Al Plamann, chief executive officer, Unified Grocers, announced he will retire from the company, effective May 1, 2013. Plamann made his announcement at the Company’s Annual Shareholders’ Meeting at the Sheraton Cerritos Hotel.

“Through Al Plamann’s leadership, Unified Grocers has more than doubled in size and has evolved into one of the premier companies in today’s grocery industry,” said Richard Goodspeed, Chairman of the Board, Unified Grocers. “We appreciate Al’s commitment to Unified’s growth and success, and we wish him well in his retirement.”

Plamann has served as Chief Executive Officer of the Company since September 1999 when Los Angeles-based Certified Grocers of California, Ltd. merged with United Grocers, Inc. of Portland, Oregon. Prior to the merger, Plamann served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Certified Grocers of California for six years and also spent four years as Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Before joining Certified in 1989, he had a distinguished 13-year career with Atlantic-Richfield Company (ARCO) in Los Angeles.

“With Bob Ling’s nearly two years of experience as President of the company, an energetic management team in place, a loyal and dedicated group of associates and a strong base of independent retailers, I feel that this is an ideal time for me to step back and let this dynamic group take the Company to new levels of prosperity,” Plamann said. “I am confident that Unified Grocers is well-positioned for success in the years to come.”

During Plamann’s tenure as CEO, Unified has grown from a Company with $1.8 billion in annual sales to nearly $4 billion. Additionally, the Company has expanded its customer base to an area that stretches from Mexico to Alaska, as well as to key international points around the globe.

“Al Plamann has been a driving force at Unified for decades, helping our Company to achieve unprecedented levels of success,” said Bob Ling, president, Unified Grocers. “He has a well-earned reputation as a creative thinker and strategist and his legacy for these achievements and other contributions will endure in our industry for many years to come.”

Plamann currently serves as the Vice Chairman of the Twelfth District Economic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve, as well as the Board of the Food Marketing Institute and the National Cooperative Grocers Association. In February of 2004, he was inducted into the CGA Hall of Achievement. He is a Board member of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Town Hall of Los Angeles, a Board of Visitors member of the George L. Graziadio School of Business & Management — Pepperdine University and a member of the Southern California Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors and Weingart Center Association, a non-profit organization that provides assistance to the homeless in Los Angeles.

With Washington State on the verge of a ballot initiative that would require labeling of some foods containing genetically engineered ingredients and other states considering similar measures, some of the major food companies and Wal-Mart, the country’s largest grocery store operator, have been discussing lobbying for a national labeling program.

Chris McManus, with boxes of petitions for his initiative to require the labeling of gene-engineered food sold in Washington State.

Executives from PepsiCo, ConAgra and about 20 other major food companies, as well as Wal-Mart and advocacy groups that favor labeling, attended a meeting in January in Washington convened by the Meridian Institute, which organizes discussions of major issues. The inclusion of Wal-Mart has buoyed hopes among labeling advocates that the big food companies will shift away from tactics like those used to defeat Proposition 37 in California last fall, when corporations spent more than $40 million to oppose the labeling of genetically modified foods.

“They spent an awful lot of money in California — talk about a lack of return on investment,” said Gary Hirshberg, co-chairman of the Just Label It campaign, which advocates national labeling, and chairman of Stonyfield, an organic dairy company.

Instead of quelling the demand for labeling, the defeat of the California measure has spawned a ballot initiative in Washington State and legislative proposals in Connecticut, Vermont, New Mexico and Missouri, and a swelling consumer boycott of some organic or “natural” brands owned by major food companies.

Mr. Hirshberg, who attended the January meeting, said he knew of roughly 20 states considering labeling requirements.

“The big food companies found themselves in an uncomfortable position after Prop. 37, and they’re talking among themselves about alternatives to merely replaying that fight over and over again,” said Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University who attended the meeting.

“They spent a lot of money, got a lot of bad press that propelled the issue into the national debate and alienated some of their customer base, as well as raising issues with some trading partners,” said Mr. Benbrook, who does work on sustainable agriculture.

