Pat's Last Putt

He had promised to reach his decision, in accordance with California tradition, "when the first snows fall on the Sierras." But the snows came in August last year. By last week, when Pat Brown finally got around to announcing that he would run for a third term as Governor of the nation's biggest state, the suspense had melted about as long ago as those first flakes.

On Brown, who usually seems as combative as a chocolate soldier, the decision worked like a bugle call. "Off to the races!" he cried at an 8 a.m. capitol press conference. Then, boarding a battered DC-7 in Sacramento, Brown prop-stopped from the far north to the Mexican border for a series of six airport press conferences announcing his candidacy. Thirteen hours and 1,500 miles later, Brown, 60, was as perky as ever. "When I get into a political campaign," he chortled, "the old adrenalin starts shooting through my veins."

Non-Eloquence. He will need more than glad glands. A January survey by the esteemed State Poll showed that the two foremost candidates for the Republican nomination were both widening their earlier leads over Brown. Actor Ronald Reagan was ahead by 4.4% , former San Francisco Mayor George Christopher by 15.1%. Brown brushed this aside with his wonted non-eloquence: "I've never been ahead in any poll, but when it gets right down to the 18th hole and you have to sink those long putts to win, I do it."

In fact, the Governor had already pulled away from his only potential Democratic challenger. The same poll gave him a 33.1% lead over Los Angeles' Mayor Sam Yorty, a longtime foe, who greeted Brown's announcement with a four-page tirade castigating the Governor for everything from allowing "delay, confusion and influence peddling" in state affairs to letting leftists and "cynical mercenaries" take over the party. Countered Brown: "Mayor Yorty made a similar vicious attack on President John F. Kennedy, and that's all I have to say about that."

Giant-Killer. For Reagan, who is far ahead of Christopher in polls among Republican voters, the Governor had only mild contempt. Brown observed that in his last two races he had defeated "the giants," William Knowland and Richard Nixon, and that now "the Republican Party is not running its strongest candidate." Though he lightly twitted Reagan for lack of experience in public office and for being a Goldwater Republican, Brown concentrated on his own record. He claims credit for doubling the capacity of the state's higher-education system, improving the water supply and recreational facilities, providing welfare measures for the aged and disabled, and promoting business expansion that created "more than 1 ,000,000 jobs in the past seven years." Brown even boasts that California's gross income, $56.4 billion a year, is "the sixth largest in the world," trailing only the U.S., the Soviet Union, West Germany, Britain and France.

If Brown succeeds in November, he will be only the second three-term Governor in California history. The first was Republican Earl Warren, who went on to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1953, charting a route that Brown would like to follow. Would he serve the full four years if elected? Yes, he said, "God willing." What if he were named to the court while Governor? That, said Pat Brown, would be a decision to discuss with his wife.

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