Chuck Quackenbush

Charles "Chuck" Quackenbush (born 1954) is a Florida law enforcement officer and former California Republican politician. He served as Insurance Commissioner of California from 1995–2000 and as a California State Assemblyman representing the 22nd District, from 1986–1994.

As a child, he grew up in a military family and after graduating University of Notre Dame on a full ROTC scholarship, he joined the United States Army and rose to the rank of Captain as a helicopter pilot. In 1982, he left the military to join the family business in Silicon Valley. He was elected as a Republican to the California Assembly in 1986.

In 1994 he was elected insurance commissioner, effectively applying considerable campaign contributions from various insurance companies and won re-election in 1998. At this point, Quackenbush was considered the most promising Republican elected official in the state of California.

In early 2000, Cindy Ossias, then a senior lawyer for the California Department of Insurance (CDI), charged the Department with corruption. According to testimony by CDI employees, including Ossias and staff attorney Robert Hagedorn, Commissioner Quackenbush and his top aides abused their positions for personal gain and acted against consumers’ interests for many years.

After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, it was alleged that Quackenbush allowed insurance companies to compensate their clients much less than the actual damages. In exchange, the insurance companies set up special "educational funds". Those funds were used to create television commercials in which Quackenbush appeared as a basketball referee with Shaquille O'Neal in a Los Angeles Lakers uniform. While couched as public service announcements, suspicions rose that main idea behind the commercials was to increase Quackenbush's name identification, which is critical for electoral success in California statewide races.

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