For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — like cereals, snacks and salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants with DNA that has been manipulated in a laboratory. The Food and Drug Administration, other regulators and many scientists say these foods pose no danger. But as Americans ask more pointed questions about what they are eating, popular suspicions about the health and environmental effects of biotechnology are fueling a movement to require that food from genetically modified crops be labeled, if not eliminated.

Impending F.D.A. approval of a genetically modified salmon and the Agriculture Department’s consideration of genetically engineered apples have further intensified the debate.

“We’re at a point where, this summer, families could be sitting at their tables and wondering whether the salmon and sweet corn they’re about to eat has been genetically modified,” said Trudy Bialic, director of public affairs at PCC Natural Markets in Seattle. “The fish has really accelerated concerns.”

Mr. Hirshberg said some company representatives wanted to find ways to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to proceed with federal labeling.

“The F.D.A. is not only employing 20-year-old, and we think obsolete, standards for materiality, but there is a general tendency on the part of the F.D.A. to be resistant to change,” he said. “With an issue as polarized and politicized as this one, it’s going to take a broad-based coalition to crack through that barrier.”

Morgan Liscinsky, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, said the agency considered the “totality of all the data and relevant information” when forming policy guidance. “We’ve continued to evaluate data as it has become available over the last 20 years,” she said.

Neither Mr. Hirshberg nor Mr. Benbrook would identify other companies that participated in the talks, but others confirmed some of the companies represented. Caroline Starke, who represents the Meridian Institute, said she could not comment on a specific meeting or participants.

Proponents of labeling in Washington State have taken a somewhat different tack from those in California, arguing that the failure to label will hurt the state’s fisheries and apple and wheat farms. “It’s a bigger issue than just the right to know,” Ms. Bialic said. “It reaches deep into our state’s economy because of the impact this is going to have on international trade.”

A third of the apples grown in Washington State are exported, many of them to markets for high-value products around the Pacific Rim, where many countries require labeling. Apple, fish and wheat farmers in Washington State worry that those countries and others among the 62 nations that require some labeling of genetically modified foods will be much more wary of whole foods than of processed goods.

The Washington measure would not apply to meat or dairy products from animals fed genetically engineered feed, and it sharply limits the ability to collect damages for mislabeling.

Mr. Benbrook and consumer advocates say the federal agencies responsible for things like labeling have relied on research financed by companies that make genetically modified seeds.

“If there is a documented issue with this overseas, it could have a devastating impact on the U.S. food system and agriculture,” Mr. Benbrook said. “The F.D.A. isn’t going to get very far with international governments by saying Monsanto and Syngenta told us these foods are safe and we believed them.”

Advocacy groups also have denounced the appointment of Michael R. Taylor, a former executive at Monsanto, as the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for food and veterinary medicine.

Ms. Liscinsky of the F.D.A. said Mr. Taylor was recused from issues involving biotechnology.

What has excited proponents of labeling most is Wal-Mart’s participation in the meeting. The retailer came under fire from consumer advocates last summer for its decision to sell a variety of genetically engineered sweet corn created by Monsanto.

Because Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer, a move by the company to require suppliers to label products could be influential in developing a national labeling program.

“I can remember when the British retail federation got behind labeling there, that was when things really started to happen there,” said Ronnie Cummins, founder and national director of the Organic Consumers Association. “If Wal-Mart is at the table, that’s a big deal.”

Brands like Honest Tea, which is owned by Coca-Cola, have written to the association, which estimates 75 percent of grocery products contain a genetically modified ingredient, to protest its “Traitors Boycott,” which urges consumers not to buy products made by units of companies that fought Proposition 37. Consumers have peppered the companies’ Web sites, Facebook pages and Twitter streams with angry remarks.

Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company, announced recently that it would remove all genetically modified ingredients from its products by the end of this year. Consumers had expressed outrage over the money its parent, Unilever, contributed to defeat the California measure.

The state Legislature in Vermont, where Ben & Jerry’s is based, is considering a law that would require labeling, as is the General Assembly in Connecticut. Legislators in New Mexico have proposed an amendment to the state’s food law that would require companies to label genetically modified products.

And this month, a senator in Missouri, home of Monsanto, one of the biggest producers of genetically modified seeds, proposed legislation that would require the labeling of genetically engineered meat and fish.

