Mr. Brown has derided the role of professional consultants in politics, but if there is one on his staff, Mr. Glazer comes closest to filling the bill.
Although he serves part-time as a city councilman in the small East Bay town of Orinda, Mr. Glazer is a communications consultant by trade, helping to shape the messages of politicians, ballot measure campaigns and corporations. But he has never run anything in politics as complex and all-consuming as a campaign for governor of California — let alone one that has an unpredictable, famously independent political celebrity at its core.
“Managing Jerry Brown is an oxymoron,” said Garry South, the only man to run a winning Democratic campaign for governor in California — Gray Davis in 1998 and 2002 — since Mr. Brown’s last victory in 1978.
No one expects Mr. Glazer to manage Mr. Brown. After a lifetime in politics, Mr. Brown, 72, thinks he knows what it will take to win a third term as governor. Mr. Glazer’s job is to manage the campaign, not the candidate.
“He is comfortable in his own skin,” Mr. Glazer said of his boss. “He has a vast knowledge base and experience. He doesn’t need the hand-holding that other candidates may need.”
Mr. Glazer oversees the work of the campaign’s small staff and those outside consultants the operation employs for polling, research and other jobs. He runs a weekly staff meeting in the Oakland warehouse that serves as campaign headquarters.
Mr. Glazer, 52, probably did not imagine himself in this role when he first encountered Mr. Brown at a campaign rally at San Diego State in 1978. He had volunteered to coordinate a student campaign for Mr. Brown at 20 campuses across California.
He went on to become a Sacramento lobbyist for California State University students and deputy campaign manager for Mr. Brown’s losing run for the United States Senate in 1982. From there, Mr. Glazer signed on as press secretary for Mr. Brown’s former chief of staff, Mr. Davis, who had won a seat in the State Assembly.
It was Mr. Glazer who persuaded Mr. Davis to promote the idea of placing the pictures of missing children on milk cartons. That campaign won Mr. Davis widespread publicity and eventually helped him win his first statewide office on his way to becoming governor.
Mr. Glazer, meanwhile, worked for several other politicians, including Mr. Brown’s younger sister, Kathleen, who lost a race for governor in 1994. He started his own firm in the mid-1990s, moved to Orinda and ran for the City Council, where he is now in his second term.
Mr. Glazer has developed a niche representing real estate developers proposing controversial projects. He helped win approval of a luxury Novato housing project known as Black Point over the objections of the Sierra Club and worked to defeat a ballot challenge to a Lowe’s home improvement store in Cotati.
In 2007, Mr. Glazer represented Rob Arkley, the Eureka developer who was trying to build a project that would include a Home Depot along the Humboldt Bay waterfront. Mr. Arkley is a Republican who has since contributed $25,000 to Meg Whitman, the leading Republican candidate running to oppose Mr. Brown this fall.
Larry Glass, a Eureka councilman who tangled with Mr. Arkley, described Mr. Glazer as a “gun for hire.” But in his work for Mr. Brown, Mr. Glazer seems driven more by passion than profit. He returned to work for Mr. Brown after a quarter-century, he said, because the candidate is still a “progressive and visionary thinker” with an ear for practical politics.
“I saw that back then, and I see it today,” Mr. Glazer said. “No change. Close our eyes and those qualities remain. He’s as vibrant today as when I first watched him and worked for him in the 1970s.”