Pete Wilson
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Pete Wilson
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| 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 Boalt Hall School of Law at 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). Through his political life, Wilson has earned more votes in California than anyone in history.
Mayor of San Diego
As mayor of San Diego, Wilson helmed the city as it transformed from a quiet navy town to an international trade hub, credited with amending the city charter to make public safety the first and foremost responsibility of city government and leading an 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. Wilson was largely responsible for transforming the downtown gaslamp quarter from a drug infested area to a highly business friendly and successful downtown. Wilson coined the slogan for San Diego, which is still widely used today: "San Diego: America's finest city"During his tenure as mayor, Wilson also led the effort to reduce the infrastructure budget, reducing or eliminating many aspects of city maintenance. In recent years, as San Diego has struggled with keeping up with rising costs of overdue maintenance, many have pointed to the budget changes from Wilson's term as significantly contributing to the challenge of catching up in this regard.
United States Senator
As a United States senator, Wilson was a vocal proponent for a stronger, more military-based 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. His term saw market-based, unsubsidized health coverage made available for employees of small businesses and additional anti-fraud meausures credited for reducing workers' compensation premiums by as much as 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 promoted additional programs for individualized testing of all students, teacher competency training, a lengthier instructional year, and a programs focusing on 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 race-based quotas (affirmative action). Both of these efforts were widely seen as racist, and essentially handed the minority vote to Democrats in California, from which the Republican Party has yet to recover.
With each year of his governorship, Wilson further reduced infrastructure spending for California, much as he had done as mayor of San Diego. Many construction projects - most notably highway expansion/improvement projects - were severely hindered or delayed, while other maintenance and construction projects were abandoned completely.
While his decision to merge the California State Police into the California Highway Patrol (CHP) was applauded by some as a better way to spend money, the CHP was severely limited in enforcement capacity by a minimal budget, which would not be restored until successor Gray Davis would take office in 1999. Wilson remains to this day to be a champion for tough on crime laws and applauded by state-wide law enforcement.
Term limits, which Wilson enacted into law, prohibited him from running for the Governorship again.
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 made it difficult for him 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, the [Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation], the Richard M. Nixon [Library and Birthplace Foundation], the [Donald Bren Foundation], is the founding director of the [California Mentor Foundation] and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the [National World War II Museum].Most recently, he was co-chair of the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Gray Davis as governor of California. Wilson is married and lives in Los Angeles, California.
External links
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