Jerry Brown wants to be a back-to-basics governor

Three years ago, when he was campaigning for attorney general, Jerry Brown scoffed at the notion that he was positioning himself to run again for governor.

"No, I don't want to be governor," he told me. "I've been there. That's a tough job."

Of course he was being disingenuous. But it was an unfair question.

No candidate can admit he really has his eyes set on a higher post -- not Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa when he was running for reelection, not Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner when he was bidding for his obscure job, not San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Like Brown, all now are plotting to be governor.

That was the only politically acceptable answer for Brown at the time. Times have changed. He's the attorney general -- the second most powerful statewide officeholder -- and, based on polls, the early favorite for the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial nomination if U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein doesn't run.

Nobody really knows what Feinstein will do. But the best bet is she'll hang onto her Senate clout.

Brown was governor from 1975 to 1983. He succeeded Ronald Reagan, who had ousted his father, Pat Brown, from the governor's office.

Why would anybody want to be governor again, particularly at his age? Brown just turned 71.

The short answer is the obvious one: Politics and public policy are his passion. It's in the bloodline. In all, he has held five elective offices, including Los Angeles Community College trustee, California secretary of state and Oakland mayor, 1998 to 2006.

"I liked being mayor. I liked being governor. I like being attorney general," Brown told me. "As mayor, I learned about making things happen."

He didn't always make things happen as governor -- most notably property tax relief. His and the Legislature's long lollygagging led to passage of Proposition 13, sponsored by apartment owners lobbyist Howard Jarvis. It resulted in substantial property tax reductions but led to fiscal chaos in local and state governments and shifted more responsibility and power to Sacramento.

Any objective chronology of when California governments and schools began to slide downhill begins with implementation of Prop. 13 in 1978.

But Brown says, "I'm not going to advocate messing with 13. That's a big fat loser."

If he had it to do over again, the former governor says, he would have created his own property tax initiative and used it to threaten the Legislature into compromise -- as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did on workers' compensation insurance in 2004.