This Time, Jerry Brown Wants to Be a Lawman -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: direct.gif Type: image/gif Size: 42 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20060605/77967510/attachment.gif> -------------- next part -------------- By JESSE McKINLEY Published: June 5, 2006 OAKLAND, Calif., June 2 ? In his nearly four decades in American politics, Jerry Brown has been a lot of things to a lot of people: a two-term California governor, a three-time presidential candidate and, most recently, the mayor of Oakland, this Rodney Dangerfield- like city across the bay from San Francisco.
But now, Mr. Brown is trying to become something that no one who remembers the freewheeling days of "Governor Moonbeam" could possibly expect: a lawman.
And not just any lawman. Mr. Brown ? faced with a mayoral term-limit ? is running for attorney general of California, the nation's most populous state and one where hot-button wedge issues like immigration, medical marijuana and same-sex marriage are constantly simmering for law enforcement officials and politicians alike.
Could it be that Mr. Brown ? a former Jesuit seminarian who once shared the limelight with Linda Ronstadt, then his girlfriend, tended to the poor with Mother Teresa, and fought The Man with his nonprofit political action committee We the People ? is suddenly siding with (gulp) the establishment?
It certainly sounds that way.
"The attorney general owes a duty of loyalty to his client, and his client is the governor and people of California," Mr. Brown said Friday in his Oakland campaign office. "And as attorney general, I'll have no hesitation in carrying out that law, whether it is capital punishment, bars on same-sex marriage or collective bargaining or anything else."
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