After three years as the vice president of government relations at the Los Angeles County Medical Association, David Pruitt has taken over as the executive director of the California Medical Association Political Action Committee, where he will directly influence the CMA's interactions with the state Legislature.

Pruitt says the first big challenge he faces in his new CAL-PAC position is how to allocate resources for the upcoming election season. "Statewide, there will be about 35 open seats in both the Assembly and the Senate, and there are probably, on average, about four candidates running for each of those seats," Pruitt explains. The organization's task is to meet with most of these candidates to find out whether their politics are aligned with "the house of medicine," and to reckon each one's chances of winning, he says. "Each year, we have about $1 million that we bring into CAL-PAC. It sounds like a lot of money, but with that many open seats, you've got to be really careful with those dollars."

Each PAC can give each candidate a maximum of $7,200, but there is still a lot PACs can do in a supporting role. "For those candidates who are 100 percent with us on the issues--such as MICRA and scope of practice--we're going to have mailers that go to the most likely voters," Pruitt says.

Pruitt replaces Dean Chalios, who held CAL-PAC's executive director position for about 14 of the 16 years he worked for the CMA. Chalios took a job with the California Dental Association.

During his tenure, Chalios and the CMA lobbying team were successful in cultivating favorable attitudes toward most doctors' issues among legislators. Rather than change CAL-PAC's course, Pruitt says he intends to build on that legacy. That means "going directly to the physicians and getting them more involved with the levels of donations from sustaining member to president's circle," he says. "Dean spent about a decade laying the groundwork to get the [$50] dues augmentation going, and that was fantastic--that's something that now automatically goes into the PAC--but there is still a lot of room to grow."