Former NFL wide receiver Antonio Brown has been extradited from Dubai to the United States to face a charge of second degree attempted murder relating to a shooting incident in May.
The Miami Police department said the former Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers player was “located in Dubai and was apprehended” before being “extradited to Essex County, NJ (New Jersey), by US Marshals”.
The added Brown was being held there prior to being moved to the Miami-Dade County Jail.
Following an investigation into the incident in May, police issued an arrest warrant in June which alleged Brown took a gun from a security guard and fired two shots at a man he had brawled with earlier on.
No arrests were made at the time and no injuries were reported.
Brown had been detained by police at the time of the incident before being released.
“I was jumped by multiple individuals who tried to steal my jewellery and cause physical harm to me,” claimed Brown in a social media post. “Contrary to some video circulating.
“Police temporarily detained me until they received my side of the story and then released me. I went home that night and was not arrested.”
Brown played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and scored a touchdown as they beat the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl at the end of the 2020-2021 season.
From the first time decades ago he was lampooned as a quirky upstart until now, the final stretch of his unprecedented fourth term as California’s governor, Jerry Brown has reveled in his reputation as a cheapskate.
“Nobody is tougher with a buck than I am,” he boasted during the 2010 campaign that sent him back to Sacramento.
Eight years later, Brown is poised to earn a place in the history books as the leader who helped right the ship of state. His mantra of measured spending could be a standard by which future governors are judged.
“We’re well positioned, but if the next governor doesn’t say ‘no’ at critical moments, things will get worse,” Brown said in an interview with The Times.
His promise of similar straight talk about California’s budget prevailed in the 2010 election, held in the shadow of financial collapse. The projected budget deficit he inherited — even after two years of cuts under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — stood at $27 billion.
All of which seemed a distant memory Wednesday as Brown signed a budget creating a $13.8-billion cash reserve, the largest in state history. “I think people in California can be proud that we’re making progress,” the 80-year old Democrat said standing beside legislative leaders — the oldest of whom was only 12 when Brown was first elected governor in 1974.
Gov. Jerry Brown displays a playing card with his dog, Sutter, on it during his State of the State speech in 2014. The cards, handed out to legislators, urged them to save — not spend — all of the growing tax revenues.
(Rich Pedroncelli / AP )
While supporters tout his record on combating climate change or raising the minimum wage, the through line of Brown’s second chance as governor has always been the budget, a topic that demanded a fiscal reckoning just days after he took office.
“What surprised me was how deep the deficit became during Schwarzenegger’s last few years,” he said. “We had to get in there and cut, and find some new revenue and work it out the best way we could.”
Brown’s first moves in 2011 were to cancel new cell phones and government vehicles for state workers, political symbolism not unlike the bland Plymouth sedan he chose in the 1970s from the state vehicle pool. By spring, he convinced lawmakers to cut $8.2 billion from programs like higher education, daytime elderly care services and doctor visits for the poor.
When substantive efforts to solve the rest of the problem stalled that June, the governor did something his predecessors had never done: He vetoed the budget ratified by lawmakers.
“For a decade, the can has been kicked down the road and debt has piled up,” Brown said as he signed the veto message. “California is facing a fiscal crisis, and very strong medicine must be taken.”
The veto was a shot across the bow to the Legislature. “It communicated very clearly that there was going to be a minimum standard for the legislative budget, and they just couldn’t slap anything together and put the name ‘budget’ on it,” Brown says now.
“We were frustrated,” remembers John A. Pérez, who was Assembly speaker at the time. “But it laid the foundation for what has become eight years of on-time, balanced budgets.”
Deeper cuts ultimately were made. Within months, ratings agencies moved California’s credit outlook to positive, the beginning of a trend that has driven down interest rates for government borrowing, one way the state has saved money.
He later turned his attention to the short-term obligations that piled up during the financial crisis, from raided school funds to Wall Street-backed deficit bonds. Branded by Brown as the state’s “wall of debt” and once towering at nearly $35 billion, today the balance is less than $5 billion.
“I tell my friends that Jerry Brown is one of the most fiscally conservative Democrats that I know,” said Connie Conway, a Tulare County Republican who served as Assembly GOP leader from 2010 to 2014. She recalls saying at one point that Brown “is the adult in the room because at least he’s admitting we have debt.”
Still, it was Republicans who handed Brown his first real budget setback in 2011, refusing to support a special statewide election to extend temporary taxes. The governor, never a back-slapping kind of politician, nonetheless mounted an intense charm offensive. He hosted private dinners for legislative Republicans where California wine flowed freely. He brought along his affable Corgi, Sutter, for visits. GOP lawmakers wouldn’t budge.
In hindsight, it was a lucky break. Special elections have historically had a disproportionately high turnout of conservative voters who likely would have rejected the plan. When Republicans balked, Brown and a coalition of business and labor leaders qualified a tax increase for the ballot in 2012, a presidential election year with strong turnout from Democrats.
Gov. Jerry Brown holds up a sign in support of Proposition 30 while visiting a San Diego school on Oct. 23, 2012, in San Diego. The ballot measure passed with 55% of the vote.
(Lenny Ignelzi / AP )
The resulting Proposition 30, a surcharge on the state’s sales tax and the incomes of wealthy taxpayers, provided revenue for six years — a more robust plan, Brown now says, than what he asked Republicans to support. “We’d have been right back in the soup” with the original plan, he said. “This way, we got a couple of more years.”
Brown campaigned hard for the ballot measure, shrewdly making it about the budget’s biggest beneficiary — schools — and about his own commitment to balancing the books. On election day, it passed with 55% of the vote.
“There’s no way in hell the voters would have approved those taxes if not for their faith in his fiscal stewardship,” Pérez said.
The taxes and California’s recovering economy have since produced historic tax windfalls. The state Department of Finance estimates the 2012 tax initiative and an extension approved by voters (but not explicitly endorsed by the governor) in 2016 has, to date, generated $50 billion in additional revenue.
Not that all of the modern Brown era has been all about less spending. State government spending has risen by 59% since 2011. Much of that has gone to K-12 schools, as required by law, and Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. Healthcare spending, in particular, has more than doubled in seven years, to about $23 billion in general fund costs. California has fully embraced Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Brown has lashed out at efforts by President Trump to rescind the law.
The rush of revenue also has allowed for a substantial savings account. Brown and lawmakers crafted a robust rainy-day reserve fund, ratified by voters in 2014. “That’s the kind of collaboration you don’t often see between legislators and governors,” Pérez said.
Through lean and flush years alike, the governor’s job approval ratings remained strong. Liberal activists routinely criticized him for not doing more to help those in need, suggesting with an increasing frequency through the years that the scion of a prominent political family had never experienced those struggles first-hand.
Health and human services advocates hold a Los Angeles rally to protest Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget in 2014.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times )
“They’re always asking for more,” he said. “There’s no natural limit. There’s no predator for this species of budgetary activity, except the governor.”
Even critics acknowledged that Brown kept listening to advocacy groups. In 2016, he agreed to remove a provision in the state’s welfare assistance program, CalWORKs, that denied coverage to children born while their families were already receiving benefits. The ban had been in place for almost two decades.
“We came a long way,” said state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), the chair of the Senate’s budget committee and a vocal advocate for changing the welfare rule. From the beginning, she said, Brown’s advisers said it was about the cost, not the policy.
Mitchell recalled a flight from Los Angeles during which Brown, a voracious reader, spoke at length about a book that chronicled poverty around the world. “And I was able to say to him, ‘Yes, that chapter right there, that sounds like Central California,’ ” she said.
Likening income inequality to his celebrated efforts on climate change, Mitchell said she once told Brown, “By you just making it a priority, you’ve had worldwide impact. So have the same attitude about poverty.”
In recent years, Brown has agreed to expand childcare programs, Medi-Cal coverage for children regardless of immigration status and a state earned income tax credit for the working poor.
“His track record on issues of poverty, inequality and economic security adds up far better [over two terms] than it often looked in individual budget years,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the nonprofit California Budget and Policy Center, which advocates for the working poor.
Looking beyond the one-year-at-a-time approach to state budgets may be an important legacy of the Brown administration. The governor pointed to recently adopted five-year plans as a way to get a better look at what’s over the horizon. “It gets people thinking about the inevitable consequences of the decisions in this budget,” he said.
It also may help break one of the more ignominious traditions of California governors: leaving a fiscal mess for the next person to clean up. It’s the kind of dilemma his father, the late Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, left Ronald Reagan in 1967 and he left the late George Deukmejian in 1983.
“The story is one of governors always hitting a wall and leaving a big, fat deficit,” he said. “I wanted to avoid that if I could.”
The crash and Verstappen’s subsequent sprint win cut the four-time champion’s deficit to Piastri to 55 points, while he is now 33 behind Norris.
The Australian led Verstappen by 104 points after the Dutch race on 31 August, so nearly half that advantage has been eroded in three grands prix and a sprint. There are still six races and two further sprints to come.
In the normal run of things, it seems inevitable that Piastri will lose more ground to Verstappen on Sunday in Texas. Norris has a chance to get ahead, but as he pointed out, the McLaren has not looked like a Verstappen-beating car at any point this weekend.
“It’s going to be difficult,” Norris said. “We were hoping to learn a lot in the sprint in terms of how the car set-up would be from qualifying to race and hopefully make tweaks but that didn’t go to plan so we are certainly on the back foot. But we won’t make it an excuse for tomorrow.
