A man of maps, Poizner charts new course for his office

Much of Insurance Commissioner-elect Steve Poizner’s life has been about maps.

They provided his road to riches: Just a few years out of Stanford’s business school, he started a company to design software that helped retailers find the best location for their stores. His next venture was a firm that developed the technology for police and rescuers to pinpoint 911 calls.

And abolishing gerrymandered political maps -- designed to make every district in California firmly Republican or Democrat -- has been a chief cause in the two years he has been enthusiastically involved in state politics.

In 2004, Poizner, a Republican from Los Gatos, spent a record-setting $6 million of his own money seeking an Assembly seat despite its Democratic makeup. He narrowly lost.

So did the redistricting reform campaign he helped run last year.

But on Tuesday, Poizner, 49, emerged as the only GOP victor, besides Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in statewide races -- and one of two who have never held a constitutional office. With the help of $9 million of his own money and a Democratic opponent who had worn out his welcome, Poizner was elected insurance commissioner, beating Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante by 12 percentage points.

“He is now as viable as anyone at the moment to be the next Republican nominee for governor,” said Rob Stutzman, a political consultant and Schwarzenegger’s former chief spokesman.

The party’s new star is an unassuming entrepreneur with his profession’s enthusiasm for the free market and a distrust of big business.

“He may be one of the smartest people who’s ever been elected to public office,” said Harvey Rosenfield, a liberal consumer advocate who helped create the insurance commissioner’s office and surprised many Democrats by endorsing Poizner, in part because he refused to accept insurance donations.

“He’ll make decisions on what the thinks is best, not what the insurance industry thinks is best,” Rosenfield said.

Like Schwarzenegger, Poizner is a self-made man and a liberal Republican. He grew up in Texas, the son of an English teacher and a geologist, and was educated as an engineer. He counts building a working laser as a high point of his youth and, as a low point, placing a malfunctioning smoke bomb at a neighbor’s door as a prank and inadvertently setting it afire.

Also like the governor, Poizner is married to an assertive Democrat; his early efforts to win over conservatives in the June primary campaign were complicated by having to explain donations to Al Gore made from the Poizners’ joint checking account.

“He would walk right into the room and sit down with people, and one by one he won them over,” said Wayne Johnson, his campaign strategist.

Poizner’s work ethic, disdain for partisan politics and careerism and drive to find common ground have impressed people during his stints in a working-class San Jose high school and in the White House’s prestigious yearlong fellowship program.

Todd Richards supervised Poizner’s year as a volunteer social studies teacher at Mount Pleasant High School. “I was very impressed with the conscientious way he went about it,” Richards said.

Ron Christie, a former special assistant to President Bush who oversaw some of Poizner’s work in the White House, said he never let on that he was wealthy and accomplished. Nor did he try to parlay the fellowship into a high-level job.

“He was as normal and as energetic as any of the rest of us,” Christie said. “We were blown away when we found out.”

People who know Poizner say he is always interested in finding new solutions and common ground, and that his methods are what you would expect from an engineer: extensive listening and intense mining of data. His proven ability to appease differing sides, however, may be severely tested as he tries to navigate the turbulent terrain of his new job.

Since it was created by voters in 1998, the insurance commissioner’s office has been a perpetual battleground between consumer advocates and the companies the office regulates.

The last Republican in the job, Chuck Quackenbush, was driven from office amid accusations that he went easy on insurers in exchange for their political support. The outgoing commissioner, Democrat John Garamendi, who has just been elected lieutenant governor, has had a combative relationship with the industry.

“We’re hoping he takes a less adversarial approach to insurance companies,” said Sam Sorich, president of the Assn. of California Insurance Companies. “We see ourselves as partners to the insurance commissioner rather than as an adversary.”

Poizner has his own agenda that has elements appealing to both sides.

He has promised to stop insurers from discouraging claims by canceling the policies of those who make them -- a recurring complaint from consumer advocates.

He also has pledged to step up the office’s investigation of fraud, which insurers say has atrophied under Garamendi.

And Poizner wants to reform the office itself by making the commissioner’s election nonpartisan and by banning candidates from accepting donations from insurers.

“I’m not going to take every opportunity to be downright antagonistic to the insurance industry,” he said.

“At the same time, anyone who breaks the rules, I will come down on them like a ton of bricks.”

jordan.rau@latimes.com