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Welcome to the 10th running of Capitol Weekly’s Top 100 list, our annual look at people who aren’t elected to office but who wield decisive influence on California politics or policy — or both. Much has changed in the nine years since we started this exercise. We shifted from a Republican to a Democratic governor, emerged from the Great Recession to become the world’s fifth-largest economy and watched GOP voter registration dip to third-party status behind decline-to-state. Hardball politics got even harder.
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Brianne Tufts is exhausted. This is the third place Tufts has lived in as many years, and she’s worried she’ll have to move again because her apartment complex might increase the rent now that her lease has expired. It’s just after 11 a.m. on a Sunday in April, and the 24-year-old mother of two sits on the balcony of her cramped 2-bedroom south Sacramento apartment watching intently as her daughters play in the living room.
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Some were bank robbers, car thieves and burglars. Now they are on the front lines in the scary and dangerous job of saving California from raging wildfires. There are about 3,900 of them, all state prison inmate volunteers from 44 fire camps spread across California.
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A move to restore federal tribal recognition to a long defunct Siskiyou County Indian rancheria has received a major blow. Research done by a college professor indicates no Indian ever lived on the 441-acre Ruffey Rancheria outside Etna.
Podcast
Elections expert Mindy Romero of the California Civic Engagement Project joins Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster to chat about California’s primary election turnout and what we might expect to see in November.
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92. Roger Salazar
The San Francisco Chronicle once called him “a master of the soundbite” and Roger Salazar has the record to back up that description. He heads ALZA Strategies, a political communications firm with heavy connections to California’s Latino political community.
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95. Robin Swanson
You’ve heard for decades about “high-powered public relations executives” in Hollywood movies, right? Well, meet one right here in Sacramento. She’s Robin Swanson, head of Swanson Communications. Normally a Democratic-leaning operative, Swanson has been outspoken in her
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92. Melanie Mason
The highest-profile story of the year in Sacramento was the explosion of sexual misconduct scandals that engulfed the Capitol and saw the birth of the #WeSaidEnough movement. Detailed, painful allegations were made public by scores of women
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88. David Lesher
The nonprofit news and commentary website CalMatters is an expanding and influential observer of California politics and public policy headed by Editor David Lesher, a veteran newsman. The staff has grown to more than two dozen, and
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9. Jim DeBoo
One of Newsom’s small army of former chiefs, Jim DeBoo continues to influence public policy from his consulting firm, DeBoo Strategic Affairs, thanks to the respect he continues to wield within the governor’s orbit. In fact, you
