CALIFORNIA - Governor Jerry Brown at 76

A politician who is willing to learn from history and willing to change.  Note, I live in California.

"Considering the long view for California’s future, Gov. Jerry Brown embraces continuity" PBS NewsHour 5/9/2014

Excerpt

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  California Governor Jerry Brown is embarking on what is likely the final campaign of a political career that spans nearly half-a-century.  He is seeking a fourth term 40 years after he first won the job.

And at every turn in this electoral twilight, Brown is embracing something he famously rejected in the 1970s, tradition and the long view of California, the nation’s most populous state.

KQED senior political editor John Myers reports from Sacramento.

JOHN MYERS, KQED:  It is part of California’s rich political history, the house that served for more than six decades as a governor’s mansion.  To the public, it’s a museum.  To Jerry Brown, it was a home, briefly.

Brown was 20 years old and in seminary school when his father, the late Pat Brown, took office and moved the family into the Sacramento mansion.  But the younger Brown refused an official home when he first became governor in 1975, a campaign he ran thumbing his nose at tradition.

GOV. JERRY BROWN, D, Calif.:  I needed a more modest apartment, which I got.

JOHN MYERS:  But it also fit it with the times for you.

GOV. JERRY BROWN:  It fit in with the times.

JOHN MYERS:  But times have changed, and so has Jerry Brown.

Now 76, he seems to take comfort in tradition and history, and the old mansion has become a favorite hangout, from private dinners with legislators to inviting in distant relatives to help celebrate his birthday.