Willie Brown is still a kingmaker? He's 83 and hasn't held office since 2004.
Kingmaker, no. And Brown is definitely not a kingmaker if you want to run statewide. I doubt he has any pull in LA or the Central Valley. Any at all.
Frankly, this bores me. If Altman wants to run for office, he should start a little lower and get a little experience. At 32, I don't count a social networking startup and an incubator for much of a resume especially with respect to running the government of the 6th largest economy in the world.
I came here to say the same thing. I am not American but politics is pretty much the same all over the world nowadays.
Effective leadership in political positions demands specialized knowledge and skills developed over long periods of time. This is so often ignored. Socio-economic problems do not succumb to neat textbook solutions. The real world is messy
To add to my previous points.
Many people labor under the misconception that solutions are lacking to many problems they face in their communities and the job of the politician is to magically conjure them. This is false.
There are some issues with no clear way to solve them but these are the minority. For the vast majority of problems(think teacher shortages, healthcare costs, pollution, government corruption etc) solutions exist: it is the political will and organization to implement them that is lacking.
And sometimes it is. Sometimes seniority beats sanity, sometimes self-interest beats public interest.
But, taking the view from the other side, the establishment sees an endless parade of bold, brilliant, I'm-the-exception types running up to knock it down. In such a position they might be forgiven, after the dozenth encounter with yet another visionary, for rolling their eyes.
And I imagine that the California establishment has seen one or two techno-utopians by now.
At the rate things are currently going, I'd be happy with someone having that kind of résumé for president.
As the son of a beloved governor, Brown not only grew up in state politics, but also devoted his career to law & government. After winning a few Democratic party elections, he ran for & served on LA Community College Board (which had just been created...coincidentally, his father actually created the UC system when he was governor) & then ran for & won the statewide office that would best prepare him to serve as governor.
Altman has no law degree or legislative experience, no background or education in government, and has never run for office. Founding a company and running an incubator is fantastic, but not sure why it'd be comparable to the legal, government or legislative experience Brown had when he first ran for governor.