Bill Lockyer
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William Westwood Lockyer (born May 8, 1941) is a retired American
politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...
from California, who held elective office from 1973 to 2015, as
State Treasurer In the state governments of the United States, 48 of the 50 states have the executive position of treasurer. New York abolished the position in 1926; duties were transferred to New York State Comptroller. Texas abolished the position of Texas ...
of
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
,
California Attorney General The attorney general of California is the state attorney general of the Government of California. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" (Constitution of California, Article V, Section ...
, and President Pro Tempore of the
California State Senate The California State Senate is the upper house of the California State Legislature, the lower house being the California State Assembly. The State Senate convenes, along with the State Assembly, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, Cal ...
.


Early life and education

Lockyer attended the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, graduating with a B.A. in
Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
in 1965. The following year, he received a Teaching Credential from CSU in Hayward, then worked for his father's roofing company and as a fork-lift driver at Ward's before getting his first job with the Legislature on the staff of Assemblyman Robert W. Crown. In 1986, Lockyer graduated with a J.D. from University of the Pacific
McGeorge School of Law University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law is a private, American Bar Association (ABA)-approved law school in the Oak Park neighborhood of the city of Sacramento, California. It is part of the University of the Pacific and is located on t ...
. (He returned to the classroom in 2009 as a non-tenured college professor, teaching undergraduate courses in American State Politics at the
University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...
and the
University of California at Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...
.) With his early legislative experience, Lockyer began his own political career as a School Board member of the
San Leandro Unified School District San Leandro Unified School District is a publicly funded unified school district in San Leandro, Alameda County, California on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, between Oakland to the northwest and Hayward to the southeast. The district ha ...
, as chair of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, and California coordinator of Senator George McGovern's 1972 campaign for the Presidency.


Personal life

Lockyer, who lives in Hayward and Long Beach, California, was married in April 2003 to public service attorney Nadia Lockyer, a former Alameda County Supervisor, with whom he has three children, a twelve-year-old son, and two twin sons, born in December 2015. By an earlier marriage, he also has an adult daughter who is an attorney at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).


Legislative career

Lockyer first won a State Assembly seat in a Special Election of September 4, 1973, following the accidental death of his political mentor, Bay Area Assemblyman Robert W. Crown. He served in the legislature for the next twenty-five years, more than half that time in the state senate, where, in 1994, he was chosen by his peers to be President Pro Tem, the most powerful position of the upper legislative house. In his spare time, Lockyer attended law school classes in Sacramento and received a law degree from the
McGeorge School of Law University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law is a private, American Bar Association (ABA)-approved law school in the Oak Park neighborhood of the city of Sacramento, California. It is part of the University of the Pacific and is located on t ...
, University of the Pacific. As legislator, Lockyer won close friends on both sides of the partisan aisle, including
Jim Brulte James L. Brulte (born April 13, 1956) is an American politician and former chairman of the California Republican Party, having served from March 3, 2013 to February 24, 2019. Brulte formerly served as a Republican in the California State Senat ...
, Republican Minority Leader of the state senate, who would long remember Lockyer's skill at compromise and consensus-building., and Democratic Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown, who recalled that, by the time Lockyer left the legislature in 1998, "Capitol insiders took his prolific effectiveness for granted."


Environmental protection legislation and the Bay Trail

As a freshman legislator in 1974, Lockyer wrote the first legislation to provide state funding for emergency oil spill decontamination. During his legislative career, as a close ally of environmental pressure groups like the
Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
and the
Planning and Conservation League Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. The evolution of forethought, the capacity to think ahead, is consi ...
, he wrote other environmental laws, including the first state regulation of trucks hauling toxic substances on California roads and highways, which preceded federal policies adopted by the EPA. Lockyer considered his greatest environmental achievement to be his 1987 bill to create a Bay Trail, which he envisioned as an eventual 500-mile-long hiking and cycling path, a continuous recreational corridor, with adjacent bayshore parks and protected natural habitats, that would entirely encircle San Francisco and San Pablo Bays. Requiring city, county and regional cooperation, the Bay Trail marked its 20th year in 2009 with 293 miles so far open to hikers, bicyclists, joggers and walkers. As nominal "father" of the Bay Trail, a segment of the shoreline had been named in Lockyer's honor.


