After some long, hard thinking about this, I am officially making an endorsement:
Steve Poizner, Republican, for governor. Why? First, of the five others who are running, only Dale F. Ogden has any insurance experience. Mr. Ogden, while he may be a good choice, seems to have limited himself by his Small Government Pledge in which he pledges to vote against expanding all government plans. Under Mr. Ogden, the succesful low cost auto insurance program would never be expanded. That would be a loss, and it is one of the downsides to agreeing to such blanket statements.
Mr. Poizner has several things working in his favor:
- He is not a career politician. Therefore, he can bring fresh, new, exciting ideas to the job. He also is not beholden to other politicians and does not have to worry about keeping their approval.
- He is not accepting insurance money. This is a huge issue. Mr. Bustamante has accepted over $150,000 in insurance money and, while he gave back some of it, he has not given it all back. I think we learned from the Quackenbush administration that insurance money and the insurance commissioner just do not mix.
- He has agreed to enforce Prop. 103. I expect Mr. Poizner to stand by his word and enforce the law of the state.
- He has agreed to investigate the use it and lose it approach to insurance. This approach used by many insurance companies renders insurance useless. Insurance, under this approach, becomes a product that you pay for but never receive the benefits of using.
- He has a plan to crackdown on uninsured motorists.
For those reasons, I endorse Mr. Poizner.
I would suggest that, in the future, candidates such as Mr. Bustamante take the race a little more seriously and stop writing about their weight loss and instead talk about the issues.