speeches

Profile

RON UNZ

* Born: Sept. 20, 1961, Los Angeles

* Residence: Palo Alto

* Current position: Full-time candidate for governor, on leave from managing his small software company.

* Education: Bachelor’s degrees in physics and history, Harvard University. Phi Beta Kappa. Recipient of a Churchill Science Fellowship to Cambridge University in England, where he studied quantum gravitation under Stephen Hawking.

* Career highlights: In the late 1980s, Unz took a leave of absence from Stanford University, where he was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in theoretical physics. He worked as an associate at a New York City mortgage finance company. In 1988, he founded Wall Street Analytics Inc., a financial services software company.

* Family: Unmarried

The Record

Ron Unz has no public record and brings an unusual, if not unique, background to his quest for California’s top public office. He has a strong record of academic and intellectual achievement. His IQ has been estimated at 214–what one expert calls “one in a million”–and as a teen-ager he won first place in the national Westinghouse talent search competition for a paper on black holes. He is a physicist as well as an expert on the Spartan naval empire.

After working for a New York City mortgage finance company, Unz founded his own small firm that sells specialized computer programs to Wall Street firms. The firm has become highly successful during the last six years and has made Unz a wealthy man.

Although he has no political experience, he says he has long had an interest in politics and has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative think tanks and causes.

Unz says his years in the business world have prepared him well to govern California. “In terms of the sectors of the American economy that create wealth, I have more experience than the other four candidates together, times a factor of a few,” he said.

The Speech: In His Own Words

I believe that the Republican Party stands for clear principles and firm ideas–smaller government, lower taxes, fewer regulations and traditional values–and that Pete Wilson stands for nothing except his political ambition.

Over the past three years, Pete Wilson and the Democrats have enacted the largest state tax increase in American history, deepening our recession and destroying jobs. Pete Wilson and the Democrats have led our Golden State to the brink of ruin. A choice between Pete Wilson and the Democrats means no choice at all for the people of California.

Unlike Pete Wilson, I have not abandoned the mainstream of the Republican Party . . . and its basic principles. . . . Under Ronald Reagan, these were the ideas which swept the nation and the world. I am the Republican candidate for governor.

Unlike Pete Wilson, my affiliation with the Republican Party is not hereditary: I come from a family of Democrats. But when that former Democrat Ronald Reagan transformed the Republican Party into the party of the ordinary working people of America, it became my party.

Unlike Pete Wilson, I didn’t attend an elite prep school, but received my education in the public schools of Los Angeles, back when they still provided an outstanding education for all of our children, rich and poor alike. It was this education which provided me with the tools of opportunity I needed to achieve economic success. But today, I am disgusted by the decay of our school system.

Unlike Pete Wilson, I don’t believe we should raise taxes again and again, until our entrepreneurs and small businesses are faced with some of the highest tax rates in America, driving our jobs and prosperity to other states. . . .

Unlike Pete Wilson, who has been on government and political payrolls for almost 30 years as a lifelong career politician, I come from the private business sector, the part of our economy which actually creates the wealth, provides the jobs and pays the taxes. I understand the value of money and the long hours required to earn it. I reject the waste that is routinely accepted by the special interest politicians who don’t understand what it’s like to earn a living in the real world.

Unlike Pete Wilson, who has little or no comprehension of the industries of tomorrow, I come from a scientific and technological background. I know that California’s future prosperity cannot be based merely upon jobs to build and maintain Pete Wilson’s endless array of future prisons.

I know that the high-technology industries of tomorrow such as computers, telecommunications, biotechnology and the entertainment industry can be the foundation of California’s prosperity. I see that the widespread adoption of telecommuting could make our freeway traffic jams a thing of the past. . . .

My grandparents came to California in the 1920s and 1930s as poor European immigrants, willing to work hard to provide a better life for their children.

I am a native-born Californian who remembers the hope and optimism and endless sense of possibility which the California Dream once meant to us. Our state has the finest climate, enormous natural beauty, and tremendous scientific and technological resources unequaled any place in the world.

The primary obstacle on our road to recovery is the deep failure of our own overgrown state government. Join with me in overcoming this one obstacle, and together we can restore the Golden State which we all remember.

In separate speeches delivered a few hours apart, California’s two gubernatorial hopefuls stuck to familiar themes — offering a preview of the issues that could define the November election to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, sought to tie Republican rival Steve Hilton to President Trump during his remarks Wednesday at the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in downtown L.A.

Hilton focused on his immigrant roots and how to help small businesses in California, and ignored Becerra’s attacks.

California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks at the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown on Wednesday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Their appearances at the conference marked one of the first times both candidates have appeared at the same event since the June 2 primary.

Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and former California attorney general, placed first in the primary, winning 28% of the vote. Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, followed with 24.6%.

Republicans make up only a quarter of registered voters in the state, so Hilton may face an uphill battle to victory in November.

Democrats, including Newsom, have sought attention by attacking Trump and defending California policies, and Becerra appeared to lean into that approach on Wednesday.

Without mentioning Hilton or Trump by name, Becerra labeled the president a “false” prophet during his 10-minute address.

“We don’t need people who make a promise to end a war in one day, and today, we still fight it and others,” said Becerra, referring to the ongoing U.S. attacks on Iran. “We don’t need someone who said they will lower the price of gasoline and then raise it by starting a reckless, illegal war.”

California doesn’t “need those prophets and worse. And I tell you this — in California we will not accept their disciples,” said Becerra, seemingly referring to Hilton.

Hilton, who spoke for about five minutes, acknowledged he was endorsed by Trump. He then pivoted to the topic of immigration and alluded to the red tape and regulations in the state that he blames for hurting small businesses.

He recounted how his parents moved from Hungary to Britain, and then how he moved to California in 2012.

“That story of the immigrant aspiration, climbing the ladder of opportunity in a new country, that is my story,” Hilton said.

Hilton attended the University of Oxford and worked a senior advisor to former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron before moving to the state. He also talked about his time running restaurants.

“That is a really tough business, and it is especially tough today in California for small business owners, for working-class Californians, and that’s what I’m fighting for in this campaign,” he said.

Hilton said he is “not an ideologue,” and doesn’t “want to tell anyone how to live their life or run their business.”

“I just want everyone to have a shot at climbing that ladder of opportunity,” he said.

Becerra also chastised Hilton over an incident in May, when Hilton filmed himself eating a Del Taco taco, which he called a “street taco.”

Becerra, looking amused, told the NALEO audience that you don’t get street tacos “in some establishment that’s been around for a long time.”

“You get it on the street from the guy who’s been making it for a long time in his little cart,” he said.

Newsom and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) also previously spoke during the conference, which included discussion of the recent killings of immigrants by federal officers.

“The price of freedom, of democracy, of inclusion, is high,” said Becerra, adding that the price of “simply driving while brown” is “so high.”