Moonbeam And The Mob

Jerry Brown's race to be California Atty Gen, is not going well.

Think for a moment of the consequences of that much power in the hands of that fruity a fruitcake. It is the AG, after all, who decides how to throw California's considerable weight around in the courts.

California can be a force for good -- good government, responsible corporations, honesty and fairness -- or its AG, like the current Bill Lockyer, can use the state's clout for wild greenie causes, anti-business campaigns and various jousts at windmills. Guess which side Moonbeam would come down on.

But his campaign has gotten tougher. From the LATimes:

A book scheduled for release next week revives decades-old allegations that Democratic candidate Jerry Brown, during his years as California governor, maintained political links to [Sidney] Korshak and other figures with alleged ties to organized crime.

Brown's opponent in the attorney general's race, Republican state Sen. Chuck Poochigian of Fresno, intends to shine a spotlight on the book, "Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers."

Published by Bloomsbury USA and set to hit sales racks next month, the book by investigative journalist Gus Russo charges that Brown took campaign contributions from Korshak and unions with suspected mob ties during the 1970s, and then granted them political favors.

Meanwhile, back from the 1970s and back in 2006, things aren't going too well for Brown. Reports Joe Fleischman in Flash Report:

Jerry Brown has had a very frustrating summer. First, his disingenuous efforts to portray Oakland crime as down when it's actually been exploding on his watch (homicides up 57% from 1995 to 2005) were overwhelmed by daily headlines of carnage in the city streets. Yesterday, the Oakland Tribune reported the city now has had more murders this year than all of last year.

The aggressive campaign of Senator Chuck Poochigian has been relentlessly pounding on Brown's (typical) neglect of Oakland as he campaigns full-time for AG while the city is in the grips of what can only be called a public safety crisis. Come to think of it, a public safety crisis is exactly what the Poochigian has accurately labeled the ever-worsening situation in Oakland.

Still, this is California, where crackpot liberals often get elected in statewide campaigns, bouyed by dense (both mentally and in living style) population centers in LA and the Bay Area that overwhelm the other more commonsense areas of the state. For Brown to loose, he's going to have to continue his slide, and Poochigian is going to have to run a flawless campaign.

Related Tags: Jerry Brown, Brown, Poochigian, Fleischman, Politics