SIXTH EDITION

Governing California in the Twenty-First Century THE P O L ITICAL DYNAMICS OF THE G OLD EN STATE

J. Theodore Anagnoson California State University, Los Angeles

Gerald Bonetto Vice President, Government Affairs, Printing Industries of California

J. Vincent Buck California State University, Fullerton

Richard E. DeLeon San Francisco State University

Jolly Emrey University of Wisconsin—Whitewater

James J. Kelleher California State University, Dominguez Hills

Nadine Koch California State University, Los Angeles

W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By midcentury, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program——trade books and college texts——were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today——with a staff of four hundred and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year——W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest publishing house owned wholly by its employees.

Copyright © 2017, 2015, 2013, 2011, 2009, 2008 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. The text of this book is composed in Berlin with the display set in Interstate. Book design: Sandra Watanabe Composition: Achorn International Manufacturing: Marquis Book Printing Editor: Ann Shin Associate Editor: Emily Stuart Editorial Assistant: Shannon Jilek Project Editor: Tenyia Lee Managing Editor, College: Marian Johnson Production Manager, College: Ashley Horna Marketing Manager, Political Science: Erin Brown Permissions Manager: Megan Schindel Permissions Specialist: Bethany Salminen Photo Editor: Ted Szczepanski   ISBN 978-0-393-60369-9 (pbk.) W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT 1234567890

Contents PREFACE  viii

1  •  California Government: Promise and Practice  1 The California Dream?  2 Why Study California Politics?  2 What Determines the Content and Character of California’s Politics?  4 Who Are Californians?  5 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? How Is the California Population Changing?  6

The Crisis of California Politics  9 The Ease of Passing Initiatives  11 Term Limits  11 The Two-Thirds Requirement for Raising Taxes  12 Lack of Consensus on Fundamental Questions  13 Reform Ideas  14

Conclusion 15 A Guide to This Book  15 Study Guide  16

2  • The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy  19 The Rules of the Game: California’s Constitution  21 The 1849 Constitution  22 The 1879 Constitution  23 From 1900 to 1917: The Progressive Movement  26 From 1960 to the Present: Late Revisions  27 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? Who Draws the Lines in California?  28

The Progressive Movement and Its Impact on California Politics  29 Local Politics  29 State Politics  30

Direct Democracy  32 Initiative 32 Referendum 37 Recall 38 Debating the Merit of Direct Democracy  39

California’s Constitution: Where Are We Now?  40 Study Guide  42  / iii

3  •  Interest Groups and the Media in California  47 Character of Interest Groups  48 Diversity of Interest Groups  49 Proliferation of Interest Groups  51

Interest-Group Strategies  53 Lobbyists 53 Campaign Contributions to Candidates  55 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? Who Spends Money in California Politics?  57 Grassroots Mobilization  58

The Legislature, Bribes, and Scandals  60 Regulating Campaign Contributions  61 Clean-Money Elections  64 Contribution Limits  64 Conflict-of-Interest Laws  64

The Media  65 Television 65 Newspapers 66 The Internet  67 Media and Political Campaigns  69

Interest-Group Politics in California: Where Are We Now?  70 Study Guide  71

4  •  Parties and Elections in California  75 Political Parties  76 The Progressive Impact on Political Parties  76 The Democratic and Republican Parties in California  77 Third Parties in California  78 Party Affiliation of California Voters  79

California’s Local Political Cultures from Left to Right  84 Elections in California  87 The Battle over the Primary  87 Presidential Primaries: Maximizing California’s Clout?  89 Initiative Campaigns: Direct Democracy or Tool of Special Interests?  91 The 2003 Gubernatorial Recall Election: A Perfect Political Storm  94 The 2008 Election: Demographic and Ideological Shifts  94 The 2010 General Election  95 The 2012 Primary Election  96 The 2012 General Election: More Demographic and Ideological Shifts  97 The 2014 Election  99 The 2016 Primary Election  100 The 2016 General Election  100

Campaigning in California  103 Money and Politics: California Style  104 Campaign Finance Reform in California  106

Voting in California  107 How You Can Register to Vote  107 Who Votes in California?  108 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? Who Votes in California?  110

iv / Contents

What Reforms Are Needed?  113 Study Guide  113

5  •  The California Legislature  119 Functions 121 Representation 121 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? Who Represents Californians?  123 Policy Making  124

Members and Districts  125 Elections 126 Fund-raising 127 Districting 127

Organization 129 Leadership 129 Committees 131 Staff 131

Legislative Process  133 Differences from U.S. Congress  136 Term Limits  136 Item Veto  136 Apportionment and District Size  137 Media Visibility  137 Court Appointments  137 Filibusters  138 Initiatives 138 Seniority 138

Challenges Facing the California Legislature  138 Money 139 Term Limits Lead to a Lack of Knowledge and Experience  139 Partisanship 141 Gridlock, Minority Rule, and Lack of Accountability  141 Initiatives 143

California Legislature: Where Are We Now?  144 Study Guide  145

6  •  The Governor and the Executive Branch  149 The Invisible Governor?  150 Formal Powers of the Governor  153 Appointments 154 Independent Executive Actions  155 Commander in Chief  155 Organizing and Managing the Executive Branch  155 Budget 157 Veto and Line-Item Veto  157 Legislative Powers  158 Legislative Recommendations  159 Judicial Powers  159 Public Roles of the Governor  159

Jerry Brown as Governor  160 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? How Does California's Governorship Compare?  163

Structure of the Executive Branch  164 Personal Staff  164 The Cabinet and Agency Heads  164

Contents / v

The Plural Elected Executive  166 Agencies and the Bureaucracy  168

California Executive Branch: Where Are We Now?  170 Study Guide  171

7  •  The California Judiciary  175 Structure of the California Judicial System  176 The Lower Courts  176 The Supreme Court  177 Jurisdiction 178 Access to the Court  178 Federalism and the California Courts: The Case of Medical Marijuana  179

Judicial Selection  181 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? Who Are California’s Judges?  183 Judicial Elections  184 Removing Judges from the Bench  187

Contemporary Issues in the Judiciary  187 Change in the Court  187 Legislative Redistricting  187 Judicial Review and the Statewide Initiative  188 Caseload 189

California Courts: Where Are We Now?  190 Study Guide  192

8  •  The State Budget and Budgetary Limitations  195 How Is the Budget Formed?  197 Executive Proposal  197 Legislative Adoption  199 Gubernatorial Action  200 Implementation 200 Other Groups Involved in the Budget Process  200

What Is in the Budget?  201 Revenues  201 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? Where Does California Get Its Revenue?  203 Why Do Revenues Vary So Much?  207 How Well Does the Tax System Function?  207 Is California Overtaxed?  208 Expenditures 209

Budgetary Limitations  212 Recent California Budgets and the Budget Process  213 The California Budgetary Process: Where Are We Now?  214 Study Guide  215

9  •  Local Government  219 The Legal Framework: Dillon’s Rule, Home Rule, and   Local Powers of Governance  220 County Governments  222 Legal Framework  223 County Government Organization  224 vi / Contents

WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? Who Lives in California’s Counties?  225 County Government Functions and Responsibilities  226 Local Agency Formation Commissions  228

City Governments  229 Legal Framework  229 Incorporation and Dissolution  229 City Government Functions and Responsibilities  230 City Government Revenues and Expenditures  230 Forms of City Government and the Legacy of Progressive Structural Reforms  231

Special Districts  237 School and Community College Districts  237 Nonschool Special Districts  237 Legal Framework  238 How Special Districts Are Created  238 The Advantages and Disadvantages of Special Districts  238

Regional Governments  239 Regulatory Regional Governments  239 Advisory Regional Governments  240

California’s Community Redevelopment Agencies: The Old and  New Models 241 Local Government: Where Are We Now?  242 Study Guide  245

10  •  Public Policy in California  249 Water Policy  252 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? Who Gets Water in California?  254

Health Insurance  255 Employer-Sponsored Insurance  256 Individual Health Insurance Marketplace  256 Medi-Cal 256 Medicare 257 TRICARE 257 The Uninsured  257

California’s Infrastructure  258 Highways 258 WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS? How Do Californians Get Around?  260 Levees 261 The Future of California’s Infrastructure  262

Indian Gaming in California  262 Conclusion 264 Study Guide  265

ANSWER KEY  269 NOTES 270 PHOTO CREDITS  281 INDEX 282

Contents / vii

Preface We began this project over a decade ago with a working title asking whether California’s political system and its politics were simply “broken.” That is, politicians were caught within a system that was so contradictory in its rules, norms, and mores that budgets couldn’t be passed on time or balanced, programs and departments couldn’t be managed under the existing set of rules, and citizen expectations were so out of line with the ability of the political system to satisfy them that the level of negativism and cynicism was as bad as could be found anywhere in the nation. We think after a decade of false and halting starts that the picture needs some modification. California has begun to repair its infrastructure. The state has new incentives for politicians to be less ideologically extreme on the right or the left, in particular the “top two” primary system and the commission that is now drawing new districts for the Assembly, the state Senate, and congressional districts every 10 years after the Census. Decision rules in Sacramento still leave much to be desired, but at least a budget can be passed with majority rule instead of having to obtain a two-thirds vote, a rule that necessitated some votes from the minority party and, unfortunately, some pork projects or other incentives to gain those votes. And the nation’s strictest term-limit rules have been modified to allow members of the Assembly or state Senate to serve 12 years in a single house before being “termed out” and forced to seek another office outside the state legislature. Hopefully this will increase the level of expertise available among legislators. At the same time, we have gone only part of the way toward a political system that would actually “function” and make efficient decisions. There still is no way to adjust the tax system without a two-thirds vote, and California’s tax system badly needs modernization; its last overhaul was more than 50 years ago. While the economy has moved toward a services base, California’s tax system remains centered on manufacturing, which was more common a half century ago. The income tax relies much too heavily on the capital gains tax, and that in turn creates revenue peaks and valleys that tempt Sacramento politicians to build the periodic surges of revenue into the base and to run deficits when times are tough. Proposition 13, passed in 1978, caused a massive centralization of authority in Sacramento over the next decade at the expense of cities, counties, and school districts. As a result, local governments have little authority over their own revenue, while state government proved unable to provide local governments with the revenue and authority they needed to deal with the recent recession, financial collapse, viii / 

and defaulted mortgages that still plague certain areas. This caused a number of local government to go bankrupt, and those that did not were unable to help people in a genuine time of need. In some dire cases, state government cutbacks combined with the revenue-depleting impacts of home mortgage foreclosures, high unemployment, business failures, and grossly overburdened public sector pension and benefit obligations created “perfect storms” of local economic and political conditions that bankrupted cities like Stockton and still threaten others. The state has been unable to help. The drought of 2013–14 exacerbated existing flaws in California’s water policy, and while the state government has proposed several solutions, some controversial, the fact remains that the state’s demand for water still drastically exceeds its supply. In these circumstances, the Sixth Edition of Governing California in the TwentyFirst Century offers a ray of hope but also the reality of a long distance to go. We hope you enjoy our analysis of California’s politics as not quite “broken” but not as yet “fixed” either. This edition continues the “Who Are Californians?” features, presenting visual snapshots of California’s politics and people. These infographics, contributed by Melissa Michelson of Menlo College, shine a light on demographic diversity and political behavior in the state. We divided the writing of this book as follows: 1. California Government: Promise and Practice—Anagnoson (tanagno@calstatela .edu) 2. The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy—Bonetto ([email protected]) and Anagnoson 3. Interest Groups and the Media in California—Bonetto 4. Parties and Elections in California—Koch ([email protected]) 5. The California Legislature—Buck ([email protected]) 6. The Governor and the Executive Branch—Buck 7. The California Judiciary—Emrey ([email protected]) 8. The State Budget and Budgetary Limitations—Anagnoson 9. Local Government—DeLeon ([email protected]) 10. Public Policy in California—Emrey There are websites for the fifth and sixth editions of this book. For the fifth edition, go to www.silcom.com/~anag999/g5.html. For the sixth edition site, substitute “g6” (without the quotes) for “g5.” The sites contain:

• A link to the publisher’s own site for this book. • A list of errata. If you find any error in the book, please email the lead author, J. Theodore Anagnoson, at [email protected] or [email protected].

• Answers to the short answer questions at the end of each chapter. We have constructed, in addition, a test bank for instructors. To gain access to the test bank, visit wwnorton.com/instructors. W. W. Norton also offers a formative quizzing tool called InQuizitive for this and other titles. The system includes adaptive multiple choice questions with im­ mediate responses and links to sections of the book online for reference and know­ ledge reinforcement. We tried several activities from the question bank and liked the feedback and the links. We recommend that you have a look also; you can try a demo at digital.wwnorton.com/govcali6. Preface / ix

We would like to acknowledge the helpful recommendations from professors who have reviewed the book; their comments have assisted us in updating events and materials. For the sixth edition, we thank the following reviewers: Larry Bensky, California State University, East Bay Joe Brookshire, College of the Redwoods Pearl Galano, California State University, Channel Islands Herbert Gooch, California Lutheran University Sarah Hill, California State University, Fullerton Wesley Hussey, Sacramento State University Alison Keleher, University of California, Santa Barbara Jamilya Ukudeeva, Cabrillo College John Vento, Antelope Valley College Joshua Pryor, California State University, Sacramento We also thank the several students who have communicated their comments. We would be glad to hear from you about the book. Please use the email ad­ dresses above to communicate with us.

x / Preface

J. Theodore Anagnoson Professor of Political Science California State University, Los Angeles

1

California Government: Promise and Practice WHAT CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT DOES AND WHY IT MATTERS In the morning you drive to work on the freeway, stopping first at the gas station on the corner to fill up and to buy an apple from the corner grocery store for a mid­ day snack. You then drive across a bridge to get to the university where you are currently taking general education courses. You are already considering what will follow after graduation. Perhaps you’ll work for the California Highway Patrol (CHP), a private security guard service, or maybe even in the same grocery store where you stopped for your apple. In the evening, you are ready to relax after a full day of school, so you go out to a restaurant. How is the government of California relevant to your day? Let’s start at the beginning: your car is built to conform to government safety standards. The free­ ways are built by the state government, with a mixture of federal and state money, to conform to federal and state standards; traffic is monitored by the CHP. The gas station has to meet local safety regulations, and it uses gasoline that conforms to federal standards for automobiles. The grocery store relies on scales that are certified by county government; both imported and domestic fruit must meet U.S. and state Department of Agriculture standards. The bridge is built by government and is maintained by government (although a large proportion of the bridges nationally and in California are behind on their scheduled maintenance). If you attend a K–12 school, the school must comply with state standards for curricu­ lum at each grade level and administer tests to determine whether it is meeting those standards. If you are in higher education, the public university you attend must have a general education program that conforms to state regulations; if you

/  1

are enrolled in a community college, California State University, or the University of California, the cost of your education is partially subsidized by state funds. (If you attend a private college, you might be receiving federal student aid.) If you eventu­ ally go to work for the CHP, you will work under state laws and regulations. The private security service is regulated by the state as well, and the grocery store must conform to state safety standards. The restaurant in which you enjoy your evening meal is inspected periodically by the local government health department, and in some locations, the department will post the summary score (A, B, or C).

The California Dream? For almost 200 years, the California dream has attracted residents from other parts of the United States as well as immigrants from abroad. Governor Arnold Schwar­ zenegger, in one of his State of the State speeches (2004), said that California rep­ resents “an empire of hope and aspiration,” a place where “Californians do great things.” To some, the California dream is sun and surf; to others, the warm winter season; to still others, a house on the coast amid redwoods and acres of untram­ meled wilderness; or to some it is the luxury of three or four cars per family. Many of these dreams can be summed up in the phrases “freedom from restraints” and “freedom from traditions.” These are typical themes in statewide elections and gubernatorial State of the State speeches—evoking the image of an older, less crowded California. A more modern conception of the California dream is finding a way to stick it out here. “California is a struggle, so we dream of the good struggle, of finding our footing, of figuring out some way to beat the statistics and buy a house and educate our kids.”1 No matter what the conception, some of the dream is attainable for many— California’s winter weather is the envy of most of the nation—but much of it is not. One of the themes of this book is the conflict between dreams and reality, between the ideals that we set for ourselves and the reality of our everyday lives. Particularly vivid for politicians is the conflict between our expectations of them and the constraints we place upon them.

Why Study California Politics? The obvious answer is that you have to: your California history course meets some requirement for graduation or your major, since the state of California decided that every college student should know something about the California Constitu­ tion and California government and politics. But more important—why care about California politics?

• You are the residents and voters of the present and future. The policies and political trends occurring today will impact your lives, affecting everything from university tuition fees to the strength of the job market. 2 / Chapter 1  /  California Government: Promise and Practice

• California politics is plagued by low levels of participation and turnout, so much so that the electorate is older, more conservative, wealthier, more educated, and less ethnically diverse than would be the case if every eligible adult voted. So your vote and participation really can make a difference.

• California politics also suffers from too much interest-group participation and not enough citizen participation. The general interests of large groups of citizens need to be represented at the table. That’s the narrow answer. The broad answer is that California’s government and politics are distinctive and worthy of study. How is California different from other states?

• We have much more cultural diversity than other states, including a much higher proportion of Latino and Asian residents. By some measures, we are the country’s multicultural trendsetter. Our diversity affects our politics, and our solutions to multicultural issues become an example for other states.

• We are one of the 10 largest economies in the world. The California economy in 2015, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, is the sixth largest in the world, in the same ballpark as the economies of Russia, Italy, and Brazil. California’s large and diverse economy means that we are able, in theory, to weather economic downturns more easily than other states. The fact that economic crises continue to plague California, then, indicates that our tax system is distinctive as well (see below and Chapter 8).

• We are the most populous state, and we have grown more quickly than other states. In 1960, New York had 41 members in the U.S. House of Representa­ tives; California had 38. The 2010 census gave California 53 seats, followed by Texas with 36 and Florida and New York with 27 each. California has been forced to develop creative solutions to the problems engendered by high growth, such as uneven population distribution among various regions of the state and the need for housing and schools. California’s growth puts pressure on many areas of infrastructure and public services.

• We are more majoritarian than other states, meaning that we rely more on the measures for direct democracy—the initiative, the referendum, and the recall—that were added to the state constitution by the Progressive movement in 1911. Every state uses majority rule for most decisions, but in a majoritarian state, the public is more likely than elected representatives to make policy decisions. Consider the following continuum:

majoritarian republican A majoritarian government is one that is highly influenced by the public at large, through public-opinion polls and measures such as the initiative, the referendum, and the recall that enable voters to decide government policies directly. A republican government is one in which we elect representatives to make our decisions for us, based on the Madisonian model for the federal government. Why Study California Politics?  /  3

Advocates for November 2016’s Proposition 66, which sought to accelerate the use of the death penalty on the 748 inmates on death row in California, make their case at a press conference. Propo­­ sition 62, which sought to abolish the death penalty, was on the same ballot. The November 2016 ballot thus confronted voters with two propositions on the death penalty—a not uncommon situation, where, some say, the real goal is to confuse voters.

