[Sosfbay-discuss] Sacramento Bee on Angelides

[alexcathy at aol.com]

Dear Friends,

Whenever I see an inflammatory expose like that San Jose Metro piece on 
Phil Angelides, I always look for a "respectable" mainstream media 
source for confirmation.  See pasted below an article from The 
Sacramento Bee from around the time Angelides announced his candidacy 
for governor last spring.  Wes Rolley may have seen this because Wes 
regularly reads the SacBee.

It's basically a "puff piece."  The Sacramento Bee likes 
"business-friendly" politicians.  But it confirms the facts about 
Angelides relationship with Angelo Tsakopoulos and his experience as a 
developer around Sacramento.

Some people look at the life story of William Jefferson Clinton and 
they see a poor boy from Arkansas who went off to Georgetown, Oxford, 
and Yale Law School and then came home to "do good."

Similarly, some people may look at the life story of Phil Angelides and 
see a nice Greek-American grandson of immigrants who went off to 
Harvard and then came home to "do good."

I do not.  I think Angelides' story, like Clinton's story or, for that 
matter, Sammy Alito's story or Arnold Schwarzenegger's story goes to 
the heart of why I'm a Green and those guys are Democrats and 
Republicans.  I look at the life story of Phil Angelides and I see a 
guy who, life me, was fortunate to be born into a family with educated 
parents and, like me, was fortunate enough to get an excellent 
education who then went off to Harvard and came back with that peculiar 
sense of entitlement that these guys have about ruling the world and 
doing well while doing good.  The guy ran for the Sacramento City 
Council. . . and lost (hell, Tian Harter did that).  Finally, in 1998, 
after he was filthy rich enough to spend millions of his own money and 
after having raised millions for other Big Shot Democrats, Angelides, 
schlepped his way into office as State Treasurer (and we know how 
closely voters follow those elections).

That's it!  That's the whole foundation for all these endorsements for 
making this guy the governor of the largest state in the U.S. and the 
world's fifth largest economy.  If Angelides gets in there and screws 
up, which is likely, then it'll be our duty as "good liberals" to 
concoct rationalizations and apologies for his screw-ups.


Alex


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Published by The Sacramento Bee, www.sacbee.com, April 11, 2005.
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE GOVERNOR
by Alexa H. Bluth -- Bee Capitol Bureau

At age 19 and not yet a Harvard graduate, lifelong Sacramentan Phil 
Angelides did something that many local politicians regarded as 
amusing. Even a little cute.

He came home early from college to run for Sacramento City Council 
against a popular incumbent. It was, Angelides reflected, his 
campus-based fight against Richard Nixon's re-election that compelled 
him to dive into the local political scene in 1973 with virtually no 
warning, no experience and no support.

"God knows what I was thinking," Angelides, now 51, recently confessed. 
"I was so excited about my experience as a college political activist 
that I really believed that you could change the world."

The snickers subsided, however, when it became clear that the young 
Democrat's anti-establishment message had penetrated, at least enough 
to force an unexpected runoff.

He did not win. But in the process, Angelides met a band of liberal 
Democrats who would become friends and political allies.

And Sacramento was introduced to a man who would spend the next few 
decades as a key player in shaping Sacramento's landscape and 
Democratic Party politics in California.

Angelides veered away after his first dips into politics, instead 
building a career and fortune in development. But, among those who have 
known him over the years, few doubted that someday he would run for 
governor.

Late last month, well into his second term as state treasurer, 
Angelides became the first to formally enter the 2006 race for governor.

If Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seeks re-election, and 
Angelides wins the Democratic primary, he will face a megastar who 
easily won his job from Democrat Gray Davis.

It is a position Angelides has sought out and relished unabashedly for 
more than a year, boasting of his efforts to take on a titan when other 
Democrats didn't.

Colleagues, friends and foes describe the same fearless - even 
starry-eyed - determination in Angelides' endeavors long before he took 
public office.

The grandson of Greek immigrants and son of a mechanical engineer who 
urged him to secure his own financial comfort and engage in public 
service, Angelides finished at Harvard and returned home.

He had lived in Sacramento since birth, leaving only for prep school in 
Ojai and college. With a liberal arts degree, Angelides landed a job in 
the state's Housing and Community Development agency, where he would 
begin to sharpen his dreams of shaping neighborhoods.

He also met his wife, Julie, then a legislative staff member. After a 
courtship over lunches at Vic's Ice Cream in the Land Park neighborhood 
where Angelides grew up and the family still lives, the two married in 
1983 in a modest Greek ceremony.

Many times, Angelides said he considered going to business school. He 
had been accepted at Harvard and Stanford. But he chose to stay in 
Sacramento, where he had begun to build a close network of friends, 
including the late Mayor Joe Serna and Capitol lobbyist Steve Thompson.

Angelides ran for City Council again in 1977, and lost.

During that race, he was beginning to form a bond with another figure 
who would prove pivotal in his private and public life, developer and 
Sacramento fixture Angelo Tsakopoulos. Tsakopoulos said Angelides 
sought his support during his first failed City Council bid.

"He came to see me," Tsakopoulos recalled. "He was so enthusiastic with 
what he wanted to do and so sure of himself and sure that he could 
really serve and he could contribute to society in a positive manner 
that he got my attention."
That led to an enduring friendship and business relationship between 
the two men, who share a heritage and are both active in the local 
Greek American community.

In 1984, Tsakopoulos hired Angelides as president of his AKT 
Development Corp., which built projects from Folsom to Elk Grove. Over 
time, Tsakopoulos would become a mentor and a key political contributor 
to Angelides.

Tsakopoulos said Angelides had no problem transitioning to his new 
career. "Within 90 days he knew every deal that we were working on and 
every problem that we were facing," he said.

