From Unlikely gubernatorial candidate hits Central Coast, positive message in tow. by Mary Duan
On the morning before Gov. Jerry Brown was due to give his state of the state address, one of the closest things Brown has to an opponent was making a whistlestop run through the Central Coast. (The only opponent, that is, unless you count the Republican former Goldman Sachs banker who ran the Troubled Asset Relief Program under Presidents Bush and Obama, or the state assemblyman who founded the California Minutemen Party and once tried to bring a loaded handgun on a commercial airliner)
And let’s face it: while the 75-year-old Brown hasn’t declared whether he’ll run in the 2014 election, even that closest thing – Independent candidate Luis J. Rodriguez – probably doesn’t have much of a chance at winning. He’s only raised about $5,000 so far. He’s never held elected office (although he was presidential candidate Rocky Anderson’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election on the Justice Party Ticket). While Rodriguez is endorsed by the Green Party, $5,000 and a Green Party endorsement won’t get you very far against a wealthy former investment banker (Neel Kashkari) and sadly, probably not a member of the lunatic fringe (Tim Donnelly) either. And if Brown declares, all three of them can forget about it. Game over.
Then again, so many people have counted out Rodriguez before, maybe we’re foolish to count him out this time. The cops counted him out when he was a child and joined his first street gang in the San Gabriel Valley at age 11. They counted him out again at 18, when he was facing six years in prison for assaulting a police officer; a judge saw something in him, took the felony charges down to a misdemeanor and gave him only a few months in jail, with a warning it was his last chance. He’s shot and been shot at, he’s been stabbed and he’s been a heroin addict. But when that judge gave him that chance, he took it and ran with it.
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