Pete Wilson

(b. Lake Forest, Illinois, 23 Aug. 1933) US; US Senator 1983 – 91, Governor of California 1991 – 99 A lawyer educated at Yale and Berkeley, Wilson was elected to the California legislature in 1966 and served there until becoming mayor of San Diego in 1970, a post he occupied until 1983 and one which earned him a reputation as an able administrator. In 1982 Wilson was elected to the Senate, where he adopted a moderate approach to issues, but strongly supported the defence spending so crucial to the California economy. In 1988 he was re-elected to the Senate but chose to run for governor in a race against former San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein in 1990. After a narrow victory in 1990, he was re-elected to a second gubernatorial term in 1994, gaining 55 per cent of the vote in a race against Kathleen Brown.

As governor Wilson had to deal with major budgetary problems, largely the effect of a recession which was especially marked in California because of cuts to the defence industry in the new environment created by the end of the Cold War. To solve revenue problems, Wilson supported tax rises and spending cuts which alienated both his Republican backers and the legislature. Wilson also had to cope with the effects of a series of natural disasters in California and with mounting concern about crime. Strong backing for law enforcement (including capital punishment) and for a tougher line on illegal immigrants helped Wilson to win re-election in 1994. On some of the most highly salient social issues in California (abortion and gay rights) he is a liberal.

As one of the Republican Party's most able and experienced politicians, Wilson has had presidential ambitions. In 1995 he announced he would seek the Republican nomination but he withdrew as Bob Dole's campaign gathered momentum.

Republican Peter Barton Wilson (born 1935) was elected the governor of California in 1991.

As governor of the most populous and economically powerful state in the United States, Pete Wilson is faced with both problems and opportunities of monumental size. His 1990 triumph over Dianne Feinstein for the governor's position made the 60-year-old Wilson an instant candidate for national office - as former California governor and U.S. president Ronald Reagan demonstrated earlier, California politics often become American policies - but for the time being Wilson has his hands full coping with California's massive budgetary, environmental, and population problems. In his first year as governor, Wilson outraged the right wing of the Republican party by raising state taxes $7 billion to help cover California's growing budget deficit, caused by a slow economy and the state's extensive system of social welfare programs. In the land of Reaganism, tax hikes by a Republican governor are viewed as nothing less than treason by many party members; as California Assemblyman Tom McClintock lamented to the New Republic, "All the advantages we [Republicans] had in the 1980s have been thrown away."

Wilson's situation is far more complex than those faced by earlier Republican governors of California, however. The population of the state grew from 23 million in 1980 to 30 million in 1990, with much of the increase in the child population or people too poor to contribute to the state's tax base. At the same time, Californians have grown used to a broad range of social services and tight environmental controls, while simultaneously expressing growing frustration with the size of government and especially with taxes, signaled most clearly by the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which imposed a cap on real estate taxes. The net result of these disparate forces was a 1991 budget deficit of $14 billion, a rude welcome to the governor's mansion for Pete Wilson.

Peter Barton Wilson was born August 23, 1935, in Lake Forest, Illinois, an affluent suburb north of Chicago. His father, James Wilson, was originally a jewelry salesman who later became a successful advertising executive. The Wilson family moved to St. Louis when Pete was in junior high school. There he attended St. Louis Country Day School, an exclusive private institution, winning an award in his senior year for combined scholarship, athletics, and citizenship. In the fall of 1952 Wilson enrolled at Yale University, where he majored in English and won a Marines ROTC scholarship. A former Yale classmate later described Wilson to the Los Angeles Times as "not the kind of guy who put himself forward a lot," a capable student but not exceptionally gifted nor much interested in student politics.

After graduation from Yale, Wilson served three years in the Marines as an infantry officer, eventually becoming a platoon commander. His Marines service gave Wilson his first taste of leadership, a kind of political initiation which would prove decisive for his later career. After writing a novel in 1958 (which has not been published), Wilson attended law school at Berkeley, having decided that he wanted to live in California while visiting the state as a Marine. He was an average student at Berkeley but became active in political circles, starting a local chapter of Young Republicans and working on various election campaigns. In 1962, while working for Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard M. Nixon, Wilson got to know one of Nixon's top aides, Herb Klein. Klein suggested that Wilson might do well in San Diego politics, and in 1963 the ambitious young Republican moved to San Diego and began his long climb to the governor's mansion. He was attractive, well-spoken, and conservative, all of which made him a good match for San Diego's rather sedate political climate.

