When Jerry Brown began his first governorship 50 years ago, he staffed his new administration with social and economic reform activists from left-of-center organizations.
One was the late Jim Lorenz, a founder of California Rural Legal Assistance, which was allied with United Farm Workers Union’s efforts to unionize field hands. Brown made Lorenz director of the Employment Development Department and directed him to devise a plan that would improve the lives of California’s poor, then as now a major segment of its population.
Lorenz eagerly complied, drafting a plan that would emulate, at least in some degree, the share-the-wealth policies of Scandinavia and other western European nations. The draft was leaked to the Oakland Tribune, then a very conservative newspaper which described it in a front-page headline as “Brown’s secret worker state,” implying incipient socialism.
Brown panicked and sacked Lorenz, who got his revenge by writing a book, “Jerry Brown: The Man on the White Horse,” that portrayed the young governor as “the finest political sleight-of-hand artist of his generation.”
That was the first and last time Brown proposed a sweeping master plan for anything. He often disdained “multi-point plans” as time-consuming and useless.
This bit of history is offered because, 50 years later, Brown’s quasi-nephew, by dint of decades-long political intertwinement of the Brown and Newsom families, is plunging back into the issue that generated the clash with Lorenz.
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom chose Modesto to unveil his “Master Plan for Career Education,” aimed at reducing California’s highest-in-the-nation levels of poverty and income disparity. “This has been a point of pride,” he said. “This is long overdue.”
It’s certainly not the revolutionary, never-released economic plan that Lorenz drafted. At best it’s evolutionary by assuming that the jobs are there to be filled, if unemployed and underemployed workers can access appropriate training.
The first part of the premise is valid. Despite having one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, with more than a million jobless workers, California also has shortages of blue-collar workers such as carpenters, electricians and auto mechanics, not to mention those in professional fields such as teachers and nurses.
Newsom’s plan envisions making job training more accessible by consolidating existing programs and removing artificial barriers, such as employers requiring college degrees for jobs that don’t need them.
The plan is full of “could” and “should” in its recommendations, implying that its success hinges on public and private institutions joining hands. In a sense it’s less a “master plan” than a plan to make plans.
“By fostering collaboration and simplifying access, the plan is poised to create inclusive pathways to prosperity that resonate with California’s diverse communities,” it declares. “It not only seeks to dismantle the structural barriers that hinder economic mobility but also serves as a model for ensuring that education and training adapt to the demands of a dynamic workforce.”
Unlike Brown, Newsom embraces the notion of master plans to deal with California’s societal ills, another being his recent “Action Plan for Preventing and Ending Homelessness in California 2025–2027.”
Newsom, who once proclaimed his affection for “big, hairy, audacious goals,” is polishing up his resume over the next 21 months before transitioning into his post-gubernatorial phase, which might include a 2028 run for the presidency.
Newsom has launched many new policies and programs. They include remaking schools into community service centers, experimenting with Scandinavian-style prisons, promoting “Care Courts” to handle the mentally ill, and converting Medi-Cal into a whole-person social service system.
However, their success or failure will only emerge long after he has vacated the governorship — and only if his successor and the Legislature agree to continue what he started, rather than veer off into priorities of their own.
Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.