Though he continued to partner with Tsakopoulos, Angelides eventually 
formed his own development company, River West.

As a developer, Angelides at times found himself on the other side of 
local activism.

He angered neighbors in Folsom's Lexington Hills, where residents said 
they had to scrounge for a park site after the federal Environmental 
Protection Agency found that the park and school site that Angelides 
had designated was a protected wetland.

Longtime local environmental activist Vicki Lee said some of the 
stumbles and developments have achieved just the opposite of the "smart 
growth" that Angelides had embraced.

"He has definitely contributed to the sprawl problem in this community, 
using his wiles and his connections to just wedge little projects and 
big projects in places that were premature and simply bad judgment," 
Lee said. "I live in this town, there's sprawl everywhere and that's 
Phil's legacy from before he was treasurer."

Angelides bristles at the criticism but does not deny it. He said he 
learned and improved with each development and preaches the importance 
of building high-density housing to preserve natural resources.

As he learned the lessons of developing, he also was quickly learning 
how to influence politics from behind the scenes.

In 1988, he became a key fund-raiser for another prominent Greek 
American, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.

Angelides soon was elected as state Democratic Party chairman, at a 
time when the party was plagued by losses and fiscal troubles.

Under his watch, Democrats made huge gains in 1992, including securing 
a victory for Bill Clinton in California and electing Democratic women 
to both of the state's seats in the U.S. Senate.

Angelides' state office is adorned with photographs of his three 
daughters, all of whom have attended Sacramento's St. Francis High 
School, and of mementos of those political victories. Among them is a 
photograph of Clinton in the Angelides home, which has been host to 
dozens of elaborate political functions - from presidential 
fund-raisers to the recent wake for the late U.S. Rep. Robert Matsui.

Meanwhile, as he was emerging as a political force, Angelides and 
Tsakopoulos were beginning a project that would become among the most 
discussed developments on Angelides' resume: Elk Grove's Laguna West.

The development started with his vision to turn a swath of farmland 
into a community designed to transform the way that communities 
developed their suburbs.

Angelides recently sat in his own home, a majestic Spanish-style house 
on the edge of William Land Park, and said that it was his neighborhood 
that inspired Laguna West and still shapes his ideal for what 
neighborhoods should be.

He envisioned a pedestrian-friendly enclave with tree-lined streets, 
parks, a central plaza and a bevy of small businesses close enough for 
residents to reach on foot. It would, Angelides said, attract nearby 
jobs and help to usher in an era of "new urbanism."

"The concept of the development and its execution were very 
forward-looking," said Scott Syphax, one of Laguna West's first 
homeowners and chief executive of the Nehemiah Corp. of California.
But the project was built as the housing market tanked, and got off to 
a slow start as the developers struggled to sell the homes. Angelides 
said he "barely survived economically."

"He's incredibly brave," said Peter Calthorpe, the architect of Laguna 
West. "In Laguna West, he had a surefire project, it was all approved. 
They could have just rolled it out like any other project and made a 
bundle of money (but) he just said to me, there's got to be a better 
way."

More than a decade later, Laguna West gets mixed reviews.

Lauded for its tight-knit feeling, lines of shade trees and parks, it 
has failed to attract the promised nearby businesses or to coax 
residents from their cars any more than any nearby suburban development.

Angelides said he struggled to persuade all of the homebuilders to go 
along with its core concepts, including front porches and granny flats.

On a recent afternoon, Angelides returned to Laguna West and surveyed 
the neighborhood.

"My view is, the measure of a community is how it works after 30 or 50 
years," Angelides said, pointing to the lakefront public park that 
stretches along what Angelides said would have been a profitable spot 
to build expensive and exclusive houses.

"I put everything on the line. We shot for 100; we didn't make 100. I'm 
not ready to grade myself yet, I'll look at it in another 10 years," he 
said. "But I know this: It's measurably more livable, it's a better 
place to live than a standard subdivision, and it was the start of 
what's become a very powerful movement."

In 1994, Angelides sought again to win public office, this time as 
state treasurer. He lost in a general election race in which he spent 
more than $1 million of the money he had earned in development. Four 
years later, Angelides won the office, defeating then-Anaheim lawmaker 
Curt Pringle, and became the state's chief investment officer.

Though Angelides' career had focused on Sacramento, the new statewide 
role suited his personality in many ways, said Tim Hodson, director of 
the Center for California Studies at California State University, 
Sacramento.

"He's a policy wonk," Hodson said. "Policy wonks have strengths and 
weaknesses, and one of the weaknesses is that policy wonks tend to 
think that everybody else is as fascinated as they are about the 
details of policies."

Lee, though critical of some of Angelides' local development pursuits, 
said today environmentalists applaud his activism as a California 
Public Employees' Retirement System trustee, one of his duties as 
treasurer.

Among the efforts, Angelides and state Controller Steve Westly, also a 
trustee in the nation's largest public pension fund, launched an 
initiative to pressure automakers, utilities and other public firms to 
reveal their efforts to curb global warming.

"He has managed to move past all the sprawl stuff and that's exactly 
why so many people support him today because he's taken that intellect 
and energy that he put into sprawl and moved it into government," Lee 
said.

Angelides said he makes no distinction between his accomplishments in 
the public and private sectors. Having served in public office six 
years, he said he hardly considers himself a longtime politician.

Instead, he views himself as a pragmatist and an idealist, and a 
devoted Sacramentan who leads a "simple life," playing tennis with 
friends on weekends and spending time with his daughters.

"Throughout my life I've always tried to pursue my beliefs, what I 
thought was right, no matter what the odds were. I've not been afraid 
of taking the risk of losing," he said. "I'm driven by a set of 
beliefs, and I want to see them become real."

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