Photo credit: Breitbart.com

Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, a moderate African-American Democrat from San Bernardino seeking her third term, has brushed back the first challenge to her re-election by Eloise Reyes, a Colton attorney strongly backed by environmental groups. Brown easily won her local party chapter’s “pre-endorsement,” getting 70 percent of an informal vote at a recent Democratic Party gathering in San Bernardino — undercutting greens’ claims she was out of touch with her constituents.

In comments to the Riverside Press-Enterprise after her triumph, Brown appeared to directly respond to the notion she didn’t know her district:

“I’ve always believed that the Democratic Party is the party of inclusion that seeks to represent all voices in the community,” Brown said. “I’ve listened closely to the community, voted on legislation with my conscience, and understand the awesome responsibility that has been given to me to represent the Inland Empire as an assembly member.”

The Brown-Reyes fight threatens to open up a rift between African-American lawmakers and environmental groups. Sierra Club California director Kathryn Phillips’ comments to the Sacramento Bee in a Jan. 12 story about Brown were seen as condescending in some quarters.

“There’s no doubt Ms. Brown, who’s a very nice person, has not been representing her constituents when it comes to environmental issues, particularly clean-air issues,” Phillips told the Bee. “She’s collected too much money from the oil industry and let that guide too many of her votes.”

Black icon defended against Sierra Club gripes

Phillips, who works out of Sacramento, is a white UC Berkeley graduate who used to work for the Environmental Defense Fund. Brown, who turns 72 next week, has been a fixture in the Inland Empire African-American political establishment for more than three decades. She co-founded a weekly publication that focuses on black issues in 1980 and has worked on a wide variety of African-American causes in western San Bernardino County.

Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, D-Los Angeles, responded to green criticism of Brown most sharply:

“I think it’s a tone-deaf approach,” Ridley-Thomas said, accusing the groups of using “wedge politics.”

 

“The environmental community, and the broader environmental coalition, needs to figure out whether or not it’s going to be a collaborator and … work with black California on policy, and shared political goals, or if it will be an adversary.”

That’s also from reporting by the Bee.

One unexpected twist in this political rumble is the harshness of the indirect, unusually personal potshot taken at Brown by a fellow Inland Empire elected Democrat. In a statement released by the Reyes campaign, state Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, said she supported Brown’s opponent because “she was a principled human being.”

Leyva’s Senate district has considerable overlap with Brown’s Assembly district.

By Chris Reed

With the op-ed in last week’s Wall Street Journal about California’s enormous potential for a fracking-driven energy boom, it’s beginning to look like how Gov. Jerry Brown deals with the issue will be a national story. It’s one that will test the narrative about Brown being the ultimate pragmatist, a liberal who raps regulation and a Democrat who sees tight-fistedness as akin to good government.

Bard College professor Walter Russell Mead is no conservative, but he’s a very thoughtful critic of modern liberalism and its essential unaffordability. He too thinks how the Golden State deals with its oil shale is a huge story. Still, he joins the long list of East Coast pundits who have no feel for California politics:

“California’s greens are sure to raise a fuss over any new drilling in America’s greenest state, but their fears are misplaced. Drilling for shale oil doesn’t risk water contamination in the way drilling for shale gas does, and much of the drilling will be done on existing oil fields. …

“Rather than pushing against any and all new drilling in California, smart greens should be looking for ways to move forward with drilling while ensuring that environmental concerns are taken care of.”

Such “smart greens” do not exist in California. Opposition to fracking has been reflexive and strident. The Golden State’s greens and their bureaucratic allies are so dogmatic that they have actually talked themselves into believing higher energy prices, specifically those created by AB 32, are good for the economy.

The advice from Pennsylvania’s governor

The question for Jerry Brown is whether he will heed the green hysterics — or Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, who saw fracking create jobs and economic growth in his state without the downside warned of by enviro groups.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has a late-February deadline for deciding whether to extend his state’s ban on fracking. This New York Post story from Nov. 30 would leave one assuming that Rendell would offer Gov. Brown the same advice he offers Gov. Cuomo:

“‘New York would be crazy not to lift the moratorium’ imposed by former Gov. David Paterson in 2008, Rendell told The Post.

“‘I told Gov. Cuomo I would come to testify before any legislative committee,’ Rendell added. ‘I told [Cuomo] it’s a good thing to do.’

“Rendell’s strong pro-fracking comments are a coup for the drilling industry and for economically depressed upstate New York, which is clamoring for jobs.

“The no-nonsense Rendell, a former head of the Democratic National Committee, has a lot of credibility on the issue. … Rendell’s former environmental commissioner suggested it’s outrageous for New York to continue buying natural gas from other states without drilling for its own.

“’I do find it stunningly hypocritical to buy gas that comes from fracking wells somewhere [else] in the US and then say fracking is bad,’ said the former commissioner, John Hanger.

“He argued that natural gas is less polluting than coal or oil. …

“Rendell noted he barred the dumping of fracking water into wells and imposed fracking-well fees to hire 100 additional environmental inspectors.

“’The environmental harm can be significantly reduced or limited,’ by putting safety regulations in place ahead of time, he said.”

Rendell, like Jerry Brown, enjoys a rep as a blunt pragmatist. But Rendell also has a regular-guy populist vibe about him. That’s not our Jerry. Whatever his other qualities, I challenge anyone to point to any single event of his most recent four years as governor that suggests he has empathy for the long-term unemployed. Brown seems unlikely to use Rendell-style rhetoric in touting what fracking will do for hurting Californians.

As for Cuomo, he’s also not a populist. Instead, the New York governor is considered a clever straddler, someone who can win liberal votes by stressing cultural issues like gun control while governing as a pro-business centrist.

It’s hard to imagine how either Brown or Cuomo can finesse fracking, which threatens green dreams of a massive shift to renewable energy sources. Cuomo also wants to be president someday. So it is going to be intriguing — and, at least for political junkies, fun — to watch how fracking and the brown energy revolution play out this year in America’s two most influential states.