How cheap is the governor?

In his first tenure as governor — the terms beginning in 1975 and 1979 — Jerry Brown was famous for not living in the governor’s mansion. Instead, he lived in a small rented apartment and slept on a mattress on the floor. He eschewed chauffeured limousines in favor of a used Plymouth. Brown’s former chief of staff — later governor — Gray Davis once told the story about a carpet in Brown’s office so threadbare that it had a hole in it. Aides kept trying to get it fixed. Brown resisted, telling them, “People can’t come in here and rail against me for not funding something, when there’s a hole in the governor’s rug.” When he ran for governor in 2010, Brown’s campaign was a mom-and-pop operation run out of a warehouse in Oakland’s Jack London Square. On the campaign trail, Brown often spoke perched on a coffee table partly because it was cheaper than renting a riser. Republican businesswoman Meg Whitman spent $177 million on the race and lost. Brown spent $37 million and won. At Thursday’s State of the State, Brown joked that he only had “three more years to go. That is, unless I take my surplus campaign funds and put a ballot initiative on the November ballot to allow four-term governors to seek a final, fifth term.” How many candidates can you think of who ran for statewide office and had leftover cash — $19.7 million in 2014 — when the votes were counted? At age 77, Brown is not as frugal as he once was. Brown and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, now are living in the newly renovated governor’s mansion.