California government has moved much more toward the majoritarian model than other states have. Initiatives to amend the constitution are routine, and interest groups often collect signatures for an initiative in order to pressure the legislature into voting in their favor. By voting directly on public policies and constitutional amendments that are placed on the ballot, California voters can influence policy in their state more than voters can in other states. And Californians like being majoritarian: surveys show that most don’t want to restrict use of the initiative in spite of its extensive use and manipulation by interest groups.2 Ballotpedia lists 364 initiatives from 1912 through November 2014, and we had another 14 in November 2016, for a total of 378.3 California’s number of initiatives historically is second only to Oregon, with 384. Twenty-seven states do not have the initiative at all, and the top five states account for more than half of all initiatives considered from 1904 to 2012.4

What Determines the Content and Character of California’s Politics? Three factors shape the content and character of California’s politics:

• the underlying demographic and sociopolitical trends that affect California and the other states;

• the rules of the game, as set out in the federal and state constitutions and in state laws;

• and the decisions of voters and politicians.

4 / Chapter 1  /  California Government: Promise and Practice

In Chapters 1 and 2 we will discuss the underlying demographic and socio­ political trends and the rules of the game. The decisions of voters and politicians, and the way they shape California politics, will be discussed later in the text.

Who Are Californians? The preamble to the California State Constitution begins, “We, the People of the State of California, . . . ”  This is fitting for a democratic form of government, which seeks to give voice to the people in the governing of their community affairs. So, who are Californians? Do the demographic characteristics of California differ from those of the United States as a whole? And how have changing demographic and socioeconomic trends contributed to the political challenges that face California voters and politicians? (See the “Who Are Californians?” feature on the next page.) RACE AND ETHNICITY  In many respects, California’s population has a notable degree of racial and ethnic diversity compared with the U.S. population. Latino or Hispanic is not a racial category in the official census, but a separate census ques­ tion asks about Hispanic or Latino origin. Answers to this question reveal that about 17 percent of the United States is Latino, but Latinos make up about 39 percent of California’s population.5 Almost 60 percent of that population is of Mexican heritage. AGE  California’s population is relatively young, mostly because of immigration. Immigrants tend to be younger and to have larger families than those who have been residents for longer periods. EDUCATION  Californians are well educated. A greater proportion of Californians have gone to college or completed a bachelor’s degree or higher than in the United States in general. Fewer, however, have graduated from high school (80.6 percent versus 85.3 percent for the United States as a whole in 2009).6 MOBILITY AND FOREIGN-BORN RESIDENTS  About 60 percent of all Ameri­ cans live in the state in which they were born, but only 50 percent of all Califor­ nians were born in California. In fact, 27.1 percent are foreign-born, more than twice the percentage of foreign-born residents in the United States as a whole (12 percent). Most are not U.S. citizens; only 46 percent of the foreign-born in both the United States and California are citizens. As one might expect with such a large foreign-born population, only 61 percent of those over age five speak English at home in California, as opposed to 82 percent nationwide. That is a substantial difference by the standards of social science. Many political issues have arisen from this, ranging from debates over whether local store signs should be written in for­ eign languages to the “English as the official state language” movement. INCOME  The U.S. Census Bureau has estimated California’s median household income at $61,489 for 2010–14, $8,007 higher than the national figure of $53,482. The state poverty rate is almost the same as the national figure: 16.4 percent (Cali­ fornia) for 2010–14 compared to 15.6 percent (United States). Income inequality in California has increased in the last 35 years. A study by the respected Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) found that pretax cash

What Determines the Content and Character of California’s Politics?  /  5

WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS?

How Is the California Population Changing? California’s demographics are changing rapidly. The state used to be dominated by non-Latino whites (Anglos), but since 2000 the state has had a majority minority population. Latinos in particular are a fast-growing population, while Anglos and blacks are an increasingly small proportion. The Asian population is also growing in size, albeit more slowly than the Latino population. If these trends continue, by 2060 less than 30 percent of Californians will be Anglo, while almost half (48 percent) will be Latino. At the same time, the total size of the state’s population is expected to continue to grow rapidly, from 39.1 million people in 2010 to 52.7 million in 2060. Population density will increase in the state’s urban areas as well as in inland areas, particularly the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys.

Projected Population Growth by Demographic Group 1980

White / Anglo

1990

Latino African American

2000

Asian

2010

Other

2030*

* Estimated

2060* 0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Projected Population Growth between 2010 and 2060 by County Less than 20% growth 20—39% Overall 41.4%

40—59% 60—79% 80% or more

SOURCES: Frank Hobbs and Nicole Stoops, "Demographic Trends in the 20th Century," U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/censr-4.pdf (accessed 10/5/16); Sandra L. Colby and Jennifer M. Ortman, "Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014 to 2060," U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf (accessed 10/5/16); and "Projections," State of California Department of Finance, www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Demographics/projections/ (accessed 10/5/16).

100%

forcriticalanalysis 1. What impact are these shifting demographics likely to have on California politics? Will they change the issues that the state government focuses on? Will they change the issues that are the subject of citizen-driven initiatives? 2. California’s coastal regions have traditionally been more densely populated, but rapid population growth and rising housing costs are increasingly driving populations to settle further inland. How will this change California politics in the inland counties, particularly in areas traditionally dedicated to agriculture?

incomes of top earners in California are 40 percent higher than they were in 1980, but middle incomes are only 5 percent higher and low incomes 19 percent lower. Bay Area incomes are twice those in the Central Valley, on average. The report did find that California’s safety net, including tax credits as well as nutrition, cash, and housing assistance, had played a significant role in lessening inequality in the state. When local, state, and federal safety net programs are included, the amount of inequality shrinks by about 40 percent.7 GEOGRAPHY AND POLITICS  Over the last 40 years, the population of Califor­ nia has shifted so that the coastal regions have become significantly more liberal and aligned with the Democratic Party than the inland regions, which in turn have become more conservative and aligned with the Republican Party. These liberal coastal regions include every county on the coast, from Del Norte County near Oregon to Los Angeles County. The Central Valley and Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino counties) are disproportionately Republican. Orange and San Diego counties have been very Republican in the past but less so in recent elec­ tions. Local politics, on the other hand, are quite different even among Democraticor Republican-leaning cities (for example, San Francisco’s local politics are very liberal compared with Los Angeles’s more moderate politics). POPULATION GROWTH  Except for the four years from 1993 to 1996, Califor­ nia’s population has grown by about 450,000 people per year for more than two decades. The 2010 census listed California’s population as 37,691,912; at the end of 2015, the state Department of Finance estimated the population at 39.3 million. California’s current rate of growth is approximately 350,000 people per year. This strong and consistent growth means that many of the problems that have plagued the state in the past will continue to do so in the future. The following are some of these issues:

• Housing and Transportation  Even with the decline brought on by the recession of 2008–09, housing prices and rents in many areas have skyrock­ eted in recent years. Many lower- and middle-class people who work in San Francisco’s Bay Area must live in the Central Valley, while many of those who work in the Los Angeles area must live in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Commutes of one to two hours each way are common for residents of these areas. Our transportation systems, built for a much smaller popula­ tion, have not kept pace with this growth.

• Schools  Population growth means more schoolchildren and thus high demand for teachers across the state. In recent years, California has lacked enough fully qualified or credentialed teachers to meet this demand, parti­c­ ularly in many urban areas. Projections of the educational requirements of the future job market indicate that approximately 41 percent of jobs will require a college degree in 2025. The University of California, California State University, and community college systems do not produce sufficient numbers of graduates to meet this goal, which means that well-educated workers from other states will move in to fill these positions. The proportion of students who receive a college degree should be rising to meet future job requirements; instead, it is falling.

What Determines the Content and Character of California’s Politics?  /  7

TABLE 1.1  ● Leading Countries of Origin of Immigrants in California, 2009

Country

Number of Immigrants in California

Mexico Philippines China (including Taiwan) Vietnam El Salvador India Korea Guatemala Iran Canada United Kingdom

4,308,000 783,000 681,000 457,000 413,000 319,000 307,000 261,000 214,000 132,000 125,000

Percentage Naturalized (%) 28% 68 68 82 37 46 55 28 76 49 40

SOURCE: Public Policy Institute of California, “Just the Facts: Immigrants in California” (April 2011), www.ppic.org (accessed 7/17/12).

• Immigration  California has experienced high levels of immigration since the 1950s—so high in some areas that candidates for Mexico’s presidency have campaigned here. Between 1970 and 2011 the number of immigrants in California’s population increased from 1.8 million to about 10.2 million; 27 percent of the state’s population during that period was foreign-born, a much higher proportion than the 13 percent nationwide. Most immigrants in California are from Latin America or Asia; 4.3 million come from Mexico alone, composing some 43 percent of the total immigrant population in California. Immigrants live in all parts of the state, with those from Latin America more likely to live in Southern California and those from Asia in Northern California. Immigrants are younger than nonimmigrant Californians and are more likely to be poor, and although some have relatively high levels of education, most are less educated than the native population.8 Table 1.1 shows the 11 largest countries of origin for immigrants in California in 2009. As of 2013, there were approximately 2.67 million undocumented immigrants in California, according to the Urban Institute and the Public Policy Institute of California, which used the census figures on the foreign-born population and sub­ tracted the numbers of people who are naturalized or here on legal visas and work permits.9 Undocumented immigrants are a continuing political issue, with politi­ cians arguing over the public services to which they should have access: Should they be treated in hospital emergency rooms? Should they be allowed to buy insur­ ance on the state exchange under the federal Affordable Care Act? As of January 1, 2015, one issue was decided: California residents who cannot establish legal pres­ ence in the United States can apply for a California driver’s license if they can establish proof of identification and state residency. Some 600,000 such licenses 8 / Chapter 1  /  California Government: Promise and Practice

TABLE 1.2  ●  Undocumented Immigrants by State, 2012

State California Texas New Jersey Florida Arizona Georgia New York Illinois North Carolina Virginia Other states All states

Number of Undocumented Immigrants 2,450,000 1,650,000 525,000 925,000 300,000 400,000 750,000 475,000 350,000 275,000 3,110,000 11,210,000

Share of State’s Total Population (%) 6.3% 6.0 5.9 4.6 4.4 3.9 3.8 3.7 3.5 3.3 2.0 3.5

SOURCE: Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/11/21/the-undocumented-immigrant -population-explained-in-7-maps/ (accessed 7/6/16).

were issued in 2015, the first year they were available. Table 1.2 lists the number of undocumented immigrants by state, along with the share they compose of that state’s total population. California and Texas have the highest proportion of undocu­ mented immigrants, at 6.3 and 6.0 percent respectively. Reflecting the controversies over immigration, both documented and undocu­ mented, in recent years, a number of demonstrations have taken place in California on the immigration issue. These demonstrations have represented different views: against more immigration, in favor of closing the borders, in favor of a “path to citi­ zenship,” both for and against the Arizona immigration law of 2010, against hous­ ing undocumented children who have been taken into custody before their court hearings, and so forth. At least one of the demonstrations involved more than 1 mil­ lion people, the largest ever seen in Southern California to date. But aside from the 2013 law that allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s permits starting in 2015 (see above), little policy action has taken place at the state level.

The Crisis of California Politics Is California government capable of making the decisions needed for the state to thrive and preserve its standard of living through the twenty-first century? The general sentiment among informed observers is that California is hamstrung by voter-approved rules and regulations, some of which are admirable on an indi­ vidual level but make for a collective nightmare. However, some progress toward effective decision making began during the 2003–11 Schwarzenegger administra­ tion and has continued under present governor Jerry Brown: The Crisis of California Politics  /  9

• Proposition 11, approved in November 2008, took the power to apportion the districts of the Assembly and state Senate (redistricting) away from those bodies and gave it to a citizens’ commission. Later, the voters added appor­ tioning congressional districts to the duties of the new citizens’ commission. In the first few years the new districts were used, they seemed to be fair (that is, not gerrymandered). Future years will establish whether unbiased districts will produce more moderate legislators who are willing to compromise for the good of the state as a whole, which was the goal of changing the reappor­ tionment method. So far, elections have been more competitive.

• In 2010 the voters opted to change the state’s party primary elections to a new top-two primary system, used for the first time in June 2012. Under the new system, there is no party primary. Instead, the election system is like a swim or track meet, in which there are preliminary heats and finals. Follow­­ ing the preliminary election, the top two candidates advance to the finals in November, even if they are from the same party or are not in a major party. Third parties such as the Green Party are strongly opposed to the new system, since they rarely finish in the top two candidates in the primary election and thus have no access to the general election ballot during the two months when voter attention is highest.

• In 2010 the voters also approved of a change in the legislative process for approving the state budget: the previous requirement was a two-thirds vote of the total number of legislators in each chamber, the Assembly and the state Senate, but it is now a simple majority (50 percent plus one). The budget approved in June 2011 was the first to use the new system. In order to raise or lower taxes, however, the state constitution still requires a two-thirds majority of both houses of the legislature, plus the governor’s signature. After the election of Governor Jerry Brown in November 2010, California’s frustrating budget stalemate initially continued in spite of the new majority rule, largely because the taxation system had not changed. In June 2012, the budget gap was $16 billion—more than the total revenues received for the general fund in 40 of the 50 states. By mid-2014, however, the budget had a surplus almost as large as the deficit from two years before, and this surplus has lasted into the 2016–17 budget year. The California taxation system is dependent on income taxes paid on capital gains (funds received from selling stock); it produced a huge surplus in 2013 and 2014 when the stock market rose, inducing many investors to sell shares. The governor and legislature agreed to use the surplus to build up a “rainy day” fund and to pay off many old bonds issued when the budget was in deficit. The first decade of the 2000s was one long downward trend, the result of dif­ ficult and tough decisions. Every college student in California knows some of them, having seen cut after cut to the budgets of the community colleges, the California State University system, and the University of California system. Tuition and fee in­­ creases have partially made up for these cuts. Other budget reductions have included Medi-Cal (California’s medical program for the poor) rate and service reductions, many cost-containment measures in state programs for the developmentally dis­ abled, and the elimination of local government redevelopment agencies and their state funding (see Chapter 9). Prisoners are being sent from the state prisons to local jails, and many state responsibilities are being passed to the local level of government. The fiscal years around 2014 show that California can have budget-surplus years as 10 / Chapter 1  /  California Government: Promise and Practice

well as deficits, but no one should think that a permanent era of plenty has arrived. California’s budget is unduly responsive to the economy and especially to capital gains. When the next recession arrives, and it will arrive, revenues will dive again. California state government thus faces a series of paradoxes. On the one hand, we see progress in cutting the deficit and in making the hard decisions necessary to weather the national economic storm. On the other hand, the difficulty of those decisions and the fact that taxes can be raised only by a two-thirds majority has meant that a budget crisis occurred every year from 2000 to 2012 and to a lesser extent through 2016. Every decision in the state government became a budget decision—a decision made solely, or almost solely, on the basis of whether there is enough money and a budget source for the considered activity. Let us take a closer look at some reasons for the recurring crises despite the promise of California state government.

The Ease of Passing Initiatives One factor in these recurring crises is certainly the ease with which special interests collect signatures to propose, campaign for, and sometimes pass initiatives to help their own causes. The initiative was added to the California Constitution by the Progressive movement in 1911 as a way to promote the involvement of the people in public policy and affairs. One recent example of a special interest using the ini­ tiative for its own gain is Proposition 15 on the June 2010 ballot, which ostensi­ bly allowed taxpayers to have more control over their government but was in fact designed to keep local public utilities from competing with PG&E. Proposition 33 on the November 2012 ballot ostensibly allowed insurance companies to give lon­ gevity discounts to drivers who had continuous insurance coverage from another insurance company; in fact, this initiative was designed to give one insurance com­ pany the ability to raise rates on drivers who had lapses in insurance coverage. Another example is the November 2016 referendum on the law banning single-use plastic bags statewide. The sponsors of the referendum, opposed to the law, make— you guessed it—plastic bags. In general, the initiative has ceased to promote direct democracy for at least the last two decades. Instead, it has mostly become just another method by which special interests convince voters who are paying little attention to government and politics to enact rules, laws, and constitutional amend­ ments that benefit the particular interest at the expense of the public as a whole. While there are exceptions, far too many initiatives fall into this category.

Term Limits The term limit movement found fertile ground in California in the 1980s and 1990s. Proposition 140 in 1990 imposed what were then the severest term limits in the nation on the legislature and the elected officials of the executive branch; the voters in many California cities instituted term limits on their local leaders as well. Part of the statewide anger and consequent push for term limit legislation was directed against Willie Brown, then speaker of the California Assembly, whose flamboyant lifestyle and prolific fund-raising provoked the ire of voters. The theory of the term limits movement is that term limits will encourage mem­ bers of the Assembly and state Senate to pay more attention to their jobs and spend less time raising money for future campaigns, and that the limits will make the legis­ lative bodies more welcoming to minority and female candidates. Since term limits The Crisis of California Politics  /  11

have been imposed, the proportion of Latino legislators has indeed risen; however, members now have much less expertise on the matters they vote on and, by the time they acquire this expertise, they are term-limited out. Additionally, many— perhaps most—members of the legislature spend a good deal of their time in office worrying about their next job and raising funds for future campaigns. Most observ­ ers believe that term limits have worsened the legislature, not bettered it. While voters strongly support term limits, they recently took a step to address some of the institutional problems that have resulted from them. In June 2012 the voters approved Proposition 28, which allows legislators to serve as many as 12 years in the legislature, as long as those 12 years are served in one house. (The previous total service time was actually higher—14 years—but was capped at 6 years in the Assembly and 8 in the Senate.) Currently the term limits are 12 years (six terms) for the Assembly, 12 years (three terms) for the state Senate, and 8 years (two terms) for all statewide officials (governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, controller, secretary of state, treasurer, superintendent of public instruction, insur­ ance commissioner, and the four elected members of the Board of Equalization).

The Two-Thirds Requirement for Raising Taxes As noted earlier, until the voters passed Proposition 25 in November 2010, Cali­ fornia’s constitution required a two-thirds vote of the total membership—not just those present and voting—in each house of the legislature to pass the budget. Only three states, Arkansas, California, and Rhode Island, required such a strong super­ majority to pass the budget. Proposition 25 lowered the required vote to 50 percent plus one. It will take several years to see if this change makes a substantial differ­ ence. So far, the first six budgets passed under the new rules—which financially penalize legislators if the budget is not passed on time—have been passed around June 15, the constitutional deadline. Only those starting with the one passed in June 2014 were technically balanced, and only because of the surge in income tax revenues from individuals who had sold stock in previous years. A balanced budget clearly requires different procedural deadlines as well as improvements in the quality of the state’s economy and tax system. Herein lies the problem. A two-thirds vote of the absolute number of legisla­ tors in both houses of the state legislature is still necessary to raise or lower any tax level. With a Republican Party that refuses to countenance tax increases of any kind (plus the taxpayer groups that promise to sue the instant any tax increase is passed), the burden of balancing the state budget has fallen on low- and moderateincome state residents, who benefit disproportionately from the state programs that have been cut. For higher-income state residents, state services are at least partially irrelevant—their major “service” is a low tax rate, as well as exemptions and deduc­ tions that enable some of their income to be taxed at a lower rate. This situation may change somewhat in the next few years. The 2012 elec­ tions saw the Democrats win a short-lived supermajority of seats in the legislature, which meant they had enough votes to raise taxes without any Republican support (see Chapter 5). Raising taxes, however, requires the approval of the governor, and Governor Jerry Brown has consistently wanted a balanced budget without addi­ tional tax increases beyond those instituted by Proposition 30, approved by voters in November 2012. This proposition enacted a four-year increase in the state sales tax and seven-year increases in the tax rates for citizens making over $250,000 in income (see Chapter 8). The supermajority lasted a little over a year, until early 12 / Chapter 1  /  California Government: Promise and Practice

2014 when three Democrats in the state Senate were suspended over corruption allegations. These developments have had a significant impact, but the two-thirds rule for raising taxes continues to hold sway. The structure of California’s tax sys­ tem has been frozen since the 1960s.