“It’s clear we were not going to be as quick as the Red Bull so we have to be happy with second. It’s not being distracted by the mess and nonsense that everyone creates.
“Saturdays have never been as good this year so I’m hoping we can turn it up tomorrow and be a little bit quicker.
“I have to be optimistic. Every lap we did today was 0.3-0.5secs off Max so to turn that around will be pretty difficult. I’m sure if Max had done his final lap he would have gone a good step quicker anyway.
“They have been quick in a lot of races recently. They have been doing a very good job and seemed to catch us up a little bit. It’s not a lot, just enough that they are more consistently ahead. And then you can get more opportunities and of course Max is good at making the most of them.”
Meanwhile, Stella admitted that McLaren were even more aware of just how potent Verstappen can be for the remainder of the season.
“I would have expected a smaller gap here, if anything, so we have to look at the facts, we have to look at the numbers,” he said. “Just objectively, not necessarily we maximised what the performance was available today in the car.
“But we need to be ready as a team and as drivers for Max and Red Bull being competitive and possibly the fastest car at every one of the remaining races.”
Oct. 16 (UPI) — Brown University has rejected a Department of Education proposal offering priority access to federal funds in exchange for agreeing to terms that critics say target left-leaning ideology in higher education.
On Oct. 1, the Trump administration sent nine universities a 10-part “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that reportedly demands reforms to hiring practices and student grading and a pledge to prohibit transgender women from using women’s changing rooms.
It also requires the creation of a “vibrant marketplace of ideas,” among other changes, including a tuition freeze for five years.
Brown University President Christina Paxson rejected the offer in a letter addressed to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, writing she was “concerned that the Compact by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance, critically compromising our ability to fulfill our mission.”
Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has targeted dozens of universities, particularly so-called elite institutions, with executive orders, lawsuits, reallocation of resources and threats over a range of allegations, from anti-Semitism to having diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Critics have accused Trump of trying to coerce schools under threat of stringent punishments — from losing their accreditation to paying hefty fines sometimes in excess of $1 billion — to adopt his far-right policies.
In late July, Brown reached a $50 million settlement with the federal government over 10 years to unfreeze federal funding and to resolve federal allegations of violating anti-discrimination laws.
As part of the agreement, which also unfroze federal funds, Brown agreed to adhere to government requirements concerning male and female athletics, codify its commitment to ensuring a “thriving Jewish community” and maintain nondiscrimination compliance, among others.
In her letter Wednesday, Paxson said the July agreement includes several of the principles included in the compact while also affirming “the governments lack of authority to dictate our curriculum or the content of academic speech.”
“While we value our long-held and well-regarded partnership with the federal government, Brown is respectfully declining to join the Compact,” she said. “We remain committed to the July agreement and its preservation of Brown’s core values in ways that the Compact — in any form — fundamentally would not.”
Brown’s rejection comes days after MIT similarly declined to join the compact.
“America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth wrote in a letter to the Department of Education on Friday.
“Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”
Conservatives and the Trump administration have alleged that university are founts of left-wing indoctrination that exclude right-leaning thought. However, critics have described the Trump administration’s attempt to address these concerns as government overreach and a violation of free speech rights.
“The White House’s new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education raises red flags,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement earlier this month.
“As Fire has long argued, campus reform is necessary. But overreaching government coercion that tries to end-run around the First Amendment to impose an official orthodoxy is unacceptable.”
“A government that can reward colleges and universities for speech it favors today can punish them for speech it dislikes tomorrow,” FIRE continued. “That’s not reform. That’s government-funded orthodoxy.”
Meanwhile, Trump over the weekend suggested that more universities would be invited to join the compact, saying in an online statement that “those Institutions that want to quickly return to the Pursuit of Truth and Achievement, they are invited to enter into the forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
In the statement, he railed against universities, saying “much of Higher Education has lost its way, and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST and ANTI_AMERICAN Ideology that serves as justification for discriminatory practices by Universities that are Unconstitutional and Unlawful”
After a poor run of form in the first half of last season, Everitt appeared to be under pressure before a late season upturn in performances and results took Edinburgh to the URC quarter-finals and the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup.
The South African’s contract expires at the end of the season and he confirmed he has yet to receive an offer of a new deal from Scottish Rugby.
Results in the next few months could determine Everitt’s future, but Brown believes Edinburgh’s problems run deeper than just the head coach.
“Edinburgh seem to be going between either a Richard Cockerill character, where they have to be shouted at and it’s very authoritarian all the time, or a Mike Blair or Sean Everitt character,” Brown, who started his career with Edinburgh before forging his reputation at Glasgow Warriors, said.
“It just seems like they can’t quite hit that sweet spot in the middle. At the same time, you can’t forget that’s a squad packed full of Scotland starters.
“Why is it that they can’t get results? They can get the one-off, the big results. We saw that in the run at the end of last season, getting into European play-offs, but they don’t seem to be able to get consistency throughout the week from game to game. I don’t think that’s just a coaching issue.
“We can’t just keep getting into that kind of cycle of new head coach, get rid of the head coach, new head coach, get rid of the head coach. There is something kind of systemic there.”
He stood taller than any other player on the field. His wingspan likely stretches far beyond any other wideout in the Mission League or, possibly, the Southern Section.
Tyran Stokes appeared as a man among men as he stretched and worked his way through pregame drills, cameras lined up along the sideline aimed at the senior as if he was back on the AAU basketball circuit — and for good reason.
The comparison was hard not to make during Sherman Oaks Notre Dame’s 57-14 victory over Culver City (3-2) on Friday night.
Is this what LeBron James looked like on the football field?
James, who played at St. Vincent–St. Mary High in Akron, Ohio, during his sophomore and junior yearsin 2000 and 2001, used his 6-foot-7 frame to earn all-state honors, the future four-time NBA most valuable player even garnering attention from Notre Dame and Urban Meyer, then a wide receivers coach for the Fighting Irish, according to ESPN. At 6-foot-8 and 250 pounds, Stokes is larger — and already plays for Notre Dame; well, the Knights of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame (3-2).
The No. 1 high school senior in the nation — according to multiple college basketball recruiting sites — wanted more. Stokes jostled his love of a second sport, football, becoming a wide receiver and defensive end on the football team earlier in September, just months before his final season of basketball at begins.
Basketball standout Tyran Stokes of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame comes up short an attempt to make his first catch Friday against Culver City.
(Craig Weston)
“He improves our practice atmosphere, he improves our game atmosphere, he improves our mindset and our competitive spirit in the room,” Notre Dame coach Evan Yabu said, noting Stokes has been a “pleasure” to have on the team.
Towering over defensive backs, Stokes was a go-to target for senior quarterback Wyatt Brown — who put the game out of reach in the first half with a three-touchdown effort — anytime he appeared on the field. Brown finished 21-for-33 passing with 301 yards and five touchdowns. On the ground, he tallied 79 yards and one touchdown.
His final pass was the one that Notre Dame will remember.
Matched up on 5-foot-8 Culver City defensive back Derrick Huezo Jr., Stokes burst forward and created 15 yards of separation. Huezo could only shrug as he trailed Stokes.
The now-two=sport star took the ball 45 yards to the house to cement the final score.
On Stokes’ first play, in Notre Dame’s second drive of the first quarter, Brown caught Stokes across the middle of the field.
The ball slipped through Stokes’ hands.
He wouldn’t let that happen when it mattered most, the clock ticking on his first game. Stokes finishes with two receptions for 57 yards (he was targeted eight times).
“I know he’s a big-time hooper,” Brown said. “But when he came over here, he was very humble and open about learning — which is a testament to him.”
Stokes politely declined all interview requests following the game — so it goes being the most-sought-after basketball recruit in the nation.
But any kid — or fan — who asked for a picture, he waited and obliged.
The moment wasn’t just big for him, but for the whole school — Stokes, one of the last to trot to the locker room to get ready for a bus ride back to Sherman Oaks.
But McVay sustained a foot injury during last week’s victory over the Tennessee Titans in Nashville.
During the Rams’ produced “Sean McVay Show,” McVay said he suffered a torn plantar fascia.
“I was being dramatic limping around toward the end of the game,” McVay said, adding, “The good news is I’m not playing, so I’m just on the sidelines watching. So if I have a little cool limp to add some swag, then you’ll know why.”
McVay, 39, is in his ninth season with the Rams, who opened the season with victories over the Houston Texans and the Titans.
The Eagles are also 2-0 after victories over the Dallas Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs.
Rams sign cornerback Tre Brown
Tre Brown warms up before a preseason game between the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos in August.
Brown, who will turn 28 next week, played four seasons for the Seattle Seahawks before signing with the San Francisco 49ers last March. But Brown suffered a heel injury during training camp, was placed on injured reserve and was ultimately released.
Brown, 5 feet, 10 inches and 185 pounds, played in 39 games for the Seahawks, starting 13. He intercepted two passes.
Brown joins a cornerback group that includes Cobie Durant, Emmanuel Forbes Jr. and Darious Williams. Witherspoon, who suffered a broken clavicle during the Rams’ victory over the Tennessee Titans last Sunday, is expected to be sidelined for 12 weeks, McVay said.
