The California Clean Money Campaign emailed supporters last night that co-founder and chairman Ted Williams died yesterday morning.. Funeral services will be Thursday at Mt. Sinai. An excerpt of the email from executive director Susan Lerner:

Ted Williams was a man who took responsibility for the big things in life ­ peace and power, wealth and justice. What's more, he brought wisdom, humanity and humor to all he did. A business leader who spent 28 years as CEO of Bell Industries, Ted long ago realized that the nation’s bloated military spending budget was draining resources from education, health care, and other programs essential to the common good of our country. For many years he devoted himself to reducing military spending, but when the Cold War was over and military spending remained unchanged, Ted understood that he had been treating the symptoms rather than the cause of the problem. He recognized that none of our nation’s pressing problems could be fixed until the special interest money was removed from the electoral system. So in 1999, Ted co-founded the California Clean Money Campaign.