Transcripts For CSPAN3 Edmund Brown At California Gubernator

CSPAN3 Edmund Brown At California Gubernatorial Candidate Forum November 6, 2016

Mr. Gerdes good morning, fellow employees and guests, and welcome to another session of politics 66. This is a very special day in this series. For one thing, it is the last wednesday before the second tuesday in november. The race is in the home stretch. This is also a special day because one of the busiest men in california is here to address us. I refer, of course, to Governor Brown. He needs no introduction to any californian. Moreover, we need no introduction to him. He is familiar with this program of ours, having appeared before us four years ago. He might be interested in knowing, however, that to date we have heard addresses by both candidates for state treasurer, controller, attorney general, and lieutenant governor. Governor brown, there are four sponsors of this program, which is designed to help pg e employees see and hear from candidates of both parties and to understand the issues. This, we feel, is a basic tenet of responsible citizenship. The four sponsors are the company, our employees association, and the two unions who represent pg e employees. The sponsors are represented today by those who share this platform with us. Now a few words about the long , and distinguished career of the chief executive of our nations most populous state. It has been my pleasure to know pat brown during most of his career. He and i became attorneys in San Francisco at about the same time. In fact, he beat me to the bar by one year. He has kept well ahead of me since that time in all respects except 1 i have an easier time getting reelected that he does. [laughter] mr. Gerdes pat first was elected to Public Office in San Francisco. He defeated the longtime incumbent Matthew Brady and became District Attorney of San Francisco. His record and the prominence he gained during eight energetic years of service as District Attorney propelled him to statewide office in 1950, when he was elected attorney general. He was the only democrat to win a state office in that year. Four years later, he was reelected attorney general in the primary when he won the when under cross filing he won the nominations of both parties. In 1958, he was swept into the Governors Office by a margin of more than a million votes. He carried with him with one exception a full slate of constitutional officers and also democratic control of both houses of the legislature. In 1962, he was elected to his second term as governor. The most important vote, i believe, that he ever won was way back in 1930 when bernese lane, a university of california coed, said aye to a proposal of then counselor brown. She became his first lady long before she became hours. Became ours. They have reared four find children, they have eight grandchildren, and they have a son who recently graduated from your law school. To round out the picture, the governors mother continues to reside in San Francisco, and im told keeps a loving but discerning eye on her distinguished son. It is a great personal pleasure for me to present his excellency, governor pat brown. [applause] gov. Brown thank you very much, bob, for a very gracious and there he and a very complete introduction. My fellow californians, there are one or two other places where we differ and holding our respective offices as the president of this company and the governorship of the state. He gets a bigger salary than i do, too. [laughter] gov. Brown i would like to ask you a question, bob. I think it is somewhat pertinent to this. It is easier for you to get reelected, but do you think that a person completely without any experience in the Pacific Gas Electric company or any other Electric Company in your place in the event you decided to retire . I have a feeling you would take a look around, particularly if it were a Motion Picture actor who had never worked a day in a public or private utility in his entire life. I think this is a very good argument that i might sit down with right now. But let me just say one or two other things. I see over here on the side it reads, listen, read, think. Study the issues and candidates and vote intelligently. I want to thank you, the employee groups, and you and management that have made it possible for me to come back here to the Pacific Gas Electric company. The first job i ever had was in the Complaint Division of the pg e at 445 sutter street right after i got out of high school. I was going to Night Law School at the same time, and i worked for the Pacific Gas Electric short a time. O shor too who could tell, instead of running into a tough fight for governor for the state, i might be sitting here today just taking it easy as the president of one of the great corporations of america. [laughter] gov. Brown one other thing. You know you run into some , awfully tough questions, and bob very nicely mentioned my wife of 36 years. We celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary on sunday. But you run into tough questions in a political campaign. I understand after this is over, im going to answer questions. You never know what people will ask. We had a telethon in fresno the other night. I was on the telephone answering the questions, and we were taking them, believe me. There was no censorship, they were not throwing me softballs. I took them all as they came. Whenever questions that somebody asked me, governor, they say you havent any sex appeal, and that your opponent has charm and will get all of the womens vote. What is your answer to that . My wife was sitting right beside me up there. I said, i am not going to answer that question, im going to let my wife answer that question. Well, girls, let me just say this [laughter] gov. Brown she said, i categorically deny that he has sex appeal. And then she went on with the answer where she stated, let me say this. I am a mother and grandmother, and the women of the state of