Lack of Consensus on Fundamental Questions Another reason for California’s perpetual state of crisis is the inability of legisla­ tors to unify on matters of policy and principle. In order to be effective, a political system must overcome the inertia generated by narrow interests to make decisions that benefit the broader public interest. This is a persistent issue in a large, complex state like California, but in the past, California politicians have been able to over­ come the lack of consensus to make progress on significant questions. Has Cali­ fornia changed? Why do interest groups cause impasse in the 2000s, when their influence was relatively minimal back in the 1970s and 1980s? After all, we have always had interest groups, and we had the two-thirds decision rule for adopting the budget or raising taxes in the legislature from 1935 until 2010. Dan Walters suggests that the blame heaped on the legislature is inappropriate: In fact, California’s governance maladies stem from the complex, often contradic­ tory nature of the state itself. With its immense geographic, economic, and cul­ tural diversity, California has myriad policy issues, but those same factors also have become an impediment to governance. The state lost its vital consensus on public policy issues, and without that civic compass, its politicians tend to ignore major issues and pursue trivial ones. . . . The real issue is whether the public’s anger at Gray Davis will morph into a new sense of civic purpose or whether California is destined to be . . . ungovernable.10

If you combine the lack of consensus with the swift-moving news cycle typified by Twitter and other social media, you can get a sense of the problem. So far, the Passing a balanced state budget is a perennially contentious issue in California. However, the budget surplus in early 2014 allowed Governor Jerry Brown—shown here breaking down certain state expenditures—to propose budgets for 2014–17 that increased state funding for education and paid off some of the debt that the state had accrued over previous years.

The Crisis of California Politics  /  13

events following the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003 have indicated very slow progress, with no “new sense of civic purpose.” The same old problems seem to vex California’s political class, over and over.

Reform Ideas In addition to the steps already taken (as discussed earlier), numerous reforms have been suggested over the years to address the institutional hindrances to effective California governance. Some of the standard ones are listed below. See how many you agree with as you begin this book. You might check this section at the end of your course to see if you still have the same opinion; there’s a significant probabil­ ity that you won’t! On the liberal side:

• Instituting public financing of election campaigns. Public financing would reduce the impact of money on Assembly, state Senate, and congressional campaigns, because all or most campaign funding would come from the state, not from interests who want something in return for these donations. It would also lessen the impact of fund-raising on members of the legislature, some of whom spend up to half their time in Sacramento raising money. However, it would be difficult to devise a system that would not unduly benefit incumbents, who are typically better known than their challengers.

• Lowering the required supermajority to raise taxes from two-thirds to some lower, more achievable, percentage, such as 55 or 60 percent. This proposal would require an amendment to the state constitution, probably impossible on a tax issue like this unless it is proposed as part of a broad package of tax relief and reform.

• Restricting the initiative process to allow more citizen participation and lessen the need to hire professional firms to collect signatures and run initiative campaigns. This would require lengthening the time allowed to collect signatures. Changing an initiative process that California’s citizens hold in high regard would be a tough sell, and the industry that sponsors initiatives and makes money from them might oppose it; this would make the campaign expensive.

• Realigning the tax structure to match the state’s shift from a manufacturing economy to a service-based one (see Chapter 8). The most powerful method for doing this would be to change the sales tax to make it apply to services such as medical care and automobile repair. In order to pass, this would have to be sold as decreasing the sales-tax rate. Several recent commissions have indicated interest, but few politicians want to be associated with the cause. On the conservative side:

• Changing the legislature from full time to part time. This idea is popular in Tea Party circles, reflecting their nostalgia for an earlier era and their desire for a less expensive government, not to mention the typical Californian’s distrust of the legislature. However, it would weaken the legislature’s level of expertise on the programs it is expected to enact and oversee. 14 / Chapter 1  /  California Government: Promise and Practice

• Lowering California’s tax rates, making the system less progressive in the process. This is popular among conservatives but is a tough sell for liberals and Democrats.

• Improving California’s business climate with lower taxes and fewer regula­ tions. Almost everyone agrees that this goal is laudable, but there is little agreement on what taxes to lower (or how to make up the difference finan­ cially) and what regulations to simplify or abolish. Most of these ideas involve so much controversy that they have little chance of being enacted, at least in the short run. Enacting major reforms such as those just listed is much easier through the ballot box (that is, via an initiative) than it is through the legislature, where constitutional changes require a two-thirds vote of the Assembly and the Senate before being placed on the ballot for ratification.

Conclusion In this book we are going to consider the real world of California politics and the possibilities, both fascinating and frustrating, of the present, as well as changes that might make the future more positive for both politicians and the public. We will investigate what makes California different from other states and examine its unique political problems, which include the following:

• the inability to balance the budget, year after year (the most recent years under Governor Jerry Brown are an exception)

• the malapportioned districts for the California legislature that, in combination with the primary system, produce legislators who are more liberal than the public on the Democratic side and more conservative than the public on the Republican side (we shall see whether the new top-two primary system and the non-gerrymandered legislative districts make any difference in this area)

• the public’s attachment to the strictest term limits in the nation • the public’s attachment to extreme majoritarianism, which produces the longest ballots in the nation as well as low turnout rates Our coverage includes subjects that the newspapers and bloggers discuss in great detail as well as some subjects, such as the California tax system and the impact of Proposition 13, that receive little coverage in the media. Welcome to the journey.

A Guide to This Book Chapter 2, “The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy,” deals with California’s state constitution and the Progressives, the two crucial factors that defined the shape and direction of today’s California government. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the bodies outside government that influence what government can accomplish. Chapter 3, “Interest Groups and the Media in A Guide to This Book  /  15

California,” takes a look at the groups that are as prevalent and influential in Califor­ nia as they are in our nation’s capital. Chapter 4, “Parties and Elections in California,” examines how both parties and voters influence government through elections and campaigns. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 cover the institutions of government. Chapter 5, “The California Legislature,” discusses the legislature, the body we love to hate. We try in this book to understand the legislature and why it functions as it does rather than to simply condemn it. Chapter 6, “The Governor and the Executive Branch,” asks whether California has become ungovernable. Chapter 7, “The California Judi­ ciary,” deals with judges and the criminal justice system. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 provide an in-depth guide to policy problems and govern­ mental structures that are particularly relevant today. Chapter 8, “The State Budget and Budgetary Limitations,” addresses taxes, spending, and the California budget, asking whether the budget can be controlled in today’s political and policy envi­ ronment with the tools we have available to us. Chapter 9, “Local Government,” considers local government and its dependency on the state, a dependency that localities are taking action to eliminate in part through the initiative process. Chap­ ter 10, “Public Policy in California,” delves into several contemporary public policy problems, illustrating how the institutions and voters have acted in these areas.

Study Guide FOR FURTHER READING Bonn, Sarah, and Caroline Danielson. Income Inequality and the Safety Net in California. Public Policy Institute of Cali­ fornia, May 2016. http://ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i =1190. Accessed 7/18/16. “California in Crisis.” California Journal (August 2003): 18–27. Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Ange­ les. New York: Vintage, 1990. Hill, Laura, and Joseph Hayes. “Just the Facts: Undocumented Immigrants.” Public Policy Institute of Cali­fornia, June 2015. www.ppic.org. Accessed 7/8/16. Horwitz, Sasha. Termed Out: Reforming California’s Term Lim­ its. Center for Governmental Studies, October 2007. www .policyarchive.org /  handle/10207/2047. Accessed 9/20/16. Lewis, Michael. “California and Bust.” Vanity Fair, Novem­ ber 2011. Mathews, Joe, and Mark Paul. California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. McGhee, Eric, and Daniel Krimm. California’s Political Geog­ raphy. Public Policy Institute of California, February 2012. www.ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1007. Accessed 9/20/16. Mejia, Marisol Cuellar, and Hans Johnson. “Just the Facts: Immi­ grants in California.” Public Policy Institute of California, May 2013. www.ppic.org. Accessed 7/8/16.

16 / Chapter 1  /  California Government: Promise and Practice

Olin, Spencer C. California’s Prodigal Sons: Hiram Johnson and the Progressives, 1911–1917. Berkeley: University of Cali­ fornia Press, 1968. Skelton, George. “California’s Capitol—The Long View. A Col­ umnist Looks Back on 50 Years Covering the Ups and Downs of Sacramento.” Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2011. Statewide Ballot Proposition Elections. Field Institute, California Opinion Index, October 2011. www.field.com/fieldpoll online/subscribers. Accessed 11/16/16. Wilson, James Q. “A Guide to Schwarzenegger Country.” Com­ mentary (December 2003): 45–49.

ON THE WEB California Choices. www.californiachoices.org. Ac­cessed 11/16/16. California Forward. “How to Fix CA’s Government.” www .cafwd-action.org/pages/how-to-fix-CA-government. Ac­­ cessed 11/16/16. The Field (California) Poll: Field Institute. www.field.com /fieldpollonline/subscribers/index.html. Accessed 11/16/16. Los Angeles Times. www.latimes.com. Accessed 11/16/16. Public Policy Institute of California. www.ppic.org. Accessed 11/16/16. A think tank devoted to nonpartisan  research on how to improve California policy. Sacramento Bee. www.sacbee.com. Accessed 11/16/16. San Francisco Chronicle. www.sfgate.com. Accessed 11/16/16.

SUMMARY I. California politics are important for several reasons. A. California is the most populous state, has an economy in the top 10 among nations of the world, and has a population more multicultural and diverse than the rest of the nation. B. California is strongly majoritarian, and its citizens like it that way. C. California is younger than many states, has a greater percentage of college-educated citizens, and is richer than most states. D. California has experienced some of the strongest population growth of any state, resulting in a number of political conflicts over the years. E. California has more immigrants, and more undocumented immigrants, than any other state, although Texas and New Jersey have almost the same proportion of undocumented immigrants. II. Progress in dealing with California’s problems has occurred in the last decade, in spite of the fact that the state is generally considered to be hamstrung by voterapproved rules and regulations. A. Redistricting, once the province of the legislature, is now done by a citizens’ commission. The new districts (used from 2012 forward) seem to have considerably less gerrymandering than the old. B. The party primary election system has been changed to the new “top-two” system, in which the two top vote-getters from the primary election, regardless of party, move to the general election for a runoff. 1. The new system is more like a swim meet or track meet, with a preliminary heat and final, than a party primary. C. In 2010 the voters approved a change to the state constitution so that the legislature could approve the state budget by a majority vote, instead of the prior rule of two-thirds of the total membership of each house of the legislature.

1. The state constitution still requires any tax increase to be approved by a two-thirds vote of each house of the legislature, plus the governor’s signature. D. These changes have not resolved the underlying problems with the state’s taxation system, which result in soaring surpluses when the stock market is high and the opposite during recessions. III. Some reasons for the continual crisis in California state government include the following: A. The ease of passing initiatives. Special interests find that the state has a congenial atmosphere in which they can spend several million dollars to collect signatures and fund a campaign to pass a law or change the state constitution in order to benefit the initiative’s proposer. B. Term limits, in spite of the 2012 change that lengthened the maximum time to 12 years in either the Assembly or the state Senate, still hamper the legislature. By the time legislators learn their jobs, they are often looking for new ones. C. The two-thirds vote requirement in the Assembly and state Senate to raise taxes has meant that the only realistic way to balance declining budgets has been to cut services disproportionately used by the lower middle class and the poor. D. The lack of consensus on fundamental questions among both politicians and citizens has made it difficult to build the broad consensus that major change requires. IV. Reform ideas are abundant, but few have the political support necessary for enactment in the short run. Several ideas from both sides of the political spectrum are listed in the text.

PRACTICE QUIZ 1. The budget must be passed by a majority of those present and voting in both chambers of the legislature. a) true b) false 2. Most states require a two-thirds majority to pass their budgets each year. a) true b) false

3. According to the text, California’s total population, its foreign-born population, and the approximate number of undocumented immigrants living in the state are: a) 50 million, 5 million, and 2 million. b) 34 million, 8.8 million, and 2.4 million. c) 25 million, 20 million, and 18 million. d) 39.3 million, 10.2 million, and 2.67 million.

Practice Quiz  /  17

4. “Latino” or “Hispanic” is one of the racial categories in the U.S. census, which is taken every 10 years. a) true b) false

c) 8 years for the governor, 12 years for the Assembly, and 12 years for the state Senate. d) 8 years for the governor, 8 years for the Assembly, and 12 years for the state Senate.

5. Compared to the proportion of immigrants who speak English at home in the U.S. population, the proportion of immigrants in California who speak English at home is a) greater. b) lesser. c) the same.

8. Undocumented immigrants were able to obtain a driver’s permit in California as of 2015. a) true b) false

6. According to this book, the inability of the California leg­ islature to make decisions that benefit the state as a whole is due to a) the influence of interest groups. b) the two-thirds requirement to raise taxes. c) California’s size and diversity. d) all of the above

9. “Majoritarian” as applied to California government means that a) the state requires majority rule in all major decisions. b) the state does not have a “republican” form of govern­ ment; it has a “majoritarian” form. c) the state makes many important decisions through direct democracy and the initiative process. d) the California legislature uses majority rule for all decisions.

7. California’s current term limits are a) 8 years for the governor, 4 years for the Assembly, and 6 years for the state Senate. b) 6 years for the governor, 6 years for the Assembly, and 8 years for the state Senate.

10. California’s institutions of higher education produce suf­ ficient numbers of graduates to meet the the state’s work­ force needs in the foreseeable future. a) true b) false

CRITICAL-THINKING QUESTIONS 1. How distinctive is California compared with other states? Are we really that different from citizens in the rest of the country? 2. California’s population differs from that of other states on several levels. What are the two or three that are most significant, and why are they significant?

3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the “majori­ tarian” form of government? Of the “republican” form of government?

KEY TERMS California dream (p. 2) capital gains tax (p. 10) consensus (p. 13) cultural diversity (p. 3) foreign-born (p. 5) Latino or Hispanic (p. 5)

majoritarian (p. 3) public financing (p. 14) racial and ethnic diversity (p. 5) redistricting (p. 10) republican (p. 3) special interests (p. 11)

18 / Chapter 1  /  California Government: Promise and Practice

supermajority (p. 12) term limits (p. 11) top-two primary (p. 10) two-thirds vote (p. 10) undocumented immigration (p. 8)

2

The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy WHAT CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT DOES AND WHY IT MATTERS The purpose of a constitution is to define the rules under which political actors and citizens interact with each other to fulfill their goals as individuals, as members of a group, and as a population as a whole. The California Constitution is long and very detailed, with numerous amendments added over the years that deal with both the fundamental principles and power of government as well as commonplace issues such as the right to fish on government property, English as the state’s official lan­ guage, and grants for stem cell research. Today California has the second highest number of constitutional amendments (over 500 by some counts), behind Alabama, and the second longest state constitution, behind Louisiana. One distinctive feature of the California Constitution is that it allows the people to enact both constitutional amendments and legislation through a majority vote without going through the legislature. The process through which citizens make leg­ islation at the ballot box is called the initiative. The initiative developed out of a political movement called Progressivism, which opposed the influence of monied special interests in politics and called for political power to be returned to the people. Any individual or group can propose a statute or an amendment to the California Constitution. However, the initiative process has not always lived up to its progressive ideals. Today, wealthy individuals and special interest groups spend hundreds of millions of dollars on campaigns for and against initiatives. In the November 2016 general election, more than $300 million was spent by both sides on 17 propositions. Al­­ though the initiative does put legislative power in the hands of the general public, it

/  19

does not eliminate the influence of money in politics, and—ironically—it bypasses the more careful debate and compromise that might take place in the legislature. For example, in 2006, California voters cast their ballots on Proposition 87, a high-profile initiative that was the most costly in history, with over $156 million spent advocating for and against the proposition. The goal of the proposition was to establish a $4 billion program, the primary goal of which was to reduce petro­ leum consumption by 25 percent. It included research and production incentives for alternative energy, alternative-energy vehicles, and energy-efficient technologies, as well as funding for education and training. The program would have been funded by a tax of 1.5 to 6.0 percent (depending on oil price per barrel) on California oil producers. The stakes were high because California is the third largest oil-producing state in the nation. At the time, roughly 37 percent of California’s oil was pumped in the state, and another 21 percent came from Alaska. The rest was imported. Supporters of the proposition contributed $61.9 million (with $49.6 million alone coming from film producer Stephen Bing), and opponents contributed $94.4 million (with Chevron Corporation, Aera Energy, and Occidental Oil and Gas contributing $38 million, $32.8 million, and $9.6 million, respectively).1 The initiative brought out celebrities on both sides, including prominent individuals, companies, and organiza­ tions. These included former president Bill Clinton, actor Brad Pitt, and the Coali­ tion for Clean Air in support of the measure, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chevron Corporation, and the California Chamber of Commerce in opposition. The campaign was bitter and acrimonious. Accusations of dirty tactics abounded, and both sides filed lawsuits. Supporters alleged that the opposition’s print and tele­ vision advertisements created the false impression that the opposition campaign was financed by a broad coalition, including educators and public-safety officials, when in fact it was subsidized by the oil industry. Opponents to the measure accused their adversaries of illegally registering several “no” web sites that, when accessed, redirected viewers to the “Yes-on-87” site. Although little came of either lawsuit, each helped sharpen and intensify feelings on both sides. In the end, Proposition 87 failed to pass, getting 45.3 percent of the vote, as vot­ ers feared that passage of the initiative would raise gas prices, resulting in a greater demand for foreign oil. This proposition is a prime example of an issue that, rather than being debated by experts and elected officials in the legislature, was appropri­ ated by wealthy individuals and interest groups in the name of direct democracy. In the November 2014 election, two high-profile initiatives pitted consumers against health insurance companies in one case and trial lawyers in another, but in neither case did the money spent approach the $156 million spent on Proposition 8 in 2006. Such examples abound in California politics.

20 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

In Chapter 1 we discussed some of the demographic differences between Cali­ fornia and other states. We also mentioned that the institutional design of Califor­ nia’s government prevents it from solving critical state issues. Here are some of the unique features of the state’s political process:

• The sheer size of the state increases the cost of political campaigns and media outreach programs.

