California retirees have a big choice in upcoming CalPERS election. Here’s who’s running

Three candidates are competing for an unusually long term of office representing retired public employees on the CalPERS Board of Administration.

Former Trustee Henry Jones resigned midway through his fourth four-year term last year due to cancer. Starting Friday, retirees may vote on his replacement, who will take office in January and serve five years — the remainder of Jones’ time plus a full term on the 13-member board.

All three candidates, listed below in alphabetical order, have long records advocating for public employees and retirees.

Tim Behrens, 75, of Porterville, is a district director and former president of California State Retirees, a group representing about 42,000 retired state employees. He said he’s spoken on behalf of the group more than 50 times over the last eight years at CalPERS board meetings. He retired in 2009 from Porterville Developmental Center, where he worked as a psychiatric technician and manager for four decades.

Randall Cheek, 74, of Carmichael, is the legislative director of the Retired Public Employees Association, which represents about 24,000 retirees from both state and local government. His career included veterans’ advocacy in state government, member services in the Legislature and lobbying on behalf of SEIU Local 1000, the largest state employee union in California. He retired in 2016.

Yvonne Walker, 63, of Elk Grove, was Local 1000’s president from 2008 through 2021, overseeing a roughly $50 million budget and championing the benefits of public employment as a model for all employers. She retired in January from the Department of Justice, where she was a legal secretary.

The winner likely will face high-profile decisions over fossil fuel divestment, private equity investing and proposals to enter private lending. Many key board decisions revolve around how much investment risk CalPERS — the nation’s largest public pension fund with more than $450 billion in assets — should accept in its pursuit of the annual returns it needs to keep pace with its ballooning liabilities.

The board elections have attracted growing amounts of campaign cash in recent years, with a coalition of Service Employees International Union chapters leading the way.

SEIU California spent about $400,000 supporting Jones in 2019. The organization contributed heavily to an independent expenditure committee that raised $500,000 to support winning candidates David Miller and Jose-Luis Pacheco last year. This spring, the union spent about $240,000 to back winner Mullissa Willette.

The coalition this year has endorsed Walker, who is leading in campaign contributions. But the other two candidates have the support of the influential retiree organizations they represent.

Board elections tend to have low turnout even though votes may be cast by mail, online or by phone. In the last retirees’ election in 2019, about 116,000 of the roughly 600,000 CalPERS retirees in the state voted.

Voting ends Sept. 26. If none of the candidates receive more than 50%, a runoff election will follow.

Tim Behrens

Behrens said he would be a “voice for the retirees on the board where it’s not just SEIU and others making all the decisions,” saying he would offer a “different perspective on the discussion regarding investments.”

He said he would push hard for CalPERS to bring its private equity investments in-house, rather than paying outside managers to handle them. He said the change — which has been floated and failed in the past — would reduce fees paid to external managers and potentially improve returns.

He said he would press CalPERS to hold more of its discussions in the open, rather than in closed session.

When asked about fossil fuel divestment, which CalPERS fought in the Legislature this year, Behrens said “board members have the fiduciary responsibility to only divest when they can do so and not hurt the fund.”

Behrens recently had about $15,000 in a campaign account as of Tuesday, with contributions from the Association of California State Supervisors PAC and California State Retirees PAC, according to a Secretary of State website.

Randall Cheek

Cheek is proud of two accomplishments in particular related to the CalPERS board.

He takes credit for raising questions as an SEIU Local 1000 lobbyist in September 2010 about a proposal for the retirement system to loan former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration $2 billion to help balance the state’s budget. The proposal, which had drawn concerns separately from CalPERS officials, was withdrawn the next day.

And, as a lobbyist for the Retired Public Employees’ Association, he said he fought a CalPERS proposal last year to enter into private lending, which the system proposed doing with little public disclosure.

He said that effort underscores his commitment to one of the central planks of his campaign: “Stop doing things in secret.”

Like Behrens, he wants the board to hold more of its discussions in public.

He said he supports bringing private equity investing in-house and supports divesting from fossil fuels.

“CalPERS needs to come up with a plan to divest because of what it’s doing to California,” he said of fossil fuels. “We know that we have more fires from climate change. We have the drought. Farmers are leaving land unplowed because they don’t have more water. The writing is on the wall for fossil fuels in California.”

Cheek recently had $9,700 in a campaign account as of Tuesday, all of it from Cal Fire Local 2881.

Yvone Walker

Walker was a well-known labor leader in California’s capitol as SEIU Local 1000’s president.

She coordinated with other unions to pursue broader priorities such as a statewide $15 minimum wage and housing affordability proposals in Sacramento, and she managed the union’s transition to a smaller budget after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 struck down unions’ ability to collect fees from employees who don’t pay dues.

But the union grew increasingly fractured toward the end of her 13-year tenure, and she lost re-election in May 2021.

Walker said protecting public employees’ benefits has always been a critical part of her work. She said CalPERS should do more to publicize the benefits of public pensions and to advocate for better retirement benefits for everyone.

“My pitch to the voters has been talking about retirement security and how CalPERS I think is not only good for our retirement but is good for us in general, because it can point the way to other employers,” she said. “And then I talk also about the fact that there are too many people out there that don’t have a retirement. How do we ensure that they do?”

She said she supports divestment from fossil fuels, adding she thinks it should be done responsibly over several years.

She declined to take a position on private equity, saying she would need more information.

As of Tuesday, a campaign account supporting her had received about $62,000 in contributions, according to Secretary of State campaign finance filings.

This story was originally published August 24, 2022 at 5:25 AM.