1984 "hate crimes" legislation

In 1984, Lockyer sponsored the State's first "hate crimes" legislation which, as later amended, provided that "no person...shall by force or threat of force, willfully injure, intimidate, interfere with, oppress, or threaten any other person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him or her by the Constitution or laws of this state or by the Constitution or laws of the United States because of the other person's race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender, or sexual orientation, or because he or she perceives that the other person has one or more of those characteristics." Later, as Attorney General, Lockyer was responsible for coordinating enforcement of this statute by local law enforcement.


1987 tort reform "napkin deal"

On September 10, 1987, while Lockyer chaired the State Senate Judiciary Committee, he and Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown met at
Frank Fat's Restaurant Frank Fat's is an American Chinese cuisine restaurant in Sacramento, California founded in 1939 by a Chinese immigrant who called himself "Frank Fat" and who came to the United States illegally in 1919. The original restaurant is one of four now ...
in Sacramento with representatives of bitterly competing special interests – insurance companies, trial lawyers, doctors and manufacturers – to formalize their agreement to "the most sweeping changes in California's civil liability laws in decades". After many days of painstaking negotiations, these warring interests had accepted a compromise bill that included "a drastic restriction in product liability laws offset by fee increases for lawyers prosecuting medical malpractice cases. Doctors got promises that protections already in place against lawsuits would not be touched. Insurance companies won a reprieve from threatened regulations gaining momentum in the Legislature." This compromise had already been worked out; the dinner was meant to ratify a future "peace pact" among all the concerned parties to abide by the compromise. Lockyer, who had acted as mediator during the earlier negotiations, scribbled the terms of the "pact" on a restaurant cloth napkin, and so ended a political war. The compromise bill was then ramrodded through the assembly and state senate on the last night of that year's legislative session, and was signed into law by Republican governor
George Deukmejian Courken George Deukmejian Jr. (; June 6, 1928 – May 8, 2018) was an American politician who served as the 35th governor of California from 1983 to 1991. Of Armenian descent, Deukmejian was a member of the Republican Party and he also serve ...
. Though it was only Lockyer's "theatrical touch" of writing the agreement on a napkin that made it especially memorable, the "napkin deal" became legendary in the State Capitol. Proudly reproducing the original napkin on a poster titled "Tort-Mania 1987", Lockyer and Brown regarded the special interests compromise and conciliation they had arranged as a great legislative accomplishment. "The public is better served", Lockyer said at the time, "when these groups are trying to mend rather than tear the fabric of society".


1997–98 "Welfare Reform" Budget and tax-cut "Mega-deal"

Federal legislation signed by
President Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
in 1996 required California to enact “welfare-to-work” legislation to help welfare recipients move from government assistance to employment and “self-sufficiency”. The resulting establishment of a new
CalWORKs The California Work Opportunities and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program is the California welfare implementation of the federal welfare-to-work Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program that provides cash aid and services to e ...
(California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids) program had a major effect on the state budget, propelling difficult negotiations between the Democratic legislature and conservative Republican governor
Pete Wilson Peter Barton Wilson (born August 23, 1933) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 36th governor of California from 1991 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as a United States senator from California bet ...
. As Senate President Pro Tem, Lockyer was a key negotiator in these private negotiations, which, he later recalled to journalist Daniel Weintraub, produced the State's “last... old-fashioned balanced budget,”, linked to a bi-partisan billion-dollar tax "mega-deal", a complex legislative package that cut state income taxes for middle class Californians.


