All serial killers want to win. They choose victims they can kill successfully.

After his re-election victory over Richard Nixon in 1962 he was strongly considered to be Lyndon Johnson's running mate in 1964 a position that eventually went to Hubert Humphrey. He later admitted that he had denied clemency in one death penalty case principally because the legislator who represented the district in which the murder occurred held a swing vote on farmworker legislation supported by Brown and who told Brown that his district "would go up in smoke" if the governor commuted the man's sentence. At first Brown ran a low key campaign stating that running the state was his biggest priority.

Edmund Gerald “Pat” Brown Sr.