Veteran political data expert Paul Mitchell sat down (remotely) with Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster on Friday to chat about early vote turnout, the partisan breakdown of those votes and how California compares to the national picture.
As the November election approaches, longtime labor activist Caitlin Vega is focused on what she sees as an existential battle: the effort to defeat Proposition 22 – the initiative that would classify App-based drivers as independent contractors and remove labor protections for thousands of workers.
Five years ago this week, Shawnda Westly found herself in a hospital emergency room with “the worst headache of [her] life.” The doctor who examined her concluded that she was experiencing a migraine, prescribed some painkillers and sent her home.
Within 48 hours, she suffered a stroke that threatened to derail her life. Westly faced a harrowing and uncertain recovery, with the very real prospect that she that might never be able to live on her own again. She was just 45 years old.
Longtime Sacramento journalist Joe Barr is Capital Public Radio’s Director of Content. While most news organizations have seen a stark decline in staffing over the past decade, Barr has led a major expansion in the station’s news department. Joe joined us by phone to chat about CapRadio’s approach to their news and music stations, the struggles of producing a torrent of election year news programming during a pandemic, and what’s next for CapRadio.
5.0.2Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an Executive Order today to outlaw the sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and light trucks in California by 2035. California is the nation’s largest market for zero-emission vehicles: Half of all electric vehicles sold in the U.S. are sold in the state. We asked Dave Weiskopf, a senior policy adviser at NextGen, to chat about it.
This week we posted four special editions of the Capitol Weekly Podcast, broadcasting the content from our September 17 conference on health care in the Golden State. We focused this year on the unprecedented public health emergency: COVID-19. Exactly six months and one day after the first Shelter-in-Place order, we examined the response to the crisis and looked at what comes next.
Lobbyist Jennifer Fearing operates Fearless Advocacy, a small “white hat” lobbying outfit that represents nonprofits, animal rights groups, environmentalists and other clients with feel-good causes. With clients like these, Fearing isn’t the highest-billing advocate on the block, but her record at the capitol is the envy of many of her peers.
Republican political strategist Jon Fleischman has been a significant voice in California conservative circles for well over a decade; he formerly served as the Executive Director of the state GOP and his Flash Report blog, founded in 2005, was one of the first (and for a time, perhaps the most influential) insider political blogs in the state. He joined John Howard and Tim Foster for a wide-ranging conversation covering President Trump, the state of the GOP, pending legislation, Steve Bannon’s arrest – and who he voted for in the 2016 presidential election.
Steve Smith of the California Labor FederationAugust saw dramatic developments in the ongoing Dynamex/AB5/gig economy saga: following the August 13 ruling that confirmed an August 20 deadline for Uber and Lyft to reclassify their workers as employees, the two companies announced that they planned to cease operations in California rather than comply. John Howard and Tim Foster of the Capitol Weekly Podcast reached out to Steve Smith of the California Labor Federation, one of the leading opponents of Proposition 22, to chat about this wild week and the issues behind AB5 and Proposition 22.
Lobbyist Aaron Read is the definiton of “venerable” in Sacramento’s Capitol Community: he began his lobbying career advocating for California state employees while Reagan was governor and Willie Brown was still just the Assemblyman from the 13th District. Read formed Aaron Read and Associates in 1978 and has been a major force in Sacramento ever since. He has a bevy of clients, many of whom have been with him for decades. He joined us this week to talk about his long career, and about the issues he’s working as the legislative session heats up this month.