George Diehr has been officially re-elected to the board of administration of CalPERS, as the state elected member. Diehr received 77.5% of the votes; Inderjit Kallirai received 22.4%. Only 28,373 votes were cast by state and Cal State University employees out of about 340,000 eligible voters. We tried to boost interest and voting by holding a candidate forum, also sparsely attended. (see Candidate Forum coverage)
Diehr, who was first elected to the CalPERS’ board in 2002 is vice president of the board and chairs the powerful investment committee. Rob Feckner, current president of the CalPERS board and the school representative, and Priya Mathur, public agency representative, both ran unopposed and were already declared winners.
With the recent resignation of Kurato Shimada, there will be another election at CalPERS next spring. With no incumbent running and since the seat is elected by all members of the system, I expect much higher interest and intend to sponsor another candidate forum.
I may ask candidates a number of questions in advance of the forum so that potential voters and the public have a better understanding of their positions on the issues even before a forum is held. I did this before the 2009 Forum. (see CalPERSCandateResponses2009, a pdf file file with Q&A from 2009). Please send your suggestions for candidate questions, as well as ideas about Candidate Forum sponsors and format via email or by posting comments here (You must register before posting comments. No spam will be posted. To register, see bottom right column under Administration.)
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