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Senator Poochigian To Target Jerry Brown's 'Moonbeam' Past

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  • Senator Poochigian To Target Jerry Brown's 'Moonbeam' Past

    SENATOR POOCHIGIAN TO TARGET JERRY BROWN'S 'MOONBEAM' PAST
    By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer

    Los Angeles Times, CA
    June 20 2006

    The GOP candidate for attorney general plans to focus on his famous
    foe's record as governor, mayor and radio host.

    SACRAMENTO - Never mind that nine of 10 Californians have not heard
    of him.

    Never mind that his opponent enjoys blanket name recognition throughout
    the Golden State, more campaign cash and a double-digit lead in
    the polls.

    Chuck Poochigian - state senator from Fresno, a conservative Republican
    with a tough record on crime and punishment - has a blueprint for
    beating Jerry Brown in the race for California attorney general.

    He wants to run against Gov. Moonbeam.

    Poochigian plans to cite Brown's progressive past as well as his
    iconoclastic pronouncements during a 1990s stint on talk radio. He
    wants to spotlight Brown's record as mayor in crime-rattled Oakland. He
    will rail against Brown's personal distaste for the death penalty. He
    hopes to reap campaign dollars from corporations fearful that Brown
    would push a litigious, anti-business agenda.

    "For me, the greatest challenge will be to overcome his high name
    identification," said Poochigian, 57. "His greatest challenge is
    to overcome his record. I can move my name ID up. He can't change
    his record."

    So far, Brown is enjoying a splendid campaign season. Though
    Poochigian got a free ride in the June 6 primary, running unopposed,
    Brown crushed Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, 63% to 37%,
    to earn the Democratic nomination.

    Brown, 68, did it by portraying himself as a hard-knuckle, big-city
    crime fighter - not the long-gone governor who jousted in the 1970s
    with the Medfly, put death penalty antagonist Rose Bird on the
    state Supreme Court, renounced the gubernatorial mansion for a floor
    mattress, dated singer Linda Ronstadt and acquired the nickname of
    Gov. Moonbeam.

    "If they want to run this campaign by going back to 1974, they're
    welcome to," said Ace Smith, Brown's political strategist. "But I
    think their strategy is about 20 years stale."

    Though one recent poll put Poochigian down by 25 percentage points
    in a head-to-head contest with Brown, the Republican's campaign team
    remains confident that the race will become a tossup by election day.

    Poochigian is counting on unified support among the GOP, which
    embraced the popular Fresno Republican early on. Though an unabashed
    conservative, he also hopes to win big among California's growing
    pack of independent voters, now more than 18% of the electorate.

    Plus, "Poochigian is the anti-Jerry Brown," said Kevin Spillane,
    a strategist for the GOP candidate.

    Brown was born into the closest thing California has to political
    royalty, the son of a popular governor, Pat Brown, who served through
    most of the 1960s. Poochigian was raised on the farm, by parents who
    never went to college.

    He is a native of Lone Star, a no-pretense speck of a place along
    the railroad tracks southeast of Fresno. His grandparents fled the
    Armenian genocide, and the family eventually settled amid the grape
    fields of Fresno County.

    His mother still lives on the family's original 20-acre
    plot. Poochigian's father died two years ago at 90. One brother
    manages a farm. Poochigian owns farmland around Fresno County, and
    sent his three children to the same public schools he attended.

    Unlike Brown, who seemed fated for elected office, Poochigian came
    to politics relatively late in life.

    At Fresno State he was a buddy of Bill Jones, a budding campus
    politician who in the 1990s was elected California secretary of
    state. Poochigian later attended law school and became a business
    lawyer. He got the political bug in 1978, volunteering for George
    Deukmejian's successful run for attorney general. Poochigian later
    was appointed as a gubernatorial aide to the conservative Deukmejian
    and Gov. Pete Wilson.

    Brown won statewide office at 32, becoming secretary of state,
    and launched the first of three presidential runs before he was
    40. Poochigian didn't run for anything until his mid-40s.

    He won an Assembly seat in 1994 and moved to the Senate in 1998,
    earning plaudits as a collegial straight-shooter, a law-and-order
    conservative capable of the occasional bipartisan compromise.

    During his tenure, he has backed tougher penalties for sexual
    predators, gun-toting felons and identity thieves. He also has opposed
    legislative efforts to roll back the state's "three strikes" law.

    Now he is following in the footsteps of his early mentor, Deukmejian, a
    fellow Armenian American whose first statewide job was as California's
    so-called top cop.
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