State attorney general

Elected attorney general in 1998 after 25 years as a legislator with a small, close-knit staff, Lockyer took on an executive position that demanded both policy direction and managerial acumen. The Department of Justice, of which he was “chief executive officer”, had some 5,000 employees, 1200 of whom were attorneys handling a caseload of 100,000 lawsuits – the equivalent, in the private sector of the seventh largest law firm in America. Much of the department's effort was as a service agency for the staggering demands of California's local law enforcement – 90,000 officers at 70,000 police terminals expecting split-second response from a state telecommunications network that received three million inquiries a day; background and fingerprints checks of a million annual applicants for positions as police officers, teachers and day-care providers, and “live scan” of another million and a half fingerprints taken during booking arrest, plus searches connected with 750,000 outstanding warrants for wanted suspects. This required Lockyer to radically restructure and reinvigorate his department with high-tech efficiencies and policy innovations to modernize the relationship between the attorney general and the law enforcement community. Having grown up in the Berkeley 'Sixties atmosphere of anti-police rhetoric, Lockyer, now described by the press as the state's "Top Cop", insisted on attending memorial services for more than 50 officers killed in the line of duty during his years in office. At the same time, Lockyer steered the Justice Department to a new legal activism that reflected his liberal values in such areas of litigation and regulation as civil rights and anti-trust enforcement and consumer and environmental protection. He became one of the two most prominent state Attorneys General in the nation, rivaled in media attention only by New York's
Eliot Spitzer Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he was the 54th governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008. Spitzer was b ...
. The two men were personal rivals as well, once nearly coming to blows after "screaming expletives at each other" at a Los Angeles convention of the National Association of Attorneys General. That organization elected Lockyer its president in 2003. As attorney general, Lockyer sometimes had to defend official positions he found objectionable, such as asking the courts, in 2004, to invalidate San Francisco same-sex marriage licenses which conflicted with state law, though he personally supported the right of
same-sex marriage Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same Legal sex and gender, sex or gender. marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 33 countries, with the most recent being ...
which brought him under fire from both social conservatives and gay activists. On other occasions, the positions Lockyer defended matched his own, as when he defended California's 1996 legalization of
medical marijuana Medical cannabis, or medical marijuana (MMJ), is cannabis and cannabinoids that are prescribed by physicians for their patients. The use of cannabis as medicine has not been rigorously tested due to production and governmental restrictions ...
against federal attacks by the
Bush Bush commonly refers to: * Shrub, a small or medium woody plant Bush, Bushes, or the bush may also refer to: People * Bush (surname), including any of several people with that name **Bush family, a prominent American family that includes: *** ...
Administration. Lockyer found this particularly satisfying as he had come to strongly support "compassionate use" of Marijuana after living through his mother's and younger sister's deaths from
leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...
.


Sex offenders, DNA testing, bullet coding

In grappling with the sheer size and range of the state's law enforcement responsibilities, Lockyer confronted, with varying success, several challenges that required his department to give new high-technology support to law enforcement agencies. In 1996, the state legislature had passed California's version of "
Megan's Law Megan's Law is the name for a federal law (and informal name for subsequent state laws) in the United States requiring law enforcement authorities to make information available to the public regarding registered sex offenders. Laws were creat ...
", which required authorities to make publicly available registration information provided to local police by former child molesters, rapists and others sex offenders after being released from custody. But the public could only access this information about registered sex offenders living in their communities by visiting a police station or calling a 900 toll-line number, until Lockyer's Department, with legislative approval in 2004, launched a public website allowing Internet users, by a simple search, to find personal details about more than 60,000 past sex offenders, and to locate, through an interactive map, such offenders living in their neighborhoods. The website faced initial complaints that, despite the State's efforts to prod local Police to provide accurate data, some of the information was outdated; and that, as the ACLU contended, there were too few restrictions to protect the civil liberties of those who had already completed their
sentences ''The Four Books of Sentences'' (''Libri Quattuor Sententiarum'') is a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the 12th century. It is a systematic compilation of theology, written around 1150; it derives its name from the '' sententiae'' ...
. But the website did draw enormous public interest, receiving over 186,000,000 "hits" from more than 16,000,000 individual users in its first year of operation. Another large-scale bio-tech challenge was expansion of State Crime Lab facilities to process DNA genetic samples taken from convicted felons, aiming to create the largest state-run DNA criminal data-bank in the country. Since 1988, California law had required blood samples taken from felons convicted of specific sex and violent crimes, in the hope of reinvigorating often “cold” investigations of unsolved crimes. When Lockyer took office, 100,000 of these blood samples were sitting in cold storage, still waiting to be analyzed and compared to DNA taken from crime scene evidence. In June 2001, Lockyer announced that with an expanded DNA Lab staff and new equipment, the backlog of unanalyzed blood samples had been entirely eliminated, leading to identification of suspects in homicide cases more than 15 years old. But then a voter-approved measure of 2004 that allowed police to gather DNA, not just from convicted violent criminals, but from anyone arrested, even without charge or conviction, for any felony, violent or otherwise led Lockyer himself to express reservations. "I personally wouldn't have put arrests in the measure," he said, adding that he would also have made it simpler for innocent people to get their information removed from the files – a complaint of civil libertarians who raised the specter of innocent people being kept in the same database as convicted armed felons. This also proved an administrative nightmare, as the backlog eliminated in 2001 had reappeared as a new backlog of 287,000 by 2006, forcing new efforts, with inadequate financial resources, to meet the television-viewing public's rising expectations of law enforcement efficiency. After a
Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
company unveiled a new technology for "coding" individual bullets, Lockyer sponsored the first legislation in the country which would have required all handgun (but not rifle) ammunition sold in California to be engraved with a unique serial identification number. "We are losing too many of our young people to seemingly random shootings and anonymous killers," said Lockyer. The bill "will strip criminals of their anonymity and give law enforcement evidence it can use to quickly and effectively solve more gun crimes." The
National Rifle Association The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent Gun politics in the United States, gun rights ...
and other gun rights groups – already at odds with Lockyer over enforcement of State prohibitions against semi-automatic rifles – strongly condemned the plan, saying criminals could easily obtain unmarked ammunition and that the whole process would create a costly enforcement bureaucracy. Manufacturers also opposed the measure as economically disastrous, since the engraving machines would cost up to half a million dollars each and would make virtually obsolete tens of millions of dollars in existing manufacturing equipment. The bill died in the legislature.


