News

January 31, 2007

I interviewed Phil Angelides at his office on Capitol Mall in Sacramento on January 29. These are the temporary digs for his business, Riverview Capital, while his permanent office is being built out. On the walls, there is a lawn sign from his run for Sacramento City Council, some political memorabilia, and some nonpolitical décor.

He was relaxed, in casual clothes, had a big smile on his face, and was genuinely happy to see me. It was his wedding anniversary, and he was a little late, having ordered flowers for his wife. As we started talking before the tape recorder was turned on, we talked about family and life. He is clearly a family man. When he talked of being able to be with his family at home and to have dinner with them, it was like a kid describing his favorite thing. But it didn't take long to segue into politics and the issues he cares about so deeply. Unsuccessful in his run for Governor, trounced in fact, he was still the Happy Warrior. It's in his blood.

You know what we were talking about this morning. It's been obviously a different time for me and my family. You know, quiet after just years. Well you know, we've always been politically active since the time I was a McGovern volunteer, since my wife and I first met. The whole family has always been engaged, and we were just commenting actually on our anniversary how, obviously we're disappointed we lost, but there's been this nice aspect to the last couple of few weeks which has been time together, being together at home, having dinner.

Q. You must have been exhausted at the end of the campaign

Yeah, as I've said, Frank, and I don't think you and I have talked about it, it helped immensely that our whole family was part of this, start to finish. Because you covered events, so you saw it. You know, my girls were there, my wife was there. It was this extraordinary phenomenon--"the Angelides family extended family vacation." I mean, it was--that helped immensely.

I'll just tell you that no matter how tired you were in the morning like when the alarm would go off at 6:30 or 7, looking at seven events to do for the day, you go to your first event --you know, it would be at a community college and you'd see all these kids who were just so thrilled to have someone running for governor, there, talking to them. You'd go to East LA College with George Lopez, and there'd be all these young kids, mostly Latino, African American, Southeast Asian, none of their parents had ever gone to college. Their eyes were bright, you know, they were full of energy. And you'd come away from that event charged up. You'd go to the next event which was going to a health clinic one morning--St. John's Health Clinic in LA-- where there was this incredible group of doctors and nurses and volunteers who were providing health care and day care for mothers who were working mothers without heath insurance, and you'd see their commitment and their belief.

As you went through the day, you'd get more energized. By the evening, you'd be electrified by everything you'd seen in the state. I was tired, but I never forgot who I was fighting for, what I was fighting for, ever, no matter how tough it was.

Q. You enjoyed meeting people.

Oh, immensely. It's very hard, you know, I've never understood people's cynicism about democracy. I mean, I see it, because I've seen leaders betray the trust of people . They make promises and they break them. They forget who sent them to the halls of power. When you go around the state and you see the incredible energy and hope and belief--particularly among the people who are scrapping the hardest to make it --it's pretty inspiring.

Q. Let me just ask you. I attended a number of your events. There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm. People enjoyed them. You spoke your heart and soul out. Do you feel that message got out to the public through the media?

No.

Q. Why is that?

No, and I don't say that with any rancor. But clearly there were two campaigns. The one that was in the room, where I was talking to people directly and there was a lot of enthusiasm and belief and then the larger campaign. It is a challenge. It is a challenge in politics nationally and particularly so in a state the scale of California. Less so, you know, I hope for example in the early primary states coming up in the Presidential context because those are still of the size where candidates can meet and engage candidates directly. But we're in a state where that's very hard, so that you have to depend on enormous financial resources, for paid media, number one, and free media that is interested in covering something other than who is ahead in the polls on that day--and who's interested in covering the essence of the race. Or over time, hopefully will have to depend on other ways, like You Tube, like the emerging internet technology that will allow people themselves to make their own determination about what's happening on the campaign trail.

Q. I was just going to bring that alternative media up. A number of folks started covering your campaign at the end with handheld cameras and putting items up on sites like Governor Phil and other places using You Tube, so that people could see and hear a whole speech, unedited. The attention span these days seems to be a whole lot less.

