AL CHECCHI'S CREDENTIALS

My profession: I have changed every [organization] I touched," Al Checchi
told us yesterday in a meeting with The Register's editorial board. He's
running for the Democratic nomination for governor against Rep. Jane Harman
and Lt. Gov. Gray Davis.

Mr. Checchi was referring to his background in turning around troubled or
sleepy large businesses, including Marriott Corp., Walt Disney Co. and
Northwest Airlines. He believes his ability to adapt to a working
environment - be it the regulated, unionized airline industry or the
imaginative world of Disney - then direct change from within, will be
effective in the political realm.

As he characterized it, running California would be the biggest challenge
yet for a man who was singled out by a national magazine in the early 1980s
as one of a promising group, all under 40, to watch.

"We've gotten to a point where government is so dysfunctional it's getting
in our way," Mr. Checchi says. "The role of government in people's lives is
to be an enabler and to provide services," he says.

The world has changed for the private sector, with more and better
information flow, global trade and empowered workers, but government
remains stuck in 1950s-era methods and processes.

He called for more decentralization and spoke to two major policy areas
that he belives would help restore the state to what he called its
pre-eminence of 25 years ago:

He wants to refashion the state's public school system by reducing
bureaucracy and "returning more authority to the local level." Though he
opposes Proposition 227, the "English for the Children" initiative that
would reduce bilingual education, he favors something similar to be enacted
by changes in state law that would require immersion in English for young
immigrant children for two years, compared with one in Prop. 227, before
regular studies in English continue.

He also supports significant expansion of charter schools, but opposes a
broad voucher program.

He wants to emphasize crime prevention.

For instance, he wants to move drug policy away from jailing nonviolent
users to treating their drug addictions in mandatory programs. "There are
48,000 people in prison who didn't commit a violent crime," he said. Such a
change, he thinks, would save $5 billion of the taxpayers' money over five
years while reducing recidivism.

He didn't go as far as we do in supporting the decriminalization of drugs,
but certainly his program would be an improvement on the current system and
would open space in the state's jam-packed prisons for violent criminals.

In addition, Mr. Checchi wants more government programs to help kids after
school before their parents return from work. "Our society has changed"
from the family lifestyles in earlier decades, he says. "Kids don't get the
kind of supervision at home anymore." This has contributed to the gang
problem, he says.

The most distance between Mr. Checchi and our libertarian views came on the
subject of taxes.

Whenever the subject was raised, the candidate rather reflexively
discounted the idea that Californians pay too much in taxes or that
government should find ways to reduce the burden. Reducing taxes, for Mr.
Checchi, would not be a starting point for his administration. He plans to
assess the bureaucracy in place, see what kind of structure should be
there, seek to spend money more smartly, provide for a financial cushion
and, if at the end of that process some funds exist, talk about tax
abatement.

We found Mr. Checchi a willing, if sometimes prickly, debater who could
make a good case and often sought areas of commonality and agreement. He
offers a lot of energy and obvious brainpower.

But the question remains: Can a business executive successfully lead a
government? Plenty of people have found towering frustrations in this very
different arena, from Ross Perot to Rob Hurtt.

If nothing else, Mr. Checchi has the confidence - or over-confidence - going in.

"I've built a lot of organizations," Mr. Checchi says of his business
experience. "I adapt and I change the place."

But even Disney is a small enterprise compared to the vast power and
expense of a state government ruling 32 million Californians of radically
diverse backgrouds and desires.

We would hope in time Mr.Checchi will realize that the best way such a
diverse population can prosper is to sharply reduce to power and cost of
government, dispersing responsibility to individuals instead of collecting
and wielding it in Sacramento.