The Rams play the defending Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
OAKLAND — Mayor Jerry Brown, who has projected an unconventional, even enigmatic, persona during 3 1/2 decades of public life, took a traditional step in his private life Saturday, marrying his longtime companion and manager of his upcoming campaign for state attorney general.
In a formal and quasireligious civil ceremony orchestrated by Brown himself and attended by almost 600 guests, the 67-year-old former governor exchanged rings with former Gap Inc. executive Anne Gust. It was the first marriage for each, and came after 15 years together.
Elements of Brown’s past, present and future converged in the half-hour ceremony packed with much of the Bay Area’s Democratic political establishment. It was held in the rotunda of a renovated, historic Civic Center office building, the sort of project Brown has promoted as a pro-development mayor. The wedding was laced with biblical readings and Gregorian chants in Latin that Brown knew all too well as a former Roman Catholic seminarian.
“I wanted the sound to be traditional,” Brown said afterward. “Most [of it] is 800 years old and nothing is less than 500.”
It was not exactly the sort of wedding people had come to expect from a man who many years ago was dubbed Gov. Moonbeam for living in Spartan fashion, driving a state-issued Plymouth and dating singer Linda Ronstadt. Nor was it the wedding of a man who studied yoga, volunteered for Mother Teresa’s home for the poor people in Calcutta, or more recently lived in lofts in gritty parts of this city.
“This is more than traditional,” former San Francisco mayor and onetime Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said after the wedding. “It would have satisfied anything the Kennedy clan would have put together. It’s California [political] history for 40 years.”
The attendees were like signposts on the political road traveled by the son and namesake of the late Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.
Jerry Brown, who grew up in San Francisco and graduated from UC Berkeley and Yale Law School, served as secretary of state from 1970 to 1974 and governor from 1975 to 1983. He also ran for president and headed the state Democratic Party. He was elected mayor of Oakland in 1999, and is seeking the Democratic nomination for state attorney general in 2006.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a former San Francisco mayor, presided over the wedding in a pink dress. The 47-year-old bride, in an ivory Diane von Furstenberg dress, was presented by her father, Rockwell T. Gust Jr., who once ran for lieutenant governor of Michigan.
Gust, who is a lawyer, and Brown, in a black suit with white shirt and tie, exchanged rings and vows. Then Feinstein declared them husband and wife, and they embraced and kissed to applause as singers performed the final chant.
Brown’s sister, Kathleen, a former state treasurer and candidate for governor, was present. So were many other Democratic politicians, including Oakland’s top city officials, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and former Gov. Gray Davis.
Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, Brown’s designated successor as mayor, was there along with people from the early years of Brown’s career, such as Orville Schelle, dean of the journalism school at UC Berkeley, and PG&E; executive Dan Richard, who served on then Gov. Brown’s staff from 1979 to 1982.
“One person just said we should have buttons saying ‘I’m from the ‘70s,’ … ‘I’m from the ‘80s’ … ‘the ‘90s,’ ” Richard said.
After the civil ceremony in Oakland, another set of nuptials was to be held at the San Francisco church where Brown’s parents were married and he was baptized.
Then Brown said the newlyweds plan to spend a couple of days on the Russian River — then take a belated honeymoon in Italy in August — after the June primary.
“We have a little campaign in the meantime,” he said.
John L. Burton, the proudly liberal and pro-labor lawmaker who shaped California politics and policy over six decades on topics as varied as welfare, foster care, auto emissions, guns and foie gras, has died. He was 92.
With his brother, Rep. Phillip Burton, and college buddy, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Burton was integral to the organization that dominated Democratic politics in San Francisco and the state starting in the 1960s.
Burton was elected to the Assembly in 1964 and Congress a decade later. Laid low by cocaine addiction, he did not seek reelection in 1982. But he returned to Sacramento after getting clean and became the Capitol’s most powerful legislator as Senate president pro tem from 1998 until term limits forced him to retire in 2004.
“I think government’s there to help the people who can’t help themselves. And there’s a lot of people that can’t help themselves,” Burton said, describing his view of a politician’s job in an oral history interview by Open California.
Burton’s death was confirmed in a statement released by his family on Sunday.
“He cared a lot,” said Kimiko Burton, his daughter. “He always instilled in me that we fight for the underdog. There are literally millions of people whose lives he helped over the years who have no idea who he is.”
An L.A. Times writer described Brown, always dapper and cool, as a piece of living art. In contrast, Burton was performance art — rumpled, often rude, too fidgety to sit in long policy meetings. Some people sprinkle conversation with profanities. Burton doused his sentences with expletives, usually F-bombs.
John Burton with then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2011.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
He was quick to yell but could also be charming. He bought pies from a fruit stand off Interstate 80 between San Francisco and Sacramento and delivered them as apologies to targets of his rants. An aide once gave him a T-shirt with the phrase: “I yell because I care.”
Unlike most politicians, who dress to the nines, Burton wore ties reluctantly and showed up at meetings with governors wearing guayaberas, rarely with his hair in place. When cameras weren’t around, he drove through San Francisco delivering blankets to homeless people.
One of Burton’s many intensely loyal aides was Angie Tate, whom he hired to be his political fundraiser in 1998 knowing she was pregnant with twins. After she gave birth three months early and tried to return to work, Burton insisted that she take a year off, fully paid. She worked with him for the rest of his days.
In later years, he created John Burton Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit group to mentor foster youth and seek policy changes. One such bill extended services for foster youth until age 21, rather than the previous cutoff of 18.
“I don’t think there is a person who has done more for foster kids than John Burton,” said Miles Cooley, a Los Angeles entertainment attorney who was in foster care when he was a child and sits on the board of Burton’s foundation. “He wasn’t speaking truth to power. He was yelling it.”
From his early days in public life, Burton, a lawyer and Army veteran, advocated for greater civil rights, opposed the death penalty, and was an antiwar activist, protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam in October 1963, when the U.S. had fewer than 17,000 troops there.
As state Senate leader four decades later, Burton joined folk singer Joan Baez at a protest of President George W. Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq. As California Democratic Party chair from 2009 to 2017, he presided as the party changed its platform to oppose capital punishment.
“John Burton was liberal when it was popular to be liberal and he was liberal when it was not popular. I always admired that,” said former state Sen. Jim Brulte, a Republican who tangled with Burton in the Legislature and later when they chaired their respective political parties.
A party chair’s job is to win elections. That requires money. In 2008, the year before Burton took over the state Democratic Party, the California Republican and Democratic parties raised and spent roughly equal sums. By 2016, his final campaign as chair, the Democrats were outspending the Republicans $36.2 million to $17.7 million.
He promoted a ballot measure in 2010 that allows the Legislature to pass the annual budget by a simple majority rather than the previous two-thirds supermajority, allowing the Democrats to pass a legislative session’s most important measure — the budget — without Republican votes, further marginalizing the GOP in Sacramento.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), then-Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Treasurer Fiona Ma were among the politicians, most of them women, who joined Burton on the convention stage in 2017 for his farewell as party chair. Former state Sen. Martha Escutia serenaded him with a rendition of “Bésame Mucho.”
“John is the chief architect of the Democrats’ dominance in California,” Pelosi said at the time.
Burton paid tribute to the people who had helped him, saying, “You’re only as good as your staff,” and closed by exhorting party loyalists to raise their middle fingers and give a Burton-like cheer to then-President Trump.
Although Burton was a partisan, his closest friend in the Senate was Ross Johnson of Fullerton, who was Senate Republican leader. Sharing a quirky love of song, the unlikely duet interrupted a Senate floor session with a rendition of “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
They also shared a distrust of authority and collaborated to curb law enforcement’s ability to seize individuals’ assets without a trial. Burton and Johnson shaped campaign finance law with a ballot measure permitting political parties to accept unlimited donations, enhancing parties’ power. As a sweetener for voters, the measure required rapid disclosure of contributions.
John Lowell Burton, born in Cincinnati in 1932, was the youngest of three brothers. After his father completed medical school in Chicago, the family relocated to San Francisco, where Dr. Burton cared for patients whether they could pay or not.
Burton lettered in basketball at San Francisco State College and kept a clipping of a newspaper box score showing he scored 20 points against a University of San Francisco team that included young Bill Russell, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He met Brown at San Francisco State and they became lifelong friends. A bartender in his younger days, Burton was arrested for bookmaking in 1962, but was cleared.
The Burton brothers reflected a dichotomy in California politics, rising from the left while Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ascended from the right, against the swirl of the Bay Area’s brand of radical politics. John Burton and Brown won their Assembly seats in 1964, the same year that voters approved a ballot measure backed by the real estate industry giving property owners the right to refuse to sell to people of color. Courts later overturned it.
The Burton-Brown organization spawned a who’s who of leaders, including two San Francisco mayors — George Moscone, who was a high school friend, and Brown, the most powerful Assembly speaker in California history. Burton was a friend of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s father, a state appellate court justice, and watched young Gavin’s high school sports games. Brown gave Newsom his start in politics with an appointment.
Barbara Boxer worked for John Burton during his time in Congress, before succeeding him in 1982 and winning a U.S. Senate seat a decade later. When Boxer retired in 2016, Brown helped promote Boxer’s successor, Kamala Harris.
