Full Biography for Tim Leslie

Candidate for
Lieutenant Governor

It was over 15 years ago when Tim Leslie helped organize a group of concerned parents to protest the Legislature's refusal to outlaw public sales of drug paraphernalia.

Soon, he found himself in a battle with Willie Brown, the ultra-liberal speaker of the State Assembly at the time who was spending thousands of dollars to intimidate the group and put a stop to their protests.

Tim Leslie and the other parents in the Community Action Against Drug Abuse refused to quit. The coaliton eventually generated so much heat that it defeated Speaker Brown's attempt to quell its efforts and won legislators to its own side.

In 1986, Willie Brown's hand-picked cnadidate spent over $1.2 million in an effort to keep Tim Leslie out of the Assembly. By deploying an aggressive group of volunteer activists, Tim Leslie won that election by a 59%-41% margin.

Voters elected Leslie to the Senate in 1991, where he continues to represent the First Senate District, a sprawling, 25,000 square-mile area encompassing 13 Northern California counties. Since that time, Leslie has ascended to assume several leadership positions in the committees as Appropriations and Judiciary.

In the Senate, Tim Leslie has earned respect as a tenacious lawmaker with an anti-tax, pro-family, pro-business focus. Long before it was politically popular, Leslie authored welfare reform legislation to end programs that encourage dependency and discourage work. He also authored and pushed a constitutional amendment that would have restored parental consent for abortion in California.

Tim Leslie is also committed to protecting Californians by attacking crime. To do so, he authored legislation extending the death penalty for the murder of a child, wrote a measure to increase sentences for drug manufacturers, and authored legislation to prohibit teachers convicted of felony sex or drug offenses from ever returning to the classroom. He was also the principle co-author of Megan's Law.

Leslie has been presented with the "Hang Tough" award by the National Tax Limitaion Committee for his efforts on behalf of the taxpayer. He has also been honored by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and praised by the State Chamber of Commerce for having "one of the best (voting) records in the Legislature".

Senator Leslie and his wife, Clydene, have two grown children, Debbie and Scott. They became grandparents for the first time in 1996 with the birth of Christopher Freeman, born to his daughter Debbie and her husband, Stuart.