I’ll miss Joel Fox, who died Jan. 10 after a long battle with cancer. But California and its nearly 40 million residents will miss him more.
Someone looking at Joel’s resume would instantly peg him as an old-school conservative Republican. And they would be right. Long-time president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, founder and president of the Small Business Action Committee, policy consultant for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s successful campaign for governor and for Richard Riordan’s unsuccessful try for the state’s top office, a state co-chair for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign.
Still, anyone dismissing Joel as a GOP partisan trying to hold back the state’s blue political tide would be ignoring what made him such an important part of California.
For Joel, politics was just a means to what he saw as a far more important end: making California government work for all its residents — Democrats, Republicans and everyone else.
Some of the work Joel was proudest of came from the numerous state and local commissions he was a part of, studying topics ranging from tax policy and state and local finances to transportation financing and revisions to the state constitution.
Anyone who has been around politics knows that government commissions aren’t designed to solve problems, except by accident. Most of the time, a blue-ribbon committee is a way for politicians to duck making tough decisions while still telling anyone who cares that the issue “is being studied.”
While Joel knew that reality, it didn’t stop him from using those commissions to raise issues that were important to the state, even if he wasn’t going to win most of the time.
Take the California Constitution Revision Commission that Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature put together in 1994. Joel was one of 28 members of a bipartisan group that worked for two years on ways to update the constitution for the 21st century and make it more efficient.
Joel knew most of the proposed reforms would never happen. Proposals to have the governor and lieutenant governor run as a ticket, have the governor appoint the superintendent of public instruction, the state treasurer and the insurance commissioner, and to abolish the state Board of Equalization were instantly and pointedly ignored.
But not all those proposals died. Since 2012, state constitutional amendments have had to go on the November ballot, when more voters turn out. And 2010’s Proposition 25 required legislators to pass a state budget by June 15 or lose their pay and expenses until it was approved.
For a policy wonk like Joel, those victories and others like them almost made all the other disappointments worthwhile.
Joel also wasn’t afraid of dealing with competing voices. Fox and Hounds Daily, the website he founded and ran from 2008 until 2020, featured writers with wide-ranging points of view, something that delighted Joel.
I first met Joel when he was working with Howard Jarvis and ran across him often when I was covering politics for the San Francisco Chronicle. When I took my first buyout from the Chronicle in 2009, he asked me if I’d like to write for Fox and Hounds. For almost a year I wrote four pieces a week and continued to write weekly after I went back to work for the Chronicle in 2010.
I’m sure Joel ground his teeth at some of my efforts, especially since I was far more favorable toward Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and other politicians from my native San Francisco than he was. But he never tried to get me to change my stories or my opinions and was always gracious and complimentary toward my work.
For Joel, that diversity of views was a feature, not a bug. Putting contrasting opinions out in front of readers was something he wanted. Although he had his own strong views on politics and government, he knew that no one side has a monopoly on good ideas.
At a time when politics and government too often become a partisan cage match, the idea that reasonable people can differ seems almost quaint and old-fashioned.
No one could ever deny that Joel was a lifelong Republican. But what he wanted for California wasn’t the best Republican government, but the best government, regardless of where those ideas came from. He worked his entire professional life to see that happen.
And that’s what California will miss.