The Assembly chamber at the state Capitol in Sacramento. (Photo: Felix Lipov, via Shutterstock)California courts are occasionally faced with scrutinizing the lawmakers’ decisions to label some bills as urgency statutes and others as special statutes. It may sound unexciting, but the reality is this: The courts’ rulings can affect millions of Californians.
A voter drops off his ballot. (Image: vepar5, via Shutterstock)Capitol Weekly’s tracking poll of by-mail voters has been running since Oct. 13 and reflects the ballooning numbers of early returns. This electorate, as reported in a prior CA120 article, overwhelmingly leans Democratic, with a significant number of likely Republican voters still expected to turn out on Election Day. As a result, the findings on ballot measures explored in this initial report skew to the left. For experienced poll watchers, this is the opposite of the early exit polling that often skews Republican.
Downtown Placerville, Calif. (Photo: Laurens Hoddenbagh, via Shutterstock)OPINION: The recent flurry of stories about small business woes often miss an important part of the picture: Small businesses’ role in helping fund government’s important responsibilities. Consider the City of Placerville. Located in El Dorado County with the original colorful Gold Rush era monikers, the sometimes controversial Hangtown and the more staid Dry Diggings, the city is a tourist draw housing a number of buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.
Political consultant Gale Kaufman at her Sacramento office. (Photo: Scott Duncan, Capitol Weekly)Gale Kaufman was campaigning in California before Arnold Schwarzenegger was Conan the Barbarian. Kaufman, a bare-knuckled Democratic strategist, is as little known to the public as she is famous among political pros. When talk in the political world turns to “Gale,” everyone knows it’s a reference to Kaufman.
The Los Angeles skyline late at night. (Photo: Songquang Deng, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Intense pressure will be applied by some legislators, regulators, and stakeholders who favor a heavy-handed command and control approach instead of market-based measures to clean the air and reduce GHGs. Look no further than the March 3 South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) governing board meeting for a real-life example.
Illustration by Tim Foster, Capitol WeeklyAs Capitol Weekly reported today, the November ballot is growing with seven measures already qualified, and another 66 in the wings. Most won’t qualify, so there is little reason to fear a 48-measure ballot like California saw in 1914. But we could near or exceed the modern high water mark of 29 on the 1988 Primary Election Ballot, and we will definitely exceed the average of 8.5 measures per ballot since 2000.
Image by Tim Foster, Capitol WeeklyANALYSIS: Nobody likes to feel like they are just a number. But to many modern campaigns, that’s exactly what we are. Whether we know it or not, the big campaigns for statewide ballot measures have assigned us a number. Ted Cruz has assigned us a number, and so have Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
State Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: David Monniaux)California’s political watchdog, facing 2014’s high-stakes statewide elections in which a relatively small number of donors put in more than $158 million to influence voters on ballot propositions, closed hundreds of cases with settlements – the most in its 40 years of existence.
Before the Nov. 4 general election, California’s political watchdog examined “every advertisement relating to state and local ballot measures” – a total of 172 state and local propositions – and ordered corrections in 19 of them, mostly for failing to make it clear who was financing the ads.
Jerry Brown maintains his strong lead among likely voters in the governor’s race against Neel Kashkari. Among two statewide ballot measures that Brown is campaigning for, Proposition 1—the $7.5 billion water bond—continues to have majority support and Proposition 2—the “rainy day fund”—has gained ground since September, with about half of likely voters in favor today.