State Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: David Monniaux)For the followers of California politics, non-election years usually are yawns. Not so 2013: One would be hard pressed to find a year with more hot-button events fraught with statewide political ramifications. Here’s our roundup of the year’s top tales, a subjective compilation to be sure but one which was fun to put together. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
California is in the forefront of the nation’s new health care insurance reforms and is following its own drummer, such as when it decided not to go along with the president’s call to give certain policyholders a year-long delay from being kicked off dubious health insurance plans. But the political forces surrounding the Affordable Care Act in California are profound and are all but certain to play a role in campaigns, including the potential reelection of California’s powerful insurance commissioner and whether Californians will approve a high-stakes initiative to regulate health insurers’ rates. (Above, left to right: Covered California’s Peter Lee, Diana Dooley and Susan Kennedy.) Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
History bound: Brown poised to be longest-serving California governor
Tucked away between a car rental agency and a dry cleaner at 1415 16th street, Simon’s has become a household name for Capitol oldies and newbies alike, a place peppered with political anecdotes since its establishment in 1984.
Capitol Alert: FPPC fines Kinney, Areias, Hickox for covert lobbying
“Three well-connected partners in the prominent California Strategies public affairs firm have agreed to pay fines to California’s political watchdog agency for trying to influence state government decisions without registering as lobbyists.”
“Jason Kinney, Rusty Areias and Winston Hickox violated state law when they “crossed over the line which
Another year, another Top 100 list, but there’s a big difference in this go-round: This is the first time we’ve put the list into a dedicated booklet and we think that’s pretty snazzy. The list, like Capitol Weekly itself, is now being published by the public benefit corporation Open California — and that’s cool, too.
And there’s a need for full disclosure. Four of those on the Top 100 are members of our 13-member governing board of directors, although it should be noted that all were on the list before we even had a board. Capitol Weekly has personal ties to the California Professional Firefighters – my daughter is their legislative director. One of our board members on the list represents TASIN, a longtime supporter of Capitol Weekly and, before that, the California Journal. And the president and CEO of the California Endowment is on the list, as is the Endowment’s senior vice president in Sacramento. The Endowment is a financial supporter of Open California.
Fickle Californians are voting with their feet, walking away from the political parties and increasingly declining to state any party preference at all.
The secretary of state reported Monday that Democrats and Republicans both lost registrants, with Republicans dipping to 28.9 percent, while Democratic registration stood at 43.9 percent, fully 15 points above the
Ann Ravel, California’s political watchdog, captured public attention in November when she squared off against an obscure but well-heeled group calling itself Americans for Social Responsibility.
The Arizona-based nonprofit poured $11 million at the 11th hour into the California campaign opposed to Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax initiative, Proposition 30. On the eve of the
I want to answer Gov. Jerry Brown’s very good question about the “non-TV voter,” posed about two weeks before Election Day – but first, I ought to address the handful of victory-lap news stories in the national media detailing a number of President Barack Obama’s political campaign staffers’ and consultants’ use of social media, big