News
In a closely watched election contest, San Francisco voters have upheld a first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products, overwhelmingly rejecting an $11.6 million campaign by R.J. Reynolds to scuttle the law. San Francisco officials last June approved the ban but a petition drive funded by Reynolds, the maker of the top-selling menthol brand, Newport, forced the issue onto yesterday’s ballot.
News
OPINION: Gov. Jerry Brown is trying to revamp the way funding for the state’s 114 community colleges is determined, which is smart since the current practice of funding schools in various regions of the state based almost entirely on enrollment does not do the areas with the highest need students any good.
Analysis
Since 2015 Capitol Weekly has been conducting polling to inform readers about policy and politics in the Golden State. This latest installment is an exit poll of voters done by Capitol Weekly using data and tools from Political Data, Inc. This polling focuses on early voters who cast ballots in the mail or at early voting centers. The full survey includes more than 11,000 respondents surveyed over a three-week period of ballot returns.
Podcast
On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster are joined by Steve Swatt, a veteran political analyst and former news reporter who at the age of 24 covered RFK’s murder and the trial of the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, for United Press International.
News
Before Election Day, fewer than one in every five California voters have cast their ballots. About 11.8 primary election million ballots were mailed during the past month — 5.3 million to Democrats and about 3.1 million to Republicans, according to figures compiled by Political Data, a firm that markets campaign information.
News
The conventional wisdom in Sacramento is that high-dollar borrowing has a better chance of winning voter approval if the economy is strong. That thinking will be tested Tuesday. Proposition 68 would provide $4.1 billion for natural resources, state parks and water projects. It is backed by Democrats and their allies, and opposed by anti-tax groups.
News
More and more of them are flooding your mailbox. They are usually bright, colorful, and nonsensical. Political mailers. What else? It’s the season, after all. Even in the age of texting and twitter, old-fashioned paper still has its charm for campaign strategists, especially in-down ballot races where a shotgun approach is not useful.
News
Diana Dooley, California’s top health official since 2011, has been named executive secretary of Gov. Brown’s office, the top administrative post in state government and, effectively, the governor’s chief of staff with broad control over the bureaucracy.
Podcast
There’s a lot going on here: A fifth of the electorate has already voted by mail, and more mailed ballots are coming in all the time. A lot of millennials got signed up through the registration program at the DMV, but what impact will that have on the contests? It looks like the SF Bay Area will outperform — again — L.A., and it’s still not clear whether a gaggle of GOP congressional incumbents are really vulnerable.
News
For the first time, California’s voter registration figures show independent voters surpassing Republicans, the culmination of a trend that has been building for decades. Updated numbers from California’s 58 counties showed decline-to-state voters, those who don’t state a party preference, had reached 25.5% in the weeks before the June 5 election. Republican registration, meanwhile, was put at 25.1%.
A menthol cigarette burning on an ashtray. (Photo: Kanin Sakulsillapakorn, via Shutterstock)
