Rob Feckner was sitting in his small, windowless office in Sacramento in mid-February when the phone rang. On the other end of the line was one of the country's most famous -- and controversial -- CEOs, Walt Disney Co.'s Michael Eisner, calling from his corporate jet en route to a shareholders' annual meeting in Minneapolis.

Feckner, a 47-year-old glazier just days from becoming president of the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, wasn't expecting the call. But he knew immediately its purpose. Eisner hoped that CalPERS would vote its 9.4 million Disney proxies in favor of his reelection to the Disney board.

A year earlier, under Feckner's predecessor, Sean Harrigan, $183 billion-in-assets CalPERS had led a group of pension funds calling on Eisner to step down as chairman and CEO. Under pressure, Disney's board in March 2004 took the chairmanship from Eisner; that September, Eisner announced that he would...