Jerry Brown

I have been meaning to post a follow-up here on my attempt to contact Jerry Brown. We did finally connect on the phone for a brief call. His answers to my questions weren't entirely satisfactory, but he was driving and I was driving so the connection was bad and our time was limited. I spent some time thinking about things over the holidays, though, and sent him this email yesterday:

Jerry:

Hope you had a good new year.

I have been thinking about our conversation and I have two suggestions.

(1) I think your strongest argument for the attorney general position is to talk from your recent two terms as Mayor of Oakland. Talk about being tough on crime and dealing with the problems of California's cities. Talk about how you think that the State can do more for our cities and that, having seen up close what cities need, you want to serve as California's attorney general to help get that help to local governments. Get your political consultants to research this approach anyway and see how it does with target voters. It seems to me that running on your time as mayor is much more pertinent than your time as governor and that local issues will appeal much more to voters than ethereal issues such as civil rights. Sorry. You'll get me and other people that are your natural supporters behind you on the Ashcroft-is-evil messaging but that won't help you with the broader base.

(2) You need to grab the high ground with the Internet. Put a working group together to give you a list of suggestions - I volunteer to serve and to help you get people on board to help. The Internet is NOT an electronic pamphlet. The Internet is a communications medium. Use it to communicate with your voters. There are a bunch of great tools out there -- Blogs, Wikis, discussion group tools like ezBoard -- reinvent yourself using the Internet to reach out to your constituency. Voters have Internet access.

Start now. Don't call me back. Email me back.

best,

Ted Shelton

I'll let you know if/when he replies!