Opinion: Where’s Jerry?

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The fun part about Jerry Brown being elected attorney general was speculating about the impact his return would have on Sacramento. Would he sleep on the floor in a crash pad, as in his governor days? Would the Virgin Sturgeon, docked on the Sacramento River, again be the gathering spot for young pols earnestly trading ideas about a state space program or solar power? Would Linda Ronstadt come to town?

But no. It’s 2007, not 1977, and although in many ways Jerry is still Jerry, this is not his town anymore. At least, he doesn’t want it. Everyone else is here to be sworn in: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (last Friday, Memorial Auditorium), Lt. Gov. John Garamendi (Sunday, state Senate chamber) Secretary of State Debra Bowen (Monday, the secretary of state’s office building), Treasurer Bill Lockyer (Monday, the Jesse Unruh Building), Controller John Chiang (Monday, California Railroad Museum).

But not Edmund G. Brown Jr., who is to take the oath in San Francisco, then get to work in his office -- in Oakland. Brown will come to Sacramento only when he absolutely has to.

If he were here, he would hear plenty of inaugural speeches about how his father, Gov. Pat Brown, made California into a great state of growth and opportunity. It just could be that that’s one reason Jerry is staying away. Although the end of the Pat Brown era is often pinpointed at the day in 1966 when Ronald Reagan defeated him for re-election, it could more accurately be put at Brown-the-son’s 1974 election, to succeed Reagan, and his ushering in of the ‘era of limits.’

Or maybe iconoclastic Jerry is just being Jerry.