Wilson had to take the California bar exam four times before passing, which speaks for his persistence if nothing else. He began his practice as a criminal defense attorney in San Diego, but found such work to be low-paying and personally repugnant - as he later commented to the Los Angeles Times, "I realized I couldn't be a criminal defense lawyer because most of the people who do come to you are guilty." Wilson switched to a more conventional law practice and continued his activity in local politics, working for Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1964. Wilson soon discovered that he genuinely liked politics and that he was good at managing the day-to-day details of the political process. He put in long hours for the Goldwater campaign, earning the friendship of local Republican boosters so necessary for a political career, and in 1966, at the age of thirty-three, he ran for and won a seat in the California state legislature.

As a young state assemblyman Wilson spent much of his time working with Frank Lanterman, a long-time power in Republican state politics. Under the tutelage of Lanterman, Wilson learned the intricacies of the political maneuvering by which the political process is conducted among a host of competing factions. As has always been his fashion, Wilson tended to be quiet and diligent as an assemblyman, neither a brilliant speaker nor visionary policy maker but willing to do the hard work needed for success. In the Republican party, Wilson defined himself as a moderate, while then-governor Ronald Reagan was forging the new coalition of extreme right-wing Republicans that would later carry him to the White House. The two men did not see eye to eye ideologically and were never close personally. At times, Wilson's moderate brand of Republicanism ran head-on with Reagan's conservatism, as when the young assemblyman sponsored a bill that would have created a master plan for controlling use of the California seashore. For the most part, however, Wilson benefitted from the strength of Reagan's popularity, and it was not until the 1991 tax crisis that the philosophical gulf between the two men became apparent.

In 1968, Wilson married Betty Robertson. The couple bought a house in Sacramento, the capital of California, but soon returned to San Diego when Wilson decided to run for mayor of that city in 1971. His experience as chairman of the state Urban Affairs and Housing Committee between 1968 and 1970 had whetted Wilson's appetite for urban government, and San Diego was the natural arena for his ambitions. Not only was the city Wilson's home and political base, but San Diego had also recently seen the indictment of several city officials for bribery and was in the mood for a change. Wilson's youthful good looks and conservative record made a perfect combination, and he beat thirteen other candidates to become mayor of California's second largest city in 1971. Voters were impressed by Wilson's refusal to accept campaign contributions from certain controversial land developers and his commitment to a program of controlled growth for the San Diego area. As he repeatedly said in campaign speeches, "We don't want to become another sprawled-out Los Angeles monster" - a platform that did not jibe well with Reagan-style laissez-faire economics but was in keeping with the growing environmental awareness of many San Diegans.

Wilson remained a very popular figure in San Diego during his terms as mayor. His habitually long work days and concern for the smallest details of city government earned him the respect of voters, while he also extended his political base by leadership in organizations such as the League of California Cities and the president's Citizens' Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality. Wilson's style of living was modest - at $20,000, his salary was less than that of some municipal bus drivers - adding to his image among San Diego residents as a young Mr. Clean. As mayor, his government was fiscally conservative but relatively liberal on social issues, particularly care of the environment. Wilson appealed to his fellow citizens as a sober but not insensitive politician, often described as being rather dull ("Button-Down Pete" was one of his nicknames, referring to his Ivy League dress) but never as insincere or dishonest. San Diego is itself often thought of as rather dull, and in 1976 its voters returned Pete Wilson to the mayor's office with a resounding 61.7% majority.

In 1978, Wilson attempted the next step in what appeared a surefire political career by running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. He failed miserably, coming in fourth out of five candidates, a defeat that taught him a good deal about politics on a large scale. His poor showing was mainly due to two factors, Proposition 13 and Wilson's own lack of charisma. Proposition 13 was a state referendum intended to put a stop to California's rising property taxes; its approval in 1978 marked the triumph of Ronald Reagan's "supply-side economics" and deeply conservative social policy. Wilson's opposition to Proposition 13 contributed heavily to his poor performance in the gubernatorial election and, ironically, to the fiscal crisis confronting Wilson twelve years later when he succeeded in the governor's race. Of more permanent significance was Wilson's inability to inspire excitement in the voting public. As Wilson's media consultant Paul Keye told the Los Angeles Times, "What you have to do is convey Pete's seriousness without letting it become so earnest it fogs your glasses." Or, as Ronald Brownstein wrote in the New Republic, Wilson has an "unerring instinct for the gray."

