The scene outside the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on Thursday was not billed as a campaign event for Gov. Jerry Brown. But it had the makings of one.
A few steps from the concrete footprints of Clark Gable and Bette Davis, the Democratic governor took the front-and-center seat among a crowd of dignitaries to celebrate the tax break he had come to sign into law at a desk below the theater's decorative dragons. Actor Warren Beatty and others took turns praising Brown, saying that he was saving thousands of California film and TV jobs. Republicans thanked him too.
"This is a great day for California," Assembly GOP leader Connie Conway of Tulare told the crowd.
Less than three weeks before Californians start voting by mail, Brown's visit to Hollywood captured the huge advantages he enjoys in his race against Republican challenger Neel Kashkari.
Some, like the power to summon news cameras to tightly staged bill signings, are perks of incumbency. Brown's predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, used scenic San Francisco and Malibu backdrops during his 2006 reelection campaign to sign California's groundbreaking law to fight global warming — once for real, and once for show.
Others are the result of Brown's deft positioning. After years of chronic partisan stalemate in Sacramento, his legislative deals with Republicans have helped the 76-year-old governor cast himself as an elder statesman who can rise above party squabbles.
Top Republican lawmakers are backing his campaign for two November ballot measures: Proposition 1, a $7.5-billion water bond measure, and Proposition 2, which would strengthen the state's rainy-day reserves and accelerate debt repayments.
For Kashkari, the former U.S. Treasury official who ran the federal bank bailout, the Republicans' alliance with Brown is awkward. Over and over, Kashkari has argued that his own success in uniting Democrats and Republicans behind the bank bailout in 2008 shows that he, unlike Brown, can bring warring parties together.
Thursday's bill signing also complicated Kashkari's case against Brown on the economy. Kashkari blames him for the state's slow recovery from recession. In that light, it didn't help Kashkari that the state Senate's Republican leader, Robert Huff of Diamond Bar, stepped on stage in Hollywood to echo his Assembly counterpart's statement that it was a "great day for California."
"I think Warren Beatty would agree with me that heaven can wait, but good jobs can't," Huff said, alluding to one of the actor's hit movies.
For Brown, the election-year politics of the $330-million-a-year film tax break made it easy to approve. Some of his top campaign donors and fundraisers made personal appeals to Brown, who was skeptical. Among them was film director Steven Spielberg.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti lobbied Brown for more than a year — once at the governor's Oakland loft, once over dinner at Taylor's Steakhouse in Los Angeles and once at the state Capitol.
In an interview in the Chinese theater lobby, Garcetti said he reminded Brown that he backed the governor's plan for a bullet train linking Los Angeles and San Francisco while others were resisting it.
"I said, 'This is my high-speed rail,' " Garcetti recalled. "There's a lot of skeptics out there. People say, 'Oh no, this is a giveaway.' I know you're right on the merits in your mind. I'm just as right on the merits in my mind."
Brown used the bill signing to make the same case he made in his sole debate with Kashkari two weeks ago: "We are back, and we are on the move."
"Yes, it is taxpayers' money," he said before signing the bill. "But it's taxpayers' money going to build jobs for the future."
Behind police barricades across Hollywood Boulevard, a cluster of protesters chanted "No fracking!" But the heckling by environmentalists who are angry at Brown for not banning the controversial oil and gas extraction technique were more of a nuisance than a sign of political trouble.
Polls show Brown about 20 points ahead of Kashkari, whose lackluster fundraising has severely limited his potential to gain much ground before the Nov. 4 election.
Apart from the debate, Brown has done no overt campaigning. He also has run no TV ads — in contrast to every other recent California governor seeking reelection. By this point in the election season, Schwarzenegger and Govs. Gray Davis and Pete Wilson had already spent heavily on advertising.
Privately, Brown is nonetheless focused on his run for reelection, as his campaign fundraising shows. But as the Hollywood event affirmed, bill signings — like the one he did in Los Angeles last week for a law requiring employers to give workers paid sick leave — are emerging as his preferred method of communicating with voters.
michael.finnegan@latimes.com
Twitter: @finneganLAT
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