Walt Brown (right) discussing the issues with soon to be Socialist Party USA Vice Presidential nominee, Stewart Alexander (left),
October 20, 2007.
Walter Frederick Brown (born July 28, 1926) is an American politician and was the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party USA in the 2004 elections. Brown became a socialist in 1948. He served as Democratic member of the Oregon State Senate from 1975 to 1987. Brown also served as a Socialist Party of Oregon candidate for the U.S. Congress (3rd Congressional District) in 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004.
Family background
Brown was born in Los Angeles, California, to Walter Andrew Brown (August 11, 1897 - November 10, 1978), an auto mechanic and truck driver (and, later, a lawyer) and his wife Emily Anna Weber (October 30, 1897 - February 25, 1978), an elementary school teacher. Brown has one brother and two sisters.
Brown married Barbara May Porter Stahmann (September 16, 1922 - January 12, 1999) on August 7, 1950. They had three sons, Jeff, Kendall, and David. Barbara died of an incurable brain tumor (glioblastoma multiforme) in 1999. Brown married Beverly Lois Isbell on August 16, 2007, and the two care for a foster child.
Military career and education
During WWll, at the age of seventeen, June 15, 1944, Brown enlisted for active duty in the United States Navy as a Seaman First Class. After eleven months of school in radio technician school, Brown was promoted to Radio Technician Second Class and assigned to an amphibious ship USS Carter Hall, stationed in Shanghai, China. In June 1946, he was honorably discharged and enlisted into the inactive Naval Reserve. Utilizing the G.I. Bill, (September 1946 to January 1952), he attended the University of Southern California, earning a B.A. (law) in June 1949 (cum laude), and a J.D. in 1952. He was a Rhodes Scholar nominee and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
In the spring of 1952, Brown was called back to military duty to serve in the Korean War.
After twenty-six years of naval service, during which time he served as a public defender; an advocate for military men with service related disabilities that were fighting the government for denied disability coverage; a trial prosecutor; an appellate criminal attorney in Washington, D.C.; an instructor at the U.S. School of Naval Justice in Rhode Island; a legal officer for the U.S. Naval Station in the Philippines; and a general court martial judge in San Diego, California, he retired with the rank of Commander in the JAG Corps, United States Navy in 1970.
Brown studied Constitutional Law at Harvard. In 1961, he received an MA from Boston University, and an MLS from the University of Oregon School of Librarianship in 1975.
Attorney career
After his extensive service in military law and courts, Brown was hired as an associate professor at the Northwestern School of Law, Lewis & Clark College, teaching from 1970 to 1980.
From 1979 to 1980, he was the Malheur County Counsel and Deputy District Attorney and was General Counsel of the Oregon Consumer League, 1987-1989, and 1991-present.
He is currently (as of 2005) the General Counsel for the Socialist Party USA and a volunteer Attorney with the Consumer Justice Alliance (from 2000-present).
In 2003 Brown received two awards from the Oregon State Bar (in the active emeritus member category), one for the most Legal Services to the Poor, another for Total Hours of Pro Bono Services.
Oregon Senate Campaigns
Brown served three terms in the Oregon State Senate, elected as a Democrat, from 1974 to 1986. Probably his greatest victory in the Senate was the world's first ban on ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in 1975, which served as a model for several other governments. The ban went into effect in 1977 in Oregon, allowing the Oregon Legislative Assembly to make any needed adjustments (such as to allow CFCs to continue to be used in inhalers for people with asthma).
Brown received many awards from environmental groups for his environmental voting record while in the Oregon State Senate.
1998-2004 congressional campaigns
Walt Brown has run four times against incumbent Earl Blumenauer. Now running as a Socialist against an entrenched and monied Democrat, Brown has received more votes than any Socialist candidate in over 80 years.
Vote totals in Congressional campaigns:
- 1998: 10,199
- 2000: 4,703
- 2002: 6,588
- 2004: 10,678
2004 presidential campaign
Brown was elected to be the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party USA (SP-USA). He went on to earn 10,837 votes, more than any of the Party's presidential candidates since 1952. The Socialist Party has run candidates for president every election cycle 1900 through 1956 (except 1924, when it endorsed the candidacy of Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr.), and then again 1976 through 2004 (except 1984).
Current activities
Brown served as the President of the Eastside Democratic Club (not affiliated with the Democratic Party) and is now on their Agenda Committee, and Oregon Consumer League, a volunteer in the Consumer-Justice Alliance, and a volunteer to both the Sunnyside Homeless Shelter and the St. Francis Dining Hall in Portland.
2008 bid for Oregon Attorney General
Brown ran as a Pacific Green Party candidate for the office of Attorney General in Oregon in the November 2008 elections. [1] Brown received 76,856 votes for 5.1% of the total vote [1].
The Barbara S. and Walter F. Brown Memorial Park
Near the conclusion of Brown's twelve years in the Oregon State Senate, he served as Chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Forestery Committee. At that time Brown and his wife purchased 185 acres (0.75 km2) of land on both sides of the Siletz River in Lincoln County on the Oregon Coast. This land had been clear-cut during WWl. They spent many years of hard work in this labor of love to reforest this land in Sitka spruce, western red cedar, and Douglas fir, all with the express intention of making it a park for all to enjoy. When Barbara died in 1999, they had not yet completed their dream. Walt Brown continued to manage this forest alone. On August 8, 2007, he donated the land to Lincoln County, which guaranteed that hunting and logging would not be allowed.
Lincoln County, with funding from the Oregon Lottery, will be building hiking trails and an educational center in the near future. The donation of this incredible piece of land defines exactly what Walt and Barbara Brown have stood for all their lives as democratic socialists and conservationists.
See also
References
- ^ http://pacificgreens.org accessed October 24, 2008
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