The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers

Edmund G. "Pat" Brown (1902-1996)

Born in San Francisco, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown obtained a law degree from the San Francisco Law School in 1927 and immediately entered private practice. Politics had always interested Brown, however, and he ran for the California State Assembly in 1928 but lost. Undeterred, Brown remained politically active and eventually chaired the speakers' bureau for Franklin D. Roosevelt's reelection campaigns in 1940 and 1944. In 1943, Brown was elected district attorney of San Francisco and then, in 1950, won statewide election to become California's attorney general. As the only Democrat in statewide office at the time, he won California's Democratic Party's nomination for the governorship in 1958. Winning in a landslide, Brown remained California's governor for the next eight years during which time he worked to resolve California's water crisis and pushed for the reform of labor unions. Brown died at his home in Beverly Hills in 1996.

Sources: Charles Moritz, Current Biography: Who's News and Why, 1960 (New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1961), pp. 55-56; "Governors of California: Edmund G. "Pat" Brown." Governor of California Homepage. Internet on-line. Available From http://www.governor.ca.gov/govsite/govsgallery/h/biography/governor_32.html.

Published by the Model Editions Partnership

Recommended citation: Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and the Election of 1960: A Project of The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, ed. by Allida Black, June Hopkins, John Sears, Christopher Alhambra, Mary Jo Binker, Christopher Brick, John S. Emrich, Eugenia Gusev, Kristen E. Gwinn, and Bryan D. Peery (Columbia, S.C.: Model Editions Partnership, 2003). Electronic version based on unpublished letters. .

For more information, visit The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers home page at https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/.

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