Blog: What Pat Brown knew and Jerry Brown finally understands – Los Angeles Times

But Jerry’s politics, unlike his father’s, have been a work in progress. When he ran for president in 1992, he campaigned as a pro-labor populist calling for more trade protections, but, characteristically, offsetting that by demanding a shift to flat, rather than progressive, tax rates. Twenty years later, in the defining act of his now almost-completed third and fourth terms as governor, he successfully campaigned to raise taxes on high-income Californians, which brought the state’s budget from deficit to surplus, and enabled California to begin investing in its future again.