Former California Governor ‘Pat’ Brown Dies Of Heart Attack Remembered For Guiding State Through Booming Growth Period

Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, the Democratic governor who led California through an era bullish on growth, beat Richard Nixon and lost to Ronald Reagan, has died. He was 90.

“More than any other individual, he built modern California,” President Clinton said Saturday.

The patriarch of California’s dominant political family had been ill for some time and died at home of a heart attack Friday night, granddaughter Kathleen Kelly said. His wife, Bernice, was at his side.

Brown was the father of Jerry Brown, also a two-term governor and a three-time presidential candidate, and former state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1994.

Presiding over the golden days of the 1960s, Brown showered a booming state with millions in public spending projects. He served eight years, from 1959 to 1967, and during that time the state paved more than 1,000 miles of freeway, erected 11 public universities, and started the California Water Project, a $3 billion, 475-mile-long network of reservoirs, aqueducts and pumping plants.

In three campaigns for governor, Brown faced the three most formidable California Republicans of his era - including two who later became president.

In 1958, Brown defeated William Knowland, then the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate and an aspirant for the 1960 Republican presidential nomination.

In 1962, Brown won a second term by defeating Nixon, prompting the loser to bitterly tell reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Nixon went on to win the presidency six years later. In 1966, Brown lost a bid for a third term to another future president, Reagan.

The state’s population exploded under Brown’s stewardship by 32 percent, to nearly 19 million people. That made California the country’s most populous state.

Unlike his son, who questioned and sometimes discouraged growth, Pat Brown gloried in it.

He also was a major force behind enactment of state laws outlawing racial discrimination in jobs and housing. He created a consumer protection agency and backed legislation creating Medi-Cal, a health-care program for the poor.

All told, Brown served 23 years in public office, including seven as district attorney of San Francisco and eight years as the state’s attorney general.

Fellow Democrats remember Brown’s terms in office with untempered nostalgia. It was a time, they say, when scads of state money joined hands with boundless will, when people dreamed up wildly ambitious projects, made them happen - and enjoyed doing it.

“I remember one funny thing when we were campaigning … he exclaimed, ‘Oh we’ll do wonderful things when we’re running the state of California,”’ former U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston said. “Politics was much more fun in those days.”

Brown considered a rematch against Reagan in 1970, but decided against it so he wouldn’t hurt his son’s chances in his run for secretary of state. The younger Brown won that election and was elected governor four years later.

It was on the issue of capital punishment that Brown suffered his worst political wounds and gained a reputation for indecision. Although he personally opposed the death penalty, Brown allowed 40 people to die in the gas chamber, saying it was his duty to uphold the law.

His handling of the case of “Red Light Bandit” and rapist Caryl Chessman in 1960 triggered widespread hostility and derision. Brown angered death penalty supporters when he granted Chessman a stay of execution and asked the Legislature to repeal capital punishment. When the Legislature refused, Brown angered death penalty opponents by allowing Chessman to die.

“Every place I went in 1960, they booed me,” Brown recalled.

Edmund Gerald Brown was born April 21, 1905, in San Francisco, a third-generation Californian. He got his nickname “Pat” as a child, for “Patrick Henry Brown,” honoring a rousing speech he gave in school.