Gray Davis

Joseph Graham Davis Jr., better known as Gray Davis, ( born December 26, 1942 in New York City ) is an American politician (Democratic Party). He was from 1999 to 2003 the 37th Governor of California.

Life

Training

Davis completed a project funded by a grant from the Reserve Officer Training Corps history studies at Stanford University in 1964 with a BA with honors and finished in 1967 a law degree from Columbia Law School with a doctorate degree (JD). He then worked as a staff attorney for Beekman & Bogue in New York. In the years 1968 and 1969, was last in the rank of captain ( Captain ) for the U.S. Army in Vietnam in use, which was awarded the Bronze Star.

First political successes

In 1970 he supported John V. Tunney during his campaign for a Senate post in 1973, he supported the successful election of Tom Bradley 's first black mayor of Los Angeles. This success led him to himself to seek political office: He ran in 1974 as State Treasurer of California, but lost the popular Jesse Unruh. He then took over from 1975 to 1981, the Office of Chief of Staff for Governor Jerry Brown. From 1983 to 1987 he was a member of an electoral district to the west of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles California State Assembly.

In the years 1987-1995 he was elected California State Controller and had a comparable Treasury is responsible for the budget of the State of California. During his tenure, some operations were uncovered in which tax dollars were not used as intended. The adoption of a supplementary budget by the Parliament and Governor, he forced the first time the fact that he was holding back payment of salaries for all elected state officials up to the governor.

In 1992, he lost the internal secretion of his party for election to the United States Senate against Dianne Feinstein, the mayor of San Francisco.

Lieutenant Governor of California

From 1995 to 1999, he was elected to the office of Lieutenant Governor of California and tried in this office particularly, to stimulate the economy and to locate additional company in his state. He also lowered the cost of training and thus also enabled the children less high-income families further education. As the owner of the second- highest office in the state, he was also the President of the Senate of California, chairman of a Commission for Economic Development, Chairman of Ministers for the federal land ownership Commission ( California State Lands Commission), President ( Regent ) of the University of California and a trustee of California State University.

Governor of California

Davis was elected to succeed Pete Wilson for Governor on November 3, 1998. He took office on January 4, 1999. Four years later, on November 5, 2002, he was re-elected.

During his tenure as governor a focus of his work was also at the development of education. Such was during his first term spending in this sector by eight billion dollars than are required under the law California Proposition 98 value. The determined according to standardized test methods average school grades improved in five consecutive years.

He signed in the United States, the first law, which called for the reduction of emissions of their models from the automakers. The relationship with Mexico has improved markedly during his tenure and he tried to limit the proliferation of weapons. Over time, however, he lost more and more support from the voters. Points here are the energy crisis in California, at which it came to widespread power outages throughout the state, for example, in spring 2001, and the collapsing due to the bursting of the dotcom bubble state revenue. His success in campaign contributions campaign have split consent.

On 7 October 2003 a petition for a (so-called recall) took place, as a result, he was appointed as only the second governor in U.S. history deselected ( after the Governor of North Dakota Lynn Frazier in 1921 ) from his office. At the same time Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor and took over on 17 November 2003, the Office. During his tenure, Davis signed the 5132 law referred to it 6244, 1100, he rejected.

Other activities

Following his deselection Davis held guest lectures at the Institute of Political Sciences ( School of Public Policy ) UCLA. He also works as a lawyer for Loeb & Loeb and serves on the board of the company DiC Entertainment at.

Private

Davis is married to Sharon Ryer since 1983.