By Tim Redmond
I don’t think so, not really. The former Assembly speaker and SF mayor has never seen himself as a candidate for statewide office. But check out this missive from publicist and person-about-town Lee Houskeeper:
Tonight at PJ Corkery’s memorial in a room full of the usual San Francisco suspects Joe O’Donahue announced that Willie Brown will run for governor. I saw a smile come over his face. After the wake politico’s Don Solem, Annemarie Conroy, Ed Moose, and Warren Hinckle were buzzing that at no time during or after Da Mayor’s moving eulogy for his ghost writer did Willie deny O’Donahue’s statement. He left quickly without comment. . .
Okay, that’s not much of an announcement. But here’s what it is: A backhanded slap at Mayor Newsom.
Brown, who appointed Newsom to the Board of Supervisors and endorsed him for mayor, could have said: Nah, Gavin’s my guy. He could have said, If Dianne Feinstein doesn’t run, Gavin’s my guy. But no; he just smiled.
As if to say: Given the cast of characters, I wish.