Pelosi is most consequential of all. Phillip Burton’s widow, Sala Burton, succeeded him in Congress. As she was dying of cancer, Sala Burton told John that she wanted Pelosi to succeed her, and he used all his connections to help Pelosi win the congressional seat in 1987.
Outgoing California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton at the California Democratic State Convention in 2017.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
In November 1978, Burton declined an invitation from Rep. Leo Ryan, a Democrat from San Mateo, to accompany him to Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult, once a force in San Francisco politics. On Nov. 18, as Ryan’s plane was about to depart with cult defectors, one of cult leader Jim Jones’ followers assassinated the congressman. Jones led a murder-suicide resulting in more than 900 deaths.
On Nov. 27, 1978, with the city convulsed by the Jonestown cataclysm, Dan White, a former San Francisco supervisor, sneaked into City Hall and assassinated Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
Burton fell hard in the months and years after, drinking heavily, huffing nitrous oxide and freebasing cocaine. He missed congressional votes, and aides feared he would be found dead. In 1982, he checked into a rehab facility in Arizona and did not seek reelection.
Burton’s eclectic circle of friends included national political figures, Hollywood glitterati, football coach John Madden, North Beach topless dancer Carol Doda and, from his bartending days, Alice Kleupfer, a cocktail waitress.
In this small world, Kleupfer’s son James Rogan won an Assembly seat from the Burbank area as a Republican in 1994, was elected to Congress in 1996, and helped lead the impeachment of President Clinton. Politics aside, Burton and Rogan shared a connection through Kleupfer.
That friendship mattered on May 30, 1996, when Republicans, holding a short-lived 41-39 seat advantage in the Assembly, rushed to approve tough-on-crime bills. One bill would have made it a crime for pregnant women to abuse drugs, a response to accounts of babies born addicted to cocaine. The GOP-led Assembly seemed certain to pass it when Burton stood to speak.
Though not a commanding orator, Burton spoke from the heart about how cocaine “takes total control of your life,” and how he spent days freebasing in hotel rooms, refusing maid service because he didn’t want anyone to see him.
“It took me, somebody who at least has got a fair set of brains sometimes, who comes from a background that is not deprived, who at the time I was doing it — and I’m not proud to say — was a member of the House of Representatives, and it took me two years to get off this drug, which is the most insidious drug you can imagine,” Burton said.
Floor speeches rarely change minds. But after Burton pleaded with Republicans not to “turn these young women into criminals,” Rogan, then-Speaker Curt Pringle and a few other Republicans withheld their votes. With the bill pending, Republicans conferred behind closed doors and quietly dropped the bill.
“It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t scripted. It was pure John Burton,” said Rogan, who went on to become a Superior Court judge in Orange County. Burton was the only Democrat who had the relationships and gravitas to derail the bill.
For most of his time in office, Burton served under Republican governors. He butted heads with them and on occasion won them over.
When young Assemblyman Burton sought to decriminalize marijuana, Reagan, implying that Burton was a nut, quipped that the San Franciscan was the one man in Sacramento who had the most to fear from the squirrels that populate Capitol Park. Burton answered by calling reporters to the park and trying to feed squirrels a copy of some Reagan-backed legislation.
“There’s some benefit to people thinking you’re nuts,” Burton said in an interview.
Though he was a relatively junior legislator, Burton took a lead role in Reagan’s 1971 welfare overhaul, pushing for annual cost-of-living adjustments for welfare recipients, something he fought to protect over the years.
He disparaged Gov. Pete Wilson, a Marine Corps veteran, for his efforts to limit welfare by calling him “the little Marine.” Burton had a “wicked sense of humor and a “colorful” way of expressing it” but was “a straight shooter,” Wilson said.
“With respect to legislative leaders, as Democrats, I would say that the combination of John Burton and Willie Brown negotiating budget and policy solutions during a time of crisis in the Reagan Cabinet Room was some of the finest policy and political talent California has ever seen,” Wilson said.
Voters elected Burton to the state Senate in 1996, and senators elected him Senate president pro tem in 1998, the year Gray Davis was elected governor, the first Democrat to hold that office after 16 years of Republicans. The relationship was strained.
In appearance, temperament and approach, they were opposites, and they clashed. Davis was a centrist who tried to be tightfisted. Burton, often dismissive of Davis, tried to pull him to the left. When it suited their interests, however, Davis signed legislation that Burton advocated, and Burton carried administration legislation.
“It ain’t brain surgery,” Burton said in 2021 of the art of turning a bill into a law. But few legislators could handle a lawmaking scalpel like Burton.
As Senate leader, he shepherded legislation to buy the last large stands of old-growth redwoods, increase public employee pensions, restrict guns and expand the right to sue, including for victims of sexual harassment. He was the target of such a suit in 2008. It was settled a few months later.
Burton routinely blocked legislation that increased the length of prison sentences but was a favorite of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents prison guards. He was, after all, pro-labor.
In 2002, Burton carried legislation ratifying the prison officers’ contract negotiated by the Davis administration granting officers a raise of roughly 35% over five years, and boosting their pensions. Later that year the union, run by the fedora-wearing Don Novey, celebrated Burton’s 70th birthday by donating $70,000 to his campaign account.
Often, Burton sought no credit for what he helped others accomplish, as Fran Pavley discovered. In 2001, her first year in the Assembly, Pavley, an Agoura Hills Democrat, proposed far-reaching climate change legislation to authorize the California Air Resources Board to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes.
Lobbyists for automakers shifted into overdrive, airing ads warning California that AB 1058 would dictate what cars people could own. The oil industry, drive-time talk radio hosts, and even Cal Worthington and his dog Spot piled on. AB 1058 looked like roadkill.
Burton’s solution: Hijack another bill and insert the contents of Pavley’s bill into it. With that bit of legerdemain, AB 1058 died, AB 1493 was born, and the auto industry’s campaign crashed.
Burton didn’t attend the ceremony when Davis signed the bill. Nor did he accompany Pavley a decade later when President Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony embracing the California concept in nationwide fuel-efficiency standards.
Pavley said she had never seen a politician work so hard for a bill for no credit, ”and I haven’t seen it since.”
Burton took special interest in certain issues. He was, for example, appalled at the force-feeding of ducks and geese to enlarge their livers to produce foie gras. In one of his final bills, he battled restaurant owners and agricultural interests to ban the practice. It passed the Senate by one vote.
In a letter urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign the bill against the wishes of some chefs, he included Burtonesque doggerel: “Save Donald Duck. F— Wolfgang Puck.”
Schwarzenegger signed the bill and sent Burton a photo of himself and Burton in the governor’s office looking at the bottom of the governor’s shoe with a note: “I got duck liver on my shoe!” In the background of the photo, there’s an image of Reagan, smiling with his head tilted back as if he’s having a good laugh.
Burton, who was divorced twice, is survived by his daughter, attorney Kimiko Burton, and two grandchildren.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
Brown – who played 94 matches for West Coast between 2007 and 2016 – said he had a “feeling of peace, but more importantly, comfort and confidence” with his decision to open up about his sexuality.
According to TDA, the 36-year-old initiated the conversation with a DM over Instagram, writing: “Hey [writer] Sam [Koslowski], I played in the AFL for 10 years for the West Coast Eagles, and I’m a bisexual man.”
Brown said his time in the AFL never afforded him “an opportunity to speak openly or explore your feelings in a safe way,” describing the culture as one of “hyper-masculinity” where “countless” homophobic comments were heard on the pitch.
“When I was growing up at school, the word ‘gay’ was thrown around constantly,” he said. “For a man in Australia, [it was seen as] probably the weakest thing you could be.”
He also urged the AFL to foster a “sense of change” with more “positive male role models,” adding: “My advice to the AFL would be, let’s celebrate the players who may not be the most successful, but are the most important in our community.”
Since opening up about his sexuality, Brown has been embraced and celebrated by fans, rugby organisations such as the Gold Coast Suns, and the LGBTQIA+ community for his bravery.
After a few days of silence, Brown took to Instagram on 31 August to express his gratitude for the support and to reflect on his coming out journey.
“It has been a few days since I shared my story, and I’ve had space to let it all sink in. Before it went live, there was a part of me that was worried about the homophobia or potential backlash I might receive,” he wrote.
“What happened instead was that the story was met with an overwhelming positive response, for which I am so grateful. With that, I’d like to share a few thoughts.”
Brown went on to express his gratitude to his partner Lou for her “love, strength, and resilience”; his ex, Shae, and their two children; and the TDA team for their care and professionalism.
“I have been overwhelmed by the kindness, encouragement, and solidarity that have poured in from people across Australia and around the world,” he continued.
“Every message, every story shared, every word of support has meant more to me than I can say. I will carry that gratitude with me always.”
Brown also gave flowers to the LGBTQIA+ athletes and advocates who came before him – including Jason Ball, Ian Roberts, Isaac Humphries, Josh Cavallo, and Danielle Laidley – praising them for helping “make sport and society more inclusive.”
The Aussie talent then brought attention to the women’s division of the AFL, lauding the organisation for its longstanding history of fostering an inclusive and supportive environment in sport.
“The players are role models not only for young women, but for every young Australian who is searching for a place where they can belong,” he wrote.
“I encourage everyone to go and watch an AFLW game – you’ll see what the future of our game can and should look like.”
Towards the end of his statement, Brown expressed his hope that young people, especially queer young Australians, will benefit from his coming out – before issuing a call to action to the AFL.