Four years later, however, Wilson ran against and defeated then-governor Jerry Brown in the 1982 race for the United States Senate. Many Californians were weary of Brown's eccentricities (his nickname was "Moonbeam"), and the Senate race itself was an excellent opportunity for Wilson's "dullness" to shine - the Senate is traditionally the more conservative house of Congress, and Brown's much-publicized liberalism was out of place in the atmosphere inspired by Reagan's conservative presidency. Wilson won the Senate race with the same mix of conservatism and progressivism that had carried him to victory twice in San Diego - he was hawkish on defense, opposed to taxes, and a supporter of the death penalty, but in favor of abortion rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and environmental planning. In many ways, his political make-up resembled that of George Bush, a moderate, Yale-educated Republican, and it succeeded for Wilson in both the 1982 and 1988 Senate elections. In the latter campaign, Wilson was reelected easily over challenger Leo T. McCarthy, as Senate incumbents generally are when the economy is strong.

As Senator of California, Wilson was best known for being unremarkable - "obscure" was the New Republic's characterization of his eight-year tenure in the Senate. His one brush with national recognition came in 1986, when the Senator had to be wheeled into the Capitol after an appendectomy to cast a decisive vote for the 1986 Republican budget. Wilson's record as Senator earned him neither great love nor enmity from most Californians; in fact, it was not until his defeat of Dianne Feinstein for governor in 1990 that Wilson generated much attention. The race with Feinstein (a former mayor of San Francisco) degenerated into a campaign of negative advertising and mudslinging, as the candidates held common opinions on nearly every substantial issue. Perhaps simply because he was the candidate from the more populous southern half of the state, Wilson won the election by three percentage points over Feinstein and entered the governor's office in January of 1991.

His decisive action of raising taxes in the face of California's fiscal problems brought Wilson's level of popularity to the lowest mark ever recorded for a California governor. An advocate of what he calls "preventive government," aimed at solving problems before they arise, Wilson raised taxes and cut social programs with equal vigor, denouncing along the way his more conservative fellow Republicans as "gutless" for their tax phobia.

Wilson, who ran unsuccessfully for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, received much public attention for his controversial and conservative agenda for California. In August of 1993, stated Christian Science Monitor contributor Daniel B. Wood, Wilson "called on President Clinton to 'repeal the perverse incentives that now exist for people to emigrate to this country illegally."' In open letters reprinted in several national newspapers, he detailed a broad plan to deny citizenship to the children of undocumented aliens, cut off health and education benefits, and create a legal-resident eligibility card that would be required for anyone seeking such benefits. Wilson told the Monitor that "enough people to fill a city the size of Oakland [Calif., population 372,242] got past the border patrol over the past four years. The almost $3 billion in state tax dollars we are required to spend by federal law on services for illegal immigrants is causing us to be unable to spend [on], and in some cases to [have to] cut, needed services for legal residents." "To me, it is terribly unfair and wrong," Wilson concluded, "to be spending state tax dollars for illegal immigrants and declining it to working poor who are legal residents."

In the summer of 1995, Wilson made another controversial decision when he convinced the University of California's Board of Regents to end the university's affirmative action policy. "At a moment when affirmative action is under attack across the country - and just one day after President Bill Clinton told Americans that it had been 'good for America' - the vote made California the first state to eliminate race preferences in college admissions and put the state at the forefront of eliminating them nationwide," declared Time contributor Margot Hornblower. Although Wilson's actions were opposed by many national figures, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, the governor's stance was popular with many California voters. "Next year," wrote Hornblower, "Californians will vote in a referendum on a measure that would forbid the state to use affirmative action not only in public education but also in state employment and contracting. Polls show three-fourths of the state's voters supporting it."

But although voters in California accepted the measure, the Clinton administration has decided to press its challenge of Proposition 209 that was deemed constitutional by a federal appeals court panel. The decision by the White House means that the Justice Department will continue to participate in the legal challenge to the proposition as a friend of the court. Thus, the Justice Department may file a legal brief outlining why it views the affirmative action ban as unconstitutional in future legal proceedings. However, the key decisions in the case will continue to be made by others.

In 1997 Wilson has also found time to volunteer as a mentor. A teenage boy from an underpriveleged neighborhood and Wilson met in April through a mentoring program. Policymakers nationwide have high hopes for such programs. Leaders of the volunteerism are searching for new ways to avert the tragedies of crime, drugs, and violence that afflict too many youth in the U.S.

