Former Assembly Speaker and former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown writes in the San Francisco Chronicle in praise of Martin Jenkins’s appointment to the Supreme Court, calling Jenkins “a truly unsung hero.”
Included in Brown’s column is this story:
Years back, when Gray Davis was governor, Attorney General Bill Lockyer and I were looking for an African American to suggest for an appointment to the state Supreme Court. Lockyer called Jenkins to float the idea.
Jenkins basically said he wasn’t ready yet — and one of the reasons was his newspaper route.
He knew a young boy who delivered the morning paper. The boy had a medical problem that at times kept him from doing his route. Every time the kid was sick, Marty would fill in for him. He was afraid that would be incompatible with the job demands of the Supreme Court.
Brown’s thumbs up contrasts with his criticism of then-Governor Jerry Brown’s appointment of Leondra Kruger to the court in 2014, based on her being a Washington, D.C., resident at the time, even though she is a Los Angeles native. “Were there no qualified African Americans in California?,” Willie Brown asked. Jenkins apparently passes Brown’s geographic test.
The three-member Commission on Judicial Appointments will most probably confirm Jenkins’s appointment on November 10.