“It’s time for the AFL and the clubs to commit to genuine change, embedding inclusion not just in words, but in culture, policies, and everyday actions,” he said.
“If we can make our game a place where everyone belongs, the ripple effect on Australian society will be profound. I look forward to joining the movement that started long before me, to create a safer, more inclusive sport, and society for everyone.”
Annabelle Chang recommends books for a living. If you were to ask which one she finds most “criminally underrated,” she’d tell you it’s Katie Henry’s “This Will Be Funny Someday.”
“It is truly one of my favorite books I’ve ever read, not just my favorite YA books, just one of my favorite books that I think will really appeal to everyone,” Annabelle, 19, told The Times. “I read it at such an important time in my life. I was 16. The protagonist is also 16.”
“Annabelle’s love for this book actually inspired our entire family to read it,” her older sister Alexandra Brown Chang, 25, added. “I think it’s absolutely fantastic. I read it when I was 23, but I still resonate with it.”
Annabelle’s knack for recommending great young adult books led her to start an Instagram and blog during the COVID-19 pandemic. After seeing the positive response from readers of all ages, she began selling titles online and at pop-up events, including the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. At 16, she opened a brick-and-mortar store in Studio City: Annabelle’s Book Club LA, the first young adult-focused bookstore in the country.
“I actually had my heart set on this one space in West Hollywood and I was so sad when it didn’t work out. The landlord at the time said that nobody would ever come to a bookstore, which I was very sad to hear,” Annabelle said. “But it all worked out for the best and I truly could not imagine a better place for the bookstore.”
At 16, Annabelle Chang opened a brick-and-mortar store in Studio City: Annabelle’s Book Club LA, the first young adult-focused bookstore in the country.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
On Sept. 2, Annabelle’s Book Club, which was recently featured in a scene in the film “Freakier Friday,” will host an extra special event: a launch party for her sister’s debut novel, “By Invitation Only.” Inspired by Alexandra’s own experience as a “debutante dropout,” the coming-of-age story follows two seemingly different female protagonists, Piper and Chapin, whose worlds collide at the elite La Danse des Débutantes in Paris. Together, Annabelle and Alexandra strive to amplify young adult narratives.
“Historically, YA hasn’t been taken as seriously as it should be, but I think we are at a moment where that is changing and people are really recognizing the power of these stories,” Annabelle said. “They’re impactful for readers of all ages, and they address universal themes and are just incredibly important for everyone.”
“I’ve wanted to write a young adult novel for a very long time, and I think that coming-of-age stories have pretty much proven to be evergreen because every generation seems to be finding new ways to tell them,” added Alexandra, who graduated from Stanford in 2022. “I think that we don’t really come of age once. We keep coming of age because every single new stage of life, whether it’s going to college or experiencing your 20s, it forces you to reevaluate who you are and who you want to be.”
Annabelle and Alexandra grew up in a literary household. Their mom, Amanda Brown, wrote the 2001 book “Legally Blonde,” which was later adapted into the Reese Witherspoon-starring blockbuster and a Broadway musical. The girls recall their mom and dad, technology investor Justin Chang, reading to them every night, which helped inspire their love for books and storytelling. Among Alexandra’s favorites were “Eloise,” “Madeline” and “Sweet Dream Pie.”
“I loved ‘Pinkalicious,’ which I think makes sense as the bookstore is also very pink,” Annabelle added. “It’s always been my favorite color and one of my favorite stories to this day.”
“I’ve wanted to write a young adult novel for a very long time, and I think that coming-of-age stories have pretty much proven to be evergreen because every generation seems to be finding new ways to tell them,” said Alexandra Brown Chang.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
At 14, Alexandra started the fashion blog Alex and Ella with her close friend, and later launched her own site, the Zeitgeist, where she continued to write about fashion, art, travel and more. While in high school, she interned for designer Zac Posen in New York, an experience she called “life-changing.”
“It really allowed me to learn so much more about fashion, the business side of fashion, but also the design aspect,” Alexandra said. “And it really helped me see fashion in all of its amazing ways and as an art form.”
In “By Invitation Only,” fashion takes center stage as the girls prepare for their debutante debuts. Especially through Chapin’s character, Alexandra argues that fashion should be treated as a serious craft — similar to young adult literature.
“When all of the debutantes are wearing custom gowns, it makes sense that all of them would have an incredible amount of time and thought put into them,” she said.
Earlier this month, Alexandra took part in the festivities at Annabelle’s Book Club for Bookstore Romance Day — an annual celebration of romance books at independent bookstores across the country. In addition to hosting perfume making and lipstick reading — which is like tarot card reading, but with lipstick — the store gave away an advance copy of “By Invitation Only.”
While there are romantic elements throughout “By Invitation Only,” the heart of the story lies in the complicated relationship between Chapin and Piper. Unlikely friendships are one of Alexandra’s favorite tropes, she said.
“Piper and Chapin come from completely different backgrounds when their lives unexpectedly collide in Paris, and they really do change for the better,” Alexandra said. “And I think that’s a great message that everyone could use right now, and it certainly is true for myself and so many of my closest friends, and I really value those friendships.”
Alexandra spent about five years writing her novel and sent several early drafts to her sisters, including Annabelle; Audrey, Annabelle’s identical twin; and 15-year-old Ames. “I was really excited to get their input as the target age demographic as well,” she said of her younger siblings.
After the launch at Annabelle’s Book Club, Alexandra will head to bookstores across the country to promote her book, including Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park and Book Passage in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Annabelle is getting ready for her second year at Stanford, where she plans to major in product design and minor in creative writing. Still, she continues to juggle her responsibilities as a student and a business owner.
“It is certainly a balance. I feel incredibly lucky that we have such a wonderful team at our store, who can run the day-to-day when I can’t be there,” Annabelle said. “I find myself going back quite often for events and meetings.”
Even as they pursue their individual paths, Annabelle and Alexandra savor every opportunity they get to collaborate with each other.
“I love that we’re able to spend even more time together and that we have this common interest,” Alexandra said. “It’s really special.”
Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi have started a family, welcoming their first child a year after they tied the knot.
“Stranger Things” star Brown and Bongiovi (son of singer Jon Bon Jovi) announced in a joint Instagram post shared Thursday that they had adopted “our sweet baby girl” over the summer. The young pair — Brown is 21 and Bongiovi is 23 — did not share additional information about their little one. Their post also featured a drawing of a willow tree.
“We are beyond excited to embark on this beautiful next chapter of parenthood in both peace and privacy,” the couple said, adding, “And then there were 3.”
Brown, who famously broke out in 2016 for her portrayal of the telekinetic Eleven in Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” has hit a number of personal milestones in the time between the series’ fourth season in 2022 and its fifth and final chapter, which will touch down later this year.
The British “Enola Holmes” and “Electric State” actor reportedly struck up a romance with fellow actor Bongiovi over social media in 2021, and they got engaged in April 2023. A year later, Bon Jovi confirmed rumors about his son and Brown’s wedding, telling BBC’s “The One Show” it was an intimate affair and that his son “is as happy as can be.”
The couple also had a second ceremony in Tuscany in September, according to Vanity Fair. Brown later confirmed her marriage to Bongiovi, sharing in October several photos from that luxurious event.
In the years since her Netflix debut, Brown has also turned her focus to her studies, other business ventures — including her makeup and clothing lines — and running her own farm in Georgia, which also serves as an animal rescue. Bongiovi, on the other hand, made his acting debut in 2024 with the film “Rockbottom” and is set to appear in the upcoming film “Poetic License,” according to IMDb.
Brown enters motherhood as she prepares to close a chapter that defined most of her teen years. Netflix will release the final episodes of “Stranger Things” in three batches: the first on Nov. 26, the second on Christmas and the finale episode on New Year’s Eve.
“I am nowhere near ready to leave you guys,” Brown told her “Stranger Things” crew and cast in a video shared in December. “I love each and every one one of you and I’ll forever carry the memories and bonds we’ve created together as a family.”
It seems Brown will now also have the comfort of her baby girl when that grand finale comes around.
On a wide, empty stretch of Venice Beach in 1980, seven Los Angeles architects — Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Coy Howard, Craig Hodgetts, Robert Mangurian and Frederick Fisher — gathered for a group portrait by photographer Ave Pildas. Clad in mismatched outfits and standing casually in the sand, they looked more like a rumpled rock band than the future of American architecture.
The resulting image, published in Interiors magazine, distilled a seismic moment in L.A.’s creative history. Those seven, gazing in their own directions yet joined in a sense of mischievous rebellion and cocky exuberance, represented a new generation that was bringing a brash, loose creativity to their work and starting to distance itself from the buttoned-up codes and expectations of the architecture establishment.
Each would go on to have a successful career, from Pritzker Architecture Prize winners to directors of architecture schools. And they and their compatriots would, for a while at least, help put a rapidly changing L.A. at the center of the built culture.
“That one photograph contains a whole world,” notes filmmaker Russell Brown, who recently directed a 12-part documentary series about that Venice architecture scene. “There was risk going on, and freedom; it was all about ideas.”
“It’s become a kind of reference point,” adds architectural journalist Frances Anderton, host of the series. “It just keeps reappearing whenever there’s a conversation about that period.”