Further Reading

Business Week, October 14, 1987.

Christian Science Monitor, October 4, 1993.

Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1976; October 11, 1982; April 11, 1997, p. A3; April 28, 1997, p. A3.

New Republic, August 22, 1988; April 15, 1991; December 9, 1991.

Newsweek, October 11, 1982.

New York Times Magazine, September 30, 1990.

Time, November 18, 1991; July 31, 1995.

For others named Pete Wilson, see Peter Wilson.

Pete Wilson
36th Governor of California
In office January 7, 1991 – January 4, 1999
Lieutenant	Leo T. McCarthy (1991–1995) Gray Davis (1995–1999)
Preceded by	George Deukmejian
Succeeded by	Gray Davis
United States Senator from California
In office January 3, 1983 – January 7, 1991
Preceded by	Samuel I. Hayakawa
Succeeded by	John F. Seymour
Mayor of San Diego, California
In office January 3, 1971 – January 7, 1982
Preceded by	Frank E. Curran
Succeeded by	Roger Hedgecock
Member of the California State Assembly
In office January 3, 1967 – January 7, 1971
Preceded by	Clair Burgener
Succeeded by	Bob Wilson
Born	August 23, 1933 (1933-08-23) (age 76) Lake Forest, Illinois
Birth name	Peter Barton Wilson
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Gayle Edlund Wilson
Alma mater	Yale University University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Profession	Politician
Religion	Presbyterianism
Military service
Service/branch	United States Marine Corps

Peter Barton "Pete" Wilson (born August 23, 1933) is an American politician from California. Wilson, a Republican, 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 (1971–1982) and five years as a California State Assemblyman (1967–1971). On September 27, 2007, Wilson endorsed Rudolph Giuliani for the U.S. President, but Giuliani later dropped out. On February 4, 2008, Wilson endorsed John McCain as a candidate for U.S. President.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Mayor of San Diego 3 United States Senator 4 Governor of California 4.1 Energy deregulation and the roots of the California energy crisis 5 Presidential campaign (1996) 6 Banking, teaching, and corporate advisory career 7 Honors and awards 8 See also 9 References 10 External links 10.1 Campaign literature and videos 10.2 Miscellaneous

Early life

Peter Barton Wilson was born on August 23, 1933, in Lake Forest, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. His parents were James Boone Wilson and Margaret Callaghan Wilson. ^[1] His father was originally a jewelry salesman who later became a successful advertising executive. The Wilson family moved to St. Louis, Missouri when Pete was in junior high school. There, he attended the St. Louis Country Day School, an exclusive private high school, where he won an award in his senior year for combined scholarship, athletics, and citizenship. In the fall of 1952, Pete Wilson enrolled at the Yale University in Connecticut, where he received a U.S. Navy (Marine Corps) ROTC scholarship, majored in English, and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree.

After graduation from Yale Univ., Wilson served for three years in the Marine Corps as an infantry officer, eventually becoming a platoon commander. Upon completion of his Marine Corps service, Wilson earned a law degree from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1962, while working for the Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard M. Nixon, Wilson got to know one of Nixon's top aides, Herb Klein. Klein suggested that Wilson might do well in Southern California politics, so in 1963, Wilson moved to San Diego.

Wilson began his practice as a criminal defense attorney in San Diego, but he found such work to be low-paying and personally repugnant. He later commented to the Los Angeles Times, "I realized I couldn't be a criminal defense lawyer - because most of the people who do come to you are guilty." Wilson switched to a more conventional law practice and continued his activity in local politics, working for Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful Presidential campaign in 1964. Wilson's like for politics and managing the day-to-day details of the political process was growing. He put in long hours for the Goldwater campaign, earning the friendship of local Republican boosters so necessary for a political career, and in 1966, at the age of thirty-three, he ran for, and won a seat in the California State Legislature, succeeding Clair Burgener.

