Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown this week told the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center that he regrets recent remarks to a radio reporter in which he compared his rival’s campaign tactics to Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda.
Brown’s comments, quoted last week on KCBS reporter Doug Sovern’s blog, sparked criticism from Meg Whitman’s campaign and the Anti-Defamation League, which issued a statement June 14 saying the comments were inappropriate and offensive.
“I’m sorry. I talked to the people at the Holocaust center and they completely understand,” Brown said June 15 in response to a reporter’s question about the comments. The group he was referring to was the Simon Wiesenthal Center, his spokesman said.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Los Angeles–based center, confirmed that Brown had called him the morning the blog appeared and they spoke for about five minutes. He said Brown, whom he has known for 30 years, told him he regretted referencing Goebbels.
“He said that his remarks were taken out of context,” Hier said. “He was complaining about, in his opinion, the constant blitz of attack ads that were coming from the other side.”
Sovern reported that he bumped into Brown while the candidate was jogging in the Oakland Hills. Sovern was riding his bike, and the conversation was not recorded, said KCBS radio editor Debra Ingerson.
On his “Sovern Nation” blog, Sovern wrote that Brown told him he was concerned about Whitman’s ability to spend an almost unlimited amount of money in the governor’s race. Whitman, the billionaire former eBay CEO, has given her campaign $81 million so far and plans to spend at least $150 million through November.
According to the blog, Brown said Whitman has the money to launch a pervasive smear campaign: “She’ll have people believing whatever she wants about me.” Brown then compared that type of messaging ability to Goebbels.
“Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world,” Brown was quoted as saying.
Asked June 15 if he regretted the remarks, Brown said: “I’ll tell you this, jogging in the hills with sweaty strangers will no longer result in conversations. Mum’s the word.”
Hier said Brown admitted he should not have used Goebbels’ name.
“He regrets any misapprehension that was created by his remarks,” Hier said. “He said he was jogging and he shouldn’t have used it. He certainly wasn’t saying Meg Whitman was Joseph Goebbels.”
Nina Grotch, interim regional director of the ADL in San Francisco, said such remarks diminish the Holocaust and take away from it being a unique historic atrocity.
“Jerry Brown is an educated and smart man and I’m sure he knows these kinds of comparisons are inappropriate,” she said.
In its statement, the ADL wrote: “The use of Nazi references to underscore a political point is inappropriate and offensive under any circumstance. Comparisons to Nazis trivialize the extent of the Nazi regime’s crimes against humanity, diminish the suffering of survivors, and offend those who understand the profound evil that Nazism represented.”
Brown campaign spokesman Sterling Clifford stressed that Brown was not comparing Whitman to Goebbels, nor was he comparing the Whitman campaign to Nazis. As for Brown’s statements to Sovern, Clifford said, “It was jogging talk taken out of context.”
Samantha Young of the Associated Press and j. staff contributed to this report.