published on September 02, 2024 in Front Page News

JERRY BROWN'S SILENT PARTNER - The Washington Post

You probably haven't seen any pictures of her -- in fact, she won't allow one to be taken for publication -- and you've never heard presidential candidate Jerry Brown utter her name in a public appearance. One of the few subjects that Jerry Brown shies away from is the woman he's been seeing for the past two years -- San Francisco attorney Anne Baldwin Gust.

Throughout his career, Brown's social life has been the stuff of speculation. He's been described by some as attractively elusive and by others as aloof and asexual. Never known for his grace or charm on the campaign trail, he's also never been known as a ladies' man away from it.

True, in the late '70s and early '80s he was famous for dating pop diva Linda Ronstadt, and he goes through periodic "linkage" -- in the mid-'80s he was linked most seriously with Pamela Fong, a Southern California photographer, and in more recent times he has squired a number of prominent San Francisco women to this event or that opera. But it's mostly a matter of fleeting gossip. And the women themselves aren't saying a lot. Fong was quoted this month in the San Francisco Examiner as saying, "It is true I know Jerry in a way probably no one else knows him and therefore understand how discreet I must be."

Told that a reporter was assembling a story on Brown's social life, his Northern California media liaison Beth Hanson laughed and quipped, "That could be pretty dull reading."

And a friend, Republican state Sen. Ed Davis, exaggerating only slightly, told a reporter that the former Jesuit seminarian -- who once took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience -- may have struggled with the last one, "but I think he's remained faithful to the other two."

Others who might be in a position to know tend to be guarded. "His private life is private," says Brown's campaign manager, Jodie Evans, who added that Brown would have nothing to say about it. "That's out of respect for Anne too."

For Brown and Gust, the first date, so to speak, was over coffee at his place, an old firehouse in the elegant Pacific Heights section of San Francisco. It's just two blocks from the condominium that Gust shares with her female roommate, also a lawyer. A mutual friend, a lawyer -- is everybody a lawyer? -- introduced them. After that it was movies and dinners and the occasional party.

Gust, an assistant general counsel at the retailing giant the Gap, is 34 -- 20 years younger than Brown -- and, like the former California governor, has never married. The age difference doesn't bother her at all.

"I guess I didn't think of it one way or another," she says. "Jerry is very young at heart."

Brown has had a profound impact on Gust in at least one way -- she changed her party affiliation. "I've been a registered Republican most of my life, but I've re-registered as a Democrat," says Gust. "I do want to vote for him in the primary in California."

And, yes, she has contributed $100 to his campaign.

"He does feel some regret at not having a wife, not having children," says a woman who worked closely with him when he was state party chairman in the late '80s. "I was driving with him somewhere and he said, 'I should be having grandchildren right now.' I think one of his sisters had a grandchild," she recalls. "He's not off being the merry bachelor."

However, no one close to Brown suggests that he will never marry. Says his niece, Kathleen Kelly, a San Francisco attorney, "At the risk of sounding like my grandfather -- who tries to set him up every chance he gets -- I don't rule it out."

Kelly, who is the same age as Gust, has become friends with her. What about Anne Gust as a candidate for the candidate?

"I have no idea," she says.

Until now Gust managed to evade reporters during the primary season. It was only after a reporter spent a week and a half interviewing some of her friends and colleagues that she agreed to a phone interview. She said she would talk about herself but did not feel comfortable revealing any details of her relationship with Brown.

True to her word, Gust was pleasant and self-possessed and laughed easily during the conversation -- particularly when asked about the relationship. To personal queries about her relationship with Brown, her answers were all the same: no comment. Asked whether Brown -- now famous for preaching thrift in government -- makes her go Dutch on dates, she broke into a gale of laughter.

She called the reports of drug use at Brown's old Laurel Canyon home "complete baloney," even though the activity allegedly took place long before she met him.

Asked whether she considered Brown ascetic, she said, "He's not extravagant."

Last fall, at a reunion for members of the Stanford class of 1980, her classmates were buzzing about the Brown connection. "She was lawyerly, very guarded about it," recalls friend Charles Renner, now a Bay Area physician. "She would only say she'd dated him once or twice."

Gust and Brown have never been reclusive. "We've been out to movies together, we've been out to dinner together," she says. "He always is approached by a lot of people."

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Clearly, the campaign has thrown a crimp in their relationship. They talk on the phone, though not every day, Gust says, and they have managed to meet occasionally on the campaign trail when her schedule intersects with his itinerary.