“I don’t want to hinder any producer of genetically modified goods,” the senator, Jamilah Nasheed, who represents St. Louis, said in a news release. “However, I strongly feel that people have the right to know what they are putting into their bodies.”

Reprinted from The New York Times (1/31/2013)

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. – January 22, 2013 – Food Marketing Institute (FMI) announced the recipient of the Herbert Hoover Award, CEO of Unified Grocers, Inc., Alfred Plamann. At this year’s FMI Midwinter Executive Conference, FMI acknowledged Plamann for his humanitarian business efforts by presenting him with this food retail industry honor.

FMI President and CEO Leslie G. Sarasin championed, “Al Plamann is legendary among wholesalers and his abiding commitment to serving independent retailers mirrors his altruistic regard for the individual.”

Plamann has a long leadership history with the company. Prior to his present position, which he has held since 2007, Plamann was president and CEO of Unified Western Grocers (1999-2007), president and CEO of Certified Grocers of California (1994-1999) and Chief Financial Officer, Certified Grocers of California. Unified Grocers operates in a culturally diverse marketplace, and Plamann continues to be a strong advocate for representing the evolving tastes and needs of the cooperative wholesaler’s members and customers.

Joe Sheridan, president and COO of Wakefern Food Corp., commented on Plamann’s honor, saying, “Every industry has its icons–Al is that icon in the supermarket industry. He is an innovator–laying the framework for the buying consortium to which Wakefern belongs; he is an unending source of wisdom and insight in an increasingly complex world; and he has set the bar high when it comes to the integrity and principles by which he conducts himself. Al has also created a member-driven culture at Unified that is a model for other cooperatives. He embodies the spirit of the Herbert Hoover Award and is well deserving of it.”

President of Unified Grocers, Bob Ling, has worked with Plamann for more than 16 years and shares the corporation’s passion for which Plamann is being recognized. In particular, Ling reflected on the philanthropic efforts of his colleague, noting, “Universally, he’s respected as an opinion leader and he’s been thoughtful throughout our history–everyone agrees that he’s a good man.”

Included in his community outreach programs are an internship program for high school graduating seniors that Plamann launched more than 15 years ago. The innovative program provides students with a paying job for the summer that not only is educational but also provides them with an insider’s look at the food industry. Ling noted that all of Unified’s associates look forward to the annual program because it provides a service to young people in a number of communities in which the company conducts business. Over time, the program has grown from Southern California-only to now include Northern California, Portland and Seattle.

Plamann is active with the Weingart Center Association, a non-profit organization that provides assistance to homeless people in the Los Angeles area. Plamann also is active in his support of the Boy Scouts, City of Hope and other community-based groups. Ling further commented on Plamann’s volunteerism, saying, “Al drives the company by leading by example and we emulate his approach; service to our members and the communities in which we conduct business is engrained in our company culture.”

Plamann’s advisory role extends to his tenure as a board member of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Town Hall of Los Angeles; a Board of Visitors member of the George L. Graziadio School of Business & Management — Pepperdine University; a member of the Southern California Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors; vice chairman of the Twelfth District Economic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve; vice chairman of the FMI Board of Directors and board member of the National Cooperative Grocers Association. Notably, in February of 2004, he was inducted into the California Grocers Association Hall of Achievement.

For Media
Hoover Award Background

(Editor’s Note: Jim Brulte addressed the CGA Board of Directors at its December Board meeting.)

Jim Brulte is making it official: The former Senate Republican leader said this afternoon that he is a candidate for chairman of the California Republican Party, a position he is widely expected to win.

Brulte told The Bee he will announce his candidacy tonight at a gathering of Republicans in San Diego.Following the announcement, Brulte will meet with a series of Republican groups throughout the state ahead of an election at the state party’s spring convention in March in Sacramento.

Brulte was recruited by influential Republicans following a disastrous November election for the GOP, and his interest in the position was widely reported. California Republicans hold no statewide offices, and Republican voter registration has fallen below 30 percent statewide.

If elected, Brulte said he will try to repair the party’s weak fundraising apparatus, recruit and help candidates and make voter registration gains.

“I want to be the nuts and bolts chairman,” he said.

