Special Report: How Californians got burned --
"In the mid-1990s, Enron was aggressively hopscotching from state to state, urging deregulation and offering money and promises.
The company pushed for opening up markets in Iowa and Michigan, priming politicians there with contributions. In 1997, it doled out more than $858,000 in soft money and political-action contributions to members of Congress, becoming the largest contributor from the energy industry. That year it hired Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, to preach its agenda.
At the time, Enron was a comparatively small ($8 billion a year in revenue) marketer of natural gas. But it was on its way toward becoming one of the world's most successful companies, a $100-billion-a-year giant that counts President Bush among its friends.
Enron had qualms about the system California was leaning toward. In testimony before the PUC in June 1994, it warned that the highly centralized market structure could lead to higher prices.
But ultimately the company joined the chorus urging California to plunge ahead. Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling told the PUC in 1994 that California could lower its $23 billion-a-year energy bills by as much as $9 billion -- enough money to triple the police forces of its largest cities.
"Commissioners, the patient is on the ground bleeding," Skilling testified. "Delay kills."
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