George Brown vs. John Tunney--The Campaign that killed the Democratic Party--by Bob Kholos

   

    During the same year as I was drafted, an unknown Congressman from  Southern California was standing on the steps of the US Congress with a group of Quakers.  It was 1965, ten years before the end of the war, and George Brown asked to be arrested with the group.
    This act was a very unusual, and a quite radical step at the time. The Capitol Police refused to take him to jail because Congress was in session, and the US Constitution protects legislators during that time frame.
    Later, in 1968 he was approached by a wealthy man to challenge the War in Vietnam by running against President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Primary.  Instead, as the story goes, he said, "See my friend Eugene McCarthy, he may be interested."  A historical American movement was created and the rest is history.
    George was an activist Representative, who as a young man picked lettuce in the Imperial Valley and Riverside, and while a student trying to become a Physicist at UCLA, worked on a committee to integrate the student housing so an athlete named Tom Bradley wouldn't have to commute.
    Retired California Assemblyman, and long time Brown aide, John Longville, added these comments recently about George and Tom Bradley:  " The UCLA integration story is even better than you posted. Back around 1939, approximately, George was president of the UCLA Student Housing Association. I don't know if there was any formal segregation rule in effect; more likely it was simply the universal practice. In any event, George personally integrated the school's housing by taking an African-American roommate (a fellow by the name of Luther Goodwin, now deceased, who ended up running George's Riverside congressional district office in the late '70s).

Fellow UCLA student Tom Bradley never forgot George's leadership. Half a century later, when Mayor Bradley hosted South African President Nelson Mandela during an official state visit to California, some were surprised to see the coveted seat next to President Mandela assigned to a congressman from the San Bernardino area." 
    Enter John Tunney.  A good guy, solid Democrat, successful Attorney and Congressman who entered the 1970 Primary race for US Senate with all of the right business and corporate connections.  He was supported by the moderate wing of the party and brought in a major New York Advertising firm to do his bidding.   John also was the son of Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Gene Tunney.  He was a sure thing to win the Primary.
    But, it was 1970.  The Vietnam War was going strong and so were the protests against it. The Grape boycott was still at its peak, and the Native American activists were pushing for power. It was the year Nixon bombed Cambodia and the College students were striking.
    In what would become the last truly grass roots movement in California political history, Congressman George E. Brown, Jr. decided to run for the same Senate seat, as an opponent of the War in Southeast Asia, supporting the Grape Boycott, and supporting the rising Native American identity movement.
   20 years after Richard Nixon proved he could win a California Senate seat by smearing his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, thus changing American political campaigning, the same thing happened to George Brown.  Only this time it was in a Democratic Primary, and it changed the way campaigns are run until this day.  It is also the reason, I believe, that my Democratic Party has run into so much trouble.
    While I was traveling with Jess Unruh in his campaign for Governor against Ronald Reagan, I was asked to help George Brown with his media operation.  It was a labor of love, and this is how I remember it unfolding:

    When Congressman George E. Brown, Jr., representing the Monterey Park area of Southern California, decided to run in the Democratic Primary for United States Senate against established moderate and wealthy attorney John Tunney, no one thought he had a chance.
    With little money, supporting Caesar Chavez and the grape boycott, and opposed to the war in Vietnam, insiders thought he had a political death wish.
    He held onto his moderately conservative district for many years.  Most people in his district supported the war in Vietnam, he did not,and made a big deal about it.
    He was the first Congressman to oppose our war effort in Southeast Asia, and voted against most foreign aide bills(which had a military component) before congress, often being the only vote in opposition.  This was his way of voting his conscience against the war.  After a number of these votes against the heavily Democratically controlled House, a national columnist argued that George was truly the only conservative in Washington, and he would have, in theory, saved the American taxpayer billions of dollars, by his actions.
    His son worked on a Kibbutz in Israel, and most people argued that Representative Brown would have voted for foreign aid to Israel, if the vote was going to be close.  But since the Congress was totally behind the only Democracy in the Middle East, there was no chance of a narrow margined vote on the issue in the 1960s.
    George had virtually no money for the 1970 primary campaign.  John Tunney had it all.
    Brown had a soft-spoken environmentalist, Bob Jeans, running his campaign.  Tunney had media mogul, David Garth from New York, running the coat-off-the-shoulder media campaign.
    George had hundreds of volunteers.  Even Jesse Unruh would get pissed at me on the campaign trail, when I would take the late night PSA flight from Sacramento to LAX, in order to help George during the 1970 election.  One night, as Jesse asked me to stay around for drinks, I refused.  Instead I said, “I’m going down to LA to help George.”
    He responded, “You really like George better than me.”
    While the Tunney camp was thinking about their advertising campaign, the Brown campaign headquarters in Los Angeles at midnight, looked like a convention of the unwashed masses. It was a political Height-Ashbury.
    The local socialist was running the printing press, the Indians, war protesters,one of the first openly Gay activist in a political campaign was running around with his cape.
La Raza Unita, Union activists, Environmentalists, vegetarians, meat eating smokers, Jewish, Catholics, Hispanics, Blacks and mired of college students, Actress Leslie Parrish, Andrea Shaulman from the upscale Students for a Democratic Society(she is now a successful therapist in Venice, CA.) and others were excitedly organizing and pushing the only real statewide grass roots campaign of that era.
    The Congressman, for his part, was laid back.  When he started talking about Native American rights one night, puffing on his ever present pipe, his statements were so radical for an established politician, that one Indian asked, “What are you smoking in that pipe.?”  Brown calmly responded with the name of the tobacco mixture and said he didn’t smoke pot.
    Something funny happened on the way to the election.  This grass roots, liberal, poorly funded candidate, who the Tunney forces were ignoring, started drawing closer in the public opinion polls.
When I traveled with Unruh to Calevaras County for the Frog jumping contest,which Mark Twain made famous, I was amazed to see in this isolated part of California, a volunteer both set up to collect donations for the Brown for Senate Campaign. No one from Brown headquarters organized this group, but like a lot of others, they just popped up around the state.
    On the first Earth Day, at the UCLA campus, we knew there would be plenty of cameras and media attention.  We also knew that George Brown, who stood beside the Quakers on the steps of the United States Capitol, and asked to be arrested in protest to the Vietnam War, would be a big success in front of the thousands of college students he would be addressing for this first time event.
    My task was to formulate something newsworthy for the day.
After discussing some ideas with George, we hit upon a theme.  George stood on the front steps in front of a huge throng of students and media at the first Earth Day. 
    George, who one female aide described as a, “Cute middle age, pipe smoking Teddy Bear, said, “This is the first Earth Day....and I am concerned about the environment.  Let’s talk about the ecology of all those dead American soldiers laying around Vietnam....Let’s STOP THE WAR!”  The crowd responded loudly.  That was basically what was discussed at headquarters.  But, George, having a sarcastic intellectual sense of humor, said, “ Oh, by the way, today is Lenin’s birthday also,so I just want to say happy birthday to Lenin.”  That comment was greeted with a lot of laughter.
    However, the news media being the animal that it is, carried not the substance of Congressman Brown’s speech.  KNXT-TV, the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, carried part of George’s speech which showed him saying, “Happy birthday to Lenin.”  Once again his political death wish took precedence in the campaign for all the voter’s to see.
    As democratic activist supreme, Chuck Levin, reminded me recently, I also came up with another way to get George Brown credible news attention.
    The Indian’s had taken over Alcatraz Island, off San Francisco Bay.  This was the time of personal liberation, and the Native Americans felt it was their time to make a statement.
    Eventually, the Coast Guard started arresting people trying to help the Indian tribes, who had sequestered the uninhabited former Federal Prison area.
    Since a Representative can not be arrested while Congress is in session, I suggested to the campaign that they rent a boat and take food and other supplies to the Island, with candidate George Brown aboard.
    It was a rough trip, but successful.  The Indians and Congressman George Brown received legitimate national news attention for the issues of concern, and the California coverage was intense.
   At his kickoff news conference, LA Times reporter Dick Bergholtz asked him, “What type of campaign are you going to run.?”  Brown responded, “Demagogic.”  His sarcasm became real when the LA Times ran Brown to run “Demagogic Campaign,” in the headline of the story.
National columnist Robert Novak told me on the road one day that someone as, “flippant” as George Brown shouldn’t be in the United States Senate.  That was an eye-opening statement by a respected professional journalist and commentator.  I responded as a Vietnam Vet, that, “With thousands of American kid’s dying and being crippled every year in Vietnam, being “flippant” was not a problem.
    Underdog Brown pulled even in the polls with Tunney during the last few weeks of the campaign.  But, Tunney outspent George by about $200,000 dollars in TV ad’s the last two weeks of the campaign, a large margin in 1970 dollars, and they unmercifully smeared him with negative advertising.
    Once George quoted H. Rap Brown, as saying that, “Violence was as American as cherry pie.”   The Tunney campaign pulled that out and said that Brown supported violence.
    Then they took his foreign policy votes out of context and said he was anti Israel.
    That was enough fear for the California Democratic voter to narrowly throw the primary to Tunney.
    For his part, George  apologized for saying that, “John Tunney was the lightweight son of a heavyweight champion.”    Six years later, Senator Tunney was rejected for reelection after Republican campaign spot’s showed him Skiing in Colorado while important Senate vote’s were taking place.
    I thought the Tunney campaign should get fined for those slanderous statements against one of the most decent guys ever to hold political office. The opposite became true, as they became the model for success in a party I once respected.  Unfortunately, I would be working with some of those same “new democrats”, that brought us the era of negative campaigning, just raise the money syndrome and buy a TV spot, during the Bradley for Mayor campaign in 1973.
    Recently, while toying with the idea of helping someone run for statewide office, I was told by the campaign manager that, "We need a press person to push our TV advertising."  This immediatly sent shivers down my back.  This is what the Tunney-Brown contest brings us still, over 30 years later.  No wonder why people are tunred off to politics.
The Democratic Party has lost its one main draw:  The party of idealism.
    I hope others who had a major role in the late Congressman's life will enter some comments. 