Mayor of San Diego

As the Mayor of San Diego, Wilson guided the city as it transformed from a quiet U.S. Navy & Marine Corps 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 beginning the downtown transformation of the 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"

United States Senator

Pete Wilson as U.S. Senator

In 1982, Wilson won the Republican primary in California to replace the retiring U.S. Senator S.I. Hayakawa. Wilson's Democratic opponent was the outgoing two-term Governor Jerry Brown. Wilson was known as a fiscal conservative who supported the Proposition 13 while Brown opposed it. However, Brown ran on his record as the Governor of building the largest state budget surpluses in California history. Both Wilson and Brown were moderate-to-liberal on social issues, including support for abortion rights. The election was expected to be close, with Brown holding a slim lead in most of the polls leading up to Election Day. Wilson hammered away at Brown's appointment of the (liberal) California Chief Justice Rose Bird, using this to portray himself as tougher on crime than Brown was. Brown's late entry into the 1980 Democratic Presidential primary, after promising he would not run was also an issue. Finally, President Ronald Reagan made a number of visits to California late in the race to campaign for Wilson. Reagan stated that the last thing he wanted to see was one of his home state's U.S. Senate seats fall into Democrats' hands, especially to be occupied by the man that succeeded him as the Governor. Despite exit polls indicating a narrow Brown victory, Wilson edged him out to win the election. A major factor may also have been a late influx of the Armenian vote in the California Governor's race between George Deukmejian and Tom Bradley. Many of these votes came from Fresno and the Central Valley which were heavily Republican. These same voters who voted for Deukmejian for Governor also voted for Wilson for Senator.

In 1985, Wilson cast a key vote in favor of Ronald Reagan's budget. Just 32 hours after having surgery to remove his ruptured appendix, Wilson arrived by ambulance at the Capitol Building shortly after midnight and was wheeled onto the Senate floor wearing blue pajamas covered by a brown velour robe. Not only was Wilson able to cast his vote in a firm voice, but he even held a brief press conference during the late-night session in which he jokingly asked reporters, "What are you all doing up this late?"

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.

Wilson was re-elected for his second term in the U.S. Senate, but he decided to run for Governor of California during his first two years of his second term, and he resigned from the Senate when he won the election for the Governor.

Governor of California

Official portrait of Pete Wilson as Governor of California^[2]

Pete Wilson was elected the Governor of California in 1990, defeating the former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who would go on to be elected to Wilson's former U.S. Senate seat two years later. Wilson was sworn in as the Governor in early 1991.

Wilson's eight years as the 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 measures 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 with early remedial education. Wilson also promoted additional programs for individualized testing of all students, teacher competency training, a lengthier instructional year, and programs focusing on a return to phonics and early mastery of early reading, writing and mathematical skills.

Wilson led efforts to enact tougher, and often considered extreme,^{[citation needed]} crime measures and signed into law the controversial "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.) Wilson also supported resuming the death penalty in California, after 25 years of a moratorium, and he signed the death warrant for the execution of Robert Alton Harris in April 1992. A total of five people were executed under his administration (the first two by the gas chamber, the latter three by lethal injection).

Wilson spoke at the funeral services for former First Lady Pat Nixon in 1993 and former President Richard M. Nixon in 1994 at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. Two years later, Wilson became, to date, the most recent Governor to speak at a California gubernatorial funeral, that of former Governor Pat Brown.

In Wilson's 1994 successful campaign for re-election against Kathleen Brown, his two signature issues were his opposition to the billions spent by the State funding services for illegal immigrants and the race based quota components of Affirmative Action. Support for the overwhelmingly popular Prop 187 helped give him a landslide win.

For most of his time as the Governor, Wilson reduced per-capita infrastructure spending for California, much as he had done as the Mayor of San Diego. [1] Many construction projects - most notably highway expansion/improvement projects - were severely hindered or delayed, while other maintenance and construction projects were abandoned completely. [2]

While his decision to merge the California State Police into the California Highway Patrol (CHP) was applauded by some as a better way to allocate taxpayer's money, the Highway Patrol was severely limited in its law enforcement capacity by a minimal budget, which would not be restored until Wilson's successor Gray Davis took office in 1999. Wilson remains a champion for tough-on-crime laws supported by state-wide law enforcement.

Wilson left California with a $16 billion dollar budget surplus.

Term limit laws passed by voters in Proposition 140, and championed by Wilson in 1990, prohibited Wilson from running for reelection to a third term.

In October 1999, Pete Wilson was given the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution. Pete Wilson was recognized for his 40 years of public service to the state and the country.

