Capitol Weekly’s Top 100 List

There’s nothing like Sacramento in August: Stifling heat, frantic lobbyists, late-night sessions, pain, general angst – and Capitol Weekly’s Top 100 list. Fits right in.

This rundown represents our view of the unelected Capitol community’s inner workings and, as usual, we offer caveats. It’s heavy on opinion, light on methodology. By turns, it’s subjective, irreverent, kindly and respectful. It’s cheeky.

It’s also fun, at least for us, and that’s why we do it every year. That, and because we make money from our reception.

This year, some people are gone because of retirement – Greg Schmidt and Jon Waldie, for example.

There are some pretty cool newbies on the list, too, but we won’t name them now. We’ll keep you in suspense.

We’ve had political lawyers and fund-raisers on the list before, but we kept them off in this go-round to make room for some new blood.

Some people who were on the list last year moved up or down, depending on circumstance, while others stayed the same. We also tried, with limited success, to navigate the byzantine world of L.A. politics, a key component of statewide power.

It’s a campaign year, and the list has political fighters, of course, but it’s also heavy with the usual representatives of business and labor that engage in the Capitol’s trench warfare.

There are glaring  omissions in the world of water – Timothy Quinn and Jeff Kightlinger, to name just two – but it wasn’t by design. We were just pooped. Anyway, there’s always next year.

For disclosure: Several of the Top 100 are members of our 13-member governing board of directors of Open California, a nonprofit. Capitol Weekly has personal ties to the California Professional Firefighters – my daughter is their legislative director – and CPF’s president is on our list, as is a lobbyist. One of our board members on the list represents the Tribal Alliance of Sovereign Indian Nations, a longtime supporter of Capitol Weekly. The California Endowment’s senior vice president in Sacramento is on the list and the Endowment has been a financial supporter of Capitol Weekly. High up is the head of the University of California and UC’s Sacramento Center is a partner with Capitol Weekly in our quarterly conference series on public policy issues. Phew, that’s a lot of disclosure.

Finally, never let it be said we’re not thinking of your convenience: We put together an index on Page 68 of our Top 100 Book, with the participants arranged alphabetically so you can find someone quickly in the printed edition.

Well, that’s it for now. See you in 2015….

PS: We’ve also divided the online list into several pages to make it a bit easier to digest.

John Howard
Editor, Capitol Weekly