Jay Michael left city management in Claremont, CA. to become the University of California’s representative and chief lobbyist in Sacramento in 1966. The man who hired him, University President Clark Kerr, was fired from his post shortly after Michael took up his position, but Michael stayed on the job through the next decade under President Charles Hitch and through the gubernatorial administration of Ronald Reagan, before leaving to become chief lobbyist for the California Medical Foundation. In this oral history Michael reflects on his early education and happy Mennonite childhood in California, the seminal influences that led him to a career in public administration, and the challenges he faced in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s protecting the mission, independence, and finances of the University of California. At that time the University was under fierce attack from many different corners, including from Governor Reagan. Michael explains how he built a grassroots coalition known as the “key contact system” of University supporters throughout the state, and the day to day work lobbyists do in cobbling together political backers and legislative support in the capital for their various causes and interests. He also recounts humorous experiences he had working with many storied leaders in Sacramento from Jesse Unruh and Willie Brown to Reagan. What comes through most clearly in this interview, which was conducted over three sessions in Michael’s home in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, CA, is Michael’s passion and idealism, and his unwavering belief in the University of California as an engine for human betterment. The Michael interview joins a series of over seventy oral histories which shed light on the university's statewide administration for more than a century, from the presidency of Benjamin Ide Wheeler, 1899 to 1919, to current times.