California Attorney General
During Van de Kamp's administration as California Attorney General, he helped to create the Public Rights Division, which focuses on the enforcement of environmental, consumer protection, anti-trust, and civil rights issues. He also helped to modernize the Department of Justice by beginning support of DNA forensic investigation. He was re-elected easily in 1986.
In 1987, Van De Kamp unsuccessfully led the State's charge against pornography by defending the pandering conviction of adult filmmaker Harold Freeman. Ultimately, the California State Supreme Court overturned Freeman's conviction. Van De Kamp appealed to the United States Supreme Court, who declined to hear the case, thus effectively legalizing the production of adult films.
In 1989, George Deukmejian announced that he would not seek third term as Governor of California the following year. Van de Kamp ran for the office in 1990, hoping to succeed Deukmejian a second time. But Van de Kamp lost the Democratic primary election to Dianne Feinstein.
Read more about this topic: John Van De Kamp
Famous quotes containing the words california, attorney and/or general:
“The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most temporary way.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.”
—Truman Capote (1924–1984)
“It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.... There are some things in every country that you must be born to endure; and another hundred years of general satisfaction with Americans and America could not reconcile this expatriate to cranberry sauce, peanut butter, and drum majorettes.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)