2000–01 California energy crisis

Of the many actions taken by Lockyer's staff against corporate fraud and malfeasance, the most prominent were related to the state's energy crisis that began in the summer of 2000, marked by rolling blackouts, brownouts and the billions of dollars in price hikes that appeared on consumers' electrical bills. It later emerged that the "crisis" stemmed in part from illegal practices by energy corporations such as the now-defunct
Enron Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. ...
. The exposure of these hidden offenses began in August 2000 when Lockyer created an Energy Task Force to launch the State's first investigation of alleged
price gouging Price gouging is a pejorative term used to describe the situation when a seller increases the prices of goods, services, or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. Usually, this event occurs after a demand or ...
by power companies. ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' scoffed at million-dollar rewards offered by the Attorney General's office for information about illegal conduct by energy powers, dismissing the allegations as unsupported by clear evidence. But such probes eventually led to some five billion dollars in brokered settlements by Enron and a half dozen other corporations which admitted to "gaming" the State's deregulated energy system.


Enron and prison-rape remark controversy

As Attorney General, Lockyer, during the Enron scandal of 2001, achieved some notoriety for his public quip, "I would love to personally escort
nron CEO NRON also known as ncRNA repressor of the nuclear factor of activated T cells is a non-coding RNA involved in repressing NFAT. The function of this ncRNA was identified by a large-scale screen of 512 non-coding RNAs discovered in earlier EST seque ...
Ken Lay Kenneth Lee Lay (April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) was an American businessman who was the founder, chief executive officer and chairman of Enron. He was heavily involved in the eponymous accounting scandal that unraveled in 2001 into the large ...
to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a
tattoo A tattoo is a form of body modification made by inserting tattoo ink, dyes, and/or pigments, either indelible or temporary, into the dermis layer of the skin to form a design. Tattoo artists create these designs using several Process of tatt ...
ed
dude ''Dude'' is American slang for an individual, typically male. From the 1870s to the 1960s, dude primarily meant a male person who dressed in an extremely fashionable manner (a dandy) or a conspicuous citified person who was visiting a rural ...
who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey'". This remark was widely condemned as an endorsement of
prison rape Prison rape or jail rape refers to sexual assault of people while they are incarcerated. The phrase is commonly used to describe rape of inmates by other inmates, or to describe rape of inmates by staff. China In February 2021, BBC News rep ...
. Lockyer later apologized for the statement in a letter to the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', saying, "My anger over the activities of energy barons doesn't come close to my lifelong outrage at the crime of rape. ... I guess I let my anger get the better of me in talking about the mercenary corporate executives who are making life so miserable for millions of Californians."


Auto industry global warming lawsuit

On September 20, 2006, Lockyer filed a lawsuit against what his office referred to as "the big six automakers" for their alleged contributions to
global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
. Initial reaction was mixed, with some environmental groups being supportive, and an auto industry trade calling it a 'nuisance suit'. A similar suit in New York had been dismissed by a federal court. The California suit wa
dismissed
on September 17, 2007, with the court saying that "The adjudication of plaintiff's claim would require the court to balance the competing interests of reducing global warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development."


