Sad Finale: Brown Bags It

The Doonesbury campaign falls off the existential edge

For nearly three weeks, the slight, intense figure in the rumpled trench coat campaigned across Wisconsin at dairy farms and bowling alleys, in workingmen's bars and suburban living rooms. "My campaign," Jerry Brown expounded to a throng of supporters in Madison's Cardinal Bar, "is on the edge, the existential edge."

Last week, after the ballots in Wisconsin were counted, Brown dropped right off that edge. The California Governor, 42, withdrew from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination after capturing a feeble 12% of the vote. His quest for the White House had cost $2 million ($300,000 in Wisconsin alone) and netted him only one delegate. Brown needed at least 20% of the Wisconsin vote to keep receiving federal matching funds. Concluded Brown: "The lesson I take from the 1980 campaign is that the voters do not feel I am ready to be President."

He was right. Though Brown tried to capitalize on several key issuesnotably his all-out opposition to nuclear power he was never able to articulate any coherent program or to shake off his image as "Governor Moonbeam." Though his campaign organization had improved considerably since his New England days, he continued to have trouble making himself heard, and he blamed the press for concentrating on the Carter-Kennedy struggle. As Brown straggled along he began paying more and more heed to an assortment of eccentrics who had attached themselves to the fringes of his entourage. Among them were members of Novus, an amorphous organization that takes its name from a Latin motto on the Great Seal of the U.S., Novus ordo seclorum, meaning New Order of the Ages. According to Bill Whitson, 53, one of the group's founders, who is currently on a leave of absence from his post at the Library of Congress, Novus is a loose network of people across the country who believe that "society will remain incomplete until some divine guidance frees us from sweeping materialism."

As these and other mystics gained Brown's ear, the Governor's political pros resigned, including Finance Chairman Anthony Dougherty and Campaign Chairman Thomas Quinn, one of Brown's most trusted and able aides. "Jerry began to believe he was the founder of a new movement, a messiah of sorts," says one former staffer. "He sat around with these people all hours of the night talking about his role as the only person who could prevent nuclear war. He seemed to lose sight of the fact that a successful political operation calls for organization and money." Says former Press Secretary Charlotte Perry: "He drew crowds, but in the same way that Steve Martin draws crowds, by being outrageous, a wild and crazy politician. They came to see Doonesbury; it's Doonesbury they saw."

In the closing days of the Wisconsin campaign came one of its oddest events: a half-hour phantasmagoria staged by Film Director Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now) and televised live from the steps of the state capitol in Madison. A helicopter carrying one of the event's seven cameras buzzed overhead as mammoth searchlights played across the stage. As a cold drizzle fell, burning wood and charcoal spread a pungent odor among the raucous crowd of 3,000 onlookers. As the flickering image of Brown appeared on TV screens in Wisconsin, the introduction LIVE FROM MADISON, WISCONSIN was misspelled: Madisno and Wisoc. Brown's microphone went dead. A large screen behind the candidate, intended to show the production to the audience, went black. As Brown spoke, his image was superimposed upon film clips of oil rigs, rocket launches, and astronauts floating in space, but often his face was blurred by these secondary shots. The show, said Variety in a review, "was as spectacular a failure as any of his [Coppola's] awesome filmic successes."

Brown now returns to a California only slightly friendlier than the states he encountered during his primary campaign. He has been in his home state only 36 days since Jan. 1, and his influence with the state legislature, never very strong, is now "just about nil," according to one state senator. If Brown had stuck it out and campaigned in his own state's primary in June, according to Quinn, "he would not only be third in his home state, he would be a very bad third." Still, Brown seems to believe that his 1980 presidential quest was just a beginning, and who knows? "This is the crisis of birth," he told his supporters on Wisconsin primary night. "The crisis of a beginning." The crowd responded with lusty chants of " '84! '84! '84!" -

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.