Jerry Brown and the Triumph of Leadership

In 2010, Jerry Brown completed a remarkable political comeback by winning an overwhelming electoral victory to return to the office of Governor of California, a position he first won in 1974 and again in 1978. Upon embarking on his third term as governor, Brown inherited a broken and broke state, since the outgoing governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, left office with a budget deficit of nearly $27 billion. By 2014, Brown had turned the state’s financial situation around by cutting spending and increasing taxes. The result was a large budget surplus and the restoration of the Golden State’s economic and political health. This chapter utilizes the LCI to make sense of how Jerry Brown has made use of his powers of public persuasion and the powers of his office to master the state’s unwieldy political system and control its public finances while securing an unprecedented fourth gubernatorial term.