He left high school to work as a car washer for the Southern Pacific and the Pullman Company but acquired his first piece of real estate through his parents while still a minor.

He worked up to chief mechanic for an automobile company, then turned to real estate and, before his election to the council in 1933, he edited and published the Southwest News-Press, a community newspaper.

[2] Funeral services were conducted at Inglewood Park Cemetery by the Golden Gate Masonic Lodge and the Order of Druids, of which Brainard had been Noble Grand Arch.

[2] A month after his death on March 19, 1940, an autopsy report revealed that Brainard had died of choking when a piece of meat lodged in his throat.

In 1933, however, he ousted incumbent Roy Donley, and he was reelected in 1935 over the End Poverty in California candidate, Charles W. Dempster.