Brulte was endorsed last week by Jon Fleischman on the conservative blog FlashReport.

Asked about the party’s platform – including positions on immigration and other controversial policy areas – Brulte suggested he is likely to avoid such fights, at least initially.

The platform is not up for a vote for three years, and Brulte said, “Ask me in the spring of 2016.”

Reprinted from The Sacramento Bee (1/14/2013)

Supervalu Inc. is selling five of its top supermarket chains — Albertsons, Acme, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s and Star Market — to an investor group owned by Cerberus Capital Management for $100 million in cash.

Cerberus’ AB Acquisition group will also acquire $3.2 billion in debt in taking over the 877 stores.

In addition, the investor group said it will try to take between a 19.9% and 30% stake in Supervalu. The tender offer of $4 a share represents a nearly 32% premium on Supervalu’s closing price Wednesday.

Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Supervalu will be left with its wholesaling business, 1,300 Save-A-Lot discount grocery stores and regional chains Cub, Farm Fresh, Shoppers, Shop ‘n Save and Hornbacher’s.

Quiz: How well do you remember 2012?

Supervalu stock was up as much as 19% Thursday, reaching $3.62 a share.

Sam Duncan, a longtime grocery industry veteran, will replace Wayne Sales as Supervalu’s president and chief executive once the acquisition closes. The Supervalu board will shrink from 10 members to seven once the deal goes through, with five current directors set to resign and a Cerberus-led investor consortium poised to choose two others.

After a longer search process, the board will expand to include 11 directors total.

Supervalu said it plans to “focus on right-sizing operations and maximizing efficiencies” going forward, generating annual revenues of more than $17 billion. The company said it has 125,000 employees.

In September, Supervalu said it would close 26 Albertsons stores by the end of 2012, including 18 in Southern California. Among all its chains, Supervalu said it would shut 60 stores nationwide.

New York-based private equity firm Cerebus said last month that it was selling Freedom Group, which produces the Bushmaster line of firearms. Adam Lanza is believed to have used one of the weapons in his assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times (1/10/2013)

After years of red ink, Gov. Jerry Brown said on Thursday that California’s $96.7-billion general fund is now poised to end next year with a surplus, thanks to years of deep budget cuts and billions in new taxes approved by voters last year.

“We achieved the position we’re in because of tough cuts … and then the people voted for taxes,” he said. “We broke the logjam by going to the people.”

READ THE SUMMARY: Gov. Brown’s proposed 2013-2014 budget »

Schools will be the big winner in the governor’s new spending plan, receiving $56.2 billion in state funds, an increase by $2.7 billion over the last year. That funding is set to jump to more than $66 billion by 2016.

The budget also dedicated an additional $350 million to the state’s public insurance program, Medi-Cal, to help implement President Obama’s healthcare law.

Brown’s budget predicts only the second budget surplus in the last decade, with an $851-million surplus projected at the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year — if all his proposals are approved by lawmakers.

With Democrats firmly in control of both legislative houses and the governor’s office, and without what had become familiar multibillion-dollar deficits, this year’s announcement lacked the anxiety and urgency that had surrounded past budget unveilings.

Instead of railing against proposed reductions in popular programs, activists are now girding for long policy battles based on the ideas put forward by the governor on Thursday.

Those fights will play out in the Legislature over the coming months. While they include sweeping changes in how Sacramento spends its money, those skirmishes, too, will lack the drama over cuts to schools and health services that have dominated Capitol discourse for the better part of the last decade.

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times (1/10/2013)

What took you so long, FDA?

New food safety standards have been years in the making, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally released new regulations last week.

It hardly seems revolutionary to require farm workers who handle fruits and vegetables to wash their hands. Or to prohibit farm animals from going into fields where produce is grown. Or require processing equipment is clean.

Yet food safety requirements in this country were so far behind the times, it actually is a big change. The Food Safety Modernization Act, passed by Congress in 2010, was the first overhaul of the rules in more than 70 years.

To be sure, the new regulations won’t pose huge challenges for the best actors in food production — they’ve already adopted many of these practices of their own volition. But not all have. In recent years, the nation has grappled with a litany of tainted foods that have caused serious illness and death. Spinach, peanut butter, eggs and cantaloupe have all been implicated.