• The competing networks of interest groups cause groups to jockey for position and influence.

• The increasing use of the initiative significantly affects state and local governance and policy.

• The divided executive branch, composed of nine separately elected officials, each with his or her own area of authority and responsibility, leads to over­ lapping responsibilities and fragmentation in the execution of state policy.

• The widespread, almost universal use of nonpartisan elections at the local level of government eliminates a valuable clue that helps voters identify the policy positions of the candidates on the ballot. Aside from the size of the state and its interest-group network, the other char­ acteristics listed above are a result of the Progressive movement, which flourished in California from 1900 to 1917. The leaders of this movement focused on one goal: making government more responsive to the political, social, and economic concerns of the people. Their reforms continue to shape California’s government and politics in ways that sharply differentiate it from other states. To some, these features hamper the political process and should be changed. To others, they form part of the essence of California—an essence that, were they to be changed, would be destroyed.

The Rules of the Game: California’s Constitution The California Constitution has a long and storied history that can be divided into four stages:

• The 1849 Constitution  Written by residents of the territory in anticipation of statehood, this constitution contains many of the basic ideas underlying California’s government today.

• The 1879 Constitution  Written by a constitutional convention in 1878, this is the basic governing document, with amendments, that is in force today.

• From 1900 to 1917  During this period, the Progressives amended the constitution and passed laws to temper the power of special interests and make government responsive to the people’s desires and needs. The most prominent reforms of this period are the initiative, referendum, and recall.

The Rules of the Game: California’s Constitution  /  21

• From 1918 to the present  Amendment after amendment lengthened the state’s constitution, resulting in a document that at one point was almost 100,000 words long. Several commissions proposed substantive changes, but only two commissions, one in the 1960s and the other in the 1990s, saw their proposals realized: the constitution’s language was shortened and clarified, but no substantial changes were made to its provisions.

The 1849 Constitution By 1849, 80,000 unruly gold miners had moved to California, inflating the state’s population enough that the settlers could apply for territorial status and draft a constitution. Admitting California as a free state at that time, however, would have upset the balance between free and slave states that had existed in the Union since 1820. In 1849 newly elected president Zachary Taylor proposed that California draft a constitution and apply directly to Congress for admission as a state, rather than applying first as a territory and later shifting to state status. California citizens elected delegates to a constitutional convention; the delegates met in turn and drew up the proposed constitution in 43 days. This constitutional convention of 48 elected men met in Monterey in Septem­ ber 1849 and relied heavily upon a book containing the constitutions of the federal government and some 30 states. Several of the provisions in California’s constitu­ tion were taken directly from those of New York and Iowa. The basic provisions of the 1849 Constitution are still in force:

• The framework of the government rests on a separation of powers—execu­ tive, legislative, and judicial—interacting through a system of checks and balances, like the federal government.

• Executive power is divided, with the separate election and jurisdiction of the governor, lieutenant governor, comptroller, treasurer, attorney general, sur­ veyor general, and superintendent of public instruction. This division weakens the governor, who cannot appoint—or remove—senior members of his or her own administration. Moreover, each of these statewide officials is a potential competitor for the governor’s office, and each can release statements that contradict what the governor is saying.

• An extensive bill of rights begins the constitution. • The legislature is elected and consists of two houses, one called the Senate, the other the Assembly. However, there are notable differences between the 1849 Constitution and the framework that exists today:

• The right to vote at that time was limited to white males 21 years of age or older who had lived in California for at least six months. Another provision denied citizenship to African Americans, Chinese Americans, and Native Americans; they were also prohibited from testifying against whites in court. The legislature could, by a two-thirds vote, enfranchise Native Americans “in such special cases as such proportion of the legislative body may deem just and proper.”

22 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

• The judiciary was elected, as judges are today, but they were organized into four levels—as Mexico’s judiciary was at the time.

• All laws and other provisions were to be published in both English and Spanish, since California was a bilingual state. In 1850 the federal government passed a series of bills that composed the Com­ promise of 1850. One bill admitted California to the Union as a free state. The Compromise also established Utah and New Mexico as territorial governments and allowed residents to decide whether or not to allow slavery in their state. It settled a dispute over the border between Texas and New Mexico and compensated Texas with $10 million to repay debts to Mexico. Finally, it abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia and put the Fugitive Slave Act into effect. California’s 1849 Constitution quickly proved to be problematic. Its framers had written it so quickly that they had neglected to include provisions for the financial stability of the new government; within the first five years, California was in deficit. There were few provisions for taxation but no limits on spending, legisla­ tive salaries, or the governor’s pardon power.2 Four times between 1859 and 1873 the legislature called for a new constitutional convention to fix obvious defects; each time, too many voters left their ballots blank to achieve the necessary major­ ity to approve the convention.

The 1879 Constitution The call for a new constitutional convention finally succeeded in 1877, as Califor­ nia suffered from the worst recession in the brief history of the nation. In 1873 a Wall Street panic had spread into a full-fledged economic collapse, and thousands of businesses went bankrupt. Unfortunately, as Kevin Starr writes in California: A History, Chinese immigrants “became increasingly the scapegoats for collapsed expectations.”3 The situation had its origins in the expansion of the Central Pacific Railroad. A years-long project to extend the railroad over the Sierra Nevada moun­ tain range began in 1863, when few California-born workers were willing to do the backbreaking work at the price that the railroad construction supervisor, Charles Crocker, was willing to pay. Starting in 1865, Crocker began to rely on Chinese workers, who lacked the bargaining power to campaign for higher wages; he even­ tually employed some 10,000. In 1869 the Union Pacific and Central Pacific rail­ roads met in Utah, completing a track that would cut the journey across the nation to one week. When the influx of Chinese workers resulted in unemployment for many non­ immigrant workers, anti-Chinese sentiment began to grow. In 1871, Los Angeles witnessed a mass lynching of 18 Chinese men, including a boy of 14, after which an Anglo-American mob looted the Chinese section of town. By 1875 the state had seen an influx of over 150,000 migrants from other states, including many who had worked to build the Union Pacific Railroad, and by 1877 unemployment rates in San Francisco were high. On July 23 of that year, a group numbering about 8,000 assembled for a meeting of the Workingmen’s Party, where speakers “denounced the capitalist system in general and the railroads in particular . . . , with emphasis on the Chinese labor the railroad had employed.”4 Fifty-one of the delegates to the 1879 convention belonged to the Working­ men’s Party; thus, it effectively enjoyed veto power over any of the decisions on

The Rules of the Game: California’s Constitution  /  23

both the convention rules and recommendations for the new constitution, for which a two-thirds majority was necessary. Joe Matthews and Mark Paul call the convention’s recommendations “a demonstration of a difficult fact of California political life”—that “supermajorities are dangerous.”5 The Workingmen’s Party sup­ ported restrictions on corporations and railroads and was strongly opposed to the presence of Chinese workers in California. One of its rallying cries was “The Chi­ nese must go!”6 The party also opposed the centralization of power for the govern­ ment and the legislature. (It made an unsuccessful proposition to the convention that California collapse the two houses of the legislature into a unicameral one and abolish the lieutenant governor’s office.) The delegates at the convention adopted a large number of diverse provisions. Among these were the shifting of responsibility to stockholders for the debts of a corporation and various new rules regarding the railroads: the railroads could not give free passes to those holding political office, they could not raise rates on one line to compensate for reductions made to compete on alternative lines, and they would be regulated by a Railroad Commission. These provisions added words—almost doubling the constitution’s size—and policies that read very much like a series of laws rather than a fundamental frame­ work within which laws could operate. In this way, the California Constitution differs greatly from the federal U.S. Constitution, whose articles and amendments deal strictly with institutional procedures and rules that construct a governmental framework. The Eighteenth Amendment stands as the only experiment in estab­ lishing a substantive policy in the U.S. Constitution; it prohibits the manufacture, sale, import, or export of alcohol and was repealed with the Twenty-First Amend­ ment just 14 years later. At the time, however, the many specific, substantive policies in the drafted California Constitution were viewed as beneficial, and it was approved by a vote of 54 to 46 percent in May 1879, with 90 percent of those eligible to vote participat­ ing. Most of the reform measures were not put into practice right away, as corpo­ rate and railroad power continued to dominate the state and sued to block their implementation. These setbacks were temporary, however. In a matter of three decades the broad reforms of the Progressive movement gained passage, weakening the grip of these special interests in the legislature and reshaping the landscape of California politics. One notable feature of the 1879 Constitution is the procedures it established for amendment. The federal constitution and every state constitution in the United States include procedures for their own amendment, but these procedures vary considerably. The U.S. Constitution is one of the most difficult to amend in the world, requiring a two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate followed by ratification by three-fourths of the states.7 This very high hurdle explains in part why the U.S. Constitution has only been amended 27 times since 1789. In contrast, the California Constitution is much easier to amend. See Figure 2.1 for an over­ view of the different paths through which the constitution can be amended. Con­ vening a constitutional convention is a more dramatic method of reform and has been used rarely. It is not particularly difficult, however, to get 8 percent of voters in the most recent gubernatorial election to sign a petition adding an amendment to the next ballot; the amendment then needs a simple majority vote to pass. This method has been used more than any other to amend the California Constitution. You can get a sense of the California Constitution and how different it is from the U.S. Constitution by examining California’s bill of rights, called the “Declara­ 24 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

FIG U R E 2 .1   ●  Amending the California Constitution

Proposal Stage

Ratification Stage

2/3 of both the state Assembly and state Senate vote in favor of an amendment Majority vote in favor

OR 8 percent of voters in last gubernatorial election sign a petition to propose an amendment

2/3 of both Assembly and Senate vote in favor of convening a constitutional convention OR

Amendment appears on ballot in next statewide election

Amendment passes

Amendment fails

Majority vote against Constitutional convention convenes, proposes amendment(s)

Majority of voters approve an initiative calling for a constitutional convention

tion of Rights.” The federal Bill of Rights consists of the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and while other amendments may be passed, the first 10 will remain the Bill of Rights as they were written. California’s bill of rights, meanwhile, can be expanded or rewritten as times change, and it therefore reflects the politi­ cal changes and conflicts that have occurred over time, with some of the rights described in much greater specificity than the corresponding federal right. You can see an example of this specificity in the provisions for freedom of speech as they apply to a newspaper. The federal constitution has the familiar First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

California’s corresponding section has both more detail and more specificity, since it has been amended over time. SEC. 2. (a) Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right. A law may not restrain or abridge liberty of speech or press.

The Rules of the Game: California’s Constitution  /  25

(b) A publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or by a press associa­ tion or wire service, or any person who has been so connected or employed, shall not be adjudged in contempt by a judicial, legislative, or administrative body, or any other body having the power to issue subpoenas, for refusing to disclose the source of any information procured while so connected or employed for publication in a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving, or process­ ing of information for communication to the public. Nor shall a radio or television news reporter or other person connected with or employed by a radio or television station, or any person who has been so connected or employed, be so adjudged in contempt for refusing to disclose the source of any information procured while so connected or employed for news or news commentary purposes on radio or televi­ sion, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving, or processing of information for communication to the public.

Note the use of modern language, such as wire service and television.

From 1900 to 1917: The Progressive Movement Pressure for political reform did not end with the 1879 Constitution. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, the Progressives pursued three goals: attack cor­ porate political influence, eliminate the political corruption that accompanied such influence, and democratize the political process.8 The Progressives understood that these goals had to be accomplished before they could address equally pressing but more mundane concerns of the time. They accomplished all of their goals—and much more. Beginning with the 1911 legislative session, these reformers passed dozens of constitutional amendments and statutes that changed the face of California government and politics.9 The most prominent of the political reforms were the following:

• Nonpartisanship  This is the norm in local elections and means that no party label is affixed to the candidates’ names on the ballot. Of the more than 19,000 elected public officials in California, fewer than 300 are elected in partisan races.

• Primary elections  Before the institution of primary elections, political parties chose their candidates in party conventions (the stereotypical smoky back room) or caucuses—meetings of party members at the local level. In a primary election, each prospective party nominee has to obtain more votes than any other prospective nominee in order to run as the party’s candidate in the November general election. (This system was changed again in 2010; see next section.)

• The office block ballot  This is the ballot that we vote on today, with a “block” for each office and the candidates listed for that office. Before this reform, in some elections, voters cast ballots for their preferred party, not for individual candidates.

• Direct democracy  These grassroots processes—the initiative, referendum, and recall—give citizens the ability to exert some control over both the legislative

26 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

and executive branches. In this way, citizens can rein in the abuse of power by elected officials or ignite officials who have become paralyzed by inaction and partisan bickering. These processes will be examined in detail later in the chapter.

• The civil service  An essential element of the Progressive reform movement was the implementation of a civil service in which government employees are selected on the basis of merit, replacing the spoils system in which employees are selected based on their personal connections to the party in power. In California, the 1913 Civil Service Act created a Civil Service Commission to eliminate politics and the spoils system among the state’s public employees. During this period, the California Constitution grew substantially as the legisla­ ture enacted dozens of constitutional amendments and statutes. In the first three months of 1911 alone, the legislature passed more than 800 statutes and 23 con­ stitutional amendments.

From 1960 to the Present: Late Revisions In 1963 the legislature created a constitution revision commission as a result of a 1962 initiative. The commission, composed of 50 citizens, 3 state senators, and 3 Assembly members, submitted two major reports containing recommended revi­ sions to the state constitution. The legislature incorporated these into 14 constitu­ tional amendments and submitted them to the voters for approval between 1966 and 1976; the voters approved 10. These amendments simplified, shortened, and re­organized the constitution but made few substantive changes to it. In 1993 the legislature again established a constitution revision commission, which proposed a number of substantial changes, some of which reformers had discussed for generations. For a variety of reasons, including the difficulty of achiev­ ing the two-thirds vote in the Assembly and Senate required to place the proposed changes on the ballot, they were never submitted to the voters. In 2010 the voters implemented a change to the primary election system that echoed the effort of many Progressive Era reforms to further democratize the political process. This change replaced the party primaries with a “top two” pri­ mary election, in which the top two candidates from a list of all candidates, regard­ less of party, proceed to the November runoff. The new system is no longer a party primary; instead it is like a swim meet or track meet, with preliminary and final races. Despite its numerous amendments, the California Constitution is not well suited to a state that is 25 times larger than it was in 1900. The legislature is the same size, with 40 state senators and 80 Assembly members, but each state Senate district has grown from just over 60,000 persons to almost 1 million; legislators are able to offer far less individualized attention to their constituents than they could in an earlier era (see the “Who Are Californians?” feature on the next page). In the early twentieth century, small amateur groups could utilize the initiative, but well-funded interest groups are now uniquely able to take advantage of it. Unfor­ tunately, serious efforts to modernize state government have been few and far be­­ tween, and when they have occurred, as with the constitutional revision commission of the 1990s, the results have been subject to partisan voting and have not achieved the majorities necessary to send them to the people for a final decision.

The Rules of the Game: California’s Constitution  /  27

WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS?

Who Draws the Lines in California? The Constitution of 1879 provided for 80 Assembly and 40 Senate districts based on population, and after each U.S. Census the lines were supposed to be redrawn by the state legislature (to account for births, deaths, and people moving). This procedure was followed until 1910, when conflict between urban and rural areas led to the Reapportionment Act of 1911, which shortchanged the growing urban areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1926 a constitutional amendment made representation in the California Senate even more unequal. In 1964 this unequal representation was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court (in Reynolds v. Sims), leading to new districts of roughly equivalent populations. In 2008, California voters approved a constitutional amendment that placed redistricting in the hands of the new Citizens Redistricting Commission. The commission drew new districts that followed a set of nonpartisan rules, such as creating geographically compact districts that kept existing cities and communities intact.

State Senate Districts, 1883

State Senate Districts, 1961

State Senate Districts, 2016

Population per district

Population per district

Population per district

Approx. 29,000

50,000 or less

200,000 — 499,999

50,001 — 99,999

500,000 — 999,999

100,000 — 199,999

1,000,000 or more

Approx. 982,500

forcriticalanalysis SOURCES: Join California, “Election History for the State of California” www.joincalifornia.com/ (accessed 12/19/16); Don A. Allen Sr., Legislative Sourcebook (1965); California Citizens Redistricting Commission, www.wedrawthelines.ca.gov/ (accessed 12/19/16).

1. Does the large population size of current Assembly and State Senate districts make it difficult for Californians to truly be represented in the legislature?

2. If the plan adopted by California in 1926 is unconstitutional because representation is unequal, why is it that the representation in the U.S. Senate is not invalid?

The Progressive Movement and Its Impact on California Politics The development of California’s distinctive constitution has been influenced by many different groups over the course of the state’s history. One group whose influence is still deeply felt in California politics is the Progressives. The Progres­ sive movement had roots in the economic and political changes that swept the United States after the Civil War. It was foreshadowed by the Populist movement, which dominated American politics from 1870 to 1896. Some of the political concerns and much of the moral indignation expressed by the Populists about the changes taking place in the United States were subse­ quently reflected in the Progressive movement. From the Civil War on, the coun­ try rapidly industrialized, and wealth became concentrated in the hands of a new breed of corporate entrepreneurs. Monopoly was the word of the day. These cor­ porate giants dictated economic policy, with significant social and political conse­ quences. One huge corporation, the Southern Pacific Railroad, held a monopoly on shipping in California and could charge producers and retailers exorbitant prices. Its vast wealth and power gave it undue influence not only economically but also politically; along with a web of associated interests, it ruled the state to a degree previously unparalleled in the nation. Bribing public officials was not unusual, nor was handpicking candidates for the two major political parties.10 The Progressives countered the powerful corporations, specifically the South­ ern Pacific Railroad, by prosecuting the corrupt politicians who served them. Even­ tually, this tactic led to a series of regulatory reforms that loosened the choke hold of the railroad, corrupt politicians, and interest groups on state and local politics.

Local Politics Progressive reforms began at the local level. The battle against the Southern Pacific Railroad and corporate influence in general started in San Francisco in 1906, with the reform movement fighting to rid city government of graft and bribery. Presi­ dent Theodore Roosevelt stepped in to help. Working hand in hand with James D. Phelan, the former mayor of San Francisco, Roosevelt sent in federal agents led by William J. Burns to investigate bribery and corruption charges.11 Public officials were put on trial for the bribery, bringing to the public’s attention the extent of graft and political corruption in municipal government, and 17 supervisors and a number of corporate leaders were indicted.12 The mayor was forced to resign, and his henchman, Abraham Reuf, who implicated officials of the Southern Pacific Railroad and several utility companies, was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in jail. Although the graft trials largely failed to convict those indicted (Reuf was an exception), they were nonetheless an important step in breaking the power of the Southern Pacific Railroad and its political allies. In 1906 the Southern Pacific Railroad also dominated local politics in Los Angeles.13 During this time, a group dedicated to good government, the NonPartisan Committee of One Hundred, was formed. They selected a reform candi­ date for mayor who was opposed by the two major parties, labor groups, and the Los Angeles Times. While the reform candidate lost his bid for the mayoralty, 17 of 23 reform candidates for other city positions were elected.14 The nonpartisan reformers were on their way to ridding the city of the Southern Pacific machine. The Progressive Movement and Its Impact on California Politics   /  29

This cartoon from 1882 depicts the Southern Pacific Railroad as a destructive octopus with farmers, miners, lumber dealers, and other victims of the company’s monopoly on shipping entangled in its tentacles. The faces of Mark Hopkins and Leland Stanford, two of the railroad’s founders, form the creature’s eyes.

