Speech by Phil Angelides
at Los Angeles fund-raiser/Beverly Wilshire
November 18, 1993

The great thing about hitting the road, like I've been doing -- you're
looking at someone who has been on the road for 19 days, and by the time
Monday rolls around and the Thanksgiving break comes, it will be 24
straight days. It's a weird phenomenon, though, where that whole process
makes you think about what you have at home. I did fly back last night
on my favorite airline, Southwest Airlines... what great peanuts, huh?

And I spent the day at home with my 4-year-old turning 5-year-old. She
didn't go to school today and I didn't go to work, I didn't make money
calls, I was a bad candidate today. We went to Toys 'R Us, and I told
her she could have anything she wanted in the store. We went to lunch --
Julie, Christina and Arianna. Of course, Megan is 15, and no matter
what, she never misses school, and I said to Julie one day, "Do you think
it's because of her incredible academic interests or do you think it's
because she wants to see her friends?" And I think anyone with teenage
kids knows the answer.

And then we went to the zoo and then I came down here. So it's been a
wonderful day to be with family and with friends.

I do want to thank all of you for being here. It is a very eclectic
group of people -- friends, people who believe I can make a difference,
people who -- at some measure, each and every one of you -- have the most
redeeming feature that anyone experiences in a statewide campaign -- and
that is the very notion of political engagement in public service, and
the notion that somehow, despite all the cynicism, despite the fact that
special interests and manipulation does affect the system, that there are
people all over the state like you, who are willing to come out on an
evening to support someone who wants to lay aside their life and try to
make this state happen again. And I am deeply grateful for your
generosity and more than that, just for your faith and your commitments.
And thank you all for being here.

Many good friends have already been here tonight. Earlier, Assemblyman
Lou Caldera, Assemblyman Joe Baca is here, Assemblywoman Betty Karnette
is here. Brad Sherman is here. I have been very blessed that many of
the elected leaders of this state have stepped forward to help me. And I
have also been fortunate that people from the business community, people
from the entertainment community that we spent many weekends on planes --
Grant Show, Dana Delany, who helped us crisscross the state -- have come
to help me as I go across the state. So thank you very, very much.

This is an incredible process, and it is one that you ask yourself
constantly, why are you doing it, if in fact you approach it the right
way. And on those long days when you're on day 19 of 24, and you're up
at 6:30 in the morning on your way to Merced, and you were in Chicago the
night before, having been in Orange County or San Diego, you pose the
"why" question. And I ask myself, why in this point in my life have I
come to run for State Treasurer, and what do I hope to accomplish in the
next decade of my life? And fully, at its heart, all of this has to do
with how we are made up as people and where we think we can make a
difference. I know in my heart that very much why I'm running comes out
of a dual dynamic.

The first dynamic is that I feel very fortunate to have grown up in an
era when young people were told that one of the best things they could do
with their life, if they had talent, if they had energy, if they had
innovation, was to go into public service. And that in the very public
sector, the common wheel of our society, that you could do things that
would lift up your society. And that it was a good place to spend part
of your life.

For the last 20 years in this country, we've had a very opposite dynamic,
which is that public institutions were not places to make change. And
then, lo and behold, we as a society are always troubled when we have
dysfunctional public sectors. And so I find myself fortunate now in
really trying to reclaim the very notion with which I was brought up --
that, in fact, within this society, the public fabric that holds this
society together, is elementally important, and that those of us who can,
should.

The other dynamic that is very much at play in this 1994 election is the
special obligation with which I was brought up. My mother comes from
another country; my grandparents on my father's side never spoke this
language, but worked 15 hours a day so that their son could go the
University of California at Berkeley, so that his sons could have both
opportunity and an obligation to serve the American community.

And so I found myself with those twin dynamics -- the era in which I grew
up and the family in which I grew up -- coming together in 1994. A time
and a place, in this place I call home -- California -- where the hurt is
great and the belief in our future is questioned, and where I truly
believe that we are at a crossroads: that we as a society -- California
-- will accept our inevitable decline in this time of trauma, or whether
we decide, by sheer force of will -- more important than 100-point
programs, more important than the technical backup, although I've learned
in life that what makes success is the vision coupled with the discipline
to do the 1,000 things to get you to the end result. I found myself, in
1994, thinking about that inevitable decline versus the potential
resurrection of this state. And for me, concluding that wonderful
campaign in 1992, there really was no choice. This was my time.

In my 20's, I always thought I wanted to run for office. In my 30's, as
I had an incredible family -- Julie is here with me tonight -- the best
mother, the best, most solid partner in life for this very mercurial
person with whom she lives -- and as we had this wonderful home in Land
Park, in this community of Sacramento in which we both grew up, I never
thought I would.

But 1994 is not just another election, with another set of people running
for office. It is the time that we will decide whether we're ready to
jump up again and use the next 7 years of this society to build a 21st
century in which my three daughters will come to the conclusion that this
is the best and most productive place to be on earth. And I want to be a
part of that. And I decided that I was going to run for State Treasurer,
because I knew, as someone who had been both in the public realm and had
managed to get things done, and someone who had been in the private
sector and had produced products and produced results, creating thousands
of jobs, and take risk -- what an exhilarating feeling, signing personal
guarantees! It sure gets you up in the morning!

