Features July 8, 2010, 11:01AM EST

Steve Peace: California Revolutionary

The man who is changing the way California—and possibly the rest of the country—elects its leaders is a political maverick with an eccentric legacy in both Sacramento and Hollywood

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Illustration by Mick Brownfield

By Ben Elgin and Christopher Palmeri

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Steve Peace knows about the consequences of partisan politics. As a Democrat in the California legislature in the late '80s, he voted one time too many with Republicans and paid the price. Party leaders stripped him of committee posts, cut his staff budget, and banished him to a smaller office. They even took away his front-row parking space.

Now Peace has a shot at vengeance. On June 8, Californians approved a ballot measure written by constitutional lawyers he hired to start a revolution in the nation's most populous state. Under Proposition 14, also called the Top Two Primaries Act, voters will be able to vote for any candidate in an open primary. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, then move on to the general election. Peace and his backers say when the measure becomes law in 2011, contenders won't have to cater to their parties' extremists to win a primary, and voters will elect more centrist, pragmatic leaders who campaign honestly. "We have two political parties that are becoming narrower and narrower," says Peace. "Today, if you behave like a kook, you get rewarded."

Peace, 57, acknowledges he's often considered a bit kooky himself. Outside California he's best known as the producer of 1978's Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, a Hollywood spoof in which Peace, as Lt. Wilbur Finletter, wields a saber in the final scene's fight to the death against a swarm of murderous fruit. In state politics his star moment was pushing through a 1996 bill that deregulated the electricity market. When blackouts and price spikes whipped the state in 2000 and 2001, Peace became infamous.

Passed last year by both chambers of the California legislature and approved by 54 percent of voters, Proposition 14 was backed by a strange-bedfellow coalition that included Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Willie Brown, a longtime Democratic leader who served 15 years as speaker of the State Assembly and eight years as mayor of San Francisco. Even former Governor Gray Davis, who was forced out after a recall vote in 2003, signed on, though he offers a more qualified endorsement of Peace. "With Steve you get the best and worst ideas imaginable," says Davis. "A couple are brilliant, four are crummy, and two are probably illegal. He's a geyser of ideas."

Having won over California voters, Peace's movement is going national. New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has impaneled a commission that is, among other things, exploring an open primary initiative for New York City's November ballot. (Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek.) Voters elsewhere may soon be considering the option as well.

Appealing to Business

Seated in a leather chair in a San Diego conference room, Peace wears a patterned dress shirt tucked into jeans, though how it manages to stay tucked in is a mystery. An excitable man, he springs out of his chair to animate stories. His noisy reenactment of his response when a campaign worker bungled the printing of campaign flyers brings a knock from the office wall next door. The flyer episode happened 30 years ago.

Before winning election to the state legislature in 1982 as a Democrat representing a conservative area, Peace produced the original Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! as well as three sequels. "We were young and dumb and got lucky," he says. He and a partner co-produced a cartoon version that ran on News Corp's (NWS) Fox and there was even a 1999 Greek-language copycat called The Attack of the Giant Mousaka. He's working with a company in Singapore on a remake of the original.

Despite his novelty hit, Peace says he always felt pulled toward politics, noting what he calls the political overtones of the Killer films in which a bungling leader paints a rosy picture for the public while civilization is under siege. In the Assembly, Peace was given a spot on the Ways & Means Committee. "There was an expectation that I was a marginal member who would help them make their numbers." He and four other moderate Democrats wanted to influence policy, and in 1987 they began siding occasionally with the GOP, which controlled 36 of 80 seats. The insurrection of the Gang of Five, as it was known, crumbled after Democrats made gains in the 1988 election, and Peace and his cohorts were stripped of committee posts and staff. "The light went on for me," he says. "It is easy to get wrapped up in the bubble of the parties. It almost takes an out-of-body experience to challenge the system you're a part of."