Country Music Conservative.(Mike Curb, politician and music executive)(Brief Article)

Mike Curb has one of the more unusual backgrounds of anyone in the music business.

At 56, he is one of the most prominent figures in entertainment, presiding over his own independent record label in Nashville with a stable of recording artists such as LeAnn Rimes, Tim McGraw, Jo Dee Messina, Wynonna Judd, Hank Williams, Jr., and Sawyer Brown, and annual sales exceeding $100 million. He also generates film soundtracks, for instance for the recent Coyote Ugly, which made more money as a record than as a film. Curb also profitably records a large quantity of Christian music.

But back in 1978, at the age of 34, Mike Curb was elected lieutenant governor of California. More than 1 million voters liked the idea of having Republican Curb in the number-two spot to rein in Governor Moonbeam," Democrat Jerry Brown. This split ticket was the first time since 1894 that Californians elected a governor and lieutenant governor from different parties.

Curb was a college dropout whose earliest political achievement came when his band, the Mike Curb Congregation, performed at the Nixon White House. But he was phenomenally successful in business--starting his own record label at 20, selling it at 23 for $3.5 million, and taking over MGM Records at 24.

By midway through his term as California's second in command, Curb had distinguished himself as a bona fide alternative to the swinging liberalism of bachelor governor Brown. When Brown was away from California, the state supreme court gave Curb the constitutional authority to lead the government, an arrangement that often proved entertaining.

During the gasoline crisis in 1979, Curb favored temporarily lifting smog standards in order to ease the pinch. Brown was opposed. Nevertheless, the legislature passed just such a measure, and Curb raced from San Francisco to the capital in Sacramento to try to sign it while Brown was travelling. Brown, en route from Washington by plane, hit California air space two minutes before Curb picked up his pen, making him powerless. Incidents ...