As Willie Brown turns 90, the California political icon reflects on his career, the state of politics, and the figures he crossed paths with.
Get news and commentary on the California issues you care about in one email.Get the news that matters to all Californians. Start every week informed.Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco and the first Black person to serve as speaker of the California State Assembly, in a conference room at his law office in downtown San Francisco on Feb. 7, 2024.
We talked for two hours as a steady stream of friends and well-wishers stopped by his table. One of his lawyer friends sat down with us. Three former San Francisco firefighters also stopped to talk and gave him a thumbs up on their way out the door. Former Assemblyman Rusty Areias even ambled by to sit and chat for a few minutes.“He’s not only smart and a great example, he is a lot of fun to be with,” Areias told me a few days later. “He did not let the old man in.
Brown had recently finished listening to the book “The Accidental President” by A.J. Baime, chronicling how Harry Truman upset the pundits and prognosticators by beating frontrunner Republican Thomas Dewey in 1948.in his book “Kamala’s Way,” Brown and his friends, including his then-girlfriend Kamala Harris, were visiting Boston in 1994 when Trump sent his private jet to fetch them to New York to discuss a hotel project in Los Angeles .
As San Francisco mayor, Brown presided over the sprucing up of the Embarcadero, opening day care centers and building a new ballpark for the Giants. In an interview as he left office, Brown told me it was “the most enjoyable eight years of my political existence.”He also embraced a high-rise building boom in San Francisco that priced-out working- and middle-class residents. Brown now lives in one of those high-rises, the 58-story Millennium Tower.
As speaker, Willie Brown was known for publicly punishing his adversaries, but also for not leaving them out in the cold for long. I mentioned this to Brown, and he nodded, pointing to the chair where Areias had sat when he stopped by our lunch table. As Brown reaches his 90th birthday, the accolades and honors that eluded him when he held elective office have been rolling in. In February, he was inducted by Gov. Gavin Newsom
Republicans who vociferously opposed him now express admiration. Bill Baker, a Republican who once represented Contra Costa County in the Assembly, was the point person for the GOP caucus on the state budget at the time, and their disagreements were sharp.
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