Illustration of California by ymgerman, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Ten years ago, I sat in my office cubicle. I squinted to make out the grainy online image of Elaine Howle, the California State Auditor, pulling out a series of bingo balls. My desktop speaker crackled, and it was hard to read the numbers on the balls. I kept the volume low so my coworkers couldn’t eavesdrop.
An illustration suggesting the variations in the voting population. (Image: Julian Tromeur, via Shutterstock)There are plenty of things to look at now that California counties have updated their voter files with the 2018 general election vote history. This is our first chance to see what really happened, as opposed to what people thought had happened based on the outcomes.
A bicyclist rides by debris following the 1994 Northridge quake. (Photo: Joseph Sohm)The images of California’s powerful earthquakes over the years have been vivid — the shattered buildings, the collapsed bridges, the buckled highways. A Los Angeles lawmaker is proposing updated earthquake legislation geared toward saving infrastructure, noting that modern building codes are designed to save lives but not necessarily preserve the physical structures.
Balancing the political power between L.A. and the San Francisco Bay Area. (Illustration: Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly)ANALYSIS: With five months to the 2018 gubernatorial primary election, there is a natural tendency to try and find the single major factor that will determine the outcome. Will it be Donald Trump, absentee voters, young people, the gas tax, racially polarized voting, the open primary, North versus South, the growing number of independent voters, the new registrants since President Trump was elected, or 25% of the electorate who registered to vote in 2016? The fact is, it will be all of these things.
A portion of the hundreds of thousands of people who protested federal immigration policies in Los Angeles in 2006. (Photo: Joseph Sohm)California’s growing Latino population is numerically strong but traditionally under-performs at election time – and that may have as much to do with economics as with politics. “The bottom line: If you see a growing Latino middle class, you will see a growing Latino representation in government,” said Mike Madrid, a veteran political strategist and author of a study by the newly formed California Latino Economic Institute.
CalPERS' governing board during a 2013 meeting. (Photo: CalPERS board)Calpensions: The state’s two largest public pension systems never recovered from huge investment losses during the deep recession and stock market crash in 2008. CalPERS lost about $100 billion and CalSTRS about $68 billion. Now after a lengthy bull market, most experts are predicting a decade of weak investment returns, well below the annual average.
Californians who thought Tuesday’s election would mark a dramatic change in the state’s culture and social fabric were right – half right. Anti-death penalty forces believed Election Day would be a game-changer. Nope. Marijuana advocates thought the same. Yep.
Coastal housing in Laguna Beach. (Photo: John Bilous)For decades, people living in California paid more for shelter than those in most of the rest of the country. But during the 1970s, “the gap started to widen. Between 1970 and 1980, California home prices went from 30 percent above U.S. levels to more than 80 percent higher,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported. Today, the average California home costs $440,000, or two-and-half-times the average price tag of $180,000 for a home across the country.
PPIC: Three out of four likely voters oppose forcing students to pay higher tuition at public colleges and universities, according to the latest survey by the Public Policy Institute of California. But most voters oppose raising taxes to meet the schools’ fiscal needs.
Election 2014: Gov. Brown on Wednesday signed into law new disclosure rules for nonprofits, a move prompted by the 11th-hour flood of stealth cash that roiled the November 2012 elections. The bill takes effect in July – after this year’s primary elections but in time for the general election.