Hewlett-Packard scandal

While Attorney General, in 2006, Lockyer and his staff conducted a criminal investigation into the
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
pretexting Pretexting is a type of social engineering attack that involves a situation, or pretext, created by an attacker in order to lure a victim into a vulnerable situation and to trick them into giving private information, specifically information that t ...
scandal to ascertain whether or not the investigators authorized by Chairman
Patricia C. Dunn Patricia C. Dunn (March 27, 1953 – December 4, 2011) was the non-executive chairman of the board of Hewlett-Packard (HP) from February 2005 until September 22, 2006, when she resigned her position. On October 4, 2006, Bill Lockyer, the Cali ...
to discover the source of leaks from within the company illegally obtained the phone records of HP board members and journalists. Charges were subsequently brought against Dunn, which were dismissed by the court in 2007 (while Dunn was battling terminal cancer) in the "interests of justice".


Landmark legal cases

*'' Silveira v. Lockyer'' (Restrictions on semi-automatic firearms) *'' Lockyer v. Andrade'' ("Three-strikes" criminal sentencing) *''
Lockyer v. City and County of San Francisco Lockyer may refer to: * Cape Lockyer * Electoral district of Lockyer, Queensland, Australia * Lockyer (lunar crater) * Lockyer (Martian crater) * Lockyer (surname) * Lockyer Creek * Lockyer Hotel * Lockyer Island * Lockyer National Park * Locky ...
'' (Same-sex Marriage)


2003 gubernatorial recall election

An initiative to recall newly re-elected Governor Gray Davis qualified for the ballot in July 2003, with a special election, scheduled for October, to include both a referendum on the recall itself and a list of candidates vying to replace Davis if the recall succeeded. With some arm-twisting by U.S. Senator
Dianne Feinstein Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein ( ; born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933) is an American politician who serves as the senior United States senator from California, a seat she has held since 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, she was ...
, all the potential Democratic candidates, including Lockyer, agreed not to run, in the hope that this would strengthen Davis' campaign to defeat the recall. At the start, it appeared that the strongest Republican candidate would be former Los Angeles Mayor
Richard Riordan Richard Joseph Riordan (born May 1, 1930) is an American investment banker, businessman, lawyer, and former Republican politician who was the 39th Mayor of Los Angeles, from 1993 to 2001. Born in New York City and raised in New Rochelle, New Y ...
, who had unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor the previous year. Lockyer, at the start of August, publicly warned Davis and his political consultants against a repeat effort to sabotage Riordan's candidacy by negative attack ads: "If they do the trashy campaign on Dick Riordan ... I think there are going to be prominent Democrats that will defect and just say, 'We're tired of that puke politics. Don't you dare do it again or we're just going to help pull the plug.'" Five days later,
Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, film producer, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. ''Time'' ...
announced that he would run as a Republican in the recall election. Lockyer and Schwarzenegger had been casual friends since Lockyer's state senate years, when the actor had chaired the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and the two men had together toured charter schools in southern California. Later, Lt. Governor
Cruz Bustamante Cruz Miguel Bustamante (born January 4, 1953) is an American politician. He previously served as the 45th lieutenant governor of California from 1999 to 2007, serving under governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A member of the Democra ...
announced he would become the only prominent Democrat to place his name on the recall ballot. On October 7, by a decisive vote, Davis was recalled, and Schwarzenegger was elected to replace him. Two weeks later, at a UC Berkeley post-mortem conference on the election, Lockyer made the surprise announcement that while he had voted against the recall, he had also voted for Schwarzenegger, the first time he had ever voted for a Republican in a state election. He explained that he was "tired of transactional, cynical, deal-making politics," and that, for him, "Arnold represented... hope, change, reform, opportunity, upbeat problem solving". He added, "I hope I haven't been conned". Many fellow Democrats and feminists reacted bitterly to Lockyer's surprise announcement, which proved damaging to his future political aspirations.


