set the boundaries of their privacy, and that they should then defend them vigorously. The voracious appetite for private details, she says, doesn’t do anybody any good.
“Marriages are complicated things,” she adds. “The healthiest of marriages are complicated. And yet we want to make them caricatures.”