Reacting to my “In defense of the politician,” a veteran State of Illinois employee told me that he thought it would be fun to work under a governor like Jerry Brown.
Younger readers might be interested to know that Illinois very nearly had its Jerry Brown, in 1982 and 1986, when the 11-year U.S> Senator lost to to James R. “Big Jim” Thompson. That 1982 race saw AESIII lose by 5,074 votes out of 3.6 million cast; Stevenson’s petition for a recount on grounds of irregularities in the counting, was rejected by the state supreme court.
My guess is that working for a Jerry Brown is what working for Adlai III would have been like, good and bad. Whether that would be fun is anyone’s guess, but it would have been interesting — for us journalists anyway.
By the way, that interesting profile of Brown by James Fallows that I mentioned is here.
This article appears in Jun 20-26, 2013.