State Politics The 1907 legislative session was one of the most corrupt on record, heavily con­ trolled by the political operatives of the Southern Pacific Railroad. At the end of the session, the editor of the Fresno Republican, Chester Rowell, wrote, “If we are fit to govern ourselves, this is the last time we will submit to be governed by the hired bosses of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.”15 At the same time, Rowell and Edward Dickson of the Los Angeles Express began to organize a statewide movement to attack Southern Pacific’s power. At Dickson’s invitation, a group of lawyers, newspaper publishers, and other political reform­ ers met in Los Angeles. They founded the Lincoln Republicans, later to become the League of Lincoln-Roosevelt Republican Clubs (also known as the LincolnRoosevelt League), dedicated to ending the control of California politics by the South­ ern Pacific Railroad and linking themselves to the national Progressive movement. 30 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

The Lincoln-Roosevelt League participated in the statewide legislative elec­ tions of 1908 and managed to elect a small group of reformers to the legislature. Two years later it fielded a full-party slate, from governor down to local candidates. STATEHOUSE VICTORY  In 1910, Hiram Johnson became the Lincoln-Roosevelt League candidate for governor. He campaigned up and down the state, focusing on one issue: the Southern Pacific Railroad. He claimed that the company, acting in concert with criminal elements, had corrupted the political process in California. He defined the battle as one between decent, law-abiding citizens and a few cor­ rupt, powerful individuals who were determined to run the state in their own best interests. Johnson won the election and met with leading national Progressives— Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, and Lincoln Steffens—to discuss a reform program for California. The new administration in Sacramento set out to elimi­ nate every special interest from the government and to make government solely responsive to the people and Johnson. Through a series of legislative acts and con­ stitutional amendments, they made significant progress in that direction. In 1911 the voters passed the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. These three reforms, widely known as direct democracy, placed enormous power and control over gov­ ernment in the hands of the voters. Now citizens could write their laws or amend the constitution through the initiative, approve or reject constitutional amendments through the referendum, and remove corrupt politicians from office through the recall. In addition to these reforms, a new law set up a railroad commission that had power to fix rates beginning in 1911. Other reforms included the direct primary, which gave ordinary citizens the power to select the candidates of the political par­ ties for national and state offices. Women obtained the right to vote in California in 1911. Legislation was also enacted that limited women to an eight-hour workday, set up a workmen’s compensation system, put into practice a weekly pay law, and required employers to inform strikebreakers that they were being hired to replace employees on strike (and therefore might face verbal abuse and physical violence). These reforms were in part a reaction to what were viewed as harsh employment practices by Southern Pacific Railroad. The Progressives in California made significant headway in limiting the influ­ ence of corporations and political parties in politics. In its first two years in office, the Johnson administration succeeded in breaking the power of the Southern Pa­ cific Railroad.16 LAST HURRAH  The national Progressive Party lost its bid to capture the White House in 1912 with Theodore Roosevelt on the ticket for president and Hiram Johnson for vice president. The failure to win an important national office weak­ ened the party by lessening the enthusiasm of its supporters. It also meant that the party had no patronage with which to reward its followers between elections. Elec­ toral failure was just one of several major problems that plagued the Progressives. Several other factors also contributed to the decline of the party: the public grew tired of reform; there was a major falling out among the leadership in California; the Progressives generally opposed World War I, which was supported by the over­ whelming majority of the American public once the country got into the war; and the party failed to support reforms that labor so badly wanted. The Progressive Movement and Its Impact on California Politics   /  31

When the Progressives learned that the Republican Party would not nominate Roosevelt in 1916, they offered him the nomination. Roosevelt declined. At a din­ ner in San Francisco in July 1916, the California Progressive Party disbanded and Hiram Johnson urged his followers to join either the Republican or the Democratic Party. Later that year Johnson, now a Republican, was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served for 28 years. If there was one major flaw in Progressive thinking, it was the belief in the active, informed citizen willing to participate in politics. Progressives believed that given the opportunity, citizens would be happy to support the democratic process and spend whatever time and effort was needed to participate in elections. Since the late 1940s, however, a host of studies have shown that many people neither vote nor pay attention to politics. But the Progressives leave behind the significant legacy of having gained tremendous political power for the people of California, if and when Californians choose to use it. The Progressive strategies to gain power for the people were appropriate for 1910, when California had a population of 2.4 million. Since then, California has grown so much and so quickly that its constitution has been unable to catch up: in a state of now 39.3 million people, reforms that allowed “the people” to propose initiatives and recall public officials cannot now be exercised on a statewide17 level without a great deal of money, organization, and professional help. The last initia­ tive that did not use paid, professional signature gatherers was introduced in 1990, and it relied on a paid campaign coordinator. An initiative organized completely by volunteers has not been successful since 1984.

Direct Democracy The Progressives established civil service reforms, nonpartisan commissions to con­ trol key state regulatory functions, nonpartisan elections to cripple local machines, office block voting (a ballot listing all candidates for a given office under the name of that office), and primary elections. Even if these innovations have failed to check the power of special interests, they have given voters the power of direct action through the initiative, referendum, and recall. Citizens activate these three mecha­ nisms by circulating petitions to gather a required number of signatures and bring the measure to statewide vote. The number of signatures, as we shall see, varies de­ pending on the mechanism.

Initiative THE PROCESS  Of the three direct voices in government, the initiative is the most well known and most frequently used. The process, also known as direct legislation, requires the proponent to obtain a title (for example, “Public Schools: English as Required Language of Instruction”) and summary of the proposed initiative from the state attorney general. Upon obtaining the title and summary, the proponents have 150 days to circulate a petition to gather the required number of signatures to qualify for the ballot—5 percent of voters in the last gubernatorial election for statutes, and 8 percent for constitutional amendments. The secretary of state sub­ mits the measure at the next general election held at least 131 days after it qualifies or at any special election held before the next general election. The governor may call a special election for the measure. 32 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

Before 1960 initiatives appeared only on the general election ballot, thus limit­ ing their use to the two-year election cycle. From 1960 to 2012 they appeared on the primary, general, and special-election ballots. In 2012 a new law, propelled by the Democratic majority in the legislature, again required that ballot propositions appear only on the general election ballot in November, motivated by the general consensus that the smaller and more conservative primary electorates disadvantage more liberal initiatives. FREQUENCY OF USE  Initiatives have become indispensable to California’s polit­ ical fabric. From 1912 to 2016 over 1,900 initiatives were titled and summarized for circulation. Of this number, 380 qualified for the ballot, 3 were removed by court order, and 135 were approved by the voters—for an overall passage rate of 36 percent. Of the 135 initiatives approved, 42 were constitutional amendments and 13 were constitutional/stationary changes.18 Figure 2.2 presents the use of initiative by decade. Note these two points: the increasing frequency of initiatives since 1970, and the varying, but generally low, level of success for the measures that made it to the ballot. For discussion purposes, we can compress the 100-year history of initiatives into four time periods: 1912–39, 1940–69, 1970–99, and 2000–16.

1912–39  From the beginning, various individuals and special interests understood that the initiative could be used to forward their special causes. Social and cultural

FIGURE 2.2  ● Number of Initiatives and Their Disposition by Decade, 1912—2016 70 Qualified Approved 60

50

40

30

20

10

0

19

9 –1 12

9 –2 20 19

9 –3 30 19

9 –4

40 19

9 –5

50

19

9 –6

60

19

9 –7 70 19

9 –8

80

19

9

–9

90

19

09

0–

0 20

16 0–

1 20

SOURCE: California Secretary of State, http://sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/pdf/initiative-totals -summary-year.pdf (accessed 11/11/16).

Direct Democracy  /  33

issues, such as outlawing professional fighting, prostitution, gambling on horse races, and land ownership by Asian Americans, drew the highest voter turnout during this period. Labor issues (closed versus open shops) and tax propositions were also volatile issues. No single issue, however, dominated the initiative process during this period more than the so-called liquor question.19 These initiatives were among the most controversial, and they drew high voter turnouts. Twelve measures related to liquor control appeared on the ballot between 1914 and 1936, for and against full pro­ hibition and anti-saloon measures, and state regulation versus local control. Voting was consistent throughout this period, with the anti-Prohibition forces generally prevailing on every measure. The issue, however, wouldn’t go away; in 1948, after many failures to qualify an initiative, the anti-liquor forces qualified another local option measure, which was rejected by 70 percent of the voters. After this vote, the issue lost its appeal, never to appear on the ballot again. 1940–69  In this time period use of the initiative declined markedly. Compared to the previous 27 years, a higher percentage of proposed measures failed to gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The subject matter of the initiatives also varied from those of 1912–39. Newer issues came to the forefront: race and civil rights, property taxes, and labor and welfare. Proposition 14 (1964) was the most prominent of a number of initiatives that dealt with fair housing. The initiative was drafted to nullify the Rumford Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination in the rental, lease, or purchase of housing on the basis of race and national origin. The Rumford Act, supporters of Proposition 14 claimed, interfered with their private property rights. Real estate and homeowners’ associations led the efforts in support of the proposition; a coa­ lition of Democratic Party leadership, organized labor, churches, and a variety of other groups led the forces against it. The broader issue of race, specifically regard­ ing treatment of and biases toward African Americans, lingered in the background of the campaign; by all accounts, race was the deciding factor in how people voted. Proposition 14 passed by a 2-to-1 margin in November 1964. Its victory was a major impetus for the Watts riots during the summer of 1965, which lasted six days, resulted in 34 deaths, and damaged almost 1,000 buildings.20 Over the next two years, Proposition 14 was overturned, first by the California Supreme Court and then by the U.S. Supreme Court, for violating the Fourteenth Amendment. 1970–99  In this period initiatives abounded, with over 1,000 initiatives receiving titles, 141 qualifying for ballot, and 56 approved by the voters. The subjects involved social, cultural, and economic issues, including the death penalty, gun control, bus­ ing, the property tax, nuclear power, water resources, air quality, coastal preservation, English as the official language, affirmative action, undocumented immigrants, and gay marriage. The most controversial initiative of this period was Proposition 13, titled the “People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation” (1978). Sponsored by longtime antitax activists Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, Proposition 13 was a reaction to the spiraling appreciation of property throughout the 1970s. In just one year, some properties were reassessed at a value 50 to 100 percent higher, and their owners’ tax bills jumped accordingly. Proposition 13 included several provisions, one of which dramatically reduced residential property taxes and another that required a two-thirds supermajority in both houses of the legislature to approve tax increases. 34 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

Proposition 13 was a grassroots effort, opposed by nearly every state employee and labor union and most Democratic leaders. The pro side raised $2.2 million, and the con side raised $2 million. On June 6, 1978, nearly two-thirds of California’s voters passed the proposition, reducing property tax rates by about 57 percent. Now, almost 40 years later, Proposition 13 is still hotly debated. Critics argue that it creates tax inequities by treating residential and commercial property as equivalent and by assessing similar properties in different ways based solely on when a homeowner bought a house. Supporters argue that pegging property taxes to the value of the property, assessed yearly, exposes homeowners to accelerated yearly property taxes, which leaves them vulnerable to losing their homes. 2000–16  During this period, California voters decided on 94 initiatives in 18 sepa­ rate elections, 3 of which were special elections, including the special election to recall Governor Gray Davis. Initiatives that passed included measures on farm ani­ mal confinement practices, redistricting the state legislative boundaries, victims’ rights, and parole procedures. (See Table 2.1 for a list of the top contributors for this period.) The most controversial and long-lasting ballot issue deals with same-sex mar­ riage, an issue that has been publicly debated for some 35 years. In 1977 the state legislature passed a law stating that marriage was a “personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman.” This was reaffirmed in 2000 when the voters passed Proposition 22, a statutory—not constitutional—amendment that revised the California Family Code to define marriage as between a man and a woman. However, in May 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled Proposition 22

TABLE 2.1  ● Top Contributors to Initiative Ballot Committees, 2000—16 Contributor California Teachers Association Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America Philip Morris Pacific Gas & Electric Company California Association of Hospital and Health Systems California State Council of Service Employees Charles Munger, Jr. Stephen L. Bing Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians Morongo Casino Resort Spa Chevron Corporation Molly Munger Thomas Steyer RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians

Amount $154,714,998 70,549,206 66,762,336 62,461,250 60,448,154 58,367,914 56,440,505 51,066,372 48,821,480 46,660,977 44,527,500 44,456,347 39,854,000 36,680,569 34,940,025

SOURCE: National Institute on Money in State Politics, www.followthemoney.org/show-me?s=CA&y=2016,2015,2014, 2013,2012,2011,2010,2009,2008,2007,2006,2005,2004,2003,2002,2001,2000&m-exi=1#[{3|{1|gro=d-ad-st,d-eid (accessed 11/17/2016).

Direct Democracy  /  35

Two same-sex couples— Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo, and Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier—pictured here outside the U.S. Supreme Court, were the plaintiffs in Hollings­­worth  v. Perry. The Court held that the sponsors of Proposition 8 “lacked standing” to appeal the fed­­ eral court ruling that upheld same-sex marriage under the Equal Protection Clause of the federal Constitution and thus paved the way for samesex marriage in California.

invalid. At about the same time, fearing such a decision, proponents of Proposi­­ tion 8 (“Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry”) had already begun to qualify the initiative for the ballot, relying on a constitutional amendment, not a statute, to end debate on the issue. The campaign over Proposition 8 was fiercely contested. In the end, the initia­tive passed by a margin of 52.3 to 47.7 percent. Both sides raised significant amounts of money: those supporting Proposition 8 contributed $39 million, while those opposing contributed $44 million, making it the second most expensive initia­ tive campaign in state history (behind only Proposition 87 in 2006) and the high­ est expenditure on a same-sex marriage initiative campaign in the nation. After the election, six lawsuits were filed with the California Supreme Court by samesex couples and government bodies challenging the constitutionality of Proposi­ tion  8.  The court consented to hear three of the six jointly, but it denied the request to stay the enforcement of Proposition 8. On May 26, 2009, the court ruled that Proposition 8 was valid but allowed existing same-sex marriages to stand (in Strauss v. Horton). Opponents of Proposition 8 then took their fight to federal court, which, on August 4, 2010, declared the ban unconstitutional in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (now Perry v. Brown). This decision was upheld by the Ninth Circuit in February 2012. The supporters of Proposition 8 (but not the state government) then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled in Hollingsworth v. Perry in June 2013 that the proposition’s supporters could not appeal the case; only the state govern­ ment could defend a proposition approved by the voters, and the state had declined to do so. As a result of this decision, same-sex marriage is legal in California. 36 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

How can we account for the increase in initiatives over the past four decades? The simplest explanation is that it is a consequence of several factors, including the complexity of modern society and the increased willingness of the govern­ ment to regulate decisions previously left to citizens. Additionally, the legislature went from part to full time in 1968, which had a number of significant effects on California politics: more politicians made a career in the field, more legislation was passed, the budget grew, and decision making and power shifted to Sacramento. These shifts, coupled with the other Progressive reforms designed to rid the capital of political corruption and an unresponsive legislature—direct primaries, term limits, regulation of campaign contributions, and various tactics to weaken political parties—undermined voters’ influence on elected officials. Frustrated by the action or inaction of the legislature, voters have turned to the initiative to get what they want. In addition to voters, special interests frequently turned to initiatives during this period to promote policies they could not get through the legislature. Money has increasingly become the only requirement for a successful initiative campaign. As a result, an industry of professional campaign managers and signature gatherers is flourishing. These so-called policy managers identify hot issues and then search for clients who will pay for the privilege of sponsoring the initiative.

Referendum THE PROCESS  The referendum allows voters to approve or reject constitutional amendments or statutes proposed or passed by the state legislature. There are two types of referendum: the legislative referendum, and the popular referendum.21 The legislative referendum exists when the legislature proposes a constitu­ tional amendment or revision and the issuing of the majority of bonds (long-term borrowing to finance capital projects such as construction of buildings and infra­ structure). This type of referendum must be approved by two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature before it appears on the ballot. The popular referendum is employed when voters are displeased with a law that was passed by the legislature. The requirements are the same as those for the initiative, and the two are sometimes confused. The process is as follows: the measure may be proposed by presenting to the secretary of state a petition with signatures equal to 5 percent of the voters in the last gubernatorial election. The filing of the signatures must take place within a 90-day period after the enactment of the statute. If the measure qualifies to be on the ballot, the law in question may not take effect until the electorate decides whether it should become a law. FREQUENCY OF USE  The referendum is used infrequently. In fact, it has almost faded from use. Between 1912 and 2016, 50 referenda have appeared on the ballot. Voters rejected 29 laws and approved 21. Of the seven approved since 1982, five dealt with Indian gaming. Proposition 29 (2000) rejected repeal of the Pala Indian tribe compact that authorized the operation of “video lottery terminals” if operated as lotteries, not slot machines. Propositions 94, 95, 96, and 97 (2008) allowed four individual tribes to operate additional slot machines and revised the environmental impact procedures. In 2012 voters approved a measure redistricting state Senate districts drawn by the Citizens Redistricting Commission, making districts more compact with near equal populations.22 In the 2016 general election, voters upheld a law passed by the state legislature that prohibited grocery and other retail stores Direct Democracy  /  37

from providing single-use plastic or paper carryout bags at point of sale and placed a 10-cent charge on reusable paper bags.

