As he turns 90, the political giant reflects on politics, his career and his induction into the California Hall of Fame.
Willie Brown is former mayor of San Francisco and the first Black person to serve as speaker of the California State Assembly., one of the most flamboyant and powerful politicians California has ever known, was delivered into this world by a midwife in his grandmother’s drafty, white clapboard house in segregated Mineola, Texas.Brown still dominates every room he enters with his smarts and swagger. His advice — and connections — are still sought by friends and even former adversaries.
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.
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. “It meant a lot to him,” said longtime political consultant Gale Kaufman, who talks with Brown frequently. “There is a new generation not as familiar with his history and importance to California politics.”
“He was a great speaker,” Baker recently told me. “He made the Assembly run about as well as any one person can, and all you have to do now is look at how this has become so .”
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