State treasurer


2006 election

By a year into Schwarzenegger's governorship, Lockyer increasingly felt the Governor's performance was disheartening, marked by inexperience, lack of strong political conviction, and personal braggadocio. In a 2005 interview, Lockyer criticized Schwarzenegger's leadership style as demonstrating an "arrogance of power" with the "odor of Austrian politics", alluding to the Austrian-born Governor's upbringing in a country with a "long history" of "elite...autocracy". Soon after the recall election, Lockyer, barred by term limits from seeking a third term as attorney general, began contemplating his own run for governor in the 2006 election. In January 2005, he tentatively announced his candidacy for governor: "the one and only office that has held abiding interest for me since I left the Legislature ... It's the job I want, not only because I think I'll be a great executive, but because I think that I can and will lead the best campaign you've ever seen, a winning Democratic campaign of ideas, ideals and inspiration to stake out a great future for California." Lockyer changed his mind four months later, saying that while he felt strongly about the need to improve education and transportation, and to address "the growing disparity" between the state's rich and poor, he was unwilling "to spend the next 10 years of my life" in the daily "partisan fighting" that plagued governors of both parties. In June 2005, he announced he would instead run for state treasurer. He was elected to that office in November 2006.


Climate change and renewable energy finance initiatives

As treasurer (and ex officio trustee of
CalPERS The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is an agency in the California executive branch that "manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.5 million California public employees, retirees, and their families".CalPERSFa ...
and
CalSTRS The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) provides retirement, disability and survivor benefits for California's 965,000 prekindergarten through community college educators and their families. CalSTRS was established by law in 191 ...
, the two largest public employee pension funds in the United States) Lockyer tried to use the influence of his office in the aid of various environmental causes. These attempts included: * Expanding the "Green Wave" environmental initiative first proposed by Treasurer
Phil Angelides Phillip Nicholas Angelides ( ; born June 12, 1953) is an American politician who was California State Treasurer and the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Governor of California in the 2006 elections. Angelides served as the Chair of the Apoll ...
in 2004 to a multibillion-dollar investment in renewable energy * With statutory authority of the Treasurer's California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority (CAEATFA), exempting new "Zero Emission Vehicle" manufacturers, such as electric automobile startup
Tesla Motors Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles (electric cars and electric truck, trucks), battery energy storage from ...
, from sales and use tax on the purchase of equipment used in California manufacturing. * State purchase – the first by any governmental body in the US – of "
Green Bonds Green bonds (also known as climate bonds) are fixed-income financial instruments ( bonds) which are used to fund projects that have positive environmental and/or climate benefits. They follow the Green Bond Principles stated by the Internationa ...
" issued by the
World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
to finance Climate Change projects in developing countries * Providing a $48 million loan guarantee program to help California truckers comply with new diesel emission regulations put into force by the
California Air Resources Board The California Air Resources Board (CARB or ARB) is the "clean air agency" of the government of California. Established in 1967 when then-governor Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford-Carrell Act, combining the Bureau of Air Sanitation and the Motor ...
Based on such state programs, Lockyer also sponsored federal legislation (H.R.3525,“Private Activity Bonds for Clean Energy Projects”) introduced in July 2009 by California Congressman Mike Thompson to provide tax-exempt bond financing nationally for private sector Renewable Energy projects, Zero-emission vehicle purchases, and "green" manufacturing facilities.


