Garamendi vows `revival' for Lt. Gov.'s office
Pasadena Star-News 2/17/07
So promises John Garamendi, who has made a career of bringing life to previously moribund offices he's held. Garamendi, who could have run in November for another term as state insurance commissioner, instead opted for a risky run for lieutenant governor, a job with the same constitutional responsibilities as the vice president of the United States - virtually none.
All Garamendi will be formally required to do for the next four years is check each morning to make sure Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's heart is still beating. Then, if he wants, he can roll over and go back to sleep. Yes, he automatically has seats on the University of California Board of Regents, the state Lands Commission and is a trustee of the California State University system. But no law says he has to be the least bit active there, and many previous lieutenant governors were not.
But that's never been the style of Garamendi, the onetime all-American tackle at Cal-Berkeley (yes, he really was a consensus all-American, unlike many other politicians who claim past athletic renown).
When he took over as president pro tem of the state Senate in the 1980s, he quickly converted what had been a largely symbolic job into a policy-shaping force. As the state's first insurance commissioner in the early 1990s, he made that office a consumerist force. When he took a hiatus to become deputy secretary of the Interior, the insurance commissioner's office quickly lost its impetus and became involved in scandal. Garamendi had to rebuild it again when he returned there in 2002.
Now he vows to make the lieutenant governor's office something it's been before: A major voice in shaping public policy for the state.
"I've got the second best sound system in the state if I want to use it," he said in an interview. "I intend to use it."
Garamendi says he wants most to work on education, global warming and health care, and the posts that come with his office give him platforms for all those efforts.
"At UC and the state university system, we're facing big questions: How are we going to produce enough teachers and nurses to meet the state's needs?" he said. Garamendi figures the impending retirement of a host of teachers and nurses now in their 50s and early 60s will necessitate training and recruiting 50,000 teachers in the next five years, far more than have been turned out in the last five. It's much the same for nurses.
"I'm already talking with the top people at UC and CSU about that," he said. "I'm going to be a very active regent and trustee."
But perhaps his best opportunity comes with his seat on the three-member state Lands Commission, with jurisdiction over offshore oil drilling, ports, rivers and many beaches. The state is now looking at a spate of proposals for liquefied natural gas receiving terminals along the coast, all of which would spew large quantities of carbon-related greenhouse gases and promote similar production by other industries.
"Call me a concerned skeptic on LNG," Garamendi said, taking care not to commit his vote in advance on any single question.
Within days of his election last November, the new lieutenant governor was holding meetings with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on his pet issues. With a large physique and a considerable athletic background of his own, Garamendi is one of the few people who meet Schwarzenegger that's not overly impressed by the governor's charismatic muscleman presence.
Garamendi promoted himself in the early phases of his campaign for lieutenant governor as a potential strong voice opposing Schwarzenegger. But now, he says, things have changed.
"I was talking about the Schwarzenegger of 2005," he said. "But if he stays on the path he's been on the last year, we'll find many, many opportunities to work together."
Will Garamendi spend a lot of his time running and fundraising for the 2010 Democratic nomination for governor, the way ex-Gov. Gray Davis did while lieutenant governor during the mid-1990s? He says no, despite having run for governor twice before. "I will be in policy mode," he said. "I'm not going to be in campaign mode, but I will leave my options open. First, though, I've got to get on top of this job."