Peter Barton Wilson was born on August 23,1933 and is an American attorney and politician who served as a United States senator from California from 1983 to 1991 and as the 36th governor of California from 1991 to 1999.
70 Facts About Pete Wilson
2.
Pete Wilson established a legal practice in San Diego and campaigned for Republicans such as Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater.
3.
Pete Wilson won election to the California State Assembly in 1966 and became the Mayor of San Diego in 1971.
4.
Pete Wilson held that office until 1983, when he became a member of the United States Senate.
5.
Pete Wilson resigned from the Senate after winning the 1990 California gubernatorial election.
6.
Pete Wilson was an advocate for California Proposition 187, which established a state-run citizenship screening system with the intention of preventing illegal immigrants from using social services.
7.
Pete Wilson sought the Republican nomination in the 1996 United States presidential election but dropped out of the race before the primaries began.
8.
Pete Wilson retired from public office after serving two terms as governor.
9.
Pete Wilson is a distinguished visiting fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.
10.
Pete Wilson co-chaired Arnold Schwarzenegger's successful 2003 gubernatorial campaign and served as a campaign advisor for Larry Elder's unsuccessful 2021 gubernatorial campaign.
11.
Peter Barton Wilson was born on August 23,1933, in Lake Forest, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago.
12.
Pete Wilson's parents were James Boone Wilson and Margaret Wilson.
13.
Pete Wilson's father sold college fraternity jewelry to work his way through University of Illinois, and later became a successful advertising executive.
14.
The Wilson family settled in St Louis, Missouri when Pete was in elementary school.
15.
Pete Wilson then attended the private, non-sectarian preparatory middle school John Burroughs in Ladue, and then St Louis Country Day School, an exclusive private high school, where he won an award in his senior year for combined scholarship, athletics, and citizenship.
16.
In 1962, while working as an Advance Man for the Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard M Nixon, Wilson got to know Herb Klein, one of Nixon's top aides.
17.
Klein suggested that Pete Wilson might do well in Southern California politics, so in 1963, Pete Wilson moved to San Diego.
18.
Pete Wilson's liking for politics and managing the day-to-day details of the political process was growing.
19.
Pete Wilson put in long hours for the Goldwater campaign, earning the friendship of local Republican boosters so necessary for a political career, and in 1966, at the age of thirty-three, he ran for, and won a seat in the California State Assembly, succeeding Clair Burgener.
20.
Pete Wilson was re-elected to the Assembly in 1968 and 1970, and in 1971 was elected mayor of San Diego.
21.
Pete Wilson served three terms as Mayor of San Diego, from 1971 to 1983, winning election by a 2:1 margin each time.
22.
Pete Wilson helped to keep Major League Baseball's Padres in San Diego, helping to persuade local millionaire Ray Kroc to buy the team.
23.
Pete Wilson proclaimed the week of the convention to be America's Finest City Week, which became an annual event and gave rise to San Diego's unofficial nickname.
24.
Pete Wilson hammered away at Brown's appointment of California Chief Justice Rose Bird, using this to portray himself as tougher on crime than Brown was.
25.
The Deukmejian voters likely voted for Pete Wilson for United States Senator.
26.
On October 19,1983, Pete Wilson voted in favor of a bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr.
27.
In January 1988, Pete Wilson voted in favor of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987.
28.
In June 1984, Pete Wilson voted in favor of legislation restricting federal highway funds for states that did not raise the minimum age for drinking to 21.
29.
In May 1985, Pete Wilson underwent surgery for a ruptured appendix at Bethesda Naval Hospital, concurrently as fellow Republican Senator Bob Dole hoped to gather enough votes for the Reagan administration's 1986 budget.
30.
Pete Wilson co-sponsored the Federal Intergovernmental Regulatory Relief Act requiring the federal government to reimburse states for the cost of new federal mandates.
31.
In 1988, Wilson won the race for the United States Senate against his Democratic opponent, Leo T McCarthy.
32.
Pete Wilson voted against Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, Bush's tax increase, thus remaining a fiscal conservative.
33.
At the beginning of his second six-year term in the Senate, Pete Wilson announced plans to run for Governor of California.
34.
Pete Wilson voted in favor of the Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination.
35.
Pete Wilson won the Republican nomination for Governor of California to succeed two-term Republican governor George Deukmejian, who chose not to seek a third term in 1990.
36.
Pete Wilson was sworn in as governor on January 7,1991.
37.
Pete Wilson returned the budget bill to the legislature without his signature, revoking a prior commitment to vetoing the measure.
38.
