A lot has changed since California’s “Gov. Moonbeam,” first took office in 1975 — at half his current age of 72. Especially Brown himself. (The “Moonbeam” label has haunted Brown since his first go round — when his “flakey” high-tech ideas and “quirky” approach to politics earned him that sobriquet.)

Many of Brown’s wild-eyed ideas then are mainstream now — like car pool lanes for California’s clogged freeways, green energy and environmental proposals before “green” was cool and his call for launching a state space satellite. Brown’s once-eccentric philosophy of governance — “Small is beautiful” — reverberates loudly today as voters reject Big Government.