Jerry Brown won an unprecedented fourth term as California Governor defeating Republican Neel Kashkari, a former George W. Bush treasury official who never really had a chance against the seventy-six year old Democrat.
Four decades after becoming governor for the first time as a young upstart who developed a reputation for living a monastic existence and dating a rock star, Brown will have four more years to lead the Golden State still struggling with high unemployment and corporate exodus problems due to confiscatory taxation policies and over regulation.
The Los Angeles Times reported that, of all the contests on the California ballot, Brown’s reelection provided the most historical significance. Brown’s father, Democrat Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, served two terms as governor of California before the man who became the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, unseeded him in 1966.
KTLA5 reported that Kashkari was gracious in his concession speech, challenging Brown to “be bold” in his next term. “This was always about … the future of California and the future of the Republican Party,” he told the supportive crowd at the Westin South Coast Plaza. “I want you to know this: I’m just getting warmed up.”
Brown said outside the governor’s mansion on Tuesday that he considers his fourth term a “gift.” Moreover, he asserted that California was going in a “progressive” but “fiscally responsible” direction. “I’m going to do my utmost to live up to the promise of California that brought my great-grandfather … here to Sacramento in 1852,” Brown said.