California Governor Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown: Leave Hillary alone California governor urges fellow Democrats not to run against Clinton in the primaries.

Jerry Brown ran against Bill Clinton in the 1992 Democratic primaries. Now he doesn’t think anyone should run against Hillary Clinton when she seeks the nomination next year.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather have less if I were running for president than to have a competitor in the primary,” the California governor said, speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday afternoon following a series of meetings with staff about climate change.


Brown said he didn’t see the need for an internal party fight. What he wants, he said, is Clinton knocking the GOP field on immigration reform, Obamacare, climate change and other differences.

“The primaries get into all the little nuances and small differences of candidates of the same party,” Brown said. “What Hillary needs is a good debate drawing the distinctions between where she stands and where all these Republicans, these wannabes running around.”

He took particular aim at the lawsuit from many Republican governors and attorneys general challenging President Barack Obama’s immigration executive actions, calling their position “at best troglodyte, and at worst, un-Christian.”

All the more reason, Brown said, to focus on the fight with the other party, and not within his own.

“There’s some big differences, and they’re more with the Republicans. So let’s have the debate and let’s see where America wants to be,” Brown said. “I don’t think running some couple of Democrats would illuminate the process.”

Brown didn’t meet with Obama, who was in Los Angeles on Friday, or with Vice President Joe Biden, who’s vacationing in the Virgin Islands.

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Jerry Brown