No. 73: Capitol Weekly’s Top 100

73: Marty Wilson

Marty Wilson’s lofty official title is executive vice president of public affairs for the California Chamber of Commerce. But the big piece of that is politics as much as public affairs. Wilson played key roles in Pete Wilson’s campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate, and he’s worked in public and private communications. But he is perhaps best known for his political work with the Chamber’s political action committees, which are among the best financed and most aggressive in the state. There’s ChamberPAC, which backs business-friendly candidates and lawmakers; CalBusPAC, which handles ballot initiatives; and, the best known of the three, JobsPAC, described as an “employer-based independent committee that supports pro-jobs candidates.” Before joining the Chamber, Wilson was at Wilson-Miller Communications for seven years, and prior to that was managing director of Public Strategies in Sacramento.