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Posted on 01/02/2003 4:24:19 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
SACRAMENTO – Now that he no longer holds elected office, former state Sen. Steve Peace offers a surprising explanation for his notorious tendency to talk your ear off.
The El Cajon Democrat suspects that the white knuckles on the microphone were not so much the death grip of an overbearing orator as the mark of a shy guy whose nervousness tended to make him talk too much.
"I am not a very natural public person," Peace said recently.
His energetic, 20-year legislative career seemed at times to be one long-winded trek, spiced with a dash of rant and tirade, through every possible detail and concept of the issue at hand.
A fellow legislator said, not entirely in jest, that the former high school debater could passionately argue both sides of an issue and then reverse his position under the sway of his own rhetoric.
A profile of Peace that appeared in The San Diego Union in 1985 said the story was based on a four-hour interview. There was no mention of whether restroom breaks were allowed.
After term limits barred him from re-election this year, Peace, 49, was looking forward to the comparative anonymity of cranking up a career in film that began a quarter-century ago when he produced the cult movie "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes."
He sold his share of a San Diego company, Four Square Productions, and is launching a new one in Los Angeles named Killer Tomato Enterprises that plans to release a Halloween DVD marking the 25th anniversary of the horror-film spoof.
"We are bumping the pumpkin," Peace boasted. "It will be the last tomato-free Halloween."
But he got a call that will cause him to put some of his planned writing and entertainment projects on the shelf, leaving the day-to-day operation of his new company to its vice president, Michael Beyer.
Peace agreed to become Gov. Gray Davis' top budget adviser as Department of Finance director after receiving calls from the governor's chief of staff, Lynn Schenk, a fellow San Diegan who pushed for the appointment, and then from Davis himself.
"I think the bottom line was being convinced of his sincerity, in a sustained and focused way, to deal with structural reform," Peace said.
The governor wants to use the current budget crisis, a record $34.8 billion shortfall, as an opportunity to propose a reform of the tax structure that would end the feast-and-famine cycle of surpluses and deficits.
Peace, a former Senate budget chairman, had said in recent years that state finances need a sweeping reform. But he thought then it was likely to come not from the gridlocked Legislature, but from a business-backed ballot initiative.
Reform is a theme throughout the political career of Peace, whose plans to run for the office of secretary of state were scrapped when he became identified with a disastrous attempt to restructure California's electricity industry by deregulating it.
Another hallmark of his career is that he developed a political position, clearly articulated in his youth, that apparently would explain many of his actions after he was elected to office.
"In college, I did a paper promoting the need for what I called the radical moderate," Peace said in the 1985 interview, recalling his days as a political science student at the University of California San Diego.
He argued that conservatives and liberals tend to be more forceful and successfully set the agenda, while the moderates who make up the majority of the electorate tend to be, in a word, moderate and have their views ignored.
The two traits, reform and political moderation, were on display when Peace and four other young Democratic Assembly members formed the "Gang of Five" in the late 1980s.
It looked like a typical power grab by a group of moderates threatening to join with all 36 Republicans in a bare-minimum, 41-vote motion to oust the liberal regime of then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, D-San Francisco.
But Peace, the group's theoretician, would buttonhole reporters and argue, at length, that it was all about reform. The group made several proposals, including legislative term limits and a ban on fund raising in nonelection years.
In recent years, Peace turned his attention toward reforming San Diego County government. He pushed through legislation that created a regional transportation planning agency and an airport authority that has taken over control of Lindbergh Field from the Port Commission.
Peace was honored last fall in Chula Vista, where he received a key to the city and a county proclamation. He is generally regarded as the most influential San Diego legislator since former Senate President Pro Tempore Jim Mills.
An old acquaintance, San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox, can list many San Diego facilities that received state funds when Peace was budget chairman, among them Otay Regional Park and the Maritime Museum.
As with others who try to take the measure of the man, Cox mentioned the quality of Peace's mind: "He has probably been one of those who have been more of a thinking elected official."
In the spring of 2000, just as the failed deregulation hit San Diego power bills, a political magazine, The California Journal, rated Peace as the smartest and hardest-working legislator, based on interviews at the Capitol.
It was small comfort for Peace, whose family – wife, Cheryl, and three college-age sons – received threats because of the electricity crisis. He is still struggling, with limited success, to escape the label of being the mastermind of deregulation.
As columnist Gail Collins wrote in The New York Times in April 2001, "Mr. Peace is widely regarded as the chief author of the bill that deregulated the state's utilities, a distinction that has made him the first California state senator to achieve celebrity status without being married to Jane Fonda."
A committee chaired by Peace wrote a deregulation plan in 1996 that was approved by the Legislature without a single "no" vote. Consumer lobbyist Lenny Goldberg later said a persuasive Peace caused him to drop his opposition.