Recall THE PROCESS The recall allows voters to determine whether to eject an elected official from office before his or her term expires. Proponents first submit a peti­ tion alleging the reason for recall. They then have 150 days to present to the sec­ retary of state a petition with the required number of signatures to qualify for the ballot. If the sitting official is recalled, a successor is elected. Most recalls are of school board or city council members at the local level. For statewide offices, the number of signatures must be equal to 12 percent of the last vote for the office, with signatures from at least five counties equal to 1 percent of the last vote for the office in the county. For the Senate, Assembly, members of the Board of Equalization, and judges, the number of signatures must be equal to 20 percent of the last vote for the office. Upon receiving the petitions, an election must be held between 60 and 80 days from the date of certification of sufficient signatures. FREQUENCY OF USE  Recall of statewide offices or the state legislature are rare. There have been eight recall elections out of 118 filings against state officeholders. Seven of the eight were state legislators; Governor Gray Davis in 2003 was the other. Four of the state legislators were expelled from office. The recall was put into use against three state legislators almost immediately after its passage—twice in 1913, against Senator Marshall Black for involvement in a banking scandal, which succeeded, and against Senator James Owen for corruption, which failed. The next year, Senator Edwin Grant, who represented the red-light district in San Francisco, was recalled for opposing prostitution, which succeeded. Four other state legislators faced a recall vote in 1994 and 1995. The National Rifle Association failed in its attempt to recall Senator David Roberti for his posi­ tion on gun control legislation. Two Republican members of the Assembly, Doris Allen and Paul Horcher, were voted out of office for supporting Willie Brown for speaker in a battle between the parties for control of the Assembly. And an attempt to recall Democratic Assemblyman Mike Machado for backing Republi­ cans failed.23 The most notorious recall, however, was that of Governor Davis. He is the only California governor to have been recalled, although there have been over two dozen previous attempts, including three against Ronald Reagan in the 1960s and one against Pete Wilson in the 1990s. During the 2002 campaign for governor, Davis, the incumbent governor, had claimed that the budget deficit was $18 billion, but a week after his election he revealed it was actually $35 billion. Proponents of the recall immediately accused Davis of misleading voters about the severity of the state’s budget crisis during his reelection campaign. Other actions prompting the recall included the governor’s efforts to prevent the anti-immigrant Proposi­ tion 187 from being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and his approval of two gun-control measures. The public also held Governor Davis partially responsible for the electricity crisis, during which some people’s electricity bills doubled and even tripled. Supporters of the recall also blamed Davis for California’s generally weak economy. After Representative Darrell Issa, who hoped to run for governor, 38 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

funded the signature collection effort with a contribution of $2 million, the recall took off on its own momentum. Because the filing requirements to run as Davis’s successor were relatively low, 135 candidates filed to replace him. Arnold Schwar­ zenegger’s candidacy quickly gained the most attention and he easily won the two-part election, in which voters were asked to decide whether Davis should be recalled and to choose his successor. Only 4 of the 135 candidates received more than 1 percent of the vote.

Debating the Merit of Direct Democracy The debate about the merits of direct democracy has been ongoing since its adoption in the early twentieth century. As we have seen, the initiative has been employed more than referendum or recall and is generally the focus of the debate on the value of direct democracy. Many scholars believe that the initiative blurs the complexity of many issues and reduces them to clichés or sound bites for the voter. Some writers, such as journalists David Broder and Peter Schrag, believe that special interests with deep pockets dominate the initiative process, undermining the efficacy of representative government with its built-in system of checks and balances. Other writers, such as academics Elisabeth R. Gerber and Shaun Bowler, argue that money plays a vital role in defeating initiatives but not in passing them. They hold that successful ini­ tiatives are the product of grassroots movements that have more to do with easily grasped social and economic issues than with well-financed campaigns. Most who have studied the initiative believe it to be a flawed method of form­ ing public policy. Many initiatives are poorly drafted and are difficult to understand even for judges and legislators. The process is complex, and proponents cannot cor­ rect errors once circulation of petitions has begun. The legislature is discouraged from participating in the process at all. Reflecting the strong historic bias of its citizens against the legislature, California is the only state that prohibits the legisla­ ture from amending initiatives unless permission is written into the initiative itself. Even then, it usually requires a supermajority of two-thirds of the legislature to ap­­ prove changes, a level of support difficult if not impossible to obtain on significant amendments. Qualifying initiatives by signature is too easy for a signature-gathering firm and too difficult in the five months allowed for those without one, meaning that a large amount of money is necessary in order to qualify an initiative. Supporters of the initiative, on the other hand, claim that it is a more effective means of serving the majority in California than the legislative process. Therein lies the catch-22 that largely defines California politics: the legislature is supposedly hamstrung by the zealous use of direct democracy, while direct democracy is sup­ posedly necessary to overcome an unproductive legislature. A 2013 Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll (see Figure 2.3) showed continued strong support for the initiative process, with 72 percent of likely voters viewing as positive the initiative’s power to change public policy, and 60 percent agreeing that public policies made through the initiative are superior to those made by the governor and legislature. Likely voters support several reforms of the initiative process, however: more public disclosure of funding sources on initiatives; giving the legislature and the initiative’s sponsors more time to seek a compromise before the initiative goes on the ballot; and increased public engage­ ment, such as a citizens’ commission to hold hearings on initiatives and make bal­ lot recommendations. Oregon established such a program in 2011. Direct Democracy  /  39

FIGURE 2.3  ●  Public Opinion of the Initiative Process In general, do you think it is a good thing or a bad thing that a majority of voters can make laws and change public policies by passing initiatives?

28%

72%

Do you think the citizens’ initiative process in California is in need of major changes, minor changes, or that it is basically fine the way it is?

17%

40%

Major changes Good thing

Minor changes

Bad thing

Fine the way it is

36%

50% 40 Somewhat agree

30

Strongly agree

20 10 0 There are too many propositions on the state ballot.

The ballot wording is often too complicated and confusing.

SOURCE: Mark Baldassare, “Reforming California’s Initiative Process,” Public Policy Institute of California, www.ppic.org/content/pubs/atissue/AI_1013MBAI.pdf (accessed 6/27/14).

California’s Constitution: Where Are We Now? California’s constitution has been through three stages—establishment in the mid1800s, rewriting in 1879, and extensive amendment during the Progressive Era. Since then, a fourth, ongoing stage has been defined by political scientists and oth­ ers, in which numerous suggestions have been made to update the constitutional framework. Most notably, the 1996 California Constitutional Revision Commission 40 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

made many suggestions to strengthen the governor and make state government less susceptible to interest-group influence. These suggestions included the following:

• Having the governor and lieutenant governor run as a team. Because the governor and lieutenant governor currently are elected separately, their political agendas may diverge.

• Having the other elected members of the executive branch appointed by the governor. The governor currently has no supervisory responsibility over the lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, the treasurer, the controller, the attorney general, the insurance commissioner, and the state superintendent of public instruction. The lack of supervisory authority significantly weakens the governor as a leader (see Chapter 6).

• Merging the several tax administration agencies. The state currently has three tax administration agencies; merging them would save money (see Chapter 6).

• Lengthening term limits for legislators. In 2012 the term limit for state Assembly members was lengthened from 6 years to 12 and for state senators from 8 years to 12, provided the total time in both chambers is limited to 12 years. This is an improvement over the stricter limits enacted in 1990, but the term limits still increase the likelihood that major, complex state legislation will be enacted by inexperienced legislators (see Chapter 4). Most of these proposals have never come before the voters.

California’s Constitution: Where Are We Now?  /  41

Study Guide FOR FURTHER READING Alexander, Robert. Interest Group Involvement in Ballot Campaigns. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Allswang, John M. The Initiative and Referendum in California, 1898–1998. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Broder, David. Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money. New York: Harcourt, 2000. California Secretary of State. “History of California Initia­ tives.”  www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/resources -and-historical-information/history-california-initiatives/. Accessed 6/15/16. Donovan, Todd, S. Bowler, D. McCuan, and K. Fernandez. “Contending Players and Strategies: Opposition Advan­ tages in Initiative Elections.” In Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States, edited by S. Bowler, T. Donovan, and C. Tolbert, 133–52. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998. Gerber, Elisabeth. The Populist Paradox: Interest Group Influence on the Promise of Direct Legislation. Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 1999. Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform. New York: Washington Square Press, 1988. Johnson, Hiram. “First Inaugural Address.” January 3, 1913. http://governors.library.ca.gov/addresses/23-hjohnson01 .html. Accessed 6/20/16. Matthews, Joe, and Mark Paul. California Crackup, How Reforms Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Mowry, George. The California Progressives. Chicago: Quad­ rangle Paperbacks, 1963. Olin, Spencer C., Jr. California’s Prodigal Sons: Hiram Johnson and the Progressives, 1911–1917. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. “Policy Forum: Do Ballot Initiatives Undermine Democ­ racy?” Cato Policy Report (July–August 2000): 6–9. www

.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v22n4/initiatives.pdf. Ac­cessed 6/20/16. Schrag, Peter. Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Starr, Kevin. Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. ———. California: A History. New York: The Modern Library, 2005. Swisher, Carl Brent. Motivation and Political Technique in the California Constitutional Convention: 1878–79. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969.

ON THE WEB Baldassare, Mark. At Issue, Reforming California’s Initiative Process. Public Policy Institute of California, 2013. www.ppic .org/main/publication.asp?i=1071. Accessed 6/20/16. Baldassare, Mark, Dean Bonner, Sonja Petek, and Jui Shres­ tha. The Initiative Process in California. Public Policy Insti­ tute of California, 2013. www.ppic.org/main/publication _show.asp?i=1072. Accessed 6/20/16. California Secretary of State. Ballot Measures. www.sos.ca.gov /elections. Accessed 6/20/16. California State Constitution. www.leginfo.ca.gov/const.html. Accessed 6/20/16. This site makes the California State Constitution searchable by keyword. Center for Governmental Studies. Democracy by Initiative. May 2008. www.policyarchive.org/collections/cgs/index ?section=5&id=5800. Accessed 6/20/16. Search for “Democ­ racy by Initiative.” Initiative & Referendum Institute. www.iandrinstitute.org. Accessed 7/20/16. Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society. www.sphts .org. Accessed 6/20/16.

SUMMARY I. The history of the California Constitution comprises four stages. A. 1849: basic structure of government established. Includes separation of powers, bicameralism, federalism, and popular election of most state offices. B. 1879: a constitutional convention adds nine new articles and 8,000 words to respond to the reform needs of the time.

C. 1910–17: the Progressive Era adds the initiative, referendum, and recall, as well as hundreds of reform laws. D. 1960–present: California voters have authorized a few significant reforms.

42 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

II. Proposing an amendment to the California Constitution is easy. A. Amendments can be proposed in three ways: 1. Through a constitutional convention. The legislature can convene the convention by a twothirds vote, or it can be convened by a majority vote of the electorate from an initiative. A Bay Area business group tried to collect sufficient signatures for a new constitutional convention in 2009–10 but gave up because professional signature-gathering firms refused to work with the group, feeling that the effort would imperil their future existence. 2. Amendments may be proposed by collecting signatures through the initiative process. a) Signatures totaling 8 percent of the vote in the last gubernatorial election are required, collected over a five-month period. b) Most amendments are proposed this way. The cost is approximately $l million to $2 million, mostly for signature gathering. 3. The legislature may propose an amendment by a two-thirds vote. B. Amendments must go through a ratification stage. Regardless of the way in which an amendment is proposed, the electorate must then ratify the amendment before it goes into the constitution. A majority vote is required. III. The Progressive reformers had several key goals. A. Ending the dominance of big business, especially the Southern Pacific Railroad, over the state. B. Reforming the corrupt political process. C. Removing from office corrupt political officials at the state and local levels of government. D. Returning political power to the people. IV. Progressive laws and constitutional amendments wrought many significant changes. A. Ended child labor B. Established a state park system C. Enacted protections for working people D. Established nonpartisan elections E. Instituted primary elections F . Created office block voting G. Set in motion the process of direct democracy—the initiative, referendum, and recall

H. Resulted in the great number of Progressive reforms that are still in operation today V. Direct democracy is a vital aspect of California politics. A. The initiative is the most popular of the three direct democracy mechanisms. 1. Proponents need to gather signatures equal to 5 percent of voters in the last gubernatorial election for statutes and 8 percent of the voters for constitutional amendments. 2. Since 1912 roughly 34 percent of initiatives that have been voted on have passed. 3. The initiative has increasingly become a mech­ anism by which special interests or wealthy individuals can pass legislation by circumventing the legislature. B. The referendum refers legislation to the voters for a direct decision. There are two types of referendum: legislative and popular. 1. Legislative referendum allows voters to decide on statutes or constitutional amendments as well as most bond measures proposed by the legislature; it takes a two-thirds vote of the legislature to place a referendum on the ballot. 2. Popular referendum allows voters to approve or repeal an act of the legislature. If the legislature passes a law that voters do not approve of, they may gather signatures to demand a popular vote on the law. Proponents need to gather signatures equal to 5 percent of voters in the last gubernatorial election. 3. The referendum is infrequently used and has appeared on the ballot less than 50 times since 1912. C. The recall allows voters to remove a public official from elected office before his or her term is up. 1. The number of signatures that needs to be gathered depends on the office: 12 percent of the last vote for statewide office from at least five counties equal to 1 percent of the last vote in the county; 20 percent of the last vote for office for Senate, Assembly, and Board of Equalization. 2. Since 1912 there have been only eight recalls of statewide officials and legislative members. 3. Governor Gray Davis is the only statewide official to have been recalled.

Summary / 43

PRACTICE QUIZ 1. The popular direct-democracy process by which citizens can place a constitutional amendment or statute on the ballot is called a(n) a) referendum. b) initiative. c) recall. d) nonpartisan election.

6. The only sitting California governor to be recalled from office was a) Ronald Reagan. b) Jerry Brown. c) Gray Davis. d) Pete Wilson.

2. The individual who served as governor during much of the Progressive period was a) Chester Rowell. b) Edward Dickson. c) Hiram Johnson. d) Samuel P. Huntington.

7. Which of the following direct-democracy devices allows voters to approve or reject constitutional amendments or statutes and the majority of bond measures put on the ballot by the legislature? a) initiative b) direct primary c) legislative referendum d) recall

3. The process by which a petition signed by a specific per­ centage of those who cast votes in the last gubernatorial election enables voters to approve or reject a law enacted by the legislature is a(n) a) popular referendum. b) initiative. c) recall. d) nonpartisan election.

8. In which historical block was the greatest number of initiatives titled? a) 1912–39 b) 1940–69 c) 1970–99 d) 2000–16

4. The process by which an elected official is removed from office before his or her term expires is called a(n) a) referendum. b) initiative. c) recall. d) nonpartisan election. 5. Progressive reformers pointed to this company whenever they spoke about machine politics and corporate privilege in Sacramento: a) Standard Oil Company b) Bank of America c) Southern Pacific Railroad d) Northern Securities Company

9. Which of the following is not a Progressive Era reform? a) nonpartisan elections b) primary elections c) the office block vote d) party caucuses 10. Which of the following is not a legal way to amend the California constitution? a) The legislature can convene a constitutional conven­ tion by a two-thirds vote. b) The governor can sign into law a proposed amend­ ment passed by the legislature. c) The legislature may propose a constitutional amend­ ment by a two-thirds vote. d) The electorate can propose a constitutional amend­ ment through the initiative process.

44 / Chapter 2  /  The Constitution and the Progressive Legacy

CRITICAL-THINKING QUESTIONS 1. The California Constitution has gone through a series of revisions. Identify the periods of those revisions and dis­ cuss the contributions that each made to the state’s politi­ cal structure. 2. Suppose you worked for a coalition of interest groups sup­ porting legislation to increase the state sales tax to fund a state-run health care system. The coalition is frustrated by the lack of action in the legislature. They come to you for advice about the initiative process and the possibility of success. What would you tell them, based on what you’ve learned in this chapter? 3. Some people argue that direct democracy provides citi­ zens with another way to correct the behavior and deci­

sion making of public officials. Others argue that it is merely the instrument of those special interest groups that have enough money to manipulate the political pro­ cess. Present an argument for each position. Where do you stand in this debate? 4. California is the model Progressive state. The key compo­ nents of the Progressive agenda, however, greatly weak­ ened the role of political parties in the state. Identify and discuss how some of these Progressive reforms have weak­ ened the state’s party system. Is this a good or a bad thing? Do you think there are any correlations between weak parties and the increasing use of the initiative process?

KEY TERMS constitutional amendment (p. 36) direct democracy (p. 31) initiative (p. 32)

Progressive movement (p. 21) recall (p. 38) legislative referendum (p. 37)

popular referendum (p. 37) statute (p. 36)

Key Terms  /  45

3

Interest Groups and the Media in California What Interest Groups Do and Why They Matter in California Politics Consider the diversity of organizations that try to influence governmental policy or legislation:

• • • • •

A student organization opposes legislation to raise tuition at state universities. A business trade association supports legislation that would reform the state’s workers’ compensation insurance system. A beverage company opposes legislation to tax sugar-sweetened soft drinks and label them with warnings of health hazards. A citizens’ group supports legislation that would impose stricter penalties on people convicted of drunk driving. An association of county governments opposes legislation that prohibits the placing of certain juvenile offenders into group homes that are located in residential neighborhoods.

•

A public employees’ union supports legislation that prohibits state agencies from contracting with businesses unless the businesses pay their employees the equivalent of a living wage.

Each of these organizations is an interest group. Interest groups have always been part of California’s (and the United States’) political landscape. They are a product of freedom of association, a First Amendment right under our democratic system of government. Interest groups are associations of individuals who seek to influence policy decisions in the legislature, the executive branch, and administrative agencies, as /  47

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well as through direct legislation (the initiative). They are one method, as is voting, for individuals to voice their opinions on issues that concern them. Interest groups are also called pressure groups, political advocacy groups, special interest groups, and lobbying groups. Because they focus primarily on influencing policy decisions in the legislature, interest groups are often referred to as the third house, a term that describes their standing and influence in the legislative process.1 In California, interest groups are especially influential because of the state’s unique political landscape. As we shall see, open primaries, top-two primary elections, term limits, and nonpartisan elections at the local level have freed candidates from party dependence and pushed them toward interest groups for financial backing and help with mobilizing voters. At the same time, interest groups have realized that they can successfully use the initiative process to achieve political goals and have spared no expense in launching propositions, even when they are in conflict with broad-based citizen interests.

Character of Interest Groups All Californians are represented, whether wittingly or not, by interest groups such as county and city governments, trade associations, labor unions, professional and religious organizations, educational institutions, and environmental groups. When a government recognizes the right of association, citizens will exercise that right, and groups of all types will form. There is much debate about the influence of interest groups in the political arena, especially about whether the theories of pluralism or elitism best explain their status and power in the political process. Pluralist theory considers the political system as a marketplace in which a multitude of interests compete, where no single interest or combination of interests is powerful enough to dominate and government sits outside as an umpire or a referee. Pluralist theory argues that power is dispersed. To achieve success, interests often have to join together to bargain and negotiate with opposition interests, producing, by the end of the process, policy decisions. Pluralist theory acknowledges that some groups are stronger and more successful than others; however, it also contends that these groups do not necessarily succeed all or even a majority of the time—weaker but well-organized groups do sometimes succeed in achieving their goals or checking stronger groups. Elitist theory acknowledges that there are many interest groups active in the political process but argues that most of them have minimal power. Power rests in the hands of a few groups, such as large national and multinational corporations, universities, foundations, and public policy institutes, where leaders (elites) set the agenda and determine the policy outcomes of government. Accordingly, when it comes to important policy matters, such as the economy and noteworthy social issues, elites representing a narrow range of groups determine the basic direction of public policy. Still, elite theory recognizes that less powerful groups, most com48 / Chapter 3  /  Interest Groups and the Media in California

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monly in coalition with other less powerful groups, are occasionally able to check the proposals of the elites. This is especially true when elites can’t agree among them­­ selves on policy choices. But neither of these theories perfectly describes interest groups in California; in practice, California politics is a blend of pluralism and elitism. In each legislative session, there is widespread interest group activity, with literally thousands of interests competing for influence on more than 2,000 bills. Most of these groups, from child care facilities and auto repair shops to environmental organizations, trade unions, and businesses, focus on measures that directly affect their interests. Often these issues are of limited concern to the public at large. In these circumstances, the groups involved in the issue, whether supporting or opposed to it, work to create policy through competition and compromise. Here the pluralism theory fits well. Yet on some broad-based issues, a small number of (elite) groups, such as public employee unions and multinational corporations, influence decision making to favor their own special interests. They are able to exert power on the legislature, the public, and other interest groups because of their economic clout and ability to contribute great sums of money to candidates, independent committees, ballot initiatives, and public relations campaigns. In the end, California politics is a mixture of pluralism and elitism, depending on the issue in question and the stakes presented.

