California Gov. Jerry Brown will not run for president in 2016, he said Tuesday.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Governor Moonbeam put to rest speculation that he might launch his fourth bid for president, 40 years after he first sought the Democratic nomination in 1976.
“No, that’s not in the cards. Unfortunately,” he said.
Brown raised eyebrows last month when he declined to outright deny interest in a bid. He has touted his efforts to deal with California’s economic woes as a model for the whole country, which some took as an indication that he was seeking a national stage.
“Things happen in California that are not happening in Washington,” Brown in October, the Los Angeles Times reported. “We can do a lot of things in California to shift the [political] climate throughout the whole country.”
But Brown quashed any hopes that he might wade into the mire of politics in Washington, D.C.
“Actually,” he told reporters, “California is a lot more governable.”
This would have been Brown’s fourth try for the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1992 he mounted a strong but ultimately unsuccessful run against Bill Clinton, winning support from The New York Times and other major publications for his flat tax proposal. Brown lost the nomination to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, during his first tenure as governor of the Golden State. His 1980 campaign prompted the Dead Kennedys to warn that Brown would create a “Zen Fascist” dictatorship in which kids would be forced to “meditate in school,” in their punk classic “California Über Alles.”