Ronald Reagan

As students of 20th-century California history will nostalgically recall, a once-struggling movie actor named Ronald Reagan rose to political prominence selling General Electric.

The Democrat-turned-Republican hosted General Electric Theatre on television and toured the country promoting GE's appliances along with his politics.

The nation's 40th president-to-be signed off each TV show with, "Goodnight for General Electric, where progress in products goes hand-in-hand with progress in the human values that enrich the lives of us all. That's why, at General Electric, progress is our most important product."

But Reagan's relationship with the giant corporation eventually ended on a sour note, according to Reagan biographer Lou Cannon.

"Reagan had first aroused corporate ire in 1959 when he included the Tennessee Valley Authority among his examples of wasteful government, saying that 'the annual interest on the TVA deal is five times as great as the flood damage it creates,'" writes Cannon in 2001's Ronald Reagan: The Presidential Portfolio.

"TVA was a revered New Deal symbol and a $50-million-a-year customer of GE products."

Reagan volunteered to drop the TVA reference from his speeches, which, writes Cannon, "mollified General Electric for awhile, but when Reagan's option came up for renewal in 1962, another GE executive asked him to confine his remarks to selling company products. This Reagan refused to do." Adds Cannon, "The option was not renewed."

Now comes San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, an ex-PR operative widely expected to seek a higher position, using his office for a more blatant pitch on behalf of General Electric and its products.

"Mayor Kevin L. Faulconer today announced that the City of San Diego is the world’s first city to partner with GE Lighting on a pilot of its Intelligent Cities platform — a software-defined lighting technology that will help San Diego solve some of the city’s infrastructure challenges," says a February 10 GE news release.

The company quotes Faulconer as saying, "We believe that the Intelligent Cities partnership will help us go further in creating truly intelligent infrastructure that helps us improve services to the public.”

"The Intelligent Cities partnership will explore enhanced sensors and Predix® — GE's software platform for the Industrial Internet which allows for advanced lighting control, traffic and parking optimization, and environmental monitoring and analysis," GE’s statement continues.

Faulconer is currently on a publicity tour of the East Coast, which, as previously reported here, is to feature a sit-down with London mayor Boris Johnson at the Brookings Institute in Washington, sponsored by JPMorgan Chase.