Thanks for reading .
Bob Kholos

   
   

 

   

       

   

       

Comments

[Victoria Pipkin-Lane]

Bob,
I am enjoying your blog, especially learning about history in an informative yet unpretenious way.

Thanks much and keep writing!!!

[bjorn joffee]

I am making a film on the Century Plaza protest against LBJ June 23,1967. Bradley was councilman that cared about complaints of police abuse...do you know of this event?

[Kenyon Hall]

I knew George Brown. He was mayor or Monterey Park when I went to elementry school there. He lived next door to one of my best friends. Later, as a conscientious objector, he became a political hero of mine because of his early stand against the war. In 1972 I worked on a congressional campaign in Pasadena, CA that was managed by Nelson C. Rising and I had the oppertunity to introduce George Brown to our candidate John Binkley. Later, after graduating from U.C. Berkeley, I bacame a friend and tennis partner of Jerremy Larner.

[Kenyon Hall]

Jeremy Larner was Eugene Mc Carthy's speach writer and the Oscar winning screen writer of The Candadate (loosly based on the John Tunney campaign for US Senate). I also marched in the Century Plaza demonstration on June 23, 1967 (I was present at the early stratagy sessons for the demonstration logistics; however, I and my girl friend did not commit civil disobedience).

[Puma Shoes]

Beautiful picture of your blog! Picture is also very beautiful! And the combination of good articles and background @ I love your style of this style

[Frank Capri]

Thank you for this opportunity.
I was the press secretary for Congressman
Brown in San Diego during his U.S. Senate Campaign against Tunney. Currently I'm writing a book about that era with a focus on the peace movement of the '60s. Anyone who would like to contribute material is welcome to contact me through my website:

www.frankcapri.com

Congressman Brown was a great example of courage and compassion.

Peace,
Frank Capri
NY City

[vibram five fingers]

This act was a very unusual, and a quite radical step at the time.

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