But Gust has caught up with him in New Hampshire, Boston and New York -- although she was home in San Francisco on his birthday, New York primary day, and thus missed out on the cake at a New York union office. She had to settle for wishing him happy birthday on the phone. She didn't even make it to Los Angeles this month when Brown spoke at the California state Democratic Party Convention.

Gust's mother and siblings have met Brown. And Gust has met all of Brown's family. She even helped Kelly plan a fund-raiser for him at the beginning of the campaign.

Somehow, you would have thought some photographer would have caught up with her somewhere. She says she's been with him at speeches and shopping malls, but "maybe I got lost in the shuffle."

In social situations, Jerry Brown is nothing if not enigmatic.

Says a female San Francisco attorney who met him at a political party: "When you stand beside him, he exudes no sexual aura. And I'm speaking as someone who checks out guys."

A woman who worked with him when he was running for party chair and often stayed in the same house (though not the same room) with him -- "God forbid we should ever stay in a hotel," she quipped, remembering Brown's shoestring campaign -- marveled that he never made a pass at her, as if that was simply expected in politics.

"He's a fun guy to date -- because he talks and he's bright," says Jo Schuman, owner of the San Francisco-based clothing business Lilli Ann, who has gone out socially with Brown and sometimes sees herself linked with him in the papers. ("We are not boyfriend and girlfriend," she says when asked.) "If I have a party or someplace to go, I always want to go with him first."

Asked about the perception that he's aloof, Schuman says, "He has it in him to warm up -- but I think he kind of cultivates that elusiveness. I think that's part of the Jerry persona... ."

Ask people whom Jerry Brown is dating and you get an analysis of the term. "I don't know what you mean by dating," says San Francisco Supervisor Angela Alioto, whose father, Joseph, was once the mayor of the city. "Jerry and I go to dinner all the time. ... I don't think of Jerry as dating one specific person. He's so driven and everything -- politically speaking -- it's not been apparent to anyone that's he's dating one person."

Linda Klein, a friend of Brown's for years, sees a man who is warm without being effusive, kind to friends' children without patronizing them.

"He's very quick on his feet with words," says Klein, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena. "But with emotions, he needs more time... . He's not a demonstrative person; he's become more so over the years. He's not one of these kissy guys."

Klein recalls being a "cheerleader" for some of the women Brown dated. "I would encourage the relationship once I met someone he was dating," Klein says. "I remember one woman in particular I liked. I said, 'What about so and so? She's brilliant, she's warm.' He said, 'Those yellow shoes, I can't deal with those yellow shoes.' We both laughed. I said, 'C'mon! People can change their shoes!' "

Kelly says that because Brown is a bachelor, the media tend to cast him unfairly as a man without human connection. "Some people think that because he's not married, he doesn't have a family," she says. "That's not the case -- from his parents down to his nieces and nephews... . they've all helped in the campaign." Brown, in turn, has become everybody's favorite uncle. "He started giving {my children} recommendations for preschool," says Kelly, chuckling. Her children are 2 years old and 5 months old.

But even those concerns are taking a back seat now. "He's totally one-dimensionally focused on the campaign," says Jo Schuman. "Nothing else matters. ... I think a relationship is the last thing on his mind."

Anne Gust has spent her adult life working on her career too. She grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., graduated from Stanford and went back to the Midwest for law school -- the University of Michigan -- before returning to the Bay area to practice law. Her classmates at Stanford remember her as energetic, bright, capable and possessed of a good sense of humor.

"I think she's ambitious -- if you're seeing that in a positive light," says her college roommate, Carol Hennacy Bounds. "She always had goals in mind."

(At last fall's Class of '80 reunion party, a number of old classmates approached Bounds to find out whether Gust and Brown were dating. "Everyone was asking me," remembers Bounds, who says she felt too awkward to ask her former roommate directly. "So my husband asked her about it and she said yes.")

Gust worked for a couple of years at one San Francisco law firm before moving as an associate to another of the city's largest firms -- Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison. Then last year, just before she would have been considered for a partnership at Brobeck, she left to be an in-house assistant general counsel at the Gap, which is based in San Bruno.

She agonized over the decision -- "you don't quit college just before graduating," she notes -- but in the end she traded dress suits for jeans. Yes, she wears them to work.

"Frankly, looking back on it I don't have any regrets at all," she says.

Gust expects to see more of Brown when he's campaigning for the June 2 California primary. "I'm sure I'll go running with him," says Gust, who runs five times a week, three to 18 miles at a stretch. In fact, for the past year she's been running off and on with the candidate, who has managed to trim 20 pounds off his frame. "He can probably outrun me now."

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