Unfortunately, it took two years for the Obama administration to write and release updated rules. And producers will have years to fully comply, particularly when it comes to small producers and water quality.

Nevertheless, it’s heartening to see a good set of standards, appropriately vetted, finally coming to fruition.

Reprinted from the Denver Post (1/9/2013)

By Russ Parsons

There’s a thought-provoking piece on Slate summarizing the comments of a longtime environmental activist who is now rethinking his opposition to genetically modified organisms. In a talk at the Oxford Farming Conference on Thursday, Mark Lynas reportedly apologized for his previous position on the subject (I say “reportedly” because neither a video nor the official transcripts of the talk have been published yet, and the link Slate provides for a summary is broken). Here is what Slate quotes him as saying:

“I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

“As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

“So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.”

Furthermore, he says, “To vilify GMOs is to be as anti-science as climate-change deniers.”

It does seem to me that most opposition to GMOs has been based on criticisms of how the technology has been used in some cases and of the corporations that have been using them (one in particular, of course, Monsanto).

Without apologizing for those companies’ actions, and while acknowledging that so far some uses such as Roundup-Ready seeds seem to have significant shortcomings, I still wonder whether we are in danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water by condemning all uses of GMOs. What about the much-less heralded success in reviving the Hawaiian papaya crop (scroll to near the end), which had been threatened with annihilation by an imported pest, until a genetically modified alternative was introduced?

This is something I’ve been pondering for a while. Well, ever since I moderated a panel at the Monterey Bay Aquarium that featured the most fascinating couple, Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak (she’s quoted near the end of this film clip). He is a longtime organic farmer and runs the student farm and CSA at UC Davis; she is a leading GMO researcher. The book they wrote together, “Tomorrow’s Table,” should be read by anyone who is interested in the future of agriculture.

If those two can find a middle ground (much less stay married), might there be room for a more nuanced view of the question?

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times (1/6/2013)

LOS ANGELES — The Democratic Party has controlled the California Legislature for a nearly unbroken stretch of 42 years. Yet control goes only so far: it takes two-thirds of the Legislature to enact a host of important legislation in this state, meaning that even the diminished Republican Party has been able to easily frustrate Democratic ambitions.

But with a swell of electoral victories in November, the Democratic Party has now crossed that boundary and controls two-thirds of both the Senate and the Assembly, giving it the kind of unfettered power that no party has had here for 80 years.

This does not appear to be a passing advantage. Even Republicans say that changes in electoral demographics mean that, with the exception of a few brief lapses caused by vacancies, Democrats could hold a supermajority at least through the end of the decade.

Yet in the “be careful what you wish for” department, Democrats are beginning to confront the struggles and complications that come with being in charge of the store. This authority came at least two years earlier than most Democrats had projected. And it is unleashing years of pent-up Democratic desires — to roll back spending cuts, approve a bond issue to rebuild the state’s water system, amend the state’s tax code, revamp California’s governance system — that had been largely checked by the Republican minority.

At the same time, it is stirring concerns from Democrats, among them Gov. Jerry Brown, that the situation may inspire an overreach that could make the party’s reign brief. By contrast, some Democrats argue that handled correctly, the next two years could provide an opportunity to lock in long-term control.

“The center of gravity of the Democratic Party will be restraint, but some people can’t help themselves,” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “The supermajority is not a permanent condition. It’s something that can be lost far more easily than it can be gained.

”The demand became apparent even before the new Legislature was sworn in this month. State Senator Ted W. Lieu, a Democrat, proposed reinstating an automobile registration fee that was repealed under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. That fee was a rallying point of what many saw as excessive taxation here; its elimination created a $4 billion revenue shortfall. Mr. Lieu pulled back at the urging of Democratic leaders.

“Democrats have unrestricted, unchecked power in the executive and the legislative branch today — and they have not had that for decades,” said James L. Brulte, a former state lawmaker running for state Republican leader. “If you are a Democrat, the good news is that your party is 100 percent in charge of state government. If you’re a Democrat, the bad news is that you don’t get to blame anybody else if things go wrong. So Democrats own it.”

Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tem of the Senate, said that he appreciated the risks and that Democrats would not overstep. Still, he said, this was a chance to address years of deep spending cuts and to put before voters measures to change a government and tax structure that analysts from both parties blame for much of California’s paralysis.

“We get the overreach warning: we have heard it, and we acknowledge it,” Mr. Steinberg told lawmakers at their swearing-in ceremony. “But frankly, I think you can focus too much on overreach because there is an equally compelling danger. It is the danger of being so cautious, so worried about creating controversy, that we fail to take advantage of unprecedented opportunities.”

In a later interview, Mr. Steinberg added: “There are a whole host of things that the two-thirds majority gives an opportunity to talk about. I believe in the two-party system. But are we prepared to use our supermajority if the Republicans choose not to participate? Yes.

”The Democratic ascension has arrived as California emerges — if tentatively — from a prolonged recession and government retrenchment. And it has come as lawmakers and outside analysts have increasingly come to view California’s problems as a result of flaws with its governance.

This new authority comes with a markedly different Legislature, filled with dozens of first-time lawmakers, empowered by a change in term-limit laws that allow them to stay longer and develop areas of expertise, and elected under a nonpartisan election system intended to produce moderation and compromise.

It is hard to think of another state as solidly Democratic, after an election that left Republicans relegated to the sidelines.

“A supermajority is problematic for California,” said Connie Conway, the Assembly Republican leader. “I hope voters understand what they’ve done. I expect a full-out assault on the taxpayers of California.”

Under California law, a two-thirds vote is required to put initiatives before voters to change the State Constitution or raise taxes. That requirement is an outgrowth of Proposition 13, the property tax reduction initiative passed in 1978.

Many Democrats said a top priority was figuring out a way to remove deep spending cuts made to education and other state services, which could mean finding new revenue.

“We do need to take stock,” said Ellen M. Corbett, the Senate Democratic leader. “We do need to take a look at things we have cut that may impact our ability to grow the economy.”

Senator Mark Leno, a Democrat, proposed putting on the ballot an initiative that would allow school districts and cities to pass a parcel tax increase with 55 percent of voters, down from the two-thirds requirement in Proposition 13. Lawmakers said they were also reviewing business tax exemptions they agreed to in order to win Republican votes.

Another Democrat, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, said, “What we want is to look carefully to see what kind of tax do we have like that, that are costing our schools, costing our taxpayers and not benefiting our economy.”

Proposition 13 has long been blamed for California’s financial turmoil and inequitable tax system, but its political popularity has made lawmakers wary of touching it.

Now that the Democrats have a supermajority, there has been a growing call for lawmakers to put an initiative before voters to revise Proposition 13, either by eliminating the two-thirds requirement or creating a split tax roll, which would protect residential property owners but remove protection from commercial and industrial properties.

“It’s Time to Adjust Prop 13,” said the headline over a column by George Skelton in The Los Angeles Times on Thursday.

Mr. Brown recoiled at the suggestion.“There’s a lot of talk about that,” Mr. Brown said. “With water, energy, school funding formulas, higher education, the whole implementing of Obama health care, we have lots on our plate. With these kind of hot-button issues, I’d be very surprised if there were any serious attempt to deal with them in the near term.”

This new Democratic dominance is also not necessarily good news for the state’s Democratic governor. He no longer has the foil of the Republican minority. And Mr. Brown, whose fiscally moderate views have at times clashed with those of his Democratic colleagues, now faces something he has not faced before: a Legislature with enough votes to override him.

Reprinted from The New York Times (Dec. 17, 2012)

Following a catastrophic election for the California Republican Party, influential members of the party have recruited a prominent former legislator, Jim Brulte, to lead a comeback.

The former Senate Republican leader has been discussing his interest in the party chairmanship with members of the party since the election a month ago. Brulte is a giant in GOP circles, having helped Republicans in the 1990s win a majority in the state Assembly for the first time in nearly 25 years.

The situation for the California GOP appears far more critical now. They hold no statewide offices, suffered a net loss of four House seats (they hold 15 of 53 in California) and allowed Democrats to achieve a two-thirds majority in the state Legislature for the first time since the 1880s.