In February 1999, Peace issued a news release saying San Diego Gas & Electric Co.'s early payoff of "stranded" costs and pending deregulation of rates "is another confirmation that the Legislature got it right."
Senate President Pro Tempore John Burton, D-San Francisco, said last fall that Peace "was so sure it was going to work" that he talked about the deregulation bill like it was his, even though the author was a Republican.
"Then when it went to hell in a handbasket, he got somewhat defensive and went into a funk and would berate FERC and berate FERC," Burton said.
Some thought Peace's repeated denunciation of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for failing to restrain wholesale power prices was only an attempt to shift blame, said Burton, but "he was absolutely right."
Peace says now that he was "the leading opponent of deregulation," but believed the Legislature had to rework a flawed plan by the state Public Utilities Commission to make the best of a bad situation.
"If we hadn't, we would have had thousands of bankruptcies in California instead of just two utilities," he said.
Peace said he warned about Enron Corp.'s business practices during the committee hearings as the bill was being written. He expects to be fully vindicated as more is revealed about the manipulation by the now-defunct energy giant and others.
Another reform pushed by Peace was writing bills in committee in public view rather than in private negotiations. He followed the policy while writing the deregulation bill and an earlier workers' compensation reform.
Peace said the workers' compensation reform done a decade ago "has held up pretty well." Corporate critics say the system still has some serious flaws. But Peace said any agreement in the ongoing struggle between workers, employers, insurers and lawyers has to be redone periodically.
In addition to reforming institutions, Peace also worked to create some: a state Infrastructure Bank to finance local public works, and an Office of Privacy Protection to guard personal information in the electronic era.
"I feel pretty good about having been in front of the curve on a variety of issues," he said.
After Peace entered the Legislature two decades ago, some of his early bills were part of a crackdown on crime through stiffer penalties, a history that should resonate with Davis' hard-line stance on crime.
"When I got to the Legislature, California was the crime capital of the world," Peace said. "If you wanted to commit a crime and get away with it and do it again, this was the place."
As he became a legislator at age 29, Peace had already spent seven years working as an aide to two former San Diego legislators, Larry Kapiloff and Wadie Deddeh. But his intelligence and savvy were overshadowed early on by his occasional volcanic outbursts, some of which remain Capitol legend to this day.
In his farewell remarks to the Senate, Peace became emotional as he talked of his "Capitol family," mentioning everyone from his own staff to the "guys in the garage."
He thanked them for offering words of encouragement during the darkest hours of deregulation, "not on a political level at all but on a personal level," which he said helped him get through the ordeal.
Now as he looks back at his legislative career, Peace regards his time at the Capitol as "my graduate school" and a great environment in which to learn and grow.
"You get exposed to a lot of things," he said. "I would do it again in a heartbeat."
I mean:
He sold his share of a San Diego company, Four Square Productions, and is launching a new one in Los Angeles named Killer Tomato Enterprises that plans to release a Halloween DVD marking the 25th anniversary of the horror-film spoof.
"We are bumping the pumpkin," Peace boasted. "It will be the last tomato-free Halloween."
Is this guy serious?
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calgov2002: for old calgov2002 articles. calgov2002: for new calgov2002 articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register |
Oh, that's rich!!! Encore!!! Bravo!!! ROTHFLMAOPIMP!!!
Thanks, Ernesto...
Quick! Anybody got a pic of Depression Davis with no right ear?
Which finally proves he's full of IT!!!
I just realized what you said, I read this an hour ago I think!
This "man" is a boy who refuses to grow up, even though he's getting older he remains childish. He actually throws TANTRUMS like the spoiled child that he can't outgrow.
Even his very name is an oxymoron! The "work" that made him famous, or should I say infamous is the epitome of absurdity! Yes, I'm talking about his absurd "cult movie" and his monkeywrenching of energy deregulation for the "cult of consumer lawyers!"
His adopted label of "Radical Moderate" is an oxymoron and Depression Davis will be far more embarrassed by this appointment than he was by appointing the La Raza Santa Clara County Supervisor to head CalTrans! That only lasted a very short time until Depression Davis was humiliated!!!
Depression Davis has confirmed my suspicions of his total ineptitude with this laimbrained, even more hairbrained appointment! This is to laugh at! Let's do it early and often as it's going to get as comical as laughs unlimited!!!
See what I mean? The new rising star in the "Theatre of the Absurd!"
Arent' Democrats fun to watch as they self-destruct?
In other words, "youse guys is hosed."
Hey! This is the equivalent of appointing David Denkins Mayor of NYC, the day after 9/11!!! Or, appointing him Mayor of Watts to bring down crime!!!
This has to be the most bizzare chapter in CA's history!!!
Wonder if anyone else has any other apt analogies.
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