2008–09 California budget crisis

In the fall of 2008, with the economy faltering, the legislature very belatedly passed what ''Los Angeles Times'' political columnist George Skelton called "another atrocious, short-sighted, gimmicky budget that set a record for procrastination" and "wreaked havoc all across California among small business vendors, healthcare centers and nursing homes that couldn't be paid by the state until a budget was enacted." Lockyer was also critical of the budget, describing its budgetary provisions to Skelton as "banana republic financing", based on accounting gimmicks (that "give gimmicks a bad name"), "phony inflated estimates of revenue" and a "boondoggle" of "massive" corporate tax breaks at a time of mounting State deficit. In 2009, it was discovered that the state faced a $25 billion deficit, following a sharp drop in tax revenues. As negotiations began to revise the state budget, Lockyer tried to convince U.S. Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner Timothy Franz Geithner (; born August 18, 1961) is a former American central banker who served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. He was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank o ...
to provide a guarantee for state bond payments. "A fiscal meltdown by California ... would surely destabilize the U.S., if not worldwide financial markets," Lockyer wrote to Geithner on May 13. The Obama Administration declined the request. Earlier, Lockyer warned the legislative conference committee that private lenders would be leery of any more "smoke-and-mirrors accounting tricks" and that lawmakers would have to rely heavily on spending cuts to balance the budget: "It seems to me that the kind of budget we will require before the end of June is almost entirely cuts ... My suggestion to you is don't delay the pain. It's going to be awful, but just get it done. It's going to be worse if it doesn't get done." Lockyer was also quoted as telling Democratic legislators that, "fair or not", angry voters blamed them for "12 years of flowing red ink". "Why don't you start with the realization that probably none of you are going to be back here next year?", after the 2010 elections. "You're not going to get reelected. Just put the politics out of your brain ... That's a very liberating thought, and with it you can get a lot done." When the legislature failed to pass a balanced budget before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, 2009, State Controller John Chiang began issuing IOUs to some state creditors. Lockyer suggested having a respected intermediary mediate between the Republican governor and the Democratic-controlled legislature. Republican State Senator
Bob Huff Robert S. Huff (born September 9, 1953) is an American businessman and politician who was the California State Senate minority leader and Senate Republican leader from January 5, 2012, until August 27, 2015. He represented the Senate's 29th Di ...
scoffed at the idea, saying, "No caucus is going to go with that... I'm not going to vote for new taxes just because some mediator told me to." Throughout the budget crisis, Lockyer warned that an impasse would increasingly raise the costs of short-and long-term state borrowing, ultimately as much as an additional $7.5 billion in interest over the next 30 years. On July 6, with no budget agreement yet concluded, Fitch Ratings downgraded California's bond rating to BBB, just one notch above the dividing line between investment grade and speculative grade "junk" bonds. A Lockyer spokesman estimated that this downgrade alone would represent an immediate "hit of hundreds of millions of dollars" in higher credit costs. As California continued to issue IOUs to cover $350 million in short-term debt, the formal standing of California bonds continued to decline. Moody's joined Fitch in cutting the State's debt rating (though still three levels above "junk" status), because of "increasing" risk to debt service payments. And a London firm which tracks speculative "credit default swaps" ranked California ninth in the world among the 10 governmental entities most likely to default on their financial obligations. A Lockyer spokesman called this assessment "ludicrous", and Lockyer himself continued to insist, as he had done throughout the crisis, that the threat of default was "infinitesimally small... short of a thermonuclear war." Two days later, on July 16, Lockyer stated, “I call on the Governor and Legislature to focus exclusively on what it takes to bring this year’s budget back in balance, honestly and immediately. I urge them to...quit adding or resurrecting endless ideological debating points, and to stop using budget negotiations to score points with political allies or against partisan opponents." He added that the state's credit rating was moving "closer and closer to the junk pile... If our credit rating sinks to junk status, the state will find the door to the infrastructure bond market locked shut". One Democratic insider stated that by this "tongue-lashing of legislative leaders", the "ever-blunt" Lockyer "didn't win...any friends in the Capitol". Four days after Lockyer's remarks, the Governor and legislative leaders finally announced they had reached agreement on a complex budget plan which combined spending cuts with various accounting maneuvers. A month later, Standard and Poor's removed California bonds from its "credit watch list", indicating that while the bonds still had a negative outlook, they were not "under threat of an imminent downgrade". Lockyer was optimistic about this "positive development ... It reflects confidence that the budget solution adopted by the governor and legislature gets us on the right track..."


2010 Tesla, Toyota and NUMMI Electric Auto Partnership

When the
Toyota is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on . Toyota is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, producing about 10 ...
corporation announced it would close the
NUMMI New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) was an American automobile manufacturing company in Fremont, California, jointly owned by General Motors and Toyota that opened in 1984 and closed in 2010. After the plant was closed by its owners, th ...
auto plant in
Fremont, California Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San Fra ...
, after its long-time partner in the facility,
General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
, pulled out of the partnership, Lockyer appointed a blue-ribbon commission that publicized the adverse economic consequences of plant closure and the unemployment of several thousand workers, and pleaded with Toyota to reconsider. The company refused. But then Lockyer, working behind the scenes, helped arrange a new partnership at the NUMMI plant between Toyota and
Tesla Motors Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles (electric cars and electric truck, trucks), battery energy storage from ...
, an electric car company, which he had assisted in the past through the Treasurer's "Green Wave" investment policies.


