News
Stem cell researchers rarely have a chance to talk directly about their work to thousands of people at a time, including those in the farthest reaches of the globe. But Jeanne Loring at the Scripps Research Institute did it last week. The California stem cell agency did it last month with Stanford researcher Gary Steinberg. And it could well be that the technique that they used will emerge as a critical tool in the effort to stave off the death of the $3 billion, stem cell program.
News
The once-a-decade national census is still nearly two years away but it’s already generating heated discussion. Among the myriad concerns raised so far is that this survey will be the first conducted in part online. People are also expressing alarm over the inclusion of a new citizenship question, the wording for questions on race and ethnicity and the way prisoners are counted.
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.
An illustration of stem cells in mitosis. (Image via Shutterstock)
