Anyone who's paid attention to this year's race for governor has heard the word "unprecedented" applied to Jerry Brown's bid for a fourth term. What might also be unprecedented for California is that in order to have voted for Brown in his first statewide run (for secretary of state in 1970, when the voting age was 21), you'd be at least 65 years old today.
Brown himself is now 76, and seemingly in fine shape to serve another four years, but his age is not an outlier among the upper echelons of political power in California. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, first elected in 1987, is 74. Sen. Barbara Boxer turns 74 in November. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and whose fourth full term in the Senate expires in 2019, exactly 50 years later — is 81. As it turns out, she is the oldest sitting senator, and Brown is the oldest governor. Unique among the states, California is a gerontocracy.
It's both ageist and outrageously stupid to suggest that the wisdom of these public servants' lived experience can't be a boon to solid governance. But it's not the incumbents' age that's so troubling; it's that each is a career politician who's wielded power for decades, representing a state whose demographics have changed dramatically. Voters in progressive, minority-majority California should be slightly troubled to have such an aged, all-white power structure at the federal level.
Money calcifies matters further. Feinstein, with a net worth of $68 million, is the fourth-wealthiest senator (and the wealthiest woman in either chamber.) Her husband, Richard Blum, is a UC regent and investment banker who's been accused of conflicts of interest stemming from his wife's career. Meanwhile, Brown, whose re-election is in no particular jeopardy, sits on a $23 million pile of cash vacuumed from a wide variety of industries. Shake enough hands over the decades and you've got an insurance policy against challengers.
It is possible to slay giants, as 31-year-old Rep. Eric Swalwell did in 2012 in an East Bay district when he ousted 20-termer Pete Stark, 50 years his senior. And in Sacramento, legislative term limits prevent lifelong death-grips on power. But the power of incumbency-protection remains vast, such that voters have little choice but to re-elect old faces from the 1970s, over and over again.
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