I knew that my life's journey had brought me to the point where I could
make a difference. So I decided to run for State Treasurer. I decided
that I want to go to Sacramento -- 5 minutes away from where I live --
that I wanted to be a person who led the debate in this state about what
capital needs we have over the next 30 years and what percentage of the
dollar we send to Sacramento needs to be invested in the very public
fabric that allows a private society and a private sector to grow --
whether it's transit or higher education, whether it's open spaces that
we can buy now for $2,000 an acre that, when they are threatened by urban
development will cost us $200,000 an acre .

I want to be a leader in working with Californians in building a dynamic
where companies decide that it's worth investing in this state's future.
I want to go in as Treasurer -- sitting on top of those $112 billion in
pension funds -- one of the largest capital formations today in America
-- the first thing I want to do is that I want to make sure we get the
best rate of return on those funds to meet obligations to retirees and
that's really job #1, job #2, job #3. But in that context of $112
billion, I want to work a few extra hours every day to figure out how we
can use that money to get this economy going again. And how we can help
talented, successful entrepreneurs to make things happen, and grow new
industries in California.

And I'll just say that with the debate about NAFTA now being over, and
the emotion behind us, it is now before us, California, to begin our
resurrection by helping industries that will produce products that will
sell in the world marketplace to begin to flourish in this state. And
when that happens, we will replace the defense industries and the
manufacturing jobs. It will be a long haul, but if we do it, it will be
worth the struggle.

And I want to go to Sacramento, finally, to make public institutions work
again. I think we've suffered greatly in this state from, frankly, a
whole set of people on the conservative side of the ledger railing
against government with no intention of fixing it because it made too
good a campaign tool...and with a whole set of people on my side of the
ledger -- the Democratic ledger -- clearly defending what was not working
anymore. I think that the voters are in a great mood. Turnout was up
for the first time in this country in 30 years, in 1992. People want
people who are willing to go into government to make the instrument
work. At our hearts, we know that whether its libraries or public
schools or infrastructure on which we drive, travel and move goods, we
all know that a functional public sector is vital.

And as one of the chief fiscal officers of this state, I will ask the
hard questions. I will ask, how can you justify in a society with
businesses just barely making it and where every dollar is precious, how
can you justify spending $500 million for stress claims in a workers comp
system when you can't send little kids to Head Start. Every measurement
from government has to be on what steps do we take, how we make state
government an instrument for the resurrection of this state.

And I also want to create a state government of judgement. One that sees
successful, talented people trying to create businesses, and takes a
stake in their success. A government of judgement that gets the
difference between a polluting industry in a bad place and job-creating
industry in urban environments in California.

I want to go to do. And at its core, I turned 40 this year, which isn't
old, it's not young, but it is one of the turning points that we all go
through on that journey from birth to death. I want to feel that I used
this decade of my life -- not to have the best job I ever had -- but to
make the biggest difference I ever could. And I know that if I do this,
I plan to win and I plan to serve -- that I want to look back on this
decade and feel that it was the best place to use my energy. And at the
end of that period, I may well say, "I'm so good at this and I still have
energy, so I want to keep going." At the end of that period, I may say
that after 4 or 8 years, I did my job and I'm going home. I hope that I
never say that the beast was too big to move and that the effort wasn't
worth it. And you are helping me be one person who is stepping into this
arena to try and bring our state back. For that, I am very grateful.

It is an extraordinary undertaking to run statewide. The pressure to
raise money is overwhelming. The real challenge in a campaign such as
this is to structure it in such a way that you are constantly renewed and
that you can talk enough about issues and policies to remind yourself, in
the course of raising money, why you are undertaking this task. And I
have a very good team, a wonderful staff. They work day and night, they
put up with me. But we're reaching out to many, many people. I am very
proud of the fact that sitting here tonight, with your help, I have
raised more money than any person running statewide other than Kathleen
Brown. But most importantly, I've raised it the hard but good way: 78%
of my donors are people who have given $250 or less. 80% have been
individuals -- it would have been much higher but many, many Greek
restaurants are owned as corporations -- sole proprietorships. And all
kinds of people are stepping forward. This week alone, we had an event
in Orange County on Sunday night. We were in San Francisco on Monday
night, where a group of young Hellenic-American lawyers sponsored an
event. On Tuesday night I was grouchy and tired, had been on the road,
and my face brightened immediately when I walked into my event -- a young
20-year-old who worked in the campaign last year -- never really raised
money or helped organize, said "I want to help you." And this young,
just out of college kid organized 60 friends to write checks of $10 and
$20 and it was a wonderful occasion. And every day, what renews me is
that, despite all the problems -- all the people with talent, diversity
and energy who exist in this state. And it gives me power and I hope to
give power back to that energy.

Thank you all very much for being here. Let me conclude with this notion
because I was with my family today. My family has made this possible for
me to be on the road. They give me a ballast and a warmth that you could
only imagine. And when I question myself, they always let me know that
this is the right thing to do. And in her own way, my 9-year-old truly
told me this the other night. This is a cute story. The best place a
father can be is sitting on his daughter's bed, talking to her before she
goes to sleep at night. And I asked her what she wanted to be when she
grew up. And she said, "I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and
I decided that I want to be one of two things -- I either want to be a
teacher or I want to be Treasurer of the State of California. So I knew
I was doing the right thing. Thank you for helping me do it. Thank
you. Thank you all for being here.

______________________

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