california are not going to vote on charm or sex appeal. Theyre going to take a look at the basic issues of this campaign education, consumer problems, roads and freeways, parks and beaches and they are going to make a decision based upon that. And that is my opinion, too. I think the people of this state are intelligent enough to make the tough judgment they are going to have to make tuesday, november 8. Now, i welcome, i repeat, this opportunity to address you, and i thank you for it. My opponent will be here tomorrow. He will have the last word. Ordinarily, that would give him some advantage, but it has worked differently in this campaign. My opponent has been auditioning for the job of governor for more than a year now, delivering day after day from podium after podium what has become known to the press of the state as the speech. That is what they call it. It is so well known to reporters that many of them are able to recited along with my opponent. The even offer corrections when he occasionally misses a line or strays from the script. Now if my opponent runs true to , form tomorrow, if he gives you another version of the speech, its theme will be that the sky is falling in california, that conditions are terrible, business is bad, and only he a Motion Picture actor can hold it up. He can be expected to take off a string of nonstatistics and nonfacts designed to prove his point. If he runs true to form he will , tell you there are ominous cracks in our california economy. I tell you today that our economy is the most dynamic in the nation and that california has never been more prosperous. But dont take my word for it. Look instead at the business trend indicator published on the by the Pacific Gas Electric company. It describes more graphically than any words of mine the dimensions of booming prosperity. You take a look at 1959 on this graph. If you look at almost every single solitary one service, finance, general, average weekly earnings, all the way up Department Store sales, real estate activity we have had some trouble in that one, but that is the only one. Bank deposits, personal income of california residents look at the way that has skyrocketed in the last seven years. Commercial Industrial Power sales, but at the way they are going up. Taxable gasoline sales that indicates the number of people on the road. In every single solitary category of Business Conditions that tell whether or not californias economy is good, it is proven that we have done a good job. Now, i dont take credit for that as governor of this state. I say of course that great corporations like this have played its part. Little corporations, little business, laborers played its part in the economy of the state and giving a full days work for a full days pay. The government, too, the fiscal policies of an administration. This has played a part, and this is the reason that employment, personal income, sales, profits, pharmacies, tourist spending, and nearly every other index are the highest level in the history of the state and the highest in history of this nation. If my opponent runs true to form, he will tell you tomorrow that whoever crosses the border into california is immediately eligible for Welfare Benefits. I tell you that there are stringent residence requirements for every category of welfare in the state of california, every category of aid but one. And they range up to five years. For the elderly, you must live in california for five of the last eight years in order to get the pensions we given the state give here in the state of california. The single exception is aid to the blind. As soon as you become a resident of the state of california, if you are blind totally blind you are entitled to the aid we give in this state. But i tell you that only amounts to 1 of the total receiving Welfare Benefits in this state, and i have never heard a single solitary republican or democrat in the legislature ever try to change the benefits that we are giving to the blind in the state. But dont take my word for it again. If you want the facts, i invite you to examine a copy of report released this week in San Francisco by the California Association for health and welfare. This is a 65yearold Nonpartisan Organization of laymen and professionals. From throughout the state. Its report will give you the facts about welfare and will point out that statesponsored rehabilitation and Training Programs are taking thousands off relief roles and saving taxpayers millions of dollars. Please believe me when i tell you that the whole thrust of my administration has been to get people off those welfare rolls and get them to work. And we started it three years ago. Coming into california, the 600,000 people that come within our borders every year, a great many of them are completely uneducated. A great many of them cannot read nor write. You have to start with basic education before they can get the most elementary of jobs. And california too, now is the most sophisticated state in the entire nation with respect industry and location. Vocation. And then we have to retrain them. They come in here completely untrained. This is not an inexpensive process, but california is doing more than any other state in the union. We have worked with private individuals. In southern california, we worked with John Mcclellan to get them to work. The department of employment, social welfare, private industry, working together trying to solve this problem. , if my opponent runs true to form tomorrow, he will be extremely careless with the s. Ct that is putting it as charitably as i can. What im trying to do today is to ask you to examine carefully what he tells you. If you tells you what he tells people all over the state, that you have to be five years a resident of california in her to be governor, but it only takes one day or one hour to get welfare you ask him, what category of a duly given the state of california other than a blind and i hope somebody will ask him