A Smaller Stage

Jerry Brown is used to thinking global, even celestial. Now the mayor-elect of Oakland, Calif., must begin thinking municipal. On Wednesday, a day after he won the mayor’s race in a landslide, many residents were cautious, yet hopeful, that a politician once dubbed “Governor Moonbeam” for his lofty, even quirky ideas when he was governor of California can handle the down-and-dirty problems of city government. Brown, 60, who moved to Oakland only in 1994, two years after his third failed presidential bid, was the only white in the mayor’s race. In January, he’ll take over a struggling city of 396,000 that is 43 percent black, 14 percent Hispanic, 14 percent Asian and only 28 percent white.