Willie Brown Interview (page: 5 / 8) Former Mayor of San Francisco	Print Interview

What happened the first time you ran for the state assembly?

Willie Brown: I lost. In 1962 I had Phil Burton, Carlton Goodlett, the owner of the local black newspaper, and a few members of the black clergy supported my candidacy. It was fun to run a campaign, but it was all without any resources, with almost nothing. But we came within a thousand votes of defeating a 22-year incumbent who was heavily financed. We had no money.

The one shortcoming Phil Burton was always plagued with was he could not raise a nickel. He was so offensive to most people in his bombastic style, that he could only get money from the labor organizations. This person whom I was running against happened to have been a member of the labor hierarchy. He had been a painter, and ran a paperhanging operation, so he was really labor's fair-haired boy. He was the chairman, I think, of the labor committee. So we had no resources from organized labor.

So we lost, but not badly. In the process of losing, however, I learned a valuable lesson. I learned that there were people beyond Burton who could be of assistance to me. One of them was a woman named Marian Conrad, a Pacific Heights matron who was in PR. She didn't need to be in PR, her husband was a Tenneco land executive, but she became fascinated with this young black politician.

She introduced me to a whole series of people, one of whom was Herb Caen, the noted San Francisco columnist. He began to take me around with him, introducing me to his San Francisco. He had never bumped into anybody that he thought had the energy or the interest, or was as comprehensive in my appetite as he was, for hamburgers and for all the other things.

That friendship blossomed into a favorable mention in his column, which most people would have paid dearly to get. It came almost naturally for me, by virtue of that exposure. So by 1964 it was a foregone conclusion that I would be an elected official. The question was just "When?"

I'd also honed my debating skills. I had begun to understand the issues. I had begun to understand direct communications with people. I had attracted a very skilled campaign operation headed by a guy named Rudolph Nothenberg.

I'd also gotten some major support from an organized political operation in the state that Alan Cranston headed called CDC. That was a left-wing organization that thought you ought to admit Red China to the UN, and all that business. And a group of kids that ran the W.E.B. DuBois Club, which was a left-wing club, mainly headed by the kids who were the offspring of ILWU (International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union) members. So by '64, the infrastructure for a successful political campaign was there, and we won handsomely.

And you haven't lost since.

Willie Brown: Never lost another election in my life.

Many people have brains, talent, even opportunity, but they don't achieve what you have. Why do you think you have succeeded?

Willie Brown: I think circumstances in the world of politics contribute substantially to whether or not you can be successful. You can be the most talented person around. You can be the most attractive person around. But the circumstances may not be there for you to be successful, because the public still ultimately determines what happens to you politically, by virtue of the casting of their vote. And you cannot ever predict what will move the public in one direction or another.

We politicians do focus groups, and surveys, and telephone persuasion, but believe me, people make up their minds on quirks. They make up their minds many times on things unrelated to anything that you have said or, in fact, done.

How would you explain to someone why what you do is so exciting and so important to you?

Willie Brown: First, it's really important to me because it's the career that I've chosen, and you want to do well in whatever career option you may exercise. But even more important than that...

The excitement comes from the joy you see on other's faces when they react to your having solved a problem for them, or responded to their needs. It's almost as if magic has occurred in their lives. And that, more than anything else, re-energizes and causes you to want to re-up for a lot more than you currently do, or you're capable of doing. And in many cases, you don't really solve the problem, what you do is you give them hope that together you can work it out. And that little thread is the source of my energy and the source of my interest, and probably the source of my excitement.

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