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Monday, October 19, 2015

And the winner of our exciting contest is...

Yesterday, this blog offered an exciting contest.* We noted that the old governor's mansion in Sacramento was being renovated and reopened and that Gov. Brown was moving in. The old mansion had been closed when he was elected back in 1974 and he famously refused to live in a newer one that had been built for his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. A recent political cartoon showed Brown touring the old mansion where he had lived when his dad was governor. In his old room was a collection of LPs; the one on top had the title "Stone Ponies." We asked what that meant.
The winner of our contest correctly noted that the Stone Poneys (note that the cartoon had the wrong spelling; Poneys is how the group spelled the word) was a group that introduced Linda Ronstadt as its lead singer. Ronstadt later went out on her own as a pop singer and became the girlfriend of Jerry Brown during his first iteration as governor.
A side note is that Mike Curb, Lt. Governor during Brown's first iteration, was a Republican. Under the California constitution, whenever the governor is out of the state, the Lt. Governor effectively becomes governor. In 1980, when Brown was running for President and thus had to be out of the state frequently, Curb would annoy him by making appointments, etc. So Curb and Brown were not on good terms. But before he became a political figure, Curb had been a music producer and in fact had formed the Stone Poneys. So he indirectly had gotten Brown his girlfriend.

Now I'm sure you want to know who the winner of the contest was. The winner is revealed on the video below. (Sorry, it won't work on iPhones; blame Steve Jobs and use a regular computer.)

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* http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2015/10/exciting-contest.html

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