Former AG spokesman Scott Gerber’s secret recording of 6 phone calls is still haunting AG Jerry Brown. Over the last week, various Republican elected officials, candidates, and organizations have called on Brown to appoint an independent investigator. Most recently, the California Republican Lawyer’s Association asked the San Francisco and Alameda District Attorneys to look into the matter. A large chunk of the AG’s offices are in fact in those two counties.
Today, Brown asked the Alameda DA’s office to review the matter. Gerber had been working out of the AG’s Oakland office, so it seems to make the most sense.
In an apparent attempt to head off Republican criticism of its internal inquiry into a secret audio taping controversy, Attorney General Jerry Brown has asked the Alameda County District Attorney’s office to look into the matter.
“They’ve invited our office to review it, so that’s what we’re doing,” said Kevin Dunleavy, chief assistant district attorney at the Alameda County office. “It will be assigned to somebody in the office who will review the circumstances.”
The Attorney General’s office made the request on Friday, two days after the California Republican Lawyers Association asked the district attorney’s offices in Alameda and San Francisco counties for an independent investigation into the secret recording conducted by Brown’s former communication director, Scott Gerber. (CoCo Times 11/16/09)
Of course, there is another side of this story that brings the right-wing boogyman, ACORN. The “filmmakers” who secretly recorded the ACORN incidents down in Southern California are, of course, subject to the same laws. Joe Garofoli in today’s chronicle highlights the perilous position that Brown is now in because of these two situations occurring at the same time.
If he charges the filmmakers, he’ll be accused of hypocrisy because he chose not to bring charges against his own spokesman, who has admitted secretly recording journalists. If he doesn’t bring charges against the filmmakers, he faces criticism from grassroots liberals and supporters of ACORN, which Republicans have also accused of voter fraud. (SF Cronicle)
As of right now, the right has made much of the Gerber situation, while the Left hasn’t really pressured Brown too far on the ACORN issue. How long that remains the case likely depends on how long the ACORN probe lingers and what we get in results.
In the article, Steve Maviglio, questions whether now might be the time for Brown to consider actually building an actual campaign instead of the one man Steve Glazer operation. Whatever he elects to do, it is clear that Brown is now in the right-wing cross hairs.
His shtick of “I’m not a candidate yet so I’m not going to talk about these issues,” which was what he said to me at the E-Board on Saturday, has worn thin. Everyone knows he is not just a candidate, but THE candidate, for the Democratic nomination.
Brown needs a real campaign that can do rapid response, that can start putting out their own framing and messaging. Right now he has none of that, and is basically acting as his own consultant. That’s not helping his cause.
Those are the kind of things I had in mind when I said Brown needs a contested primary to become a better candidate. His instinct to essentially say or do nothing that could get him in trouble and stalling on building a campaign for as long as possible is only reinforced by the absence of a Democratic challenger.
I’m not the only one who is worried about this. A lot of people at the E-Board meeting, including longtime Sacramento insiders, share these concerns. They don’t think Brown is playing this right and are very deeply worried about his ability to drive turnout in November 2010. Many are also concerned that he’s just not going to be a very good governor.