Energy deregulation and the roots of the California energy crisis

Main article: California electricity crisis

During the energy crisis, as a Hoover fellow, Wilson authored an article titled "What California Must Do" that blamed Gray Davis for not building enough power plants. Wilson defended his record of power plant construction and stated that between 1985 and 1988, 23 plants were certified and 18 were built in California [3]. The San Francisco Chronicle contradicted this claim in a 2001 article that claimed that no new facilities had been built in the last decade [4]. The graphs Wilson provided in his article showed that Davis had approved twice as many new power plant capacity in Davis' first three years as Governor as Wilson's eight years. The Governor Gray Davis Digital Library contends that Davis' energy policies during his governorship resulted in 38 power plants, totaling 14,365 MW [5].

Wilson acknowledged that he had not anticipated the large growth in energy demand [6]. While Davis blamed Wilson for the energy deregulation plan [7]he rarely acknowledges the fact that he voted, along with 100% of the California legislature, to deregulate the State's electricity market. In 2003, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that the energy crisis was caused by poorly structured energy deregulation and market manipulation that was allowed under deregulation.^[3]

Presidential campaign (1996)

Wilson also ran for President in the 1996 election, making major announcements on both the east and west coasts. Wilson announced first in New York City, at Battery Park, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop. He completed a cross-country tour, with his west coast announcement at the Los Angeles, California Police Academy.^{[citation needed]}

The Wilson campaign had problems from the start. After deciding to run, he almost immediately had throat surgery that kept him from announcing — or even talking — for months. His campaign lasted a month and a day and left him with a million dollars in campaign debt.^[4]

Banking, teaching, and corporate advisory career

Statue of Wilson in downtown San Diego

After leaving office, Wilson spent two years as a managing director of Pacific Capital Group, a merchant bank based in Los Angeles, California. He has served 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 has been 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?"^{[citation needed]}

Wilson is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank affiliated with Stanford University, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Richard M. Nixon 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. Wilson sits on two prestigious Federal advisory committees, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. He currently works as a consultant at the Los Angeles office of Bingham McCutchen LLP, a large, national law firm.^{[citation needed]}

In 2003, Wilson was co-chair of the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Gray Davis as governor of California.^{[citation needed]}

In 2007, a statue of Wilson joined Ernest Hahn and Alonzo Horton on what has been dubbed^[who?] the San Diego Walk of Fame. At the unveiling, Wilson quipped:

"View this statue, as I will, as a surrogate recipient of the tribute that's deserved by all of you who shared the dream, who made it come true and gave all the proud neighborhoods of San Diego the vibrant heart they needed."^{[citation needed]}

On 23 May 2009, as a former governor, Wilson gave the commencement speech and received an honorary degree from the San Diego State College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts.^{[citation needed]}

Wilson is married, has two step children and five grandchildren, and lives in Los Angeles, California.^{[citation needed]}

Honors and awards

During and after Wilson's distinguished career, he was awarded numerous awards and honors:

• The Woodrow Wilson Institute award for Distinguished Public Service
• The Patriots Award by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society
• An honorary degree from the San Diego State College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts
• The Distinguished Alumnus Award from Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley
• The Bernard E. Witkin Amicus Curiae Award given by the Judicial Council of California

See also

• Pete Wilson's official website

United States Marine Corps portal

References

1. ^ San Diego Genealogy Project: Pete Wilson
2. ^ "Official portrait of Pete Wilson as Governor of California". California State Capitol Museum. http://californiagovernors.ca.gov/h/biography/governor_36.html. Retrieved 2008-12-12. 
3. ^ FERC Summary of findings
4. ^ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983558,00.html

External links

Campaign literature and videos

• Reaffirming Liberty: Wilson for President Campaign Brochure
• Pete Wilson, Candidate for Governor, 1994 Platform Papers, Speeches and Endorsements

Miscellaneous

• Pete Wilson Biography and Inaugural addresses
• Hoover Institution Biography
• Cal Voter: Gov. Wilson's Record on Crime
• Undated speech by Pete Wilson on Affirmative Action titled "The Minority-Majority Society"

California Assembly
Preceded by Clair Burgener	California State Assemblyman 1967–1971	Succeeded by Bob Wilson
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Preceded by Frank E. Curran	Mayor of San Diego, California 1971–1983	Succeeded by William E. Cleator, Sr.
Preceded by George Deukmejian	Governor of California 1991–1999	Succeeded by Gray Davis
United States Senate
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Persondata
NAME	Wilson, Pete
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Politician and United States Marine Corps officer
DATE OF BIRTH
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

[[]]

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