Pete Wilson
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Pete Wilson | |
| Order: | 36th Governor of California |
| Term of Office: | January 7, 1991 – January 4, 1999 |
| Predecessor: | George Deukmejian |
| Successor: | Gray Davis |
| Date of Birth: | August 23, 1933 |
| Place of Birth: | Lake Forest, Illinois |
| Profession: | Politician |
| Political Party: | Republican |
| Lieutenant Governor: | Gray Davis |
Peter Barton Wilson (born August 23, 1933) is an American Republican politician from California.
Born in Lake Forest, Illinois, and raised in Missouri, Wilson earned his B.A. from Yale University in 1955, where he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity, and proceeded to serve three years as a United States Marine Corps infantry officer. Upon completion of his military obligation, Wilson earned a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Wilson served as the thirty-sixth Governor of California (1991-1999), the culmination of more than three decades in the public arena that included eight years as a United States Senator (1983-1991), eleven years as Mayor of San Diego (1971-1983), and five years as a California State Assemblyman (1967-1971).
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Mayor of San Diego
As mayor of San Diego, Wilson led the transformation of the city from a quiet navy town to an international trade hub, amending the city charter to make public safety the first and foremost responsibility of city government and leading a successful effort to manage San Diego's dynamic growth and to revitalize the city's downtown area. He substantially cut the property tax rate and imposed a limit on the growth of the city budget that became a model for California's subsequently adopted Proposition 13.
United States Senator
As a United States senator, Wilson was a leading voice for a stronger defense and U.S. foreign policy. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he called for early implementation of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a national ballistic missile defense system.
Wilson also cosponsored the federal Intergovernmental Regulatory Relief Act requiring the federal government to reimburse states for the cost of new federal mandates. A fiscal conservative, he was named the Senate's "Watchdog of the Treasury" for each of his eight years in the nation's capital.
Governor of California
Wilson's eight years as governor saw California go into a strong economic recovery. Inheriting the state's worst economy since the Great Depression, Wilson insisted on strict budget discipline and worked to rehabilitate the state's environment for investment and new job creation. He provided market-based, unsubsidized health coverage for employees of small businesses and obtained anti-fraud meansures that drove down workers' compensation premiums by 40 percent.
Wilson also enacted education reforms focused on creating curricular standards, reducing class sizes, and replacing social promotion by with early remedial education. Wilson also began new programs of individualized testing of all students, teacher competency training, a lengthier instructional year, and a return to phonics and early mastery of early reading, writing, and mathematical skills.
Wilson led efforts to enact tougher crime measures and signed into law "Three Strikes," (25 years to life for repeat felons) and "One Strike," (25 years to life upon the first conviction of aggravated rape or child molestation.) He also resumed the death penalty in California, after 25 years of moratorium, with the execution of Alton Harris in April 1992.
In Wilson's 1994 successful campaign for re-election against Kathleen Brown, which he won in a landslide, his two signature issues were his opposition to illegal immigration (Prop 187) and affirmative action.
Energy deregulation and the roots of the California energy crisis
As Governor, Wilson championed deregulation of California's electricity markets. The resulting law, AB1890, was signed in 1996. The law guaranteed reduced rates for residential consumers through the end of Wilson's second term as Governor. The law also required that utilities only purchase electricity for sale to residential customers on the spot market, forbidding long term contracts to smooth out price spikes. Industry analysts immediately warned the law was a recipe for power outages and price gouging, as the power producers no longer had a motivation to build new power plants, while energy speculators stood to gain from shortage pricing in the newly deregulated market. As predicted, the state's energy needs continued to grow, while new generating capacity was not brought on line. The result was the spectacular California energy crisis of 2001, which saw rolling blackouts across much of the state, while energy speculators led by Enron Corporation were able to charge the state energy prices over 1600 times the historic rate. Wilson was out of office by the time the ill effects of AB1890 came home to roost, leaving his successor Democrat Gray Davis to bear the political brunt of the crisis. Wilson defended his energy policy and urged specific policies in an article published by the Hoover Institution.
Running for US President
Wilson also ran for President of the United States in the 1996 election, making his announcement at the Los Angeles Police Academy. His campaign gained little traction and closed quietly in September 1995 after a botched throat surgery kept him from being able to speak.
Banking and teaching career
After leaving office, Wilson spent two years as a managing director of Pacific Capital Group, a merchant bank based in Los Angeles, California. He serves as a director of the Irvine Company, the U.S. Telepacific Corporation, Inc., National Information Consortium Inc., an advisor to Crossflo Systems, and IDT Entertainment. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of Thomas Weisel Partners, a San Francisco merchant bank. He also served as chairman of the Japan Task Force of the Pacific Council on International Policy, which produced an analysis of Japanese economic and national security prospects over the next decade entitled “Can Japan Come Back?” Wilson is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative thinktank affiliated with Stanford University and is on the governing boards of the National D-Day Museum, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, the Donald Bren Foundation, and is the founding director of the California Mentor Foundation.
Most recently, he was co-chair of the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Gray Davis as governor of California. Wilson lives in Los Angeles, California.
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Categories: 1933 births | Zeta Psi brothers | United States Marine Corps officers | Governors of California | United States Senators from California | United States presidential candidates | Members of the California State Assembly | Mayors of San Diego, California | Pro-choice politicians | Living people