But I think there's a hunger for something more than the typical sound bite. You know, there's a study Frank and I don't know who did it--but the typical sound bite in a gubernatorial race--the study was about 8 years ago and it tracked gubernatorial races from 1974 on. Well, two things, it tracked the amount of coverage, which had shrunk dramatically. And secondly, the average sound bite from a candidate had gone from something like 30 seconds--where you can actually articulate some view of what you are standing for--down to, I believe, the average sound bite now is 5 or 6 or 8 seconds. I believe there's voter hunger for more than is provided, by paid media and by the free media, newspaper and television coverage.

Q. Do you think you should have posted some of your speeches that came from people's back yards?

We did, actually. I think it's going to become a growing phenomena. You see, I think we ran this campaign when the You Tube phenomenon was just coming of age. I think four years from now, Let's go back--in Presidential races, 8 to 12 years ago you couldn't turn on C-SPAN and watch they way you could in 2004--Edwards and Kerry and Dean speaking before people in New Hampshire and Iowa--and make your own judgment. There's going to be much more direct access to voters this time than ever before. It's evolving rapidly and I believe it’s a very good trend. But look, here's what I know. I know we stood for the right things in this campaign. I know that the issues we argued for are ultimately in fact the right direction for this state. I have no question about that, and in fact, one of the real telltale signs of that is that the Governor himself had to adopt much of what we put before the voters this year to retain his seat.

In the end, life is not fair. This turned out to be too steep a hill to climb, too many boulders thrown at us--having to fight two back-to-back battles where we had immense resources thrown at us--$90 million total in negative ads But the playing field is not always fair, and I always said to myself that, as tough as it was on us to wage this campaign--I meant this when I said it--the struggles we went through were nothing compared to the struggles that all those hard working families, al those middle class families, all those kids in school, were going through in this state.

So, when people asked me if I got tired, was I disappointed, sure, I have the normal range of human emotion, but I was in this to carry the banner for a set of causes I believed in, so I'm never tired of doing that.

Q. Some people have said that you didn't have one overarching message. Did you have one, and is there one that fits on a bumper strip?

Sure. The overarching message is, I wanted to put the government of the state of California back on the side of the people of this state. I wanted to give people opportunity, to give people chances. And it was what I stood for from day one all through the end.

Q. You raised a number of issues and you had different themes.

But they were all on that point.

Q. I heard it explained at this conference in Berkeley [the recent UC Berkeley IGS and Center for Politics symposium] that because you didn't have the money for the paid media so that you could put out the overarching theme, one that your individual issues and themes could fit into, that the voters didn't really get that message. Do you think that's true?

Here's what I do think is true. I do think it's true that in the end, given the amount of resources that first Westly and then Schwarzenegger had, and the level of negative assault, it was very hard for us to reach as many Californians as we had hoped to reach with that very fundamental and basic message. There's no question that when we got to the General Election, we started at an enormous disadvantage. We were facing the most famous guy in the world, facing an incumbent in a state where no incumbent had been beaten in 64 years--and an incumbent who, as between his own campaign and the California Republican Party, had about $90 million dollars to spend.

Q. And somebody who changed his positions and his positioning in a very wise move from his standpoint?

Right. And that added to the difficulty in the sense that while I believed that the right thing for the state was to change direction fundamentally for the long term and not just accept one year of goodies. He was able to, in a sense, blunt much of what we put before the voters. But this notion that we didn't have a message or that it didn't take is actually fallacious. The ultimate proof that we knew what we were talking about and that id did have resonance is that Schwarcenegger felt the need to try to do as much of our agenda as possible. He knew in the end that if he dug in and we had the resources--we'd have to have both--then we would have a fighting chance in this election. But in the end, because he had the resources and we didn’t, and because he co-opted our message, he made it very difficult.