2010 election

Three of Lockyer's predecessors as state treasurer –
Jesse Unruh Jesse Marvin Unruh (, ; September 30, 1922 – August 4, 1987), also known as Big Daddy Unruh, was an American politician who served as speaker of the California State Assembly and as the California State Treasurer. Early life and education Born ...
,
Kathleen Brown Kathleen Lynn Brown (born September 25, 1945) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 29th Treasurer of California from 1991 to 1995. Brown unsuccessfully ran for Governor of California in the 1994 election. Early life and e ...
, and
Phil Angelides Phillip Nicholas Angelides ( ; born June 12, 1953) is an American politician who was California State Treasurer and the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Governor of California in the 2006 elections. Angelides served as the Chair of the Apoll ...
– had lost gubernatorial campaigns, and Democratic pundits considered the treasurer's job a much "smaller bully pulpit" which did not provide a good springboard to higher office. Despite persistent rumors that Lockyer, who had earlier accumulated a $10 million political war chest, might be a "dark horse" possibility for governor in 2010, he expressed no interest in mounting a campaign to succeed Schwarzenegger. When asked about the possibility, Lockyer stated that he saw no chance of winning a primary election battle with former governor
Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...
(his successor as attorney general), who eventually emerged as the unchallenged Democratic nominee and went on to win the general election. Lockyer also said he preferred spending time with his family. "You kill yourself being a Governor", he joked, "and then maybe you get a new aqueduct named after you". In an article probing Schwarzenegger's political unpopularity in his final months in office, George Skelton, after quoting Lockyer's reflection on the fickle electorate ("Our state voters have very high expectations of what government can do. And their haste to criticize is very high") opined that Lockyer "might have been governor himself if he were more ambitious and photogenic, and sometimes less blunt". Having faced no opposition in the Democratic primary, Lockyer, using the attention-getting campaign slogan, "Straight Talk, No Bull#*+!" was re-elected for a final term as state treasurer in the November 2010 election, defeating a Republican state senator from Orange County,
Mimi Walters Marian Elaine "Mimi" Walters (née Krogius; born May 14, 1962) is an American businesswoman and politician. A Republican, she served from 2015 to 2019 as the U.S. representative for California's 45th congressional district. Before running fo ...
, and receiving more votes that year than any elected official in the United States. He was endorsed by the ''
Sacramento Bee ''The Sacramento Bee'' is a daily newspaper published in Sacramento, California, in the United States. Since its foundation in 1857, ''The Bee'' has become the largest newspaper in Sacramento, the fifth largest newspaper in California, and the 2 ...
'', ''
Oakland Tribune The ''Oakland Tribune'' is a weekly newspaper published in Oakland, California, by the Bay Area News Group (BANG), a subsidiary of MediaNews Group. Founded in 1874, the ''Tribune'' rose to become an influential daily newspaper. With the declin ...
'', ''
San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'', ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', and the ''
San Jose Mercury News ''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidiar ...
'', which concluded that "the Hayward Democrat has done well at a number of jobs over several decades, from the Legislature to attorney general. But as state treasurer for the past four years, he has really shone, maturing to near-statesman stature..."


Retirement from public office

In 2012, Lockyer was seriously considered for chancellor of the
California State University The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...
system, but the position went instead to a professional educational administrator. Then, unable to run for a third term as treasurer due to
term limits A term limit is a legal restriction that limits the number of terms an officeholder may serve in a particular elected office. When term limits are found in presidential and semi-presidential systems they act as a method of curbing the potenti ...
, he expressed a tentative interest in running for state controller in 2014, but instead announced his retirement from elected office. He is now Of Counsel to the Boston-based international law firm, Brown Rudnick, advising clients in the firm's Orange County office on government law and strategies.; http://www.brownrudnick.com/people-detail/lockyer-bill


See also

* 1998 California Attorney General election * 2002 California Attorney General election


References


External links


California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer
Official state site
Bill Lockyer for state treasurer
Official campaign site
Follow the Money – Bill Lockyer
2006 campaign contributions *
Join California Bill Lockyer
, - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Lockyer, Bill 1941 births California Attorneys General Democratic Party California state senators Living people McGeorge School of Law alumni Democratic Party members of the California State Assembly People from Hayward, California State treasurers of California University of California, Berkeley alumni 20th-century American politicians