Curt Pringle

Curtis L. "Curt" Pringle (born June 27, 1959) is an American politician from the U.S. state of California.

He is the most recent Republican to have served as the Speaker of the California State Assembly.

He is a former mayor of Anaheim and a former chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

Since leaving office, Pringle has operated a public relations and government affairs firm, Curt Pringle & Associates.

Pringle was born in Emmetsburg, Iowa, in 1959, but moved to California with his family at the age of nine in 1968 and settled in Garden Grove.

Pringle then earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's degree in public administration from California State University, Long Beach.

As a young man, Pringle worked for his family's drycleaning and drapery/window covering business.

In 1986, after three unsuccessful runs for a seat on the Garden Grove City Council, Pringle was elected to the Orange County Republican Central Committee, which is the controlling organ of the Orange County Republican Party.

Pringle served as vice-chair of the Orange County Republican Central Committee.

In 1988, the Republican nominee from Pringle's Assembly district, freshman incumbent Dick Longshore, died the day after the June primary election, and, under Californian law, the Orange County Republican Central Committee members were charged with selecting a replacement nominee to run in the November general election, and out of the ten candidates, they chose Pringle.

In his first campaign for the State Assembly, Pringle was accused of voter suppression against Hispanics in Santa Ana.

The Orange County Republican Party hired a security guard firm to protect against supposed illegal voting by undocumented aliens in the Pringle district.

Some claimed this was an effort to scare Hispanic voters.

The FBI investigated and no charges were filed against Pringle and the local GOP, however they agreed to pay $400,000 to settle the civil lawsuit out of court.

Pringle took office as a state assemblyman in December 1988 at the age of 29.

In 1990, he was defeated for re-election by Democrat Tom Umberg in 1990.

After the redistricting of 1991, Pringle ran and was elected to the district, Assembly in 1992.

He also won re-election in 1994 and 1996 and left the Assembly, due to term limits in 1998.

Pringle worked his way up the Republican hierarchy in the Assembly.

After the Assembly Republicans won a majority in the 1994 election, Pringle, the Assistant Republican Leader at the time, also was appointed the Chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

He served in that capacity for most of 1995, when the Assembly operated under a power sharing agreement with a split house.

Later in 1995, Pringle was elected the Assembly Republican Leader and became the Majority Leader of the Assembly, before being elected Speaker in January 1996.

In 1996, Assemblywoman Doris Allen was recalled from office in a in as tough campaign between Republicans and several Democrats.

This recall campaign was marred by the tactic of some Republicans to aid Democratic primary decoy candidate Laurie Campbell in an attempt to split the Democratic ticket and thus weaken the candidacy of Democrat Linda Moulton-Patterson who was running against Republican Scott Baugh for Allen's former seat.

Mark Richard Denny, an aide to Pringle, admitted that he illegally circulated election nominating petitions for Campbell in order to split the Democratic vote.

In addition, Jeff Gibson, another campaign aide to Pringle, also pleaded guilty to illegally gathering nomination signatures for the Campbell campaign.

Willie Brown stated that Pringle was the last state Assembly Speaker to wield broad power in the office, since rule changes immediately after Pringle's tenure transferred much of the Speaker's authority to committee chairmen.

Pringle, for example, issued committee assignments to both parties' members, controlled State Assembly funds, and had broad administrative authority.

As Speaker, Pringle also chaired the Assembly Rules Committee.

He has a good relationship with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat and former Speaker of the Assembly, whom he knows from their years together in Sacramento, and Pringle even hosted a fundraiser for Villaraigosa's unsuccessful 2001 bid for L.A. Mayor.

Pringle was also a member of the Orange County Transportation Authority's board of directors.

In 2002, Pringle re-entered electoral politics with his campaign for mayor of Anaheim, California, the tenth-most populous city in the state.

Pringle won a multi-candidate race, with 36% of the vote, finishing 7% ahead of his nearest competitor, Anaheim city councilwoman Lucille King (29%).

During his tenure as mayor Pringle and the Anaheim City Council over which he presided enacted a number of reforms that the Orange County Register depicted as "freedom-friendly".

According to the Los Angeles Times, "Pringle has built such a strong reputation for his aggressive pro-business approach to governance (creative tax waivers, sweeping zone changes, market incentives to redevelop run-down parts of the city) that other local officials have coined a verb for his philosophy: 'to Pringle-ize.'"

As an active mayor, governing with majority support on the city council, Pringle led the effort to transform the area surrounding Angel Stadium and Honda Center (formerly the Arrowhead Pond) into the Platinum Triangle, which is meant to be Orange County's "downtown".

He was also the public face for the city as it courted the National Football League for a football franchise and fought the Angels baseball club over its name change from "Anaheim Angels" to "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim."

Pringle was also seen occasionally with mayors of other major California cities when they traveled to Sacramento to collectively lobby the governor and California State Legislature.

In August 2006, the Los Angeles Times's West magazine named Pringle as one of the 100 most powerful people in Southern California.

And the OC Metro magazine listed Pringle in their Hot 25 for 2006.