Q. Do you feel the Democrats were wise in taking the goodies last year?

Well, two things. First of all, I'm enormously grateful for the number of Democrats that fought wire to wire with me and the campaign and all the people we represented--you know, who never left behind any of those college kids or those middle class families who are struggling just to make it. And I count in those people, people like Barbara Boxer, who was there at the opening bell and was there at the end. People like Nancy Pelosi, who, even though she had 50 House races she was concerned about all over this country, came out to be at the debate in Sacramento, to ask voters to when she went on TV that night to vote for me. People like Dianne Feinstein, people like Mark Leno. People did an enormous amount.

Q. But the Assembly and Senate Democratic leadership took a lot of deals last year, many of which I think wee good public policy…

Yeah. I'm always, and I've always been for good policy. Look, I never wish for other people's misfortune to elevate myself. So, I never considered trying to sabotage things that could help people. Having said that, I believe Democrats have to take the long view. that elections are more than winning for a twelve month period. They are about fundamentally changing the course of society so we get better results--better education, better health care, more equity for working and middle class families. I do believe that some may have lost sight of the fact that one year of goodies does not make for a fundamentally strong future for California.

Q. Speaking of health care, what do you think of the Governor's proposal?

To be continued.

February 1, 2007

This is the second part of an interview of Phil Angelides earlier this week in Sacramento. The first segment was published yesterday.

Here, Angelides makes the case for why politics matters in this state, what he was fighting for, what he accomplished in the state Treasurer's office, and the need to build a progressive movement in California to elect a Democratic governor in the future.

Q. What do you think of the Governor's health plan?

First of all, I'm glad that he recognizes that it's an issue, finally after all the pushing and prodding by our campaign and others.

There are a number of things that the plan doesn't do that it should do. The governor has levied a tax on small business people, he's levied a tax on doctors, he's levied a tax on hospitals, but he's really pretty much left alone the health insurers and the HMOs who are making the most money and the most profit out of the system today. Last year, according to the California Medical Association, Health Insurers and HMOs took about $10 billion in premiums for their overhead, administrative costs, executive salaries, and profits. That $10 billion is enough to insure every uninsured Californian. So one thing the plan doesn't do--it asks for "shared responsibility," but it doesn't ask the biggest guys to chip in.

Q. There is a provision that 85%, at least, of the premiums have to go to health services…

That's where it is today. That's been the standard in California, so the Governor really didn't move the ball. My proposal would have moved it down to 10%.

Q. Do you feel to some degree he's taken some of your ideas and put this into your health plan?

Oh look. I don't think there's any question that all through last year he took ideas that we put on the table and said these are what Californians can do, and look, I'm disappointed in not winning the election but I've always measured political action by what we get done for people. You know, when I was a McGovern volunteer in 1972, I was sorely disappointed that Richard Nixon was re-elected President of the United States, but I know that the Herculean efforts that people undertook in 1968 and 1972 helped hasten the end of the Vietnam War and kept alive the movement for Civil Rights and economic opportunity. I mean, all through my life I've been engaged in campaigns for what we could get done, and you know, the fact is--we proposed to rollback college fees and tuition. The Governor ended up freezing them, at least for one year--and now they're going back up.

Early on, I proposed that the state take a leading role in combating global warming and we put caps on carbon emissions. The legislation has now been signed. Now we'll see if it's in fact implemented in a way that's real.

I advocated for $100 million in new research funds at the University of California to fund cutting edge research in this state that cold fuel our economy for the 21st Century. The governor has included it in his budget.

I advocated that we expand health care to all children and that we ask employers to pay their fare share so that working people would have health coverage and now that's on the table.

So I don't think there's any question that our fundamental message was right for California. In the end, for a combination of reasons--an extraordinarily difficult primary in which, you know, tens of millions of dollars of negative ads were thrown against us, an incumbent with enormous resources and celebrity. For a number of reasons, we could not climb the hill, but there's no question that we pushed the rock up.