The 1980 image is the jumping-off point for “Rebel Architects: From Venice to the World Stage,” produced by Brown’s nonprofit, Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles. Four of the architects — now in their 70s and 80s — gathered for a (far less brash) new photo and an honest conversation about their early careers in L.A., and what’s transpired since for the series, which began streaming monthly on FORT: LA’s website July 1.
A native Angeleno with a background in feature and documentary filmmaking, Brown conceived of the concept after a chat with architect Robert Thibodeau, co-founder of Venice-based DU Architects. After a deeper dive into the image with Anderton, the idea for a reunion was born.
“We thought, why don’t we restage the photo and then use that as an excuse to get the guys together?” Brown explains.
He preferred a spontaneous, lighthearted group discussion to the typical documentary, with its one-on-one interviews and heavy production.
Frances Anderton, from left, Frederick Fisher, Craig Hodgetts, Thom Mayne and Eric Owen Moss catch up for “Rebel Architects,” a 12-part series.
(FORT: LA)
“It’s about the chemistry between creative peers,” says Brown. “The real legacy of these architects isn’t just in the buildings. It’s in the conversations they started — and are still having.” He added: “There’s a spark that happens when they’re together … They talk about failure, competition, teaching, aging. It’s a very human exchange.”
Episode 1, titled “Capturing a Moment in L.A. Architecture,” opens with four of the surviving architects — Fisher, Mayne, Moss and Hodgetts — recreating that seminal photograph for Pildas and sitting down for an interview. (Howard was interviewed separately, Gehry declined and Mangurian died in 2023.) The group dissects the photo’s cinematic, informal composition, in which Pildas aims down from a berm, the neglected buildings behind the eclectic crew shrinking into the horizon, merging with the sand. And they remember a time in which the city’s messy urban forms and perceived cultural inferiority provided endless creative fuel, and liberation.
Pildas recalls how the original shoot came together at the request of British design editor Beverly Russell, who was looking to capture “Frank Gehry and some of his Turks.” (The international design press was gaga for L.A. at the time. Anderton notes that her move from the U.K. resulted from a similar assignment, on the “subversive architects of the West Coast,” for the publication Architectural Review in 1987.)
At the time, most of the architects were working in garages and warehouses, forming their studios and collaborating with equally norm-busting and (relatively) unheralded artists in the scrappy, dangerous, forgotten, yet exploding Venice scene. In a later episode, the architects start listing the art talents they would run into, or befriend, including Larry Bell, James Turrell, Ed Ruscha, Fred Eversley, Robert Irwin, Robert Rauschenberg and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name a few.
Basquiat was then living and working in Hodgetts’ building. “It was a spectacular fusion of all this creative energy,” Hodgetts remembers. “There was no audience, there were no guardrails, and one did not feel constrained.” He adds, later: “We all felt like we were marooned on a desert island.”
Pildas, who had studied architecture before switching to design and, eventually, photography, was uniquely suited to capture the group. He had shot some of the small, quirky experiments of Mangurian and Mayne, and knew most of the others through social and professional circles. (He even knew Hodgetts from high school back in Cincinnati.)
The first attempt at the photo seemed stiff, says Pildas, so he took out a joint, which all except Hodgetts accepted, he says. The icebreaker worked. In a later image, says Pildas, Fisher is hugging Gehry’s leg, the others huddled around. “It got pretty friendly in the end,” he jokes.
Pildas argues that the photo is much more layered with meaning (not to mention nostalgia) now than it was at the time. “Back then, it was just another magazine shoot. Now, it’s history,” he says. Adds Moss: “Its relevancy, or not, is confirmed by the following years. Otherwise it’s gone.”
Frederick Fisher, from left, Thom Mayne, Craig Hodgetts and Eric Owen Moss recreate their famous 1980 photo.
(Ave Pildas)
Each episode explores the image’s layers, and the unfolding stories that followed — the challenges of maintaining originality; crucial role of journalists in promoting their work; maddening disconnect between L.A.’s talent and its clients, along with the mercurial, ever-evolving identity of Los Angeles. The tone, like the photo, is unpretentious and playful, heavy on character and story, not theory. This was not always an easy task with a group that can get esoteric quite quickly, adds Anderton. “I was trying to keep it light,” she laughs. “I don’t think I even have the ability to talk in the language of the academy.”
“They’re cracking jokes, interrupting each other, reminiscing about teaching gigs and design arguments,” says Brown. “There’s real affection, but also a sense of rivalry that never fully went away.” Hodgetts doesn’t see it that way, however. “It was really about the joy of creating things. We wanted to jam a bit, perform together; that’s really life-affirming,” he says.
There are some revealing moments. Mayne, whose firm Morphosis is known for bold, city-altering buildings such as Caltrans HQ in downtown L.A., reflects on teaching as a way of “being the father I never had.” (His father left his family when he was a young boy.) He tenderly discusses the seminal role that his wife Blythe — a co-owner of Morphosis — has played in his career. Fisher reveals that Gehry was the chief reason he dropped everything to come out to L.A. (At the time, he was working as a display designer at a department store in Cincinnati.) “I remember seeing this architect jumping up and down on cardboard furniture. I could see there was something going on here. Something percolating,” he says. Moss opens up about his struggles to negotiate the demands of the practical world, while Hodgetts performs brilliant critiques of the others’ work, sometimes to broad smiles, others to cringes.
Notably absent from the reunion is Gehry himself, who is now 96. “He’s at a point in his life where trudging through sand for a photo wasn’t going to happen,” says Brown. “But his presence is everywhere. He’s still the elephant in the room.”
One episode explores how Gehry, about a decade older than the others, both profoundly influenced and often overshadowed the group — a reality that was perhaps reinforced by his nonchalant dominance in the photo itself. “Frank takes up a lot of oxygen,” Mayne quips. Still, all admire Gehry’s unwillingness to compromise creatively, despite often heavy criticism.
Another prevailing theme is the bittersweet loss of that early sense of freedom, and the Venice of the 1970s, with its breathtakingly low rents and abandoned charm. Today’s architects — wherever they are — face higher stakes, infinitely higher costs and tighter regulations.
“The Venice we grew up with is completely gone,” says Fisher. “But maybe it’s just moved,” noted Moss. Distinguishing L.A. as a place whose energy and attention is constantly shifting, he wonders if creative ferment might now be happening in faraway places like Tehachapi — “wherever land is cheap and ambition is high,” he says.
While Pildas was capturing the seven architects 45 years ago, he was also busy chronicling the city’s street culture — jazz clubs, boulevard eccentrics, decaying movie palaces and bohemian artists. All were featured in the 2023 documentary “Ave’s America” (streaming on Prime Video) directed by his former student, Patrick Taulère, exploring his six decades of humbly perceptive, deeply human work.
After reviewing the recreation of the photo — the architects are still smiling this time, but their scrappy overconfidence feels eons away — Pildas wonders who the next generation will be, and how they will rise.
“Maybe it’ll happen that they’ll have another picture someday with a bunch of new architects, right?” he says. “This is a fertile ground for architecture anyway, and always has been.”
Exposing that “fertile ground” to Angelenos of all kinds is FORT: LA’s overarching goal. Founded in 2020, it offers architecture trails, fellowships and a surprising variety of programming, from design competitions to architecture-themed wine tastings. All, says Brown, is delivered, like “Rebel Architects,” with a sense of accessible joy and exploration — an especially useful gift in a turbulent, insecure time for the city.
“Suddenly, you kind of think about the city in a different way and feel it in a different way,” says Brown. “This is a place that allows this kind of vision to come to life.”
Through the first two weeks of USC’s preseason football camp, Prophet Brown had established himself as one of the early standouts in a crowded cornerback room.
But Brown’s breakout was cut short this week, when the redshirt junior suffered a noncontact injury during USC’s practice that’s expected to keep him out for the foreseeable future.
The timeline for his return remains uncertain. USC coach Lincoln Riley suggested the team would definitely be without him “for the first few games” but was still “hopeful to get him back here at some point.”
“Hate it for him because he’s been playing really well,” Riley said. “Obviously has had one of the more rapid ascents [this fall] in terms of all the years that he’s been here.”
USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn had just singled out Brown on Wednesday night as “one of the guys we trust most on defense.”
“He’s taken a big step,” Lynn said. “Outside of [safety] Kamari [Ramsey], I would say there’s no one on the back end that knows the defense quite like him.”
Brown had taken reps at all three corner spots since the beginning of camp, but was widely believed to be the favorite to start at slot corner. The only other player on USC’s roster with more than a handful of snaps in the slot during his college career is transfer corner DJ Harvey.
Lynn said on Wednesday that Harvey was getting some reps at slot corner.
“He’s a guy from a skill set standpoint that can do all three [corner positions],” Lynn said. “So we’re trying to get him as many reps at those slots as possible, to try to see which one is his best spot.”
Chasen Johnson, a transfer from Central Florida, and DeCarlos Nicholson were both expected to compete for outside corner spots and have minimal experience in the slot.
Until Friday, USC had felt pretty good about its depth at the position. But losing Brown is a significant blow, one that will put more pressure on young defensive backs to contribute early.
Riley also mentioned Braylon Conley and Marcelles Williams as corners who impressed in camp and could step up in Brown’s place.
Feeling good up front
At the start of camp, no position on USC’s roster appeared, on paper, to be as big of a concern as the offensive line, where the Trojans have to replace three starters from a group that already struggled a year ago.
