Poizner and Gararmendi square off in possible prelude to 2010
By Dan Walters - dwalters@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
12:00 am PDT Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Last week's sharply worded exchange of letters between Republican
Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and his Democratic predecessor,
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, sounded very much like opening salvos of the
2010 contest for governor.
While there are other potential aspirants for the governorship, few in
politics doubt that Poizner, a very wealthy Silicon Valley
entrepreneur, and Garamendi, a three-decade veteran of California
politics, see themselves as successors to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The flashpoint of last week's exchange was a batch of insurance
regulations that Poizner posted on the Department of Insurance Web
site a week ago, rewriting rules that Garamendi had promulgated in
late 2006, just before vacating the office.
Harvey Rosenfield, who wrote the 1988 ballot measure (Proposition 103)
that made the insurance commissioner's position elective and gave it
more powers, immediately denounced Poizner's emergency rules as "an
outrageous giveaway to the insurance industry" that would fatten
insurers' profits while raising rates on consumers. One would give the
insurance commissioner the power to boost insurers' profit margins by
two additional percentage points.
Almost immediately, Garamendi chimed in with a letter to Poizner
describing himself as "more than disappointed (and) alarmed that after
making such substantial changes to a complex set of regulations, you
are proposing that they be hastily adopted as emergency regulations."
"Even without adequate time to completely analyze the impact of these
changes, I am certain that you have opened the door to abuse by
insurers," Garamendi continued. "Some of your modifications to the
prior approval regulations create gaping exceptions that undermine the
spirit and the intent of Proposition 103."
Those were fighting words. Poizner responded a day later =96 last Friday
=96 with an even more barbed letter to Garamendi, terming the lieutenant
governor's blast as "a press release written in the first person" and
chiding him for "action in ignorance" by denouncing the new rules
without thoroughly reading them. Poizner characterized the 2006 rules
as "unceremoniously dumped into the Office of Administrative Law" and
"not fully baked."
"It is clear that your rush to submit them was more about legacy-
building and partisan politics than good public policy," Poizner
wrote.
While gubernatorial politics certainly underlie the exchange, so does
the ever-evolving relationship between the Department of Insurance and
insurers on one hand and consumer activists, allied with trial
attorneys, on the other.
Proposition 103 was the survivor of a very expensive, multi-measure
battle between the warring factions 20 years ago. The elected
insurance commissioner always has found himself in the middle of their
ongoing battles. Garamendi aligned himself with Rosenfield and other
consumerists and battled incessantly with insurers during his two
terms as commissioner, while the Republican who succeeded Garamendi
after his first term, Chuck Quackenbush, was much friendlier to the
industry before being driven out of office by a fundraising scandal.
Garamendi returned to the office in the 2002 election and resumed his
regulation squabbles with insurers, who contended that he was building
his political career by unfairly painting them as villains. Poizner
was elected in 2006. While his relations with insurers have been
friendlier, he's also been a tough regulator on occasion and created a
positive image for himself in response to wildfires and other
calamities.
Chances are against Garamendi and Poizner facing each other directly
in 2010, given the spate of other potential candidates, but it's
certainly possible. If it happens, insurance will be one of their
issues.
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