Q. Do you think there's anyway you could have won it, looking back at it with total hindsight?

Very difficult. But, Frank, I got in this early on when Arnold Schwarzenegger had 60% plus approval ratings. When the polls we were taking ourselves at the moment I decided to run this race, showed the Governor winning re-election by 20 plus points. A lot of people said to me, "You're a young guy. You can wait to do this--let someone else do this." But this is not the way I'm built. I just don't believe you, that if you have a set of beliefs and you believe we can do better, you stand in, you fight, and you make the case. So, I always believed that it would be extraordinarily difficult. I knew this, you know, I'm a student of history. You know, this year, even in the big Democratic sweep across the country, one incumbent governor went down, and that's in the state of Maryland. Only one.

Q. So, is there anything you would have done differently, from what you know now?

I don't think, in the macro sense, no. I really don't. Was it winnable? It might have been a fight, had the primary not been of the nature it was, and I'll just be blunt about it. Between May 1 and July 1, the Westly and the Schwarzenegger campaigns spent $40 million in negative advertising. It was essentially the Westly message on TV, day and night. You know, the ad about Tahoe that was completely fallacious--attacks on taxes that have turned out to be, again, wholly fallacious from Westly and the Governor. Those did enormous damage to our ability to be competitive at the time we needed to. But you know, life is tough.

Q. Do you feel that any mistakes were made in the campaign?

Oh, I'm sure there were. Always. But again, in a macro sense, it would have been very difficult. But look, I'm one of those people, and the rest of my team are--we'll always look at what you could have done better, could you have done differently. But the fundamentals were--enormous resources thrown at us, an incumbent governor running for re-election in a time frame that most Californians felt the state was doing OK--helped by about $7 billion of unexpected revenue. You know, if that hadn't come in, you would have had a very different budget--cuts to education, cuts to health care. And, you did have a governor who decided that he would take my agenda, at least for a few months.

Q. So, in that way, you've won?

Yeah.

Q. Do you feel the Democratic Party itself, the California Democratic Party, did enough for you?

You can come out of a campaign like this trying to point fingers, lay blame, saying "who should have done more, who should have done x." I actually focus on something very different, which is--I was amazed at how much people did do all over the state. I'm amazed that I think close to 30,000 people contributed to the campaign.

Q. How many contributed to Governor Schwarzenegger, do you know?

I'd be surprised if it's close to that. Certainly, the Westly campaign had one really big donor. But look, 30,000 people contributed. 75,000 people joined our volunteer list, many of them downloading precinct lists, phoning and walking and talking to their neighbors. So many people undertook Herculean tasks, you know gave me--I would get checks from retirees sending me checks of $100 and $500 saying "this is all the money I have, I wish I had more." There were kids, who had never been involved in politics before, who were coming in and volunteering day and night, day and night.

I went to a phone bank one night in San Francisco, that Sal Roselli of United Health Care Workers had put together, and it was one of the most moving moments of the campaign because there were probably 70-80 people at that phone bank, mostly women--immigrants who had become citizens. You could tell, they had all been working at jobs--8, 10, 12 hours before they were there. There they were. They were on the phones and they were excited and believed in what they had done. You know, I look at that, I look at Nancy Pelosi, changing her schedule constantly to be with me. I look at all the people who gave me, basically all that they had, and I'm enormously grateful.

Now, I will say this. By the time Schwarzenegger leaves office, in 2010, it will be 28 years since Jerry brown left the governorship. We will have 23 years of Republican governors. It's very clear that we need to build a much stronger, united, progressive movement in this state. The other side was very united, very focused, with enormous resources.

Q. Do you think they had a better field operation--the Republicans?

I don't know, Frank, you'll have to ask other folks that. I will just say this--I believe we have work to do to build the strength to win gubernatorial elections. The fact is that this is an endemic problem, and not a one election problem.

Q. How do we go about doing it? Through the Democratic Party of the state, through other organizations? You have a list of 75,000 people that would help you out. How do we get from here to there?