Diversity of Interest Groups The term interest group is all inclusive, covering a wide range of businesses and organizations. The California secretary of state classifies interest groups into 19 cat­ egories and indicates the amount spent by each category for lobbying during a twoyear legislative session. Table 3.1 lists the figures for the 2013–14 session. Many organizations openly state under the About tab on their web sites that lobbying or advocacy is a major part of their activity; this is a principal reason why many individuals and businesses join the group. For example, the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association claims to be “the most powerful and most knowledgeable legal voice for the injured workers of California”; the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, professes to promote “the interests of working people and their families for the betterment of California communities”; and the California Alliance of Child and Family Services claims it is “the champion and leading voice for organizations that advocate for children and families, and for advancing policies and services on their behalves.” Table 3.2 lists the top employers of lobbyists. This list has remained relatively stable over the past several years, with three or four groups moving in and out of the ranks from one year to the next, depending on their agenda in the legislative session. By most standards, the lobbyists for these groups are some of the most successful in Sacramento. Note how the top 10 employers of lobbyists match up with the categories in Table 3.1. The health sector, for instance, is third in total contributions, and the California Hospital Association and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan both make the list. Individual businesses and educational institutions, however, rarely identify lobbying as one of their activities. This is understandable and perfectly legitimate: lobbying is not a primary reason for the existence of these organizations. They participate in politics to protect their chief interests: profits and education. But they are careful not to call attention to their involvement in politics out of fear that they Character of Interest Groups  /  49

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TABle 3.1  ● Lobbying Categories and Spending, 2013—14 Category Miscellaneous* Government Health Manufacturing, industrial Finance, insurance Oil and gas Education Labor unions Professional, trade Utilities Transportation Entertainment, recreation Real estate Merchandise, retail Agriculture Legal Public employees Lodging, restaurants Political organizations

Amount (in millions) $98.8 87.9 76.6 46.8 40.0 35.2 31.1 30.5 30.2 27.1 13.9 12.8 12.0 9.5 8.6 8.5 6.9 3.5 .2

*Includes hundreds of interest groups, such as professional and trade associations, environmental organizations, and religious groups. Source: Data from California Secretary of State, http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Lobbying/Employers/list.aspx?view -category&session=2013 (accessed 6/15/16).

may alienate customers or tarnish their image. Accordingly, information about their lobbying activity must be obtained from newspaper accounts and public disclosure documents. Many businesses do join professional or trade associations to give them a voice on issues that affect their industry. “We’re the champion of California businesses, large and small,” the California Chamber of Commerce proudly asserts on its web site. “For more than 125 years, CalChamber has worked to make California a better place to live, work, and do business by giving private-sector employers a voice in state politics.” Its more than 13,000 member businesses give the chamber tremendous clout and stature. In turn, individual members enjoy several advantages— sharing of cost, strength in numbers, and, perhaps most important, anonymity. Government also lobbies government. Taxpayer protection groups have come to call these interests—education, health, special districts, local government, state agencies—“the spending lobby” because they are motivated by the desire to maintain or increase their revenue. In 2014, for instance, Government was the second highest spender, after the catchall Miscellaneous category, among the 19 categories of lobbyist employers registered with the secretary of state. According to governmental lobbyists, the passage in 1978 of Proposition 13, which limited property tax revenues to local government, is responsible for spurring the growth in governmental lobbying and the competition for funds. John P.

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TABle 3.2  ● Top Ten Lobbyist Employers, 2013—14 Organization Western States Petroleum Association California State Council of Service Employees Chevron Corporation and subsidiaries California Chamber of Commerce California Hospital Association Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. California Medical Association AT&T Pacific Gas and Electric Company California Teachers Association

Cumulative Expenditures $13,553,943 9,993,316 8,257,361 7,639,130 6 ,1 1 8,525 5,237,233 4,125,207 3,929,936 3,701,041 3,605,399

Source: Data from California Secretary of State, http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Lobbying/Employers/list.aspx?view -category&session=2013 (accessed 6/15/16).

Quimby, Sr., a former assemblyman who lobbies for San Bernardino County, told the Riverside Press Enterprise in 1997: “I wish government wasn’t for sale like this, but the fact is you have to hustle to get your share. Local governments without lobbyists see the ones with representation doing better so they say, ‘We need to get our butts on board and get one [lobbyist] or they’re going to steal everything from us.’”2 Or, to put it another way, government agencies spend taxpayers’ money to lobby government for more money to spend on taxpayers.

Proliferation of Interest Groups In California over the last two and a half decades, the number of interest groups and lobbying expenditures has grown steadily. In 1990 lobbyists represented approxi­­ mately 1,300 interest groups; in 2000 the number nearly doubled to 2,552; in 2012 it increased to 3,468; and in 2014 it swelled to 3,690.3 During the same period, lobbying expenditures also grew substantially with just a slight dip in 2009–10, as seen in Table 3.3. California continually ranks first nationally in number of interest groups and amount spent on lobbying activity. California accounts for one-third of all lobbyist activity in the country (but only 12 percent of the country’s population). Texas and New York rank second and third behind California in population, and each spends around 60 percent of what is spent in California on lobbying activities.4 What Carey McWilliams said about California politics during the 1930s and 1940s still holds true today: “Interests, not people, are represented in Sacramento. Sacramento is the marketplace of California where grape growers and sardine fishermen, morticians and osteopaths bid for allotments of state power.”5 Several factors have encouraged the proliferation of interest groups: Weak Political Parties  California has weak parties for a variety of reasons, but the main one is the Progressive reforms of the 1910s. These reforms were directed at the spoils system in government, the control of the political parties over

Character of Interest Groups  /  51

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TABle 3.3  ●  Growth in Lobbying Expenditures Legislative

Lobbying

Percent

1 9 9 1 —1 9 92 1993—1994 1995—1996 1997—1998 1999—2000 2001—2002 2003—2004 2005—2006 2007—2008 2009—2010 2 0 1 1 —2 0 1 2 2013—2014

$193,575,480 233,872,097 250,119,667 292,615,513 344,318,650 386,829,719 4 1 3 ,376,146 500,326,710 558,419,109 538,638,251 563,003,065 579,995,079

0 7.0 6.7 9.6 17.7 12.4 6.9 21.0 11.0 —3.5 4.5 3.0

Source: Data from California Secretary of State, http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Lobbying/Employers/list.aspx?view -category&session=2013 (accessed 6/15/16).

which candidates would represent the party in general elections, and the influence of interest groups in the legislature. To balance these influences, the Progressive reforms granted voters the direct-democracy practices of initiative, referendum, and recall. These measures and subsequent reforms—many of which were considered citizen initiatives, such as the direct primary, term limits, redistricting by an independent commission, and top-two open primaries—greatly free officials from party structure and discipline. But politicians still need money, resources, and support to win reelection, and so they have looked to interest groups in lieu of parties for help. In this way, Progressive attempts to curb interest-group influence have instead strengthened it. Growth of Government  California government has grown substantially over the past half century. Californians, like other Americans, initially were suspicious of government, perceiving it as a force whose powers had to be kept in check to protect individual rights. As time passed, however, citizens began to perceive government as a tool that could be used to solve myriad social and economic problems. The legislature has eagerly taken up the challenge. A by-product of government expansion has been that local levels of government have increased their lobbying efforts in the state legislature. For example, in 2013–14, counties, cities, special dis­­ tricts, school districts, and public employee unions spent over $87.9 million on lob­­ bying legislation that would affect their interests. (See Table 3.1.) Term Limits  In 1990, California voters approved term limits for all state and legislative offices. Term limits, it was argued, would break the cozy relationship between elected officials and lobbyists. Yet this has not been the case. As legislators with years of institutional memory left office, the legislature became more chaotic and less efficient. This opened the door for the “third house” of special interests 52 / Chapter 3  /  Interest Groups and the Media in California

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to gain influence, as lobbyists had the institutional memory that new legislators lacked. Legislators now often rely on lobbyists to write intricate legislation and council them on the flood of complex issues that come across their desk.6 Public Interest Groups  The growth of public interest groups, what some call the New Politics movement, began in the 1970s and continues through today. Examples of such groups are AARP, Sierra Club, and the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights. As the textbook We the People explains, the public interest lobby sought to distinguish itself from other groups—business groups, in particular— by “purporting to represent the general good rather than its own economic interests.”7 Although these so-called public interest groups claim to represent only the public interest, they should be judged critically; they are sometimes facades behind which narrow private interests hide.

Interest-Group Strategies Today, in California, politics is interest groups. Not all interest groups, however, are equal. Some have considerably more clout than others. The success of an interest group depends on several factors: a clear message, group cohesiveness, the alignment of the group’s interests with those of other groups and elected officials, an understanding of the political process, technical expertise, and money. As we shall see, money is especially important.

Lobbyists The people who do the work for interest groups are called lobbyists, and the work they do is called lobbying. Lobbyists are at the forefront of interest-group activity. They coordinate the efforts to secure passage, amendment, or defeat of bills in the legislature and the approval or veto of bills by the governor. Having a good lobbyist is paramount to the success of any group. There are citizen lobbyists and professional lobbyists. A citizen lobbyist is not paid to advocate for a particular issue or set of issues. Citizen lobbyists interact with their representatives to express their personal views on an issue and to attempt to influence legislation on that issue. Professional lobbyists are paid for their services and must register with the secretary of state. They also must submit quarterly disclosure reports detailing for whom they are working, the amount of money earned, and payment such as gifts and honoraria made to public officials they lobby. There are two types of professional lobbyists: contract and in-house. Contract lobbyists make up 50 percent of all lobbyists in Sacramento; in-house lobbyists account for the other half. 8 Contract lobbyists offer their services to the general public; they are advocates for hire and often represent multiple clients on a variety of issues at the same time. In-house lobbyists are employees of a trade, professional, or labor association and represent that group’s interest only. Many of these interest groups also use contract lobbyists because the group is involved in too many issues for its in-house staff to handle, or it may want to use a lobbyist who specializes in a specific subject area such as health insurance. A group may also want to use a lob­­ byist who has a close relationship with a particular legislator or members of a spe­­ cific committee whose support is vital for the group’s success. Interest-Group Strategies  /  53

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Lobbyists and special interests are often seen as the driving force behind politics in California, as illustrated by this cartoon from the Los Angeles Daily News.

Lobbying the Legislature  Few issues are just lobbied—that is, discussed with legislators or their staff during the legislative process. Most issues are managed using a combination of techniques: public relations (marketing), grassroots mobilization, and coalition building. The first job of the lobbyist is to know the group’s objective. Is the goal new legislation? Is it to amend existing law? Or is it to stop another business or interest group from passing new legislation or amending an existing law that may affect the group’s interest? The goal may not even be legislation. The group may want to amend current regulatory policy or shape the content of new regulations that will affect its members. The lobbyist must also identify other groups that may have an interest in the issue and assess whether these groups, as well as legislators, the executive branch, regulators, or the general public, will support or oppose the group’s activity. Moreover, lobbyists who can rely on the group’s members, especially if they reside in the legislator’s district, can more easily influence policy making. The most successful efforts are built around networks of activists who have made it a point to know their elected officials. These relationships can be built in many ways: working on election campaigns, commending representatives in writing for actions they have taken, contributing to political campaigns, and connecting in other ways so as to have a positive relationship with these officials. With this preparation in hand, the lobbyist has a greater chance of success. Of course, several other factors are also important: knowledge of the legislation process, strong communication skills, established relationships, credibility, adaptability to change, and the ability to negotiate. Lobbying the Executive Branch  The techniques used to lobby the executive branch are similar to those used in lobbying the state legislature. There are, however, two main differences between these two branches that make lobbying the 54 / Chapter 3  /  Interest Groups and the Media in California

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executive more challenging. First, unlike most other states, California has a number (seven) of statewide elected administration offices composing the plural executive. This makes it more difficult to coordinate lobbying, especially when the elected officials of those offices are from different political parties. Second, the executive branch includes more than 85 agencies, 325 state commissions and boards, and 30 educational institutions (see Chapter 6). The agencies write and oversee the implementation of thousands of regulations that have a powerful impact on different sectors of society at different times. The regulations they write and implement are generally subject-specific and often very technical. This forces a lobbyist to de­­ velop expertise—and relationships—with a number of different agencies.

Campaign Contributions to Candidates In addition to their expenditures on lobbying to influence legislative action, interest groups also make campaign contributions, which enable them to become familiar with and gain access to legislators. They do so through political action committees (PACs). There is a connection between lobbying success and campaign contributions. Those who invest heavily in lobbying generally invest heavily in PAC contributions, and vice versa.9 Table 3.4 lists the top 10 contributors for the 2013–14 legislative year. The table shows only the amount directly contributed to candidates for the state legislature—the total of which was $146,268,911. This figure does not include what these organizations may have contributed to statewide offices ($68,771,707),10 the Democratic or Republican Party committees ($60,317,306),11 independent expenditures ($90,999,463),12 or ballot initiatives ($184,207,934),13 which, when totaled, comes to an additional $404,296,410. Campaign contributions enable a lobbyist to gain access to legislators. The lobbyist can then make his or her argument—at which time he or she can provide the legislator with important, often technical information. To put these numbers in perspective, consider

TABle 3.4  ● Top Ten Contributors to Legislative Candidates, 2013—14 Organization

Amount ($)

California Association of Realtors California State Council of Laborers California Teachers Association California State Council of Service Employees California State Association of Electrical Workers Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians AT&T State Building & Construction Trades Council California Professional Firefighters The Doctors Company

$1,516,600 1,013,700 975,087 913,700 795,700 754,300 725,461 702,550 679,294 6 1 1 ,200

SOURCE: National Institute on Money in State Politics, www.followthemoney.org (accessed 6/15/16).

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that the average cost of a seat in the California Assembly was $821,396 and in the California Senate was $1,199,596 during the 2013–14 election cycle. Studies show that incumbency (i.e., currently holding political office) is a strong factor in being elected to office. Incumbents hold an advantage over their opponents for a number of reasons: high visibility and name recognition; media at­­ tention; history of constituency service; experience in managing a successful political campaign; and, most important, strong ties to the fund-raising pipeline.14 For example, in the 2014 campaign for state Senate, 20 seats were up for election— 10 with incumbents and 10 open seats. All 10 incumbents won reelection handily. The winning incumbents raised $13.4 million—an average of $1.3 million per incumbent—compared to their opponents who raised a combined $3.4 million. The latter number, however, is deceptive because Luis Chavez, the opponent of incumbent James Vidak, raised about $3.2 million of this amount in a losing effort to unseat Vidak. In the 2014 campaign for state Assembly, all 80 seats were up for election. Fiftyseven of the candidates were incumbents, who raised $53.2 million—an average of $933,000 per incumbent. Their opponents raised $6.9 million—an average of $121,367 per candidate. Needless to say, the incumbents dominated, as all but four won reelection. Of the four incumbents who lost, three were in interparty contests in which the Republican challenger defeated the Democrat incumbent, and one was in an intraparty contest in which the Democrat challenger defeated the Democrat incumbent. In each race, the losing incumbent outspent the winning challenger. In the Senate, the campaign for the 10 open seats (where there is no incumbent) showed expenditures of $23 million. Overall, the winning candidates raised 30 percent more money than the losing candidates did. In competition for the 23 open seats in the Assembly, candidates raised $38.7 million. The competition for monetary support was ongoing and spirited. In the end, the winning candidates out­­ raised their competitors by the small margin of 4.4 percent. In both the Senate and Assembly, 94 percent of incumbents were reelected to office, and 79 percent of those running for open seats who raised more money than their opponent won. What is the source of the campaign funds? The majority of contributions (91 percent) came from non-individual sources—that is, primarily from interest groups and to a much lesser amount from the candidate’s political party, which also received significant contributions from the same interest groups that contribute to the candidate.15 (See the “Who Are Californians?” feature on the opposite page for more on top interest group contributors.) Incumbency and interest groups (and their campaign contributions) go handin-hand, since their interrelationship, as we have seen, plays a crucial role in sitting legislators getting reelected. As Jesse Unruh, former speaker of the Assembly, once said, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”16 This adage still holds true today. Most interest groups and PACs carefully target their campaign contributions. They support individuals who are in positions of power (e.g., incumbent state officers, party leaders in the legislature, committee chairs, and rising stars). Contributions have little to do with a legislator’s or party’s political ideology. The only question is this: Can this legislator help me achieve my goals? California Correctional Peace Officers Association  An example of the dynamics of campaign contributions and lobbying can be seen in the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), one of the most powerful interest groups in Sacramento. It has achieved this status through a combination of 56 / Chapter 3  /  Interest Groups and the Media in California

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WHO ARE CALIFORNIANS?

Who Spends Money in California Politics? Every election cycle, interest groups and individual donors spend massive amounts of money in California politics. In 2016 they contributed a record total of $473 million in support of or in opposition to ballot propositions, while only $99.5 million was raised by candidates running for the state legislature.

Funds Raised for Selected Ballot Measures, 2016* Support

Oppose

$60.3 million

$14.6 million

$58.7 million

Prop. 52 Lock in Medi-Cal funding

$19 million

$6,240

$2.8 million

Prop. 55 Extend tax increases on incomes over $250,000 $109 million

Prop. 64 Legalize recreational marijuana

$34.4 million

Prop. 61 Regulate drug prices

$1.6 million

* As of December 2016

$71.3 million SOURCES: California Secretary of State, "Ballot Measure Total Contributions - 2016," www.sos.ca.gov/campaign-lobbying/cal-access-resources/measure-contributions/ (accessed 12/10/16); National Institute on Money in State Politics, www.followthemoney .org/show-me?s=CA&y=2016 (accessed 12/10/16).

Prop. 56 Increase taxes on tobacco

Top Interest Group Contributors, 2016* Donations for ballot initiatives Donor

Donations to Democrats $0

$10M

$20M

Donations to Republicans $30M

$40M

$50M

CA Association of Hospitals and Health Systems Philip Morris USA RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company CA Teachers Association AIDS Healthcare Foundation Pfizer Johnson & Johnson Merck & Co. Dignity Health CA State Council of Service Employees

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forcriticalanalysis 1. Should more be done to limit the role of wealthy interest groups in California politics, or is this sort of campaign spending an important component of political speech? 2. What do you think contributes to the high cost of candidate and ballot measure campaigns in California?

