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Pete Wilson

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For others named Pete Wilson, see Peter Wilson.
Pete Wilson
36th Governor of California
In office
January 7, 1991 – January 4, 1999
LieutenantLeo T. McCarthy
(1991–1995)
Gray Davis
(1995–1999)
Preceded byGeorge Deukmejian
Succeeded byGray Davis
United States Senator
from California
In office
January 3, 1983 – January 7, 1991
Preceded bySamuel I. Hayakawa
Succeeded byJohn F. Seymour
Personal details
Born (1933-08-23) August 23, 1933 (age 91)
Illinois Lake Forest, Illinois
Political partyRepublican Party
SpouseGayle Edlund
ProfessionPolitician

Peter Barton Wilson (born August 23, 1933) is an American Republican politician from California. Wilson served as the thirty-sixth Governor of California (1991–1999), the culmination of more than three decades in the public arena that included eight years as a United States Senator (1983–1991), eleven years as Mayor of San Diego (1971–1983) and five years as a California State Assemblyman (1967–1971).

Early life

Peter Barton Wilson was born August 23, 1933, 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, earned his B.A., pledged the Zeta Psi fraternity, and won a Marines ROTC scholarship.

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. Upon completion of his military obligation, Wilson earned a law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

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 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.

Peter Wilson died from a heart attack

Mayor of San Diego

As mayor of San Diego, Wilson helmed the city as it transformed from a quiet navy town to an international trade hub, credited with amending the city charter to make public safety the first and foremost responsibility of city government and leading an effort to manage San Diego's dynamic growth and to revitalize the city's downtown area. He substantially cut the property tax rate and imposed a limit on the growth of the city budget that became a model for California's subsequently adopted Proposition 13. Wilson was largely responsible for transforming the downtown gaslamp quarter from a drug infested area to a highly business friendly and successful downtown. Wilson coined the slogan for San Diego, which is still widely used today: "San Diego: America's finest city"

United States Senator

As a United States senator from 1983 to 1991, Wilson was a vocal proponent for a stronger, more military-based defense and U.S. foreign policy. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he called for early implementation of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a national ballistic missile defense system.

Wilson also cosponsored the federal Intergovernmental Regulatory Relief Act requiring the federal government to reimburse states for the cost of new federal mandates. A fiscal conservative, he was named the Senate's "Watchdog of the Treasury" for each of his eight years in the nation's capital.

Governor of California

Wilson's eight years as governor saw California go into a strong economic recovery. Inheriting the state's worst economy since the Great Depression, Wilson insisted on strict budget discipline and worked to rehabilitate the state's environment for investment and new job creation. His term saw market-based, unsubsidized health coverage made available for employees of small businesses and additional anti-fraud 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 crime measures and signed into law "Three Strikes," (25 years to life for repeat felons) and "One Strike," (25 years to life upon the first conviction of aggravated rape or child molestation.) He also resumed the death penalty in California, after 25 years of moratorium, with the execution of Robert Alton Harris in April 1992.

Wilson spoke at the funeral services for Richard M. Nixon in Yorba Linda in 1994. Two years later, he became, to date, the most recent governor to preside over a gubernatorial funeral, that being of 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, and support for the overwhelmingly popular Prop 187, giving him a landslide win.

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

Term limits, which Wilson enacted into law, prohibited him from running for governor again.

Energy deregulation and the roots of the California energy crisis

As Governor, Wilson championed deregulation of California's electricity markets. The resulting law, AB1890, was unanimously passed by the State legislature and signed in 1996. The law guaranteed reduced rates for residential consumers through the end of Wilson's second term as Governor. The law also required that utilities only purchase electricity for sale to residential customers on the spot market, forbidding long term contracts to smooth out price spikes.

Industry analysts immediately warned the law was a recipe for power outages and price gouging if new power plants were not brought online. Wilson's successor, Gray Davis, did not encourage new building of power plants and, as predicted, the state's energy needs continued to grow, while new generating capacity was not brought on line.

The result was the spectacular California energy crisis of 2001, which saw rolling blackouts across much of the state, while energy speculators led by Enron Corporation were able to charge the state energy prices over 1600 times the historic rate. Wilson outlined his energy policy and urged specific policies in an article published by the Hoover Institution.

Running for US President

Wilson also ran for President of the United States in the 1996 election, making 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 Police Academy. Although his message tested strong in both the Northeast and West, his campaign gained little traction and closed quietly in September 1995 after complications from throat surgery (two weeks after he established an exploratory committee) made it difficult for him to speak.

Banking, teaching and corporate advisory career

After leaving office, Wilson spent two years as a managing director of Pacific Capital Group, a merchant bank based in Los Angeles, California. He serves as a director of the Irvine Company, the U.S. Telepacific Corporation, Inc., National Information Consortium Inc., an advisor to Crossflo Systems, and IDT Entertainment. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of Thomas Weisel Partners, a San Francisco merchant bank. He also served as chairman of the Japan Task Force of the Pacific Council on International Policy, which produced an analysis of Japanese economic and national security prospects over the next decade entitled “Can Japan Come Back?” Wilson is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative thinktank affiliated with Stanford University, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, the Donald Bren Foundation, is the founding director of the California Mentor Foundation and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National World War II Museum. 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.

Most recently, he was co-chair of the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Gray Davis as governor of California. Wilson is married, has two step children and five grandchildren, and lives in Los Angeles, California.

News articles

Campaign literature and videos

Miscellaneous

Political offices
Preceded by
Unknown
 California State Assemblyman
1967–1971 		Succeeded by
Unknown
Preceded by Mayor of San Diego, California
1971–1983 		Succeeded by
Preceded by U.S. senator (Class 1) from California
1983–1991
Served alongside: Alan Cranston 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Governor of California
1991–1999 		Succeeded by
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