Elected with the slogan “Straight talk, no Bull #*+!,” William Westwood “Bill” Lockyer served two terms as state treasurer. He was elected in 2006 and again in 2010.
Lockyer earned a teaching credential from California State University in Hayward, and graduated with a bachelors degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a teacher, and his first elective office was as a member of the San Leandro School Board in 1968.
He spent a total of 25 years as a member of the state Legislature, first in the Assembly from 1973, before legislators were limited as to the number of terms they could serve. He later became a state senator. While in the Senate, Lockyer earned his law degree from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. He served as Senate president pro tempore from 1994 to 1998.
In 1998, Lockyer was elected the state’s attorney general, where he oversaw the creation of a sophisticated
Lockyer is known for “speaking his mind with astonishing frankness,” as the Huffington Post put it, “. . . without regard for political fallout.”
As treasurer, Lockyer touted the fact that none of the state’s principal in the Pooled Money Investment Account (PIMA) was lost during the recession. He also expanded the state’s investment in renewable energy, increased the sale of state bonds, reformed some of the methods of credit rating agencies in the state, directed over $1.3 billion in financial assistance to California’s small businesses, expanded ScholarShare (the state’s “529” college savings accounts for families), and expanded availability of low-cost loans to small and rural health care clinics.
Lockyer and his wife, Nadia Maria Davis Lockyer, have one young son, and Lockyer has an adult daughter by a previous marriage. Nadia Lockyer, an attorney, was elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in 2010, on the same day that her husband won his second term as state treasurer.
Nadia Lockyer resigned from the board of supervisors in April 2012 after weeks of media stories detailing her affair with a methamphetamine drug addict, his alleged assault on her and her own drug use. At one point an email surfaced, allegedly sent by Nadia Lockyer that referenced her husband buying drugs for her. At first, she said her boyfriend had hacked into her account and sent it, but evenutally admitted she wrote it.
Tom Dressler, a spokesman for Bill Lockyer, denied the treasurer had ever bought his wife drugs. “The allegation that Bill Lockyer provided her drugs is B.S. when we didn’t know who sent it, and it’s still B.S.”
Lockyer will be termed out of office in 2014 and has indicated he will run for state controller at that time.
Biography (Treasurer’s website)
The Top Vote-Getter in America? Lockyer of California (by Richard H. Smith, Huffington Post)
About Bill (Lockyer homepage)
Newsom Leads Fundraising for 2014 (by Chase Davis, California Watch)
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer’s Wife Admits Sending Email Linking Him to Drugs (by Kevin Yamamura, Sacramento Bee)
Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer Resigns, Citing Need to Focus on Motherhood, Recovery (by Julia Prodis Sulek, Angela Woodall and Josh Richman, Mercury News)
