Nicholas Petris (1923-2013): Longtime Liberal Firebrand in California Politics

Nicholas Petris (grave photo Michael Colbruno)

Plot 49A

Nicholas Christos Petris was an American legislator whose long career in Sacramento made him one of the most distinctive liberal voices in California politics. For nearly four decades, he represented Oakland and the East Bay in the California State Assembly and State Senate, combining an orator’s cadence with a reformer’s impatience for the status quo. 

Born in Oakland to Greek immigrant parents, Petris grew up speaking Greek before learning English in school, an experience that shaped both his identity and his lifelong attachment to classical rhetoric. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in journalism, and later earned his law degree from Stanford Law School. During World War II, he served in the Office of Strategic Services, after which he returned to Oakland to practice law and enter public life. 

Petris was elected to the California State Assembly in 1958 and to the State Senate in 1966, where he would remain until term limits forced his retirement in 1996. His legislative record ranged widely but consistently reflected a belief that government should serve those most in need—tenants, farmworkers, the elderly, and the mentally ill. He was a principal author of the Lanterman–Petris–Short Act of 1967, which reformed California’s mental health system and curtailed the involuntary commitment of most patients. 

Environmental protection formed another central pillar of his work. As co-author of the McAteer–Petris Act, he helped establish the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a landmark effort that halted the unchecked filling of the Bay and reshaped regional planning.  He also advanced early and often controversial proposals to combat air pollution—including an unsuccessful but widely noted attempt in the late 1960s to phase out gasoline-powered automobiles. Though the proposal failed, it foreshadowed stricter emissions standards that would later define California policy. 

In the Legislature, Petris was known as much for his style as for his substance. Colleagues recalled speeches laced with references to Greek philosophy and delivered with a moral clarity that rarely softened for political convenience. Admirers saw integrity; critics saw stubbornness. Both agreed that when Petris rose to speak, it was from conviction rather than calculation. His ideas were often described as ahead of their time—a phenomenon staffers dubbed the “Petris gap,” the distance between proposal and eventual acceptance. 

His legislative reach extended into housing, education, public health, and consumer protection, and his name became attached to institutions that outlived his tenure, including a health policy center at UC Berkeley and a state office building in Oakland.

Petris died in Oakland at the age of 90, the city of his birth and the political base he never abandoned. In retrospect, his career traces the arc of postwar California liberalism—ambitious, argumentative, and grounded in the belief that public policy could anticipate the future rather than merely react to it.

Sources: Wikipedia, Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Tracy Press