that question tomorrow. Now, im not here to give my opponents speech for him. Thats not my job. If he is true to form, it will be more notable less for what is said than what is left unsaid. The fundamental question raised by the candidacy of my opponent is still unanswered less than a week before election and a day and the since he set out to win the governorship. The unanswered question that disturbs millions of conserved disturbed californians is, what has Ronald Reagan ever done for the state of california and his entire life, other than make a Motion Picture, bedtime for , for ladies on probation or last stand of custer. These are the things. While we have been building this great big state of california, its colleges in freeways, where was my opponent . That question is important, but the real question you have to ask yourself is, what would my opponent do as governor . How would he exercise the power and prestige of governor . The acts and decisions of the governor of california directly affects the lives of you here today, all of the 19 million plus souls in this state. How would my opponent at . Act . What would his decision to be, if he shouldbe , ever be in a position to execute them . This is the disturbing question that every california voter must answer as best he can before he enters the voting booth next tuesday. My opponent, i repeat, has never spent a single day in Public Office. He has never served a single day in and appointed office. An appointed office. He has never been before a board or commission in the state of california to fight for or against any of these things he talks about during this campaign. He has never come to grips with the challenges we face in california that are growing and changing more swiftly than any society in history. He has never been on the firing line facing daytoday problems a governor must solve, or be faced instead by chaos in crisis. We cannot judge my opponent by his record of action in Public Office there is no such record. We must judge him instead by his words, by what he tells us he believes and stands for. Let me give you one example of the type of problems that a governor must deal with. Some of your people know this better than i. Of course we have this great , California Water project. In putting that project over, i had consultations with the people, your executives, here and in sacramento. I told them that this was not a power project. I said i believed in the private distribution of power. I believe in the public distribution of power. I think the competitive situation we have in california has been a good thing, but i told them that during the period that i was governor and building this project a governor has plenary power in this California Water project by reason of the burns porter act and the department of water resources, the appointment of the director. I would ask you to ask her your president whether i have not lived up to that commitment. In the distribution of that water, it will take tremendous power load. And we have sat down and negotiated a contract. It is almost ready for signing. It is the best example of cooperation between government and private business, the private stockholders of the state. Im proud of that fact, that we have been able to work together, as proud of anything else i have done as governor. One other thing i think you know that other governors tries tried to build a California Water project. They tried while i was attorney general. During the times of governor warren and governor night. But we ran into this northernsouthern california division. The people in the south were afraid that once they had invested in a great distribution center, they would have to that the people in the north would take the water away from them. The people in the north were afraid that if they took the water and sent it down south, that once they got it, they would never be able to get it back. Well as a matter of fact, we , have what is known as a county of origin statute. There is plenty of water to take care of us until the year of probably 2010. It is a question of building the project and disturbing the water where it isnt. But it was the toughest fight. I went out on the bond issue and passed it in 1959. In 1960, we had the bond issue on the ballot. In the northern part of the state, they felt i had been a traitor. To send their water to the south. In 1962, when mr. Nixon ran against me for the governorship, wherever i went in the northern part of the state they would say, dan brown, and it was rough and tough in the counties i carried by an overwhelming vote. But we had the floods in 1964, we had the dam up halfway. It was up just tying up to hold the water and save the city of marysville and yuba city. You know what they want to do now . Now theyre going to call it the brown dam. This is the way those things work out. [laughter] gov. Brown the point i want to make is that when you are governor, you are making decisions. If you try to make everybody happy, you just dont make anybody happy. The buck stops in the Governors Office, and every time you make a tough decision, you make somebody unhappy. If its the appointment of a judge, location of a freeway, the building of a dam there is somebody that does not want it. If they were easy, the governor has nothing to do with it. So that is the situation. , but i have nothing my opponent has never had to make these decisions. You cannot afford, my friends you cannot afford to place a man in office that you have not any idea what he will do. Up in sacramento, they have a citizen assessor. He calls himself a citizen politician. They placed a citizen assessor that wanted to throw the rascals out in sacramento. The assessor there is raising all the assessments from 22 to 100 , and people up there are shocked at what the citizen of citizen assessor is going to do. Now this is an example of what , you buy simply because you are not happ

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