LOS ANGELES — What qualifies as political activism in Hollywood usually starts and ends with writing a big check. Not so for Rob Reiner.
The iconic actor and director, who on Sunday was found dead in his home along with his wife, the producer and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, in a suspected homicide, was a policy maker and campaign strategist in his own right with lasting fingerprints on the political ecosystem in California and beyond.
An unapologetic liberal, Reiner was the driving force behind a successful California ballot initiative to tax tobacco products to fund early childhood development programs and an unsuccessful bid for universal preschool in the state. He was deeply involved in the legal strategy to overturn bans on same-sex marriage. His advocacy was instrumental in pushing those causes from the progressive fringes to the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
“A lot of Hollywood political advocacy — not all but a lot — is about jumping on a train that’s already moving and doing a little bit to help,” said Ben Austin, who was a top lieutenant to Reiner for his signature First 5 program, which offered education and child care for California’s youngest residents. “Rob created his own trains and through old-school politicking, he got others to jump on.”
His death reverberated far beyond the entertainment industry, with former presidents (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden) and other Democratic Party leaders (Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris) issuing stricken statements attesting to his political legacy. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s statements attributing Reiner’s death to “Trump Derangement System” earned the president rare rebukes from members of his own party.
For Reiner, politics was more than a hobby. He hired political operatives – including veterans of the Clinton White House — and embedded himself into statewide campaigns and government bureaucracy to advance his goals. In the hours since news of his death, for which his son Nick is now a suspect and in custody, Reiner alums have been swapping memories and consolation.
In 1998, he put a tobacco tax on the ballot that would fund an array of early childhood development programs, which he later re-branded as First 5. His narrow victory set a precedent for celebrities championing their causes directly to voters, including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s successful ballot measure to fund after-school initiatives three years later.
The parallels stoked speculation that the two Hollywood titans would face off in a gubernatorial race; Maureen Dowd of the New York Times dubbed the potential match-up “Meathead vs. Terminator,” a nod to the duo’s respective iconic roles.
Reiner’s considerations for a gubernatorial run were “very real,” said Jordan Markwith, a Bay Area public affairs consultant who worked for Reiner in the early 2000s.
“Rob would’ve made an incredible governor because he cared deeply about people and the issues that matters most,” said Markwith, whose office at the time was next door to Reiner’s at Castle Rock, the director’s entertainment company. “I wish he would’ve run. At the end of the day, it’s all about timing. He chose to put his family first.”
He continued to focus on early childhood development in the early 2000s. For Reiner’s aides, working with a movie icon lent unusual glitz to typically-unglamorous policy work. They would travel by private jet from Santa Monica for their monthly meetings in Sacramento, the rhythms of their work days scheduled around Reiner’s time on Hollywood sets.
“I would have to go make an appointment with his producer to meet him on a movie set [and] peel him away to meet in his trailer to talk about nerdy early childhood policy,” Austin recalled. “Rob, with a snap of a finger, was able to code switch from directing actors into political strategy.”
But the First 5 program faced an inherent contradiction: Its tobacco tax was meant to decrease smoking rates, but doing so would mean less money for its initiatives. To ensure their continued political popularity and funding, Reiner tried to expand its ambitions. He traveled around the state lobbying every county to support universal pre-school and universal health care for young children.
Politicians and bureaucrats, typically loath to share the spotlight, quickly saw the benefit of having Reiner on board.
“What they realized was, when Rob came to town, every reporter covered us,” recalled Mike Trujillo, who worked with Reiner as a young communications and political aide for First 5. “Because of his bully pulpit and his bullhorn, everyone got in line.”
While he convinced some counties to fund such big-swing measures, he did not emerge unscathed from his efforts. Reiner chafed at the slow pace of government, and the First 5 program was criticized as having lax oversight. He stepped down from his statewide post after he was accused of spending state dollars to promote a ballot initiative to fund universal pre-school with a tax on high-earners. (His allies note that he used those funds not to benefit himself, but to boost an initiative that would increase his own taxes). That ballot measure failed in 2006.
Reiner also threw himself into the fight to legalize same-sex marriage. Newsom, who made headlines in 2004 when, as San Francisco mayor, he began issuing licenses to gay couples, said the director reached out to encourage him.
“He [said] he had my back at a time when a lot of members of my own party, the Democratic Party, didn’t,” Newsom said on Monday in an appearance on the MeidasTouch Network.
After California’s Proposition 8 passed in 2008, banning same-sex marriage, Reiner backed a high-stakes litigation strategy that some other LGBTQ+ advocates saw as too risky. He founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which brought together a bipartisan attorney super-duo — Republican Ted Olson and Democrat David Boies — and searched for same-sex couples who would have the best case to challenge the ban.
Reiner approached Kris Perry, who worked on First 5 on the county and state level, and her partner Sandy Stier. That early childhood connection paved the way for Perry to be the named plaintiff in the lawsuit that ultimately overturned Prop 8.
“It was an amazing gift from them — being trusted to lead with them,” Perry said.
Perry and others described Reiner’s wife, Michele, as an equal partner in his advocacy. “You couldn’t distinguish them. They were so invested together,” she said.
Together, they built a sprawling political network that seemingly touched everyone in Hollywood, starting with Norman Lear, the television producer who gave Reiner his breakout role in “All in the Family,” the social commentary-laced sitcom smash. The shape of Reiner’s advocacy — a focus on democracy, the formation of his own political vehicles – followed the contours of his mentor’s political work.
Markwith said Reiner served as a bridge between old Hollywood activism and the current crop of celebrity politicos.
“It was great to go to an event at his house and you would see Norman Lear standing next to Leonardo DiCaprio,” Markwith recalled. “To see them, generations apart, working on similar issues — that connective tissue was Rob.”
