The Significance of Boring Government
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We take pride in our democracy, our expansive franchise, and our ability to elect even some of the most menial and seemingly unelectable jobs—my personal favorite being the coroner, which requires merely a simple majority of votes and, often enough, a brief state medical exam. It’s comforting to know that, in some counties, I can vote for the guy who will mismanage my body in death. Nonetheless, we as Americans rarely show out in force on election day, and when we do, the numbers barely top 60% of the population—a D grade, sort of like Stanford seniors in regard to the recent University of Connecticut and Intercollegiate Studies Institute civics exam. But even then, we only show up in those high numbers during a highly contested Presidential election. Even midterms that determine the control of Congress hardly solicit going to the polls—so imagine what kind of massive turn out there is for local dogcatcher elections.
Yet we do not feel compelled, as Australia does, to require voting of our citizens. We believe in personal responsibility and aren’t about to tax you if you don’t vote. I won’t get into the merits of this, though I am likely to agree with such a resolution as we have today—the point of this article is to talk about a particular candidate running for a strange office in the state of California.
The office is Insurance Commissioner. Despite its boring and perhaps even dreary subject matter, the office is vital to the economy of California and this particular race coming up this November is especially essential to residents of the Golden State.
The Republican candidate is a Stanford Business School graduate named Steve Poizner. Don’t shy away from him if you’re not a Republican. He’s running against Cruz Bustamante, famous during the recall process as having bucked the state Democratic Party to run for Governor, only to lose to the now incumbent Schwarzenegger and thank a series of Indian gaming casinos in his concession speech. Now, Cruz is back, and kicking off his campaign for insurance commissioner by going on a diet. Yes, you can track Cruz’s weight by going onto his campaign website!
Not only has Bustamante proven himself to be a complete incompetent as both Lieutenant Governor and candidate, but up until very recently, he was receiving campaign contributions from the insurance industry—an industry that his office is charged with regulating.
Contrast this against Steve Poizner. He has refused to accept any contributions from the insurance industry. He is an entrepreneur who founded and chaired a company that developed the GPS technology in cell phones that has saved countless lives around the country. He is a former White House fellow, having started his tenure at the National Security Council days before 9/11, only to end up being a part of the massive security overhaul in the United States in response to the terrorist attacks. Steve came back to California only to teach two semesters at an inner city school before spearheading education reform in the state and throughout the country.
Too often, truly competent individuals can only be found running for big offices. And yet, also too often can we find no competent individuals running for big office. The case before you is one in which someone truly competent is running for what some might consider a less important position. Make no mistake: Steve Poizner is an extremely intelligent and charismatic guy who has done his homework on the insurance industry in California. I’ve had the opportunity to meet him a couple of times and I can assure you he is capable of answering practically any question on the subject and has a plan for California’s future. Perhaps for these reasons he has lined up endorsements from local, state, and federal elected officials, taxpayer groups, law enforcement coalitions, and newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee.
If you’re registered in the state of California, please consider voting for Steve Poizner for Insurance Commissioner (his website can be found at www.joinsteve.com). Sometimes voting can simply be a case of choosing the better of two evils, but in this race, Poizner presents a positive good while Bustamante presents a staggering negative.
