Thomas D. Elias

Back in the early 1970s, just a few years after Pat Brown was knocked out of the governor’s office by Ronald Reagan, it was not uncommon to see him tooling along California freeways behind the wheel of his silver American-made sedan with a personalized license plate saying “The Guv.”

Back in his very first term, Gov.-elect Jerry Brown often used clichés old and new to make his points.

No political development of the last two years was more remarkable than the rise of the Tea Party movement, which began with a few rallies around California in April 2009 and soon mushroomed into a national phenomenon.

Suddenly, there may be a solid link between two of the greatest American political debates of the past decade — illegal immigration and climate change.

“Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.” – Julius Caesar, 62 B.C.

In the midst of the fall election-season headlines, the single best California budget move of the last few years got almost no public attention.

The scene was the waiting area for a flight to Los Angeles from what was then called Houston Intercontinental Airport (the airfield had not yet been renamed for ex-President George Bush pere). The date was mid-2000, before most Americans had heard of either Osama bin Laden or Barack Obama.

For most of this century, Republicans running for high office in California have proclaimed that only they can stem the tide of jobs and businesses leaving California, a phenomenon they blame on the Democrats they often say have controlled state government for decades.

Arnold Schwarzenegger made many promises while running for governor in 2003 and kept one. He made many more during the more than seven years his smoking tent sat outside his office in the state Capitol’s “horseshoe” suite of executive offices - and kept virtually none.

Cynics derided him as Gov. Moonbeam, reviving the tag applied in 1977 by the late Chicago columnist Mike Royko, who later apologized for it. They said he was too old at 72 to become governor again. Jerry Brown’s critics said he waged too passive of a campaign and didn’t hire enough campaign staff (when the going got serious around Labor Day, he had all of 12 paid staffers).