Ron Unz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ron K. Unz, born 1961, is a former businessman and political activist, best known for an unsuccessful run for the governorship of California, and for sponsoring propositions promoting immersion English education.
Unz attended Harvard University, graduating in physics, and then went to Stanford to work on a PhD in theoretical physics, however he flunked out after two years. Unz then went to work in the banking industry writing software for mortgage securities. Unz founded a company called Wall Street Analytics and moved back to Palo Alto California.
Unz briefly enjoyed some minor notoriety in the early 1990s as a quirky Silicon Valley millionaire (even though his fortune was actually made on Wall Street), prior to the explosion of internet millionaires in the region in late 1990s. Unz's modest fortune, estimated at less than 10 million dollars, 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. In 1998 he sponsored Proposition 227, a proposition to change the state's bilingual education to an immersion bilingual educational system, which was approved by the voters.
