Brown vs. Curb: One of California's strangest cases

Continued from Page 17-A powers. On the surface, the issue is simply one of legal interpretation: Does Curb have the right to assume all the duties of the governor every time Brown leaves the state?

But the issue also could have a major political impact on both California and the nation. The viability of Brown's presidential campaign could be severely hampered if he loses his court case. He would either have to cut back on his national campaigning in order to stay close to home and run the country's largest state government, or leave the state to Curb and risk further alienating fellow California Democrats whose support he will need in 1980.

(Brown Tuesday canceled most of a planned four-day exploratory campaign trip through the Northeast, the Washington Post reported. Brown aides said he had decided to return to Sacramento to push for two energy bills, but there was speculation that he was concerned about what Curb might do in his absence.)

Few observers believe anything will keep Brown from campaigning actively for the White House.

Going to the courts is a last resort for Brown. Attempts to work out a compromise solution with Curb have failed, and the governor, who prides himself on innovative appointments and creative solutions to problems of government, has

seen his work undermined in his absence.

According to aides to the governor, Brown now must call Curb on the phone each time he is about to leave the state and plead with him not to veto bills and fill vacancies.

With Brown's out-of-state appearances soon to increase dramatically, Curb may end up spending as much as one-third of his time in the governor's chair.

"It's not really Brown's fault that he is in this bind with the lieutenant governor," said Robert Kessler, a Democratic party official in California. "But abdicating the leadership of the largest state government in America to a Republican so he can take on an incumbent Democratic president is not exactly going to endear him to party people around the country.”

The man who has made Brown's life increasingly difficult is the latest member of California's crew of unlikely politicians.

Over the past two decades, the state has sent to the U.S. Senate a press secretary (Pierre Salinger), a tap dancer (George Murphy) and a 73-year-old semanticist (S.I. Hayakawa). The governor's chair has been filled by actor Ronald Reagan and now, by Brown, a former Jesuit missionary student who spent a year observing a vow of silence.

Like Murphy and Reagan, Curb has made the jump from show business to politics with remarkable ease. His music career began when

he dropped out of college after writing the tune for a motorcycle commercial ("You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda").

Curb founded his own record company in the mid-'60s and, at the age of 23, sold the company for $3 million to become president of MGM Records. There, he made waves in the music industry by denouncing the use of drugs and banning from the MGM label artists who used them.

At 29, he moved on to an even more lucrative producing arrangement with Warner Bros., founding Warner-Curb Productions. Today, the company is the 12th largest record company in America, worth some $22 million. It is home to the lieutenant governor's stable of wildly successful, undeniably wholesome young stars.

His unusually strong stand on drugs drew the Republican party to Curb and MGM in a search for clean-cut talent that could perform at party fund-raisers and pull in the 18to 34-year-old voters.

Overnight, Curb became the GOP's main music man, lining up pop singers and performing himself with his "Mike Curb Congregation." Curb was on stage with his group in 1972 in Miami when Sammy Davis Jr. gave President Richard M. Nixon his famous bear-hug of support.

Under the tutelage of Reagan, Curb immersed himself in the organizational end of politics as well. He ran Reagan's California

campaign for president in 1976, and then switched over to run Gerald R. Ford's state effort in the fall, persuading nearly every important Reagan backer to come along with him.

With his own election victory last year in the face of a Brown landslide, some GOP leaders around the country considered Curb a possible party superstar of the future. He is clearly the Republican frontrunner to succeed Brown in 1982.

But in only a year of political battles, Curb has found his carefully cultivated clean image dirtied far more than it ever was in the music business. His election campaign against Mervyn Dymally, the incumbent lieutenant governor and the highest elected black official in California, was a bruising, lowroad battle.

Both men spent the balance of the campaign attacking each other as liars, cheats and corrupt demagogues. Curb's role in writing the music for a sleazy, low-budget film entitled "Mondo Hollywood" became a major campaign issue, especially when it was revealed that the clean-cut candidate had sung in the film in falsetto voice using the name, 'Michelle.' His song provided the background for a nude bathing scene with homosexual overtones.

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More recently, two newspapers have published stories accusing Curb of having participated in illegal record sale schemes with four known organized crime figures while head of MGM Records. Curb has denied the charges.

Despite his setbacks, Curb has proved to be a remarkably effective political counterweight to Brown.

"Curb just drives Jerry crazy," one Brown aide admitted privately. "He makes us look silly, as if we can't even control our own government.

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Fighting with him is not good for a candidate who is already looked at as a flake by a lot of people."

Brown and Curb's relationship has, at times, taken on a Keystone Kops flavor. During the California gas crisis last May, Curb took advantage of a Brown trip to Washington, D.C., to issue an executive order scaling down California's tough air pollution laws in order to increase gasoline production.

But when a crucial mistake was found in the text of the order, Curb was forced to drive at breakneck speed back to Sacramento to sign a corrected copy before Brown's airplane crossed into California airspace and he, once again, became the real governor.

(Brown decided that he had won the race and, rather than rescinding Curb's order, he labeled it invalid and chose to ignore it.)

After Curb appointed a conservative Superior Court judge to an important seat on a state appeals court, Brown withdrew the nomination.

He immediately began a dayand-night effort to fill every open judgeship before he left on a trip to New Hampshire.

The governor felt similar pressure when Curb threatened to schedule a special election on school busing just before Brown's much publicized spring trip to Africa with singer Linda Ronstadt.

Curb, who once produced an early

Ronstadt record, also has expressed interest in extraditing American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks to South Dakota to face assault charges a move Brown has refused to make.

Brown skipped the Western Governors Conference last June rather than leave Curb in charge of the state while important bills were moving through the legislature. Finally, seeking an end to "Curb's meddling," the governor took him to court.

The California constitution clearly states that when the governor is absent from the state, "the lieutenant governor shall act as governor." Curb believes the words should continue to be interpreted literally.

Lawyers for Brown contend however, that today's instant communications have made such an interpretation obsolete. Only în an emergency or when a governor becomes temporarily disabled should the lieutenant governor take over, Brown believes.

"The president doesn't stop being president when he leaves the country," reasoned Gray Davis, Brown's chief of staff.

Although the California Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the power struggle this week, a final decision on the matter is not expected for weeks or possibly months.

"Until it's settled, Jerry will have to depend on Curb's good will,” said Assemblyman Mel Levine, D-Los Angeles. "A lot of progressive legislation could go down with a veto while Curb is sitting as acting-governor."