But nearing the midway point of camp, Riley said he feels better about depth up front than he did in the spring.
“I like this group a lot,” Riley said. “Some young guys that have really come on fast. Give credit to Coach [Zach] Hanson for the development of these guys because we’ve got some guys who are rapidly improving.”
Among those who have surprised Riley: Guards Hayden Treter and Micah Banuelos, both of whom have dealt with injuries since coming to USC.
Both will likely be needed this season, given the lack of proven options otherwise.
Etc.
Star wideout Ja’Kobi Lane [unspecified injury] has yet to fully participate in USC’s preseason practices, but is expected to begin “ramping up” in the coming days, Riley said.
Tuesday night, Gustavo Dudamel was back at the Hollywood Bowl. This summer is the 20th anniversary of his U.S. debut — at 24 years old — conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and becoming irrepressibly besotted with the amphitheater.
He walked on stage, now the proud paterfamilias with greying hair and a broad welcoming smile on his face as he surveyed the nearly full house. The weather was fine. The orchestra, as so very few orchestras ever do, looked happy.
For Dudamel, his single homecoming week this Bowl season began Monday evening conducting his beloved Youth Orchestra Los Angeles as part of the annual YOLA National Festival, which brings kids from around the country to the Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood. But it is also a bittersweet week. Travel issues (no one will say exactly what, but we can easily guess) have meant the cancellation of his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela‘s trip to the Bowl next week. Dudamel will also be forced to remain behind with them in Caracas.
After 20 years, Dudamel clearly knows what works at the Bowl, but he also likes to push the envelope as with Tuesday’s savvy blend of Duke Ellington and jazzy Ravel. The soloist was Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, whose recent recording of Ravel’s complete solo piano works along with his two concertos, has been one of the most popular releases celebrating the Ravel year (March 7 was the 150th anniversary of the French composer’s birth).
Ellington and Ravel were certainly aware of each other. When Ravel visited New York in 1928, he heard the 29-year-old Ellington’s band at the Cotton Club, although his attention on the trip was more drawn to Gershwin. Ellington knew and admired Ravel, and Billy Strayhorn, who was responsible for much of Ellington’s music, was strongly drawn to Ravel’s harmony and use of instrumental color.
On his return to Paris, Ravel wrote his two piano concertos, the first for the left hand alone, and jazz influences were strong. Cho played both concertos, which were framed by the symphonic tone poems “Harlem” and “Black, Brown and Beige, which Ellington called tone parallels.
There has been no shortage of Ravel concerto performance of late — or ever — but Ellington is another matter. Although the pianist, composer and band leader was very much on the radar of the classical world — “Harlem” was originally intended for Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony; Leopold Stokowski attended the Carnegie Hall premiere of “Black, Brown and Beige,” as did Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson and Frank Sinatra — Ellington never played the crossover game. The NBC “Harlem” never panned out and became a big-band score. Ever practical, Ellington, who composed mostly in wee hours after gigs, always wrote for the occasion and the players. He tended to leave orchestration to others, more concerned with highlighting the fabulous improvising soloists in his band.
The scores, moreover, were gatherings, developments and riffs on various existing songs. “Harlem” is an acoustical enrapturement of the legendary Harlem Renaissance and one of the great symphonic portraits of a place in the repertory. “Black, Brown and Beige” is an ambitious acoustical unfolding of the American Black narrative, from African work songs to spiritual exaltation with “Come Sunday” (sung by Mahalia Jackson at the premiere) to aspects of Black life, in war and peace, up to the Harlem Renaissance.
Both works are best known today, if nonetheless seldom heard, in the conventional but effective orchestrations by Maurice Peress and are what Dudamel relies on. The version of “Black, Brown and Beige” reduces it from 45 to 18 too-short minutes.
The primary reason for these scores’ neglect is that orchestras can’t swing. The exception is the L.A. Phil. With Dudamel’s surprising success of taking the L.A. Phil to Coachella, there now seems nothing it can’t do.
The time has come to commission more experimental and more timely arrangements. But even these Peress arrangements, blasted through the Bowl‘s sound system and with the orchestra bolstered by a jazz saxophone section, jazz drummer and other jazz-inclined players, caught the essence of one of America’s greatest composers.
Ravel fared less well. The left-hand concerto has dark mysteries hard to transmit over so many acres and video close-ups of two-armed pianists trying to keep the right hand out of the way can be disconcerting. This summer, in fact, unmusical jumpy video is at all times disconcerting.
Ravel’s jazzier, sunnier G-Major concerto is a winner everywhere. But for all Cho’s acclaim in Ravel, he played with sturdy authority. Four years ago, joining Dudamel at an L.A. Phil gala in Walt Disney Concert Hall, Cho brought refined freshness to Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto. In Ravel at the Bowl, amplification strongly accentuated his polished technique, gleaming tone and meticulous rhythms, leaving it up to Dudamel and a joyous, eager orchestra to exult in the Ravel that Ellington helped make swing.
Whether you like Harris or not, a possible run by the XX chromosome former vice president raises a perennial conundrum: Can a woman win the presidency?
She’s a professor of government and director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University. She points out that post-election, Democrats can’t figure out who they are or what they stand for. In that disarray, it may seem easy and safe in 2028 to travel the well-worn route of “a straight, old white guy who fills the status quo.”
That may be especially true in the Trump era, when an increasingly vocal and empowered slice of America seems to believe that women do, in fact, belong in the kitchen making sanwhiches, far away from any decision beyond turkey or ham.
Post-2024, Harris’ defeat — and deciphering what it means — has caused a lot of “morning-after anxiety and agita,” she said. “We’re all doing research, we’re all in the field trying to figure this out.”
While confused Democrats diddle in private with their feelings, Republicans have made race and gender the center of their platform, even if they cloak it under economic talk. The party’s position on race has become painfully clear with its stance that all undocumented immigrants are criminals and deserving of horrific detention in places such as “Alligator Alcatraz” or even foreign prisons known for torture.
The Republican position on women is slightly more cloaked, but no less retrograde. Whether it’s the refusal to tell the public how Trump is included in the Epstein files, the swift and brutal erosion of reproductive rights, or claims, such as the one by far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk, that the only reason for women to attend college should be to get a “Mrs.” degree, Republicans have made little secret of the fact that equality is not part of their package.
Although Trump’s approval ratings have tanked over immigration, he did win just over half of the popular vote last fall. So that’s a lot of Americans who either agree with him, or at least aren’t bothered by these pre-civil rights ideas on race and gender.
Add to that reality the eager pack of nice, safe Democratic white guys who are lining up for their own chance at the Oval Office — our current California governor included — and it does beg the question for the left: Is a woman worth the risk?
“I’ve definitely seen and heard consultants and, you know, even anxious women donors say, ‘Maybe this means we can’t run a woman.’ And I think it’s completely normal for certain elements of the party to be anxious about gender,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, a grassroots advocacy group.
She too thinks the gender question is “logical” since it has been blamed — though not by her — as “the reason we lost to Donald Trump twice in a row, right? Whereas Biden was able to beat him.”
While Timmaraju is clear that those losses can’t — and shouldn’t — be tied to gender alone, gender also can’t be ignored when the margins are thin.
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive political organizing group Our Revolution, which backed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, said that gender and race are always a factor, but he believes the bigger question for any candidate in 2028 will be their platform.
Harris, he said, “lost not because she was a woman. She lost because she did not embrace an economic populist message. And I think the electorate is angry about their standard of living declining, and they’re angry about the elites controlling D.C. and enriching themselves.”
Greevarghese told me he sees an opposite momentum building within the party and the electorate — a desire to not play it safe.
“Whoever it is — male, female, gay, straight, Black, white, Asian — the candidate’s got to have a critique of this moment, and it can’t be a normie Dem.”
Brown, the professor, adds, rightfully, that looking at the question of a female candidate’s chances through the lens of just Harris is too narrow. There are lots of women likely to jump into the race. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are just two names already in the mix. Brown adds that an outside contender such as a woman from a political dynasty (think Obama) or a celebrity along the lines of Trump could also make headway.
The criticisms of Harris, with her baggage of losing the election and critiques of how she handled the campaign and the media, may not dog another female candidate, especially with voters.
“Whether Kamala runs again or not, I’m optimistic that the American people will vote for a female president,” Vanessa Cardenas told me. She is the executive director of America’s Voice, an advocacy group for immigrants’ rights.
“After the chaos, cruelty and incompetence of the Trump presidency, Latino voters, like most Americans, will reward candidates who can speak most authentically and seem most ready to fight for an alternative vision of America,” she said. “I believe women, and women of color, can credibility and forcibly speak to the need for change rooted in the lived experiences of their communities.”
Timmaraju said that regardless of what Harris decides, Democrats will probably have one of the most robust primaries in recent times — which can only be good for the party and for voters.
And rather than asking, “Can a woman win?” the better question would be, “Do we really want a system that won’t let them try?”
Gerald A. Brown, who chaired California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board in its infancy and was a member of the National Labor Relations Board for 10 years, has died. He was 90.
Brown died of congestive heart failure Sunday in Sacramento, the national labor board announced.
