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Long-Term Vision Guy

By Harrison Sheppard
The year 2005 was not one of the best for Gov. Schwarzenegger. He went through a bruising battle with the state’s unions, ultimately resulting in the defeat of his entire special-election ballot-measure package. He was criticized for what seemed to be a move to the right in a Democratic state. And his poll ratings tanked to almost the level of his deposed predecessor, Gray Davis.
    So, as the year ended, the governor started making a series of wholesale changes in his policies, his attitudes, his approach to governing, and, perhaps most critically, his staff.
    Key among those staff changes was choosing Dan Dunmoyer as his long-term vision guy.
    The governor has never really had a high-level staffer whose main task it is to keep an eye on the distant horizon, even as his colleagues in the “horseshoe” — the suite of governor’s offices — try to put out that week’s fire.
    “There wasn’t somebody who had the time … to just say, ‘So what should we do, not tomorrow or next week, but maybe in a month or two, or two or three years from now?’’’ Dunmoyer says.
    Seeing this need, the governor created the position of deputy chief of staff and senior adviser for policy development. The governor’s new chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, recruited Dunmoyer for the slot while he was president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, where he had worked since 1989.
    Though he came most recently from the private sector, Dunmoyer is familiar with the inner workings of the Capitol. In the 1980s, he worked for Republicans in the state Legislature, most notably as chief administrative officer for the Assembly’s Republican Caucus.
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