I think a lot of this has to be spontaneous combustion. I mean clearly the party has a role. I was party chairman. I'm very proud of what we did. We registered 1.3 million new Democrats in 1992 alone. We actually pushed up the numbers, the registration numbers--the percentages of Democrats in the state actually went up. It can be done. Particularly now when people are motivated by the war, by the hope of change in Washington, it's possible. So the party has a role but clearly all these grassroots, community based organizations also have a role in building the ranks of a progressive movement. But also elected leadership has a role, and I believe that many, many elected leaders did an enormous amount for my campaign, there also needs to be a greater culture of united action, given what's at stake.

Here's what I want to say, Frank, that I think is fundamental. When you asked if I was tired at the end of the campaign, disappointed, I will say that the one thing I was disappointed--I love being in public service because I love being in government to make a difference for people. In the eight years I was in public office, as treasurer, we did big things on behalf of people in this state. We transformed the treasurer's office into a force for progress. We showed that the capital, money, in a free enterprise society could be applied to do good things for people--billions of dollars of investment in inner cities, investments in renewable energy, in environmental technology, using our pension funds to stand up for shareholders who had been defrauded in the marketplace, making the case for investment in education and higher education, in the knowledge and skills of our people. We showed that government can make a difference.

I say all this because, in the end, there's a lot of focus on the tactics of politics, but what we have to remembers as Democrats and progressives is the ultimate goal is to build a politics in this state which is capable of doing on a large scale what we were able to do in the Treasurer's office--make government an instrument for opportunity, for equality of chances for people in this state. Make government an instrument that rewards hard working families. And in that respect, we have work to do to instill that movement in California.

There's more--one more cup of coffee. To be continued.

February 2, 2007

This is the last part of an interview with Phil Angelides earlier this week. The first and second segments were published previously.

All told, the interviews ran a little over half an hour. In this last part, he talks about what he hopes he accomplished in his years in politics including the campaign for governor he finished three months ago and his hopes for the future.

Q. Now as I look at the California Democratic Party website, a lot of the stuff on it deal with the Iraq War and next to nothing has to deal with California issues. Is there some way we can get people connected with California issues?

Well, the Iraq War is going to dominate, for some time now. We're creating a website, I don't know if you have been to it--Standing Up For California. So I think we're going to try to find ways to take the 80,000 people who were actively engaged in our campaign and try to engage with them, and hopefully build the number of people engaged around both state and national issues.

Q. What state issues are you planning on being involved with?

Here's what I'm going to do--as I joke that I'm back in the private sector by public demand--and I will be there for a while--but you know, most of my life has been outside of political office, so this is not something that is new to me. I was an elected official for 8 years of my career, but throughout my career, I've been engaged in the public arena. So when people ask me "So now what are you going to do? Are you going to stay active in politics?"--Of course.

Do you know who I first worked for? Did I ever tell you this story? I first got involved in 1971, when I was an undergrad in college--one day there was a note on the bulletin board--Alard Lowenstein.[A former Member of Congress who was a firebrand in efforts to end the Vietnam War]

I started with Pete Mc Closkey, though because he [Lowenstein] came to the campus and urged people to go to New Hampshire to help McCloskey because it was our best chance to hurt Nixon. So, I spent all of the fall '71, early '72, sleeping on floors. I remember election night in Concord, when McCloskey lost --he got 20% of the vote. Here was this guy who I really admired, because he was standing up to the most powerful man in the world, he was doing the things that were right on the environment, civil rights, on the Vietnam War, and I remember that night being crushed, thinking, gosh, how can a Richard Nixon beat a Pete McCloskey and I spent the rest of the year as a McGovern volunteer and I remember McGovern's concession speech in Sioux Falls, talking about how the campaign was worth every bone crushing moment. And I couldn't believe that a Richard Nixon, who turned out to be the most corrupt President in our history could beat George McGovern.

