(First in a Five-part series)
He was the most powerful Democrat in California — forceful, charismatic, adept at the art of the political deal. And on the gray winter morning when former Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown became mayor of his adopted hometown, he vowed to apply all his political skill to restoring “the dream of San Francisco.”
But among the 3,000 supporters who packed Yerba Buena Gardens for his January 1996 inauguration were some whose dreams were far more personal.
They were lawyers, lobbyists, campaign donors and political players — Brown’s “juice clientele,” as one state legislator described them at the time – – the mayor’s cronies, as they came to be known.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/04/29/MN162298.DTL&ao=all
San Franciscans For Clean Government 