California Assembly meets with California state legislators. Left to right: Chairman of the California Assembly Committee on Ways and Means,
Robert W. Crown; California State Assembly Speaker, Jesse Unruh; President Kennedy; Chairman of the California Senate Finance Committee,
George Miller, Jr.; and President Pro Tempore of the California State Senate,
Hugh M. Burns. Oval Office, White House, Washington, D.C. Unruh's political career began as an unsuccessful candidate for the
California State Assembly in 1950 and 1952. He was elected as a member of the Assembly on his third attempt in 1954. In 1956, he was an unsuccessful candidate for a Democratic
presidential elector for California. In 1959, he wrote California's
Unruh Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination by businesses that offer services to the public and was a model for later reforms enacted nationally in the 1960s and 1970s. Unruh was Speaker of the
California State Assembly from 1961 to 1969 and a delegate to
Democratic National Convention from California in 1960 and 1968. While serving as speaker of the California Assembly in the 1960s, Unruh used, according to one observer, “his political clout to stretch budget appropriations for education, to push through social legislation to better the plight of the poor, and to reorganize California's Legislature into a full-time professional institution.”
Campaign work As a national official of the Democratic Party, he often feuded with
Governor of California Pat Brown (1959–1967), a fellow Democrat, and was a case-study of
James Q. Wilson's treatise on machine politics,
The Amateur Democrat. Unruh was California campaign manager for
John F. Kennedy in 1960 and a close Kennedy associate throughout his presidency. He helped convince Senator
Robert F. Kennedy to enter the 1968 presidential race and managed his California campaign. Kennedy won the California primary, but
was assassinated in Los Angeles shortly after his victory speech. After an unsuccessful effort, managed by Unruh and Mayor
Richard J. Daley of Chicago, to draft Senator
Edward M. Kennedy, Unruh released California delegates to vote their conscience and announced that he would support
Eugene McCarthy at the
1968 Democratic National Convention. U.S. President
Lyndon Johnson once described Unruh as "probably one of the most selfish men" he had met in politics. Unruh left the legislature to unsuccessfully run for governor against
Ronald Reagan in
1970. One of his campaign workers was
Timothy Kraft, who a decade later was the campaign manager for the unsuccessful reelection bid of President
Jimmy Carter. In 1973, Unruh ran unsuccessfully for
Mayor of Los Angeles.
California Treasurer When he campaigned for state treasurer in 1974, the post was considered insignificant. Unruh's radio advertisements assured voters, "Make no mistake about it, I really want this job." Once elected, Unruh politicized the office.
The Wall Street Journal noted he became "the most politically powerful public finance officer outside the U.S. Treasury". Because as Treasurer he was an
ex officio member of many California boards and commissions, Unruh supervised "the raising and expenditure of virtually all the state's money and consolidated his influence over billions of dollars in public investments and pension funds". He served as state treasurer from 1975 until his death from
prostate cancer on August 4, 1987, 8 months into his 4th term as treasurer. Unruh remains the second-longest-serving California State Treasurer, behind only
Charles G. Johnson, who served 33 years between 1923 and 1956. The
University of Southern California Department of Political Science includes the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. ==Personal life==