Another Gem in Brown’s Crown

Willie Brown’s election as San Francisco mayor marks a political milestone for the City by the Bay. Once again the former speaker of the state Assembly has proven he is without peer as a political operator. This week he again came out on top, with help from a sometimes hapless incumbent. Now can he apply his skills to ensuring that San Francisco has the unexciting things that cities need: clean streets, police protection, social services?

Brown, a lawyer and the son of a Texas sharecropper, will probably finish his political life as the first black mayor of San Francisco. His election is one of the myriad unintended consequences of state term limits, which forced him to step aside after 31 years in the Assembly. In his 14 years as speaker, the Democrat became known as Sacramento’s ultimate power broker, his most dazzling feat perhaps being his engineering of the election of a handpicked Republican, Doris Allen, as his successor in the Assembly post.

Whether his legislative skills will help in managing a big city is an open question, but Brown certainly brings to the job an intimate knowledge of how to push the right buttons in Sacramento and Washington, skills that are noticeably lacking among politicians representing the larger and needier Los Angeles.

The Tuesday election also concluded another closely watched California race, the special congressional election to succeed Norman Y. Mineta of San Jose. The Democratic candidate, Jerry Estruth, with backing from the national party, attempted to paint state Sen. Tom Campbell (R-Stanford) as the ideological twin of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. This was a patently false contention, and Campbell won handily. Voters in the Bay Area Tuesday knew what they wanted--and California politics will be more interesting for it. Brown: The cap says it all.