While Brown works to cobble together a centrist coalition, the corpse of Howard Jarvis speaks.

by Brian Leubitz

Jerry Brown is putting together quite the interesting coalition for his tax revenue measure.  He’s got some labor support, of course, but he’s been claiming support from some large companies that usually go by “Big” and followed by the name of some industry. He’s got some Big Oil, some Big Healthcare, yada, yada.

Hearing this, the corpse of Howard Jarvis was none too pleased. So, they’ve gone ahead and begged their Big Business friends to resist Jerry Brown’s “cajoling.”

“We know that Governor Brown, just through the power of his office alone, can cajole and perhaps even threaten vulnerable businesses,” the groups said in an open letter. “It is therefore not lost on us that, under certain circumstances, modest support to help the governor place his measure on the ballot might be viewed a lesser of two evils or, more likely, as an insurance payment. However, on behalf of citizen taxpayers and the small business community, we appeal to your sense of doing what is right for all of California.” (SacBee)

This really is quite remarkable. Though HJTA didn’t exactly get along with Gov. Schwarzenegger, they never really went this far with him.  By this far, I mean insinuating that Brown is threatening companies in order to solicit funding for his revenue measure.  Not that Arnold ever did that, because, special interests had no power on him.  He could resist them with his massive musculature.  Until he couldn’t.

But this is more a sign of desperation than anything else.  If Brown is able to pull significant resources and support from some of the traditional funders of anti-tax campaign, it will be an exceedingly difficult fall campaign for HJTA and its allies.  Because you know you are doing well when you try to quote Benjamin Franklin about hanging together or hanging separately. (I say try because it is quite possible that Franklin didn’t actually come up with the phrase.) The quote is even more out of touch considering the desperate state of many of Californians most needy who have been devastated by the continuous cuts to services.