You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [82]
Brown knew that even the giant killer who slew Nixon’s chances at the governorship was destined to meet some fierce opposition at the hands of his critics and that his own reelection this time was far from a sure thing.
Worse yet, the favored son of the Republican Party that was slated to run against him had crossover appeal to Brown’s own liberal base.
George Christopher, a Greek immigrant at the age of two, had a loyal California following. After a successful career in the dairy business, Christopher began a political career in 1946 by being elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and in 1955 was elected mayor. Particularly troubling to Brown was that in Christopher’s reelection bid in 1959, his opponent had successfully painted him with a liberal paintbrush, claiming that under his mayoralty Christopher had allowed San Francisco to “become the national headquarters of organized homosexuals in the United States.”
Here was a Republican challenger who might have more appeal to Brown’s base than other Democrats. What Brown needed was a more right-wing Republican opponent than Christopher. But who?
As the Republican primary drew closer, Brown was relieved to find that a more ideal opponent had thrown his hat in the ring, a candidate who could be painted as a right-wing extremist in line with the police-state-loving Republican Party as emblematized by Goldwater and Nixon.
Moreover this opponent was a political neophyte with little to no mainstream practical business experience.
Better yet he was an actor more identified with his role as the shill host for the Death Valley Days TV show than as a serious public persona. His recently released autobiography, Where’s the Rest of Me?, only further denigrated his image with a Hollywood air of superficiality that called to the public mind images of him taking second billing to a chimp and divorcing Jane Wyman, everyone’s favorite mother from Father Knows Best. Add to that his jingoistic term at the Screen Actors Guild and his naming names back in the era of the Hollywood Ten, and no one would dare ascribe to him any liberal appeal.
Brown was sure that there would be little crossover with his supporters, and given the fact that Democrats greatly outnumbered Republicans in the state voting rolls, victory would be a shoo-in.
But in order for this right-wing neo to get the Republican nomination, he had to win the Republican primary over the sure hand and experience of Christopher, and this was by no means a sure thing.
So Brown decided to help the neophyte along by making statements that would clearly differentiate him from Christopher for the Republican base, casting him as a John Birch extremist rather than the plainspoken everyman that he had played on screen for a very lucrative, non-everyman salary. He even focused the Republican debate on civil rights so that everyone could see that there really was next to no difference between his own views and those of Christopher.
This left the Republican base with a simple conclusion: Why run a candidate who is just a watered-down Democrat?
The plainspoken actor easily beat his seasoned competitor and secured the Republican nomination with a little help from his adversary in the state house.
Brown’s plan had worked.
He had secured the opponent of his choosing. He would beat this bad actor, who would then return to the realm of bad television, where he would bore his way through endless cocktail parties of the rich and worthless while the Democrats kept control of the Golden State all to themselves.
Now victory was almost assured…but not quite.
On Election Day (November 8, 1966), the giant killer was taken down by his opponent of choice.
Ronald Reagan defeated Brown by a huge majority, taking close to a million votes more than the incumbent mustered. Moreover, Reagan swept all but three of the state’s fifty-eight counties, with numbers that amounted to almost the full registered strength of the