Republican voter registration has fallen below 30 percent statewide, and the party is essentially broke.

Brulte, 56, has not discussed the chairmanship publicly. Activists and party leaders with whom he has spoken expect him to be a candidate during the organization’s spring elections. He is widely expected to win.

“His political judgment is superb,” Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, said Wednesday. “I found out about his interest from (House Majority Whip) Kevin McCarthy and told him to sign me up immediately.”

Mike Spence, president of the Conservative Republicans of California, said Brulte told him he talked with fellow partners at his public affairs company, California Strategies LLC, about becoming party chairman.

“I think having someone like Jim Brulte as chair shows we’re not dead in California,” Spence said. “He has a lot of credibility with donors and grass-roots activists and other people. I think it would be a morale boost for the party.”

Jason Kinney, a spokesman for California Strategies, said in an email, “The Republicans here support it and the Democrats oppose it – because the one thing we all agree on is that, if Jim decides to do it, he’ll be extremely effective.”

If he is elected, Brulte will be expected to resurrect the party’s sunken fundraising apparatus and make voter registration gains, if only incrementally.

Jeff Randle, a Republican strategist, said a Brulte chairmanship “would be a huge win for our party.”

Brulte has for years been warning about the Republican Party’s shortcomings, including its failure to adapt to California’s growth in Latino voters. After the GOP was battered in California in the 1998 elections, Brulte said the political action committee he controlled would use its contributions to broaden the traditional Republican candidate base, trying to recruit “good Hispanic, black, Asian, female (and) Jewish Republican candidates.”

More than a decade later, Brulte predicted last year that the 2012 election would be even worse for Republicans than in 2010, when Democrats swept the statewide elections. By almost any measure, he was right.

Garry South, a Democratic strategist and partner at California Strategies, described Brulte as a “solidly conservative guy … but he’s not a nut about it.”

“I think that if he decides to do it, there couldn’t be any better choice,” South said. “He is a great strategic political thinker, he’s got a winning manner about him … and has enough force of personality to deal with various factions, like he did both in the Assembly and the Senate as minority leader.”

However, South said rebuilding the Republican Party in California may be out of reach for anyone.

“A political party is always just the sum of its parts,” South said. “The parts at this point don’t add up to much, and they certainly don’t add up to winning elections.”

Brulte, whose political base is in San Bernardino County, started as a young aide to U.S. Sen. S.I. Hayakawa in 1980 and had stints with the Republican National Committee, the defense and housing agencies in the Reagan administration and as an advance man for President George H. W. Bush before returning to California to work as a legislative aide.

He won an Assembly seat from Rancho Cucamonga in 1990 and served the full 14 years in the Assembly and Senate allowed under term limits, serving as GOP leader in each house.

Perhaps his most memorable political success came in 1994, when Republicans picked up eight Assembly seats under his stewardship and eventually briefly controlled the lower house.

Though Brulte is likely to easily win over Republican lawmakers and donors in his bid for the party chairmanship, he may have more difficulty courting the party’s volunteer class.

“Jim has an impossible task in my opinion, and I’m not opposed, by the way, to the idea of him running for chairman at all,” said Aaron Park, a Republican activist from Rocklin and conservative blogger. “But the problem is he’s got to try to sell activists on the fact that he really does care about us, as opposed to the interest of the legislators. They’re oftentimes at odds.”

The current chairman of the state Republican Party, Tom Del Beccaro, announced shortly before the election that he would not run again next year.

Del Beccaro was elected chairman in March 2010. The party was hampered by fundraising difficulties and internal disputes, and in the last election cycle many Republican donors bypassed the party infrastructure in their efforts to recruit and fund GOP candidates.

Del Beccaro said the party “cannot become more Sacramento-centric.” Asked if he was referring to Brulte, Del Beccaro said whoever succeeds him must “have a more than healthy plan for involving volunteers, not just Sacramento-area donors.”

Steven Baric, the party vice chairman, was initially expected to run to succeed Del Beccaro as the party’s leader. He said Wednesday that he has not decided if he will.

Reprinted from the Sacramento Bee (Dec. 6, 2012)