On July 12,1991, Pete Wilson signed a bill mandating that parents neglecting paying for child support could warrant stiff fines and potential suspensions of business and professional licenses.
39.
On July 24,1991, Pete Wilson signed a bill requiring mass transit rail lines to be built underground in the event construction take place in the residential neighborhoods of North Hollywood and Van Nuys.
40.
Pete Wilson feared that the bill would increase lawsuits and make California less competitive economically.
41.
Pete Wilson was the driving force behind the 1996 legislation that deregulated the state's energy market, which was the first energy utilities deregulation in the US and aggressively pushed by companies such as Enron.
42.
Pete Wilson enacted education reforms aimed at creating statewide curriculum standards, reducing class size and replacing social promotion with early remedial education.
43.
Pete Wilson promoted standardized testing of all students, increased teacher training, and a longer school year.
44.
On February 22,1993, Pete Wilson issued an executive order banning smoke in a majority of state buildings barring "buildings controlled by the courts, the Legislature or the state's two university systems".
45.
Pete Wilson said secondhand smoke "threatens the health of non-smoking state employees" and charged workplace smoking with increasing the cost of cleaning, damaged furniture and carpets, and heightens the chances of starting fires.
46.
In late 1993, Pete Wilson traveled to Asia to endorse Californian goods and investment opportunities abroad.
47.
Pete Wilson was re-elected to a second gubernatorial term in 1994, gaining 55 percent of the vote in his race against Democratic State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, daughter of former California Governor Pat Brown.
48.
Two years later, Pete Wilson became, to date, the most recent governor to speak at a California gubernatorial funeral, that of former Governor Pat Brown.
49.
Pete Wilson was succeeded by then-lieutenant governor Gray Davis as governor.
50.
On January 8,1993, Pete Wilson submitted the 1993 spending plan, advocating an immediate cut in welfare grants by 4.2 percent that would be followed six months later by a larger reduction of 15 percent that would be directed at recipient families with an able-bodied adult.
51.
Pete Wilson led efforts to enact "tough on crime" measures and signed into law the "Three Strikes" As a result of the Three Strikes Law, 4,431 offenders have been sentenced to 25 years to life for strings of crime.
52.
Pete Wilson supported resuming the death penalty in California, after a 25-year moratorium, and he signed the death warrant for the execution of child-murderer Robert Alton Harris.
53.
Pete Wilson supported deregulation of the energy industry in California during his administration due to heavy lobbying efforts by Enron.
54.
Nevertheless, during the California energy crisis caused by companies such as Enron, Pete Wilson authored an article titled "What California Must Do" that blamed Gray Davis for not building enough power plants.
55.
Pete Wilson defended his record of power plant construction and claimed that between 1985 and 1998,23 plants were certified and 18 were built in California.
56.
Pete Wilson announced first in New York City, at Battery Park, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop.
57.
Pete Wilson's campaign lasted a month and a day and left him with a million dollars in campaign debt.
58.
On September 29,1995, Pete Wilson told supporters in Sacramento that he was dropping out of the Republican primary, citing he lacked the "necessary campaign funds to take this message to the people who need to hear it".
59.
Pete Wilson became the first candidate to exit the Republican primary.
60.
Pete Wilson has served as a director of the Irvine Company, TelePacific Communications, Inc.
61.
Pete Wilson has been a member of the Board of Advisors of Thomas Weisel Partners, a San Francisco merchant bank.
62.
Pete Wilson is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located on the campus of Stanford University, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Richard Nixon Foundation, the Donald Bren Foundation, is the founding director of the California Mentor Foundation and is the chairman of the board of trustees of the National World War II Museum.
63.
Pete Wilson sits on two prestigious Federal advisory committees, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee.
64.
Pete Wilson previously worked as a consultant at the Los Angeles office of Bingham McCutchen LLP, a large, national law firm.
65.
In 2003, Pete Wilson was co-chair of the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Gray Davis as governor of California.
66.
On September 27,2007, Pete Wilson endorsed Rudolph Giuliani for US President, but Giuliani later dropped out of the primary.
67.
On February 4,2008, Pete Wilson endorsed John McCain as a candidate for US president.
68.
In 2007, a statue of Pete Wilson joined Ernest Hahn and Alonzo Horton on the San Diego Walk of Fame.
69.
On May 23,2009, Pete Wilson gave the commencement speech and received an honorary degree from the San Diego State University of Professional Studies and Fine Arts.
70.
In 2009, Pete Wilson chaired the unsuccessful campaign of Meg Whitman for governor.