Jerry Brown captures historic 4th term as California governor --- Gov. Jerry Brown has been elected to an unprecedented fourth term, defeating Laguna Beach Republican Neel Kashkari, who was leading in Orange County. -- Brown is already the state’s longest-serving governor. He logged two terms in the office from 1975 to 1983 and made history again by winning the fourth term. -- A former U.S. treasury official, Kashkari helped lead the federal bank bailout during the recession, after which he started working for Pimco. -- “While tonight’s outcome was not what I had hoped, I am incredibly proud of our campaign and what we accomplished to help our party,” Kashkari said in a statement. -- “It won’t happen overnight, but we have laid the groundwork for a Republican comeback in California,” he said. -- The 41-year-old Kashkari depicted Brown, a onetime Jesuit seminarian, as a vestige of a vanished era. Brown, 76, the nation’s oldest sitting governor, began his first term as governor when Gerald Ford was in the White House. -- Kashkari also argued the governor was ignoring the plight of troubled schools and protecting the interests of powerful teachers unions that spent millions to elect him. Yet Kashkari was unable to raise enough money to boost his name recognition or get his message across to a wide audience. --- Brown argued during the campaign that he led a comeback by the state after the recession cost California more than a million jobs. -- His victory came amid a tough political environment for Democrats nationally, with widespread voter discontent with President Barack Obama. -- Brown won re-election after a muted and sometimes invisible gubernatorial campaign in which the incumbent Democrat never appeared to be threatened by Kashkari, a Republican making his first run for elected office. -- Brown, a career politician, also ran for president three times and has served as state attorney general, secretary of state and mayor of Oakland. -- The nation’s most populous state with more than 38 million people has long-term problems that include a looming government pension crisis and troubled public school and water-supply systems. -- Brown, however, kept his campaign anchored to an optimistic narrative that featured the state’s now-balanced budget and job growth since the recession. The Democrat-controlled Legislature approved Brown’s plans to send more money to high-need schools and restructure sentencing laws to allow lower-level offenders to go to county jails instead of state lock-ups. -- Brown spent most of the campaign promoting two ballot proposals that call for borrowing billions of dollars for a variety of water projects and for funneling more money into budget reserves -- The rainy-day fund would help pay down billions in pension obligations and other debt and provide a larger cushion against future economic slides. -- Read More, MATTHEW FLEMING, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/brown-640917-state-governor.html