Ron Unz

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Ron K. Unz, (born 1961 in North Hollywood) is a former businessman and political activist, best known for an unsuccessful race in 1994 for the governorship of California, and for sponsoring propositions promoting structured English immersion education. In March 2007, The American Conservative named him its new publisher.

Unz attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, having graduated with a bachelor of science in physics. He then went to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, to work on a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, however he flunked out after two years.^{[citation needed]} Unz then went to work in the banking industry writing software for mortgage securities. Unz founded a company called Wall Street Analytics and returned to Palo Alto.

Unz briefly enjoyed some minor notoriety in the early 1990s as a Silicon Valley millionaire (even though his fortune was made on Wall Street), prior to the explosion of Internet millionaires in the region in late 1990s. Unz's fortune, estimated at less than $10 million, is no longer considered particularly noteworthy by the local media.

Unz made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for governor of California in 1994, finishing in third place. He received 707,431 votes (34.3 percent). The nomination and the election went to the incumbent Pete Wilson, who drew 1,266,832 (61.4 percent) of primary ballots.

In 1994, Ron Unz opposed Proposition 187 to deny legal services to illegal immigrants. But in 1998, Unz sponsored the state's Proposition 227, a proposition to change the state's bilingual education to an opt-in structured English language educational system, which was approved by the voters. The proposition did not end bilingual education, rather, it allows parents to opt-in to a bilingual education program at the school, if sufficient number of parents petition the school.

Read the full text of Proposition 227