Meet a Republican Candidate Who Often Acts Like a Democrat

Yes, two other prominent Republicans apparently intend to make serious attempts to deprive Poizner of their party’s nomination. Those would be former Silicon Valley Congressman and law school dean Tom Campbell and ex-eBay chief executive Meg Whitman.

But Campbell has failed twice in attempts at statewide office, while Whitman is a complete rookie — and rookies don’t do well when going after top-of-the-ticket jobs in California unless they’re movie stars like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

His Path to Sacramento

So Poizner is the early favorite among Republicans and he knows it, even if polls don’t yet reflect this very strongly. The geekish-looking billionaire put himself in that position by spending many millions of the dollars he acquired when selling off two high tech companies. His 2006 campaign for insurance commissioner cost him $12 million in personal funds. He spent another $6.7 million on an unsuccessful 2004 run for state Assembly in the Palo Alto area. He put up $2.75 million to support an unsuccessful legislative redistricting reform initiative the next year and he’s invested more millions in a Republican Party voter registration drive, adding $5 per newly registered voter to the $3 previously paid by the party to local Republican clubs for each new voter they sign up.

All that, plus a host of speeches before local Republican fund-raising dinners and a firm no-new-taxes pledge, has made him popular among the GOP faithful, even though he differs with most of them by taking a pro-choice stance on abortion.

But it’s his conduct as insurance commissioner that makes him a threat to Democrats. No commissioner since the office became elective in 1990 has done more for consumers. That’s normally a Democratic distinction.

The $12 million Poizner spent on his 2006 campaign allowed him to refuse any contributions from the insurance companies he now regulates. Before that, they and their agents had consistently funded Republican candidates for insurance commissioner and then tried to exact favoritism from any winner they backed. That’s what brought down the disgraced former commissioner, Chuck Quackenbush, who slinked out of California after being forced to resign, moving first to Hawaii and then Florida.

Impressive String of Accomplishments

Poizner forced a 28 percent homeowners insurance rate cut from Allstate, the second-largest property insurer in the state. He compelled HealthNet to reinstate thousands of wrongly-cancelled health insurance policies. He will shortly create a pay-by-the-mile car insurance rate option and is now enlisting some companies to write “green” homeowners policies, which allow owners of homes that burn or are otherwise destroyed to rebuild with the most energy efficient and environmentally friendly materials and appliances, even if they cost more than direct replacements of lost items.

These are all Democratic-sounding actions, but Poizner doesn’t see it that way. “I have three priorities as commissioner,” he said in an interview. “I want consumers to have lots of choices, which is a Republican thing. I want consumers to have more information and if insurance companies break the rules, I’ll clobber them. So I guess that makes me a hybrid.”

Hybrids are popular in California, as carmakers have discovered and Democrats just might.

Poizner also showed class by evincing no interest when it seemed possible he could take a short cut to the governor’s office. He insisted he would keep his name off the replacement ballot when the prison guards union threatened a recall attempt against Schwarzenegger. Yes, he knew many Democrats would have entered any such election, splitting their party’s vote and possibly allowing a Republican to sneak into office with a fairly small minority vote.

“I understand the political advantage, but I won’t do it,” he said while the recall effort was alive. “It's wrong and it’s a distraction from the things we really need to do, and I won’t get involved in it.”

Somebody Else’s Wallet

He also knows he cannot entirely fund his upcoming run for governor by himself. “Self-financing is a path to failure,” he says, noting past defeats of super-rich candidates like Al Checchi, Steve Westly, Darrell Issa and the late Norton Simon and William Matson Roth. “I’ll raise as much as I can from outside. But I will also soon be deciding who I won’t take money from, just as I wouldn’t take insurance company money the last time.”

So you’ve got a candidate well-liked by his fellow Republicans, who often acts like a Democrat in his job. Also one who has the money to make himself completely independent and a record of doing just that.

It’s a combination California hasn't seen in decades, and one that should strike some fear in just about everyone else considering a run, regardless of party.