Author: Stuart Leavenworth

When Jerry Brown finally made his candidacy official last week, we couldn’t resist suggesting a few campaign slogans for the former governor who would be governor again, and urging readers to do the same.

They did. As of Thursday, readers had logged more than 400 comments in response to “Suggest your own Jerry Brown campaign slogan,” posted Tuesday on The Bee’s editorial page blog, The Swarm (www.sacbee.com/swarm).

Reading through these items, you can understand why editorial cartoonists and stand-up comics are celebrating Brown’s latest political foray.

With a history that includes Zen Buddhism, Linda Ronstadt, Rose Bird, a radio talk show and labels such as “Governor Moonbeam,” the 71-year-old Brown offers a rich vein of material to mine.

Some readers offered slogans that were inventive but pushed the boundaries of good taste. (“If it’s Brown, flush it down.”) Others took shots at GOP rival Meg Whitman, with lines like, “Because California is too important to go to the highest bidder.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also took some pops, as you can see from the slogans that follow.

In the spirit of good fun and a spirited gubernatorial campaign, here are some slogans offered by The Bee’s editorial board and readers for the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for governor:

Editorial board suggestions:

• “Fighting for California even before Cheap Trick was a band”

• “Still Zen after all these years”

• “Why Gerrymander when you can Jerrymander?”

• “A retread we can believe in”

• “Back to the future with Brown”

Sampling of reader suggestions:

• “Remember, I gave you the Bird!”

• “Experience a billionaire can’t buy!”

• “Vote for Jerry because inexperience obviously hasn’t been working”

• “My résumé is as longer than some people’s memories”

• “Gov. Moonbeam before Gore invented the Internet!”

• “Vote Brown – launch a Scud and run for Nevada”

• “Sometimes warmed over really is better”

• “BROWN – easier to spell”

• “Jerry Brown, California’s last straw”

• “What a long strange trip it’s been”

Don’t worry. There will be equal opportunity for the public to suggest campaign slogans for Whitman and Steve Poizner, the GOP candidates for governor.

Stay tuned to The Swarm for another interactive session of slogan brainstorming.

GIVE US YOUR SLOGAN

To read more slogans or to add your own, go to Tuesday’s blog post “Suggest your own Jerry Brown campaign slogan” at www.sacbee.com/swarm

Stuart Leavenworth

It’s Wednesday at noon in Vince’s Italian Restaurant in Elk Grove. The local Rotary Club is gathered for lunch, and about 80 people are digging into their steaks and shrimp salads.

The meeting starts with a rousing rendition of “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and the usual salutations, announcements, the Pledge of Allegiance and greeting of guests. It was at that point that I noted Abram Wilson, sitting over to the left.

Wilson stood out for several reasons. He was dressed in a dapper suit. He was one of the few African Americans in attendance. He was also the only mayor in the room.

Wilson is the mayor of San Ramon.

What was the mayor of San Ramon doing in Elk Grove, 54 miles away from home? “I am running again for AD 15,” he told me. By AD 15, Wilson means the 15th Assembly District, one of the more artful works of gerrymandered cartography that California’s politicians have produced.

A Rorschach blotch that stretches from Walnut Creek to Livermore to Stockton and Elk Grove, AD 15 would not exist except for politicians attempting to rig elections. Following the last census, Democrats and Republicans huddled in private and attempted to draw up safe seats for their respective parties in Congress, the Legislature and the state Board of Equalization.

It is not a perfect science. The kingpins designed AD 15 to be a Republican stronghold, but in the anti-GOP wave of 2008, Democrat Joan Buchanan of Alamo swept into office, defeating Wilson, a Republican. But Wilson hopes to seize on a current backlash against incumbents. That’s why he is burning rubber and piling up the mileage between the East Bay and points inland.

We’ve all heard the usual arguments against gerrymandering. It stifles political competition. It results in a Legislature dominated by ideologues on the left and right, with few or no moderates.

Less noticed is the impact of gerrymandering on communities such as Elk Grove. Over the last decade, Elk Grove was one of the state’s fastest-growing cities. In fact, this city of 136,000 experienced the nation’s fastest growth rate among large cities between July 1, 2004, and July 1, 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

By rights, voters in such cities should be represented by someone with some sort of geographic connection. A former mayor of Stockton or Lodi might fit that bill. But a former member of the San Ramon school board, like Buchanan? Or a San Ramon mayor? How can they possibly represent a district that stretches into four counties and three distinct regions?

To be sure, Buchanan and Wilson make an effort to stay connected. Hours before Wilson was at the Rotary Club on Wednesday, Buchanan had hosted a free pancake breakfast in Elk Grove. She is deep into re-election mode, months after a costly and failed bid to win the open 10th Congressional District seat.

Still, because of gerrymandering, Wilson and Buchanan are like political Bedouins. They wander the electoral desert with no single place to call home. And if Assembly District 15 were to exist in perpetuity, residents of Elk Grove would probably never have one of their own in the seat. The district’s votes are predominantly in the East Bay.

There is some hope for an end to Rorschach blotches like AD 15.

Voters in 2008 surprised the naysayers by passing Proposition 11, a redistricting reform measure. Because of that initiative, state auditor Elaine Howle is putting together a panel of citizens to draw maps for the Legislature and BOE after the next census. Some 31,000 Californians have applied for the job. By October, the auditor’s office will narrow that pool to 60 finalists – 20 Democrats, 20 Republicans and 20 from neither party.

Clearly, there is no way to keep politics out of redistricting. Yet The Powers That Be are so threatened by Proposition 11 that they are working to overturn it.

As The Bee’s Capitol Alert noted this month, 14 Democrats in California’s congressional delegation, along with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, have dumped $160,000 into a campaign initiative account to eliminate the 14-member citizen redistricting commission.

If they can raise enough money and persuade voters to repeal Proposition 11, California could see a return to the days of fat-cat politics gerrymandering seats.

I asked Wilson what he thought about Bass and other Democrats trying to overturn redistricting reform.

“Terrible, terrible,” he said.

Then he returned to gripping and grinning, trying to win back a seat that, by design, was supposed to be safe for the GOP.