Brownell, Gordon: Moscone's influence

Abstract

Gordon Brownell: I had never seen an elected politician who was as masterful at achieving his goals and ability to achieve his goals on really tough issues as with George Moscone. I was quoted in the press after the bill had passed that “It passed because of Moscone the magnificent.” That’s really what it was. I don’t think that that year that any other sponsor of that legislation would have been successful in getting the bill through. Watching George work that bill, talking to his colleagues, again – particularly in the Senate – getting votes in the Senate that a lot of observers, the media and the others, didn’t think that George was able to get the votes because of the respect and the affection that his colleagues had for him. When the bill went down in the Assembly the first time, after he got over his anger at what had happened there was no way that the bill was going to lose the second time around. I was present at the meeting the Speaker’s office between the first vote and the second vote, and George didn’t control the votes in the Assembly like the Speaker did, but he made it very clear that this bill was going to pass, and the Speaker assured him that it would pass. In fact, it did pass. I don’t think anyone other than George Moscone could have done that in 1975.

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Type

Interview

Date Original

2011-06-05

Relation

The Moscone oral history interviews are part of the George Moscone Collection, MSS 328.

Contributing Institution

Holt-Atherton Special Collections and Archives, University of the Pacific Library

Rights Information

To view additional information on copyright and related rights of this item, such as to purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish them, click here to view the Holt-Atherton Special Collections policies.

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