Brown embarrassed Carter in the California race, trouncing him by 39 percentage points, but left the party convention empty handed.

THE ROCK 'N' ROLL YEARS

Despite his family's wealth and power, Brown was unfamiliar with the high life that he was confronted with upon returning home with status near a Hollywood celebrity.

The would-be Jesuit priest was now all the rage. He dated Linda Ronstadt (his only public romance so far) and began a life-long custom of throwing big-name parties.

In his '92 race, in fact, Brown has racked up endorsements from stars like Graham Nash, David Crosby, Tim Nash and Carol O'Connor and has appeared on stage with the B-52's.

But the wheels soon came off the bandwagon.

For some Californians, Proposition 13, a landmark tax-cutting initiative, destroyed the perception that Brown was a man of his word. Brown opposed the measure vigorously, but when it passed overwhelmingly in June 1978, the governor did an about-face.

"He was personally opposed to Prop 13, but the day after it passed he got on the national news, saying how great it was, how he would enforce it," says Mark J. DiCamillo '75, a California polling executive.

Brown was re-elected in 1978, but many Californians had lost confidence in the governor. In 1981, the Mediterranean fruit fly invaded the state's Central Valley, threatening to wreak havoc on California's huge agricultural industry.

Despite farmers' concerns, Brown waffled for months before finally deciding to use the pesticide Malathion to fight the fly.

But workers in the California Conservation Corps (CCC), many of whom were assigned the task of stripping trees of fruit as Malathion-carrying helicopters circled overhead, refused what they thought was hazardous duty.

Rebuked by his own volunteers, Brown dispatched chief of staff B.T. Collins to restore order in the CCC. Collins saved the organization, but not without several dramatic confrontations that were embarrassing to the governor. At one meeting that has since become legend, a frustrated Collins responded to CCC worker complaints by downing a glass full of the pesticide.

Still, the damage was done. Brown failed to carry a single state primary in his 1980 presidential bid and, meanwhile, faced threats of an insurgency by his Republican lieutenant governor.

Brown ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 1982 against little known San Diego mayor Pete Wilson, now the state's governor. The election, however, quickly became a referendum on brown the governor--a referendum he lost.

"The election was all about Jerry Brown," says DiCamillo. "It was a giant thumbs down on Jerry Brown."