Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom -- together again?

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Candidates for the top two political jobs in California don’t run as a ticket, and for Democrats this year that may be a very good thing. For Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom—candidates, respectively, for governor and lieutenant governor—too much togetherness could prove troublesome. Last year, when the San Francisco mayor was still running for governor, he knocked Brown none too subtlely as an aged remainder from the past. Newsom’s criticism of the attorney general continued as recently as late January of this year, well after Newsom’s departure from the race.

“Jerry Brown understands how to navigate, but I wonder if there’s fire in his belly,” Newsom said on KGO-AM radio. “I don’t get a sense there’s fire in his belly. We need someone with fire in his belly. I hope he’s the guy.”

The sound bite was played for Brown in a subsequent interview, and the former governor volleyed back with a veiled insult of Newsom.

“He’s been giving a lot of advice to the president and now me,” Brown said. “I’m sure there will be others because when you don’t have a lot to do, you can start figuring out what other people ought to be doing. So I appreciate the advice, and I’m going to be examining my intestinal fortitude here.”

-- Cathleen Decker