Friday, April 18, 2003
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Attorney General Bill Lockyer to Wed Orange County Lawyer Today
By a MetNews Staff Writer
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and Orange County lawyer Nadia Maria Davis are getting married today and are expecting a child later this summer, the attorney general’s spokesman said yesterday.
The wedding will take place at an undisclosed Northern California location, Nathan Barankin told the MetNews. It will be a “very small wedding,” limited to close friends and family, the spokesman said.
It will be the third marriage for Lockyer and the first for Davis, a former president of the Santa Ana school board who lost her re-election bid last year.
Lockyer, who has a daughter who is an attorney with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “wants to be the best father and husband possible,” Barankin said.
Barankin said the couple met at a political event over a year ago and share “a passion for civil rights, a passion for public education, and a love of children.”
But they do not agree on everything, he acknowledged. Davis endorsed an Orange County group’s campaign to amend the Three-Strikes Law so that it would apply only when the new offense is a serious or violent felony, while the attorney general is a strong supporter of the current law and recently won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the law can be applied even if the newest offense is petty theft.
Do not look for the pair to argue that or other issues in public, however, Barankin commented. “Any public policy disputes they might have are going to be interesting dinner topics, he said. “They’re real people just like you and me.”
Barankin declined to comment on honeymoon plans.
Lockyer has been winning elections in the state for over 25 years. He was an assemblyman and senator from Alameda County, and earned his law degree at Sacramento’s McGeorge School of Law during his legislative service.
He chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, and served as president pro tempore of the Senate before winning his present office in 1998.
He has been talked about widely as a potential candidate for governor. But he has eschewed any possibility of running in a possible recall election to succeed Gov. Gray Davis, and Barankin said a decision on whether to run in 2006 is more than two years away.
Davis is a Loyola Law School graduate who was admitted to the State Bar in 1997 and elected to the Santa Ana school board the following year. Observers attributed her re-election loss to criticism over the slow pace of school construction in the district and her outspoken support for a controversial fellow board member targeted for recall.
She has been active in a number of groups, including Amnesty International, the Public Interest Law Foundation the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
In addition to her own campaigns, she has worked for other candidates as an organizer, fundraiser, and legal adviser.
Copyright 2003, Metropolitan News Company