“He was a man of great integrity who was committed to the concept of collective bargaining,” Boren Chertkov, an attorney who worked with Brown at the national labor board, told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday. “He felt employees should have a voice in what their capitalistic economy should be.”
Brown was a labor arbitrator from Austin, Texas, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him in 1976 to California’s year-old labor board as part of a shake-up. Earlier in the year, Gerald Brown had conducted hearings for the California board on labor issues involving Gallo wine.
The original five-member board, created to supervise secret-ballot farmworker unionization elections, was criticized by rural legislators and farmers as being biased toward Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers union. Brown took over as chairman from Roger M. Mahony, now archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who was then the bishop of Fresno. Two other board members also were replaced.
In 1980, the state Senate refused to reconfirm Brown as chairman because growers still contended that the labor board favored farmworkers. During his unsuccessful renomination process, Brown defended the board’s record, saying most of the board’s decisions had been upheld by the courts.
Gray Davis, who was the governor’s chief of staff at the time, told The Times in 1980 that it was a “charade” to suggest that Brown was not qualified to continue as the labor board’s chairman.
Before coming to California, Brown had been appointed to the five-member board of the National Labor Relations Board by President Kennedy. From 1961 to 1971, he helped decide cases for the federal agency that conducts elections for labor unions and investigates unfair labor practices.
During Brown’s tenure, the national labor board tried to expedite election procedures and expanded what could be included in collective bargaining agreements, Chertkov said.
Born in Olustee, Okla., Brown received his bachelor’s degree in 1935 from West Texas State College, where he was captain of the boxing team. Three years later, he earned his master’s degree from the University of Texas.
Early in his working life, he taught social science at a Texas high school, economics and political science at Amarillo (Texas) Junior College, and economics at the University of North Carolina before becoming involved with the National Labor Relations Board.
In 1943, he interrupted his year-old career with the national board as a field examiner in Atlanta to serve two years in the Army Air Forces, then rejoined the agency in Chicago. By 1947, Brown was the director of a regional National Labor Relations Board office in San Francisco, a position he held until his appointment to the national board.
Brown is survived by two daughters, Barbara Brown Hawkins of Silver Spring, Md., and Carol Brown of Bellevue, Wash., and a granddaughter.
On Sunday, our thoughtful and reserved president reposted on his Truth Social site a video generated by artificial intelligence that falsely showed former President Obama being arrested and imprisoned.
There are those among you who think this is high humor; those among you who who find it as tiresome as it is offensive; and those among you blissfully unaware of the mental morass that is Truth Social.
Whatever camp you fall into, the video crosses all demographics by being expected — just another crazy Trump stunt in a repetitive cycle of division and diversion so frequent it makes Groundhog Day seem fresh. Epstein who?
But there are three reasons why this particular video — not made by the president but amplified to thousands — is worth noting, and maybe even worth fearing.
First, it is flat-out racist. In it, Obama is ripped out of a chair in the Oval Office and forced onto his knees, almost bowing, to a laughing Trump. That imagery isn’t hard to interpret: America’s most esteemed Black man — who recently warned we are on the brink of losing democracy — forced into submission before our leader.
If you are inclined to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, right before this scene of Obama forced to kneel, a meme of Pepe the Frog — an iconic image of the far-right and white supremacy — flashes on the screen.
Not subtle. But also, not the first time racism has come straight from the White House. On Monday, the Rev. Amos Brown, pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church and a student of Martin Luther King Jr., reminded me that not too long ago, then-President Woodrow Wilson screened the pro-KKK film “The Birth of a Nation” at the executive mansion. It was the first film screening ever held there, and its anti-Black viewpoint sparked controversy and protests.
That was due in no small part to a truth that Hollywood knows well — fiction has great power to sway minds. Brown sees direct similarities in how Wilson amplified fictional anti-Blackness then, and how Trump is doing so now, both for political gain.
“Mr. Trump should realize that Obama hasn’t done anything to him. But just the idea, the thought of a Black person being human, is a threat to him and his supporters,” Brown told me.
Brown said he’s praying for the president to “stop this bigotry” and see the error of his ways. I’ll pray the great gods give the reverend good luck on that.
But, on the earthly plane, Brown said that “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”
Trump courted the Black vote and has his supporters among people of all colors and ethnicities, but he’s also played on racist tropes for political success, from stoking fear around the Central Park Five, now known as the Exonerated Five, decades ago to stoking fear around Black immigrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio during the recent election. It’s an old playbook, because it works.
Reposting the image of Obama on his knees is scary because it’s a harsh reminder that racism is no longer an undercurrent in our society, if it ever was. It’s a motivator and a power to be openly wielded — just the way Wilson did back in 1915.
But the differences in media from back in the day to now are what should raise our second fear around this video. A fictional film is one thing. An AI-generated video that for many people seems to depict reality is a whole new level of, well, reality.
The fear of deepfakes in politics is not new. It’s a global problem, and in fairness, this isn’t the first time (by far) Trump or other politicians have used deepfakes.
Of course it did, and millions of people looked at these fake pictures, at least some assuming they were real.
The list of deepfake political examples is long and ominous. Which brings us to the third reason Trump’s latest use of one is unsettling.
He clearly sees the effectiveness of manipulating race and reality to increase his own power and further his own agenda.
Obama on his knees strikes a chord all too close to the image of Latino Sen. Alex Padilla being taken to the floor by federal authorities a few weeks ago during a news conference. It bears chilling resemblance to the thousands of images flooding us daily of immigrants being taken down and detained by immigration officers in often violent fashion.
Videos like this one of Obama are the normalizing, the mockery, the celebration of the erosion of civil rights and violence we are currently seeing being aimed at Black, brown and vulnerable Americans.
There is nothing innocent or unplanned about these kinds of videos. They are a political weapon being used for a purpose.
Because when repetition dulls our shock of them, how long before we are no longer shocked by real images of real arrests?
At a time when it is trying to figure out a way to attract a larger share of moderate whites in presidential elections, the national Democratic Party is facing a tough decision.
Its leading candidate for party chairman is a black man who has been close to two of the party’s liberal icons, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Ron Brown, a 47-year-old Washington lawyer, once served on Kennedy’s Senate staff and last summer managed Jackson’s forces during the Democratic National Convention.
He is vying for the Democratic chairmanship with four other men: Michigan Democratic Chairman Richard Wiener and former U. S. Reps. Michael D. Barnes of Maryland, James R. Jones of Oklahoma and James V. Stanton of Ohio.
The 404 Democratic National Committee members will choose the new chairman in February. Although a political insider’s job, the post is always crucial to the direction of the party and the kind of presidential nominee it chooses at the end of the chairman’s four-year term.
Big Names
Brown’s four competitors have significant support, but it is Brown who is picking up the big names.
Two potential presidential candidates–New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley–have endorsed him, and a major Democratic moderate, former Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, is working hard on his behalf.
Brown also has strong support among organized labor and is popular with the large bloc of Democratic National Committee members from California.
“You’re going to see a consensus building for Ron in the next few weeks,” said a top Los Angeles Democrat who asked not to be identified. “You’re going to see governors coming out for him.”
Even Brown’s opponents cannot find anything bad to say about him and some acknowledge that he is the most qualified person seeking the job. He is a skilled negotiator and communicator and has worked within the party for years.
But some Democrats worry that his selection would send the wrong signal to moderates who have been deserting the party in recent presidential elections.
‘New Direction’
“We have been trying to move the party in a new direction for four years and that is not the direction of Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy,” said Al From, executive director of the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats, many of them Southern senators and governors.
“Ron may be in the center of the political spectrum personally,” From said, “but the baggage he carries is that the two politicians he is most associated with are liberals. At some point this party has to recognize the fact that the liberal message is not winning presidential elections.”
Some Democrats also worry that Brown is a stalking horse for Jackson, who may run again for President in 1992. But Babbitt said in an interview that theory was off base.
“I know Ron Brown and I can tell you he is not a stalking horse for Jesse. I made this mistake four years ago when I opposed the selection of (Paul G. Kirk Jr.) for Democratic chair on the ground that he was a stalking horse for Ted Kennedy.
“That not only turned out to be false, (but) Paul Kirk has been an outstanding chairman for the last four years. He has greatly improved the party. Ron Brown will do the same thing.”
Jewish Supporters
Some Democrats also worry that because Brown advised Jackson, if only briefly, his selection to head the Democratic Party could alienate some Jews who are major financial supporters of the party and who have quarreled with Jackson in the past.
Edward Sanders, a former president of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, acknowledged that was a problem Brown had to surmount.
“But I am convinced Ron is his own man,” said Sanders, who arranged a meeting for Brown with some Jewish leaders recently in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. John Emerson, a former DNC member, said: “The next chairman of the Democratic Party has to be someone who can deal with Jesse Jackson. Ron is his own man and Jesse really respects him. It’s Ron’s asset not his liability.”
California has 23 votes on the Democratic National Committee and longtime party adviser Mickey Kantor believes “Ron can get 16 to 18 of those votes from what I have been able to determine.”
Brown said in an interview that he finds himself in a strange position: When Democratic leaders were worried about what Jackson would do at the national convention last summer, Brown agreed to help things go smoothly and ultimately won high praise.
“Now,” said Brown, “some people are worried that I am too close to Jesse. But anybody who knows me knows that isn’t so. I think my strongest point, in fact, is that I can be someone all sides can turn to.”
