Sen. Lockyer to Enter Race for Attorney General

Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer will formally announce today that he is running for attorney general, vowing to take an “expansive” view of the job as the state’s top law enforcement officer.

In an interview Monday, Lockyer, a Democrat from a blue-collar district south of Oakland, vowed to press for a crackdown on domestic violence, consumer fraud and environmental crime. He said he would use the office to protect abortion rights and limit the availability of assault weapons.

“I’ve written a lot of laws that are tough on crime: child molesters, drunken drivers, wife-beaters,” said Lockyer, who will be forced by term limits to leave the Legislature this year. “Yet I’m frustrated by the lack of adequate enforcement of those laws.”

Lockyer is known as a tough Democratic partisan, a prodigious fund-raiser and a lawmaker who has crafted detailed legislation that overhauled everything from gambling regulation to criminal law and the civil justice system.

First elected to the Assembly in 1973, Lockyer became the Senate leader four years ago. From that post, he became the most powerful Democrat in Sacramento, taking the lead in negotiating with Gov. Pete Wilson over budgets and legislative proposals.

As he attempts to parlay his 25-year legislative career into a statewide office, Lockyer, 56, leads the other candidates for the Democratic nomination for attorney general with a campaign fund of more than $3 million.

One of his foes in the June 2 primary--Sen. Charles Calderon (D-Whittier)--has $389,000 in the bank. Former U.S. Rep. Lynn Schenk of San Diego reports having $78,000 in a campaign finance statement filed Monday.

Republican candidates for attorney general are Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi and David Stirling, chief deputy to Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, who is running for governor.

Of the candidates, Lockyer has the least experience in court. A former schoolteacher, he gained his law degree while he was in the Legislature, and is “of counsel” for an East Bay law firm that represents plaintiffs in personal injury cases. He said he would sever the relationship if he is elected.

Major sources of Lockyer’s campaign donations are the California trial lawyers association and labor groups, particularly public school teachers unions.

Lockyer will make his formal announcement at news conferences today at the offices of domestic violence shelters in Sacramento and Los Angeles, underscoring his pledge to pay greater attention to such issues.

“The attorney general,” Lockyer said, “needs to tend to the core responsibilities associated with fighting crime, but also needs to be the people’s lawyer and be more aggressively involved in protecting reproductive rights, to be more engaged in consumer protection and environmental issues.”

Lockyer long has supported capital punishment, and although he was highly critical of the 1994 three-strikes sentencing law, he voted for it, and now says that it helps reduce crime.

Lockyer criticized outgoing Atty. Gen. Lungren on two counts: not suing tobacco companies sooner, and not trying harder to prohibit the sale of semiautomatic weapons that are virtually identical to weapons banned under state law.

In recent months, Lungren has reversed positions and is attempting to ban more assault weapons and has joined other states in suing the tobacco industry. Lungren had said that a statute written by Lockyer and then-Speaker Willie Brown prevented him from suing the tobacco industry sooner.

That law was part of the so-called Napkin Deal, among the most famous back room deals ever struck in Sacramento. Outlined on a linen napkin at the watering hole Frank Fat’s, the sweeping deal restructured many aspects of civil law, and amounted to a legislatively imposed truce among warring special interests including lawyers, physicians, insurance companies and business.

As part of the deal, the Legislature granted immunity to tobacco companies from lawsuits. After the Legislature stripped tobacco companies of that protection last year, Lungren filed a suit to recoup some state costs associated with tobacco-related illnesses.

Lockyer insisted that Lungren could have filed the suit without last year’s repeal of the protection for tobacco firms. But he also called the 1987 decision to grant tobacco companies the exemption from liability lawsuits a “mistake.”

“We have all now become much more aware of the dangers and health risks associated with tobacco than we were a decade ago,” said Lockyer, who in recent years has become among the most ardent anti-tobacco lawmakers in the Capitol.

Lockyer’s past is marred by a short temper and a decade-old allegation that he sexually harassed a woman news reporter. Lockyer insists that such troubles are behind him, and that his record as Senate leader shows that he takes harassment charges seriously.