CalPERS members voted in an expensive board election. Here’s who won
Two-time incumbent David Miller defended his seat on the CalPERS Board of Administration from two challengers, Santa Monica fire Captain Dominick Bei and former Pasadena city manager Steve Mermell, according to CalPERS election results released Thursday.
The other incumbent running, Jose Luis Pacheco, lost his board seat to challenger Troy Johnson, a senior administrative assistant for a Southern California school district. Pacheco lost despite raising the most money of any candidate in the public employees’ retirement system’s election history.
Johnson narrowly avoided a runoff election by earning 52% of the vote. Pacheco and former Caltrans employee Sam Hasan Akkad each earned 33% and 15% of the votes respectively.
In the other race, Miller earned 54% of the vote, while Mermell and Bei won 24% and 22% respectively.
Shortly after his win, Johnson said he was deeply honored to have the trust of his fellow CalPERS members and California retirees.
“I will never stop fighting to protect the hard earned pension and benefits they deserve,” Johnson said in a statement. “I look forward to working with my fellow trustees to ensure that CalPERS continues to be a model for retirement security.”
In an interview, Miller said that his priorities for his third term remain the same: sustaining the long-term performance of CalPERS; providing quality healthcare to public employees, and protecting the pension system from people who want to cast doubt on the fund’s security or those who hope to chip away at the benefits promised to retirees.
Miller and Johnson won with the backing of the California School Employees Association and several Service Employees International Union locals, a labor coalition that helped Pacheco to victory in 2021.
“Without institutional support from organizations that represent a large number of public employees, it’s really tough to win,” Miller said, referring to SEIU and CSEA.
Those groups’ support for Johnson, which helped him raise $84,000 in contributions, was enough to oust Pacheco, despite the incumbent’s impressive campaign haul, which totaled more than $192,000 in contributions — the most campaign contributions any candidate for the CalPERS board has raised previously.
During the last at-large election in 2021, the coalition of SEIU-affiliated locals and CSEA helped Pacheco oust former board member Margaret Brown. This year, Pacheco, an IT professional and administrator, pulled in his record haul from construction trade and public safety unions.
Johnson campaigned on the ever-rising cost of healthcare and said he would use his seat on the board to push CalPERS to use its status as the largest retirement system in the country to negotiate better deals for California retirees. During his campaign, Pacheco touted the board’s efforts to reduce drug costs for members by negotiating new agreements with healthcare companies.
Pacheco and Bei ran as a slate. Around Sacramento, signs for both candidates were seen together, which were funded by the Retired Public Employees Association, a group led by Brown that has been critical of aspects of CalPERS investment strategies involving private equity.
Bei and Mermell both criticized the leadership of the $583 billion pension fund, which has less than 80% of the money to cover its future financial obligations. During a candidate forum last month, Bei highlighted a high turnover rate among CalPERS chief investment officers, and Mermell said the retirement system was paying private equity brokers too much in fees for their investment work.
As the incumbent, Miller defended the board’s investment strategy and recent successes by pointing to the fact that the pension system has been chipping away at its unfunded liability to pay for members’ retirement benefits.
The two seats won by Miller and Johnson make up one-third of the elected officials on CalPERS’ 13-person board, which oversees a more than $500 billion investment portfolio and health benefits for over 1.5 million retirees, public employees and their families. The remaining seven seats are composed of state officials and governor and Legislature appointees.
Over 145,000 CalPERS members, less than 10% of eligible voters, submitted a ballot by mail, online and phone during the month-long election in August and September. Next year, CalPERS will hold elections for the state, school and public agency members. Johnson’s first term and Miller’s third term will begin in January.
This story was originally published October 2, 2025 at 10:44 AM with the headline "CalPERS members voted in an expensive board election. Here’s who won."