I say this because I've always been involved in the front ranks of what I believe is every fight that's mattered for progressives. And I'm going to stay at it. And the issues I'm gong to stay involved in are issues of opportunity. Giving young people, and the hardest working families a shake. Issues like access to college. You know, the Governor again cut all the money for college preparation and academic outreach programs. I'm going to stand in and fight for those places where we can give people a hand up, where we can give people a chance. This has been the greatness of this country.

Q. What do you think of moving the primary?

Fine. I think it's always hard to over plan those things. I'm not sure it will have an effect, we'll see. It can't hurt.

Q. Do you have any advice for Bill Lockyer in the role as Treasurer?

Bill and I talked. I actually wrote Bill a little note the night I walked out of the office. My one advice was that money is an extraordinarily powerful instrument and it ought to be used for good purpose.

Looking back at what we did in 8 years, did you get this summary of what we did in the Treasurer's office? I want you to see it because what I did in the Treasurer's office was that we really did make it a place that was a force for progress. We helped reshape how capital was invested in America and the world. Before we got there, there was this notion that you either had to--that your investments were one thing, responsibility to society, the economy, and the environment were something else.

At the end of 8 years, because of our leadership, there is much broader recognition today in the global financial markets that everyone has a responsibility to invest in a way that is financially successful but also does good things for society. Our investments in inner cities, our investments in environmental protection, our mobilizing of shareholders to press corporations to fight global warming, our mobilizing of shareholders to demand ethical conduct in the corporate boardroom, all of those things have changed the way money is invested, all for the benefit of the citizens of the state.

Q. You had a lot of accolades at Lockyer's inauguration to the Treasurer's office and I think many people realize that you did a lot of things in that office.

That was great, and it’s the kind of thing that I would have liked to do as governor--the kinds of programs we did like small business loans, helping teachers who were teaching inner city schools by their first homes, a whole set of initiatives that really broadened opportunities--the kind of thing that I would have liked to have done as governor but I will do in the private realm. So I'm going to be in business, but I'm gong to stay engaged in the public arena.

Q. Is there any legislation you'd like to help the Governor on?

Well, I'm just helpful as a citizen. If we universal health care this year, which be a great goal--that it's done in a way that's fair to small business people and to working and middle class families. Here's what I don't want to see: I don't want to see a façade of a program. I don't want to see a program where we say to a working family who can't even make ends meet today that they have to buy health insurance and they end up buying a policy with huge deductibles that's a boon to the insurance companies and not them. I want the plan to be for small businesses and for the middle class and working families in this state, not for the big insurers.

Q. Are you open to single payer?

I'm open to every idea. Abolutely.

Q. Have you spoken to Schwarzenegger since the election?

Just election night, not since then.

Q. What do you think of his performance as Governor since the election?

It's too early to tell. I mean, look Frank, there are big challenges ahead and I don't mean to rerun the election, but I will say this. I believe that on issues we campaigned on we were fundamentally right. The fact is, I look at the state today and I say "what are the things we need to do to be successful in the years ahead?" We need to have the best education system in the world, more young people going to college. That's still an unfulfilled agenda. We need to expand health care--that's an unfulfilled agenda. We need to have a balanced budget--that's an unfulfilled agenda--and I think the Governor has rough waters ahead of him in that regard.

Q. Have you looked at the Governor's budget?

Yeah.

Q. What do you think of it?

It needs work. It needs to be real in terms of the revenues versus what it's spending. It's an early period, so we'll see how the governor does.

Q. Any final thoughts?

I hope and I believe that we move the ball. That because of my campaign things got done like raising the minimum wage, signing global warming, freezing college fees, a serious discussion of health care, that otherwise wouldn't have happened. Ultimately, that's what politics is about. It's about holding power so you can make the most difference, but it's also about making sure your ideas become real. But here's the other thing I hope for, which is that the thousands of kids who got involved in our campaign stay at it for life. That they are inspired to go on to run themselves, to return, to get other young people involved. That's my most fervent hope.