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aggressive lobbying, large campaign contributions, and skillful public relations. The CCPOA, a union, is one of the biggest contributors to candidates running for statewide and legislative office. Over the past two decades, the union has spent over $40 million on lobbying,17 contributing aggressively to the campaigns of its supporters and just as aggressively to defeat those who oppose its agenda. The union is one of the few public employee groups to give generously to both Republicans and Democrats. For example, when Pete Wilson ran for governor in 1990, prison guards gave $1 million to his campaign. Wilson reciprocated with substantial pay increases and stronger sentencing policies. The union made its most significant show of support, however, to Gray Davis. Besides granting him early endorsement in the primary, which guaranteed his selection as the Democratic candidate for governor, it contributed more than $3 million between 1998 and 2002 to his campaign war chest. During the same period, the union gave millions of dollars to members of the legislature, with especially large sums going to the leadership of both parties. Governor Davis responded in kind. Correctional officers’ wages were tied to those of highway patrol officers. At that time, highway patrol officers earned $666 more than correctional officers. Moreover, highway patrol officers’ pay, and by implication correctional officers’ pay, for each year were brought in line with the pay of police officers in the five largest urban areas. CCPOA also spent heavily—$1.8 million—in support of Jerry Brown’s 2010 gubernatorial victory. In March 2012 the legislature and Governor Brown agreed on a new contract, which the union overwhelmingly approved. The contract in­­ creased officers’ pension contributions, reduced their yearly pay by requiring one day of unpaid leave each month, and eliminated a state-funded, $42-million-a-year 401(k)-type plan that correctional officers had received in addition to their pensions. These changes sound like losses. However, as the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, the contract eliminated limitations on accrual of vacation time, currently estimated at more than 33 million hours and with costs to the state calculated at $1 billion.18 Governor Brown argued that collective bargaining is about “give and take” and claimed that the deal with the correctional officers was comparable to what other public employee unions received under Governor Schwarzenegger. But some ob­­ servers allege that the union contract is a bargaining chip to gain union support for the governor’s prison reform agenda, which includes closing youth prisons and trans­­ ferring up to 30,000 low-level offenders from state prisons to local jails. These re­­forms are intended to save the state millions of dollars. Still, the returns from CCPOA’s campaign spending and lobbying suggest that the strategy has paid off handsomely for the union. In March 2016, Governor Brown announced a new three-year deal with the union that includes annual across-the-board 3 percent raises for members. As a compromise, union members agreed to pay a small percentage of their salary into a reserve account for retirees’ medical benefits. The state will match the employees’ contribution. Today, “California’s prison guards are the nation’s highest paid, a big reason that spending on the state’s prison system has rocketed from less than 4.3 per­­ cent of the budget in 1986 to more than 11 percent today.”19

Grassroots Mobilization Up until now, we have focused on the influence of interest groups on the state legislature and executive branch. Interest groups, however, flex their muscles in other 58 / Chapter 3  /  Interest Groups and the Media in California

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The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the union representing the state’s prison guards, is one of the most influential and aggressive lobbies in Sacramento. California’s prison guards are now among the highest paid in the country.

ways in the electoral process: through get-out-the-vote and initiative (direct legislation) campaigns. Get Out the Vote  Many interest groups engage in get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations among their members to help a candidate (and political party) or an issue win at the ballot box. This is especially true during what are perceived as hotly contested elections. In such instances, GOTV can be the most important activity un­­dertaken because there are many examples of an election being won or lost by a handful of votes. GOTV operations are often considered “outsider strategies”—that is, they take place outside the traditional arena of interest-group activity (the legislature), and they are supported by groups that feel they have a vital stake in the outcome of the election. Examples of this are Hispanics’ interest in 1994 in defeating Proposition 187, which declared undocumented people ineligible for public services, and the Protect Marriage Coalition’s efforts in 2008 on behalf of Proposition 8, which eliminated same-sex couples’ right to marry. Some interest groups, such as organized labor, religious denominations, and minorities, have a long history of mobilizing their members to vote for or against a candidate or critical issue. Other interest groups, such as the LGBTQ community, environmentalists, and gender-based groups, have more recently begun to participate in GOTV activities. They mobilize their supporters at the grassroots level through a variety of techniques, including direct mail, door-to-door canvassing, telemarketing, poll watching, pickup, phoning, and assistance. Months of work go into planning the campaign. While the goal is simple—delivering members’ votes—the outcome is unpredictable until the final tally of ballots. Initiatives  Chapter 2 explored the history of the initiative and the impact of some of those that have passed. What was initially considered a tool for citizens to check the actions of elected officials and the influence of interest groups in the Interest-Group Strategies  /  59

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legislature is still considered so today. The majority of voters support the use of the initiative because they believe that the public is better suited than elected representatives to decide “important government issues,” although many believe that a few narrow economic interests also shape public policy through the initiative process.20 Yet, as Elisabeth Gerber shows, this may not be as big of an issue as voters think. Although there are now more initiatives and considerably more money spent on them, groups with different goals use the initiative process differently. On the one hand, narrow (economic) interest groups, whose members join because of their occupation or professional status, rely primarily on the mobilization of money for initiative campaigns. They use these monetary resources and, to a lesser extent, personnel in two ways: “to protect the status quo or to pressure the legislature.” When they sponsor initiatives, the measures generally fail. On the other hand, citizen groups, whose members join as free individuals committed to some personal belief or social issue, rely primarily on the mobilization of personnel who “volunteer their personal time and energy . . . to pass new laws by initiative.”21 In the end, the measures that are backed by citizen groups succeed at a higher rate than those that are sponsored by narrow economic interests.

The Legislature, Bribes, and Scandals Interest-group politics is not new; lobbyists have played a visible and sometimes controversial role in California politics for a long time. The most notorious figure was Arthur Samish, whose influence in the state legislature during the 1930s and 1940s drew national attention. Samish represented the most powerful industries in the state: oil, liquor stores, transportation, breweries, and racing. Samish was not shy about his influence. He once told a grand jury looking into his lobbying activities, “To hell with the governor of California. I’m the governor of the legislature.”22 Samish’s downfall came as a result of two articles in Collier’s magazine in 1949 about “the man who secretly controls the state.”23 In one of the articles, when asked who had more influence, himself or Samish, Governor Earl Warren responded, “On matters that affect his clients, Artie unquestionably has more power than the governor.”24 Soon after the articles appeared, Governor Warren asked for legislation to regulate lobbyists and require the disclosure of lobbyists’ financial activities. The legislature obliged first with the Collier Act and later with the Erwin Act, two of the earliest efforts to regulate lobbying in the state. The legislature also voted to ban Arthur Samish from the capitol building. Somewhat thereafter, Samish was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to three years in federal prison, thus ending his career as a Sacramento power broker. As the preceding incident illustrates, interest-group influence has not remained on the sidelines; quite the opposite, in fact. It is not surprising that with the growth of the “lobbying industrial complex” in California, allegations of influence peddling follow and sometimes turn out to be true. For example, Clay Jackson, one of the most influential lobbyists in Sacramento, was accused in the early 1990s of offering large campaign contributions to Senator Alan Robbins in return for the lawmaker’s support on legislation benefiting Jackson’s clients. The FBI uncovered Robbins’s part in the plan, and he agreed to wear a wire to expose Jackson in exchange for a reduced sentence. In the end, Jackson, Robbins, and former state senator Paul Car60 / Chapter 3  /  Interest Groups and the Media in California

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penter (who funneled campaign money through a public relations firm for Robbins’s personal use) were convicted of engaging in a money-laundering scheme. Again, in 2014, the Senate was rocked by the indictment of three members— Rod Wright, Leland Yee, and Ron Calderon. All three were suspended by the Senate but remained on voluntary pay and benefit leave until their cases were ruled upon or their terms expired. This was the first time either the Assembly or Senate suspended members in its 164-year history. In 2014, Senator Wright was convicted of voter fraud and perjury. He appealed the verdict; however, he lost the appeal. Later that year he was sentenced to 90 days in jail and ordered to complete 1,500 hours of community service. But Wright spent less than one hour in jail. Because of the nonviolent nature of his crime and overcrowding in the jail, he was quietly released. Senator Lee was not so fortunate. In April 2016 he negotiated a plea bargain and avoided a possible 20-year prison sentence. Ultimately he received a five-year prison sentence on the lesser charges of bribes for political favors and coordinating weapons sales to help pay down campaign debts. In June 2016 former assemblyman Tom Calderon, the brother of Senator Ron Calderon, pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering and implicated his brother in the scheme. His conviction could have carried up to 20 years in prison; however, federal prosecutors recommended a one-year prison sentence. Because of significant health problems, he was ultimately sentenced to six months in prison and six months under house arrest wearing an electronic monitor. Senator Ron Calderon pleaded guilty to mail fraud, acknowledging that he accepted thousands of dollars in bribes from a hospital executive and FBI agents. He was sentenced to three and a half years in federal prison and will be required to do 150 hours of community service following his release. This brought to a close the FBI’s Senate investigation and sting operation. Because of these scandals, the Senate adopted resolutions to ban members from fund-raising during the last month of the legislative session and the month leading up to a budget vote, when special interests are especially active in trying to influence legislation. The resolutions also required the Senate Rules Committee to appoint an ethics ombudsman to accept allegations of wrongdoing and protect whistle-blowers from retaliation. In 2016, however, the ban on political fund­-raising was killed after the Assembly did not adopt a similar rule—perhaps because it didn’t suffer similar scandals—so all that is left is the ethics ombudsman position. In the 2016 primary election, however, voters passed a legislative referendum (Proposition 50) that gave the Senate and Assembly the power to suspend members and prohibit them from receiving pay and benefits during the suspension per­­iod. This brought to a close the debate over legislative suspensions and the withholding of pay and benefits of suspended legislators. These incidents raise questions about the connections among interest groups, money, and power in Sacramento. They reveal how a legal fund-raising system can be used to benefit legislators, especially in an environment in which there is a fine line between campaign contributions and influence over legislators’ votes—even when these processes are conducted legally.

Regulating Campaign Contributions This dubious history of influence peddling prompted numerous efforts over the years at reform. With the passage of the California Political Reform Act (PRA) of 1974, California lobbyist and interest groups are required to report campaign The Legislature, Bribes, and Scandals  /  61

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TABle 3.5  ●  California Contribution Limits

Individuals*

Single Candidates Committees

PACs

Small Contributor Committee**

Political Party

Super PACs***

$28,200

$4,200

$28,200

$28,200

unlimited

$0

Statewide Candidate

7,000

4,200

7,000

14,100

unlimited

0

State Senate

4,200

4,200

4,200

8,500

unlimited

0

State Assembly

4,200

4,200

4,200

8,500

unlimited

0

35,000

35,000

35,000

35,000

$35,000

0

unlimited

4,200

unlimited

unlimited

unlimited

0

Governor

Party Committees Ballot Measures

*Corporate and union contribution limits are the same as individual limits. **A small contributor committee is one that has been in existence for at least six months, receives contributions from 100 or more persons but no individual contributions of more than $200 in a calendar year, and makes contributions to five or more candidates. ***Super PAC: an independent expenditure organization that can spend unlimited amounts for or against candidates and ballot measures, but cannot give directly to candidates, PACs, or committees. Source: California Fair Political Practices Commission, California State Contribution Limits, www.fppc.ca.gov/learn/campaign-rules/state-contribution-limits.html (accessed 6/1/16).

and lobbying expenditures. At the same time, the PRA shifted the filing of lobbying statements from the state legislature to the independent Fair Political Practice Commission. Since its passage, the PRA has undergone numerous amendments, the most significant being in 2000 with the passage of Proposition 34. The following rules now govern interest groups and lobbyists:

• A lobbyist or lobbying firm cannot present a gift to a state-elected official or legislative official in aggregate of more than $10 a month. Anyone who is not a registered lobbyist can give up to $250 in gifts in any calendar year.

• A lobbyist cannot contribute to state candidates or officeholders if he or she is registered to lobby that candidate or officeholder’s agency. However, the various interest groups that employ lobbyists have no such restrictions.

• Interest groups, individuals, and businesses have specific limits on election contributions to candidates or officeholders (see Table 3.5). A controversial issue involves campaign contributions not directly tied to the can­­ didate or political party. Much of the publicity and discussion of this type of organization, called Super PACs at the national level, centers on presidential, U.S. Senate, and House of Representatives campaigns in which millions of dollars are raised in support of or in opposition to a federal election candidate. 62 / Chapter 3  /  Interest Groups and the Media in California

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At the state level, these organizations are sometimes referred to as Super PACs but more often as independent expenditure committees. Like their federal counterpart, these committees may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations, and individuals and then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against a political candidate. Independent expenditure committees have come under scrutiny for a variety of reasons: they infuse large sums of money into a campaign without having to comply with the limits for direct contributions to a candidate; they allow for great sums of money from outside the state to influence the state’s politics and elections; and they sometimes make it difficult to identify donors by contributing money, one step removed from the independent expenditure committee, through contributions to affiliate nonprofit organizations. Interestingly, for all the focus on independent spending, while not an insignificant amount, it has hovered around 10 percent as a percentage of total direct contributions to political campaigns. In a recently revised study of independent expenditure committees in California, Linda Casey of the National Institute on Money in State Politics (FollowTheMoney.org) compares the amount of independent expenditure spending to the amount given directly to candidates and ballot measure committees. From 2006 through 2014, independent expenditure committees spent $258,197,427 on candidates who ran for state offices and ballot measures; and, as Table 3.6 shows, this number is significantly less than the $2,212,747,644 contributed directly to candidates and ballot measure committees—just 11.7 percent of the total expenditures. In 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commis­­ sion held that these independent expenditure committees were legal and could raise unlimited funds. While not directly deliberating on independent expenditure committees in California, Citizens United confirmed the practice in California, since Cali­­ fornia had allowed such open expenditures before the Supreme Court ruling. In 2015, however, the California Fair Political Practices Commission took action to clarify the meaning of “coordination” between candidates and organizations in

TABle 3.6  ● Independent Spending Compared to Direct Campaign Contributions, 2006—2014 Independent state campaigns and ballot measures 2008 20 10 2012 20 1 4 Total

$35,413,175 84,055,049 47,638,234 82,660,044 167,106,458

Direct contributions to state campaigns and ballot measures

Independent spending as percent of direct campaign contributions

$591,753,664 640,346,256 581,215,152 399,432,572 2,212,747,644

9.40% 13.13 8.20 20.69 1 1 .70

SOURCE: Linda Casey, “Independent Spending in California, 2005–2010,” September 20, 2011, revised and updated June 1, 2016, National Institute on Money in State Politics, www.followthemoney.org/research/institute -reports/?q=&b=0&b=1&t%5B%5D=16&p=3 (accessed 12/19/16).

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order to make sure that independent expenditures were clearly independent of the candidate. It clarified within the definition of   “coordination” these activities:

• the group cannot be established or run by former members of the candidate’s staff,

• the candidate cannot participate in fund-raising for the outside group, • the group cannot be established or funded by the candidates’ family members, and

• political consultants cannot work for both the candidate and the outside group. While these changes may seem minimal, they are intended, within the scope of law, to help bring transparency to the relationship between candidates and independent expenditure, which, as we mentioned earlier, topped $90 million in 2014. Some public interest groups, such as Common Cause, Clean Money Campaign, and the League of Women Voters, have called for further restrictions on lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions by both individuals and interest groups. Such measures, they argue, would constrain the power of special interests and allow public-policy decisions to reflect the overall interests of society. Recommendations to restrict the power of interest groups fall into three categories: clean-money elections, contribution restrictions, and conflict-of-interest laws.

Clean-Money Elections The first category, clean-money elections, would provide public funding to candidates who demonstrate a base of public support by obtaining a qualifying number of voter signatures and a certain number of small contributions and who agree to forgo any other private donations. Such measures would cover all state legislative and statewide offices and have recently been adopted by Maine and Arizona. In California, it would be difficult to get the political parties and most legislators, who are tied to the current funding system, to support the idea. It would also be difficult to convince the public that they should subsidize campaigns for elective office. Over the years, only 35 to 40 percent of California voters have supported public fi­­ nancing of election campaigns.

Contribution Limits The second category, contribution limits, has been a focal point of campaign reform for some time. Most of the effort has come from citizen groups disgruntled with the current system. Together they have established stricter reporting requirements and limits on campaign contributions and loans to state candidates and political parties. The changes have been accomplished almost wholly through initiatives sponsored by these groups over the past decade—Propositions 63 and 78 in 1993, Proposition 208 in 1996, and Proposition 34 in 2000. These efforts will continue in the future as various groups attempt to rein in the free flow of money into political campaigns.

Conflict-of-Interest Laws The last category, conflict-of-interest laws, covers a multitude of situations. These laws are based on the belief that government officials owe their loyalty to the public,

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and that personal gain should not be part of the political process. Conflict-of-interest laws prohibit government officials from participating in decisions in which they have a vested interest, such as a business or real estate investment, or in any variety of sit­­ uations in which they or their family would stand to gain financially. There are, however, government-official lobbyist activities that technically fall outside of conflict-of-interest laws but may give the impression of conflict of interest. For example, the California Senate offers lobbyists who contribute to its charity, the California International Relations Foundation, the opportunity to travel with the lawmakers to various foreign countries.25 Each donor contributes $2,000 to $3,000, which gives the donor a seat on the foundation’s board of directors and the invitation to travel with legislators on trade and cultural trips to foreign countries. Since 2004 there have been 18 trips to places such as Tokyo, Jerusalem, and Rio de Janeiro. The foundation operates out in the open, and it does not underwrite the expenses of either the traveling legislators or the supporters. Critics, however, contend that it creates a conflict-of-interest situation by providing a unique opportunity for supporters to gain the goodwill of and access to legislators. This is especially convenient when the supporter’s interest group has a bill pending in the legislature.

The Media For most Californians, the media—news stories, paid political commercials, public debate, direct mail—are the most influential sources of information on the activity of interest groups, the amount of money spent on lobbying and political campaigns, and the increasing frequency and amount of money spent on initiatives. The media keep citizens actively involved in politics. The term media refers to the dispensers of information, including broadcast media (radio and television), print media (newspapers and magazines), and electronic media (the Internet). An individual source is a medium (the Latin singular of media). Sometimes we speak about mass media but most often the limiting adjective (mass) is assumed.

Television For many years, television has been the medium of choice for obtaining political information for the vast majority of Americans, and Californians are no exception. Although the rise of digital media has challenged television’s dominance, TV retains a slight edge.26 This medium can spread messages quickly, covering a wide variety of topics, including car chases, earthquakes, and the latest political scandal. Television is particularly important for conducting political campaigns in a large state with a diverse population such as California. Yet for all its speed and ability to reach large numbers of viewers, television is a medium that provides little information on government. Two facts account for this lack of information: (1) California is so big and diverse that it is difficult to cover statewide political and governmental news, and (2) Californians in general are not that interested in state government and policy. These dynamics, along with a fragmented political structure, produce a stark reality—the largest state in the nation, with some of the largest media resources and markets in the nation, provides relatively little political and governmental news, particularly

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on television news programs.27 There are few media correspondents in Sacramento. More important, because there is no newspaper distributed statewide, there is no incentive for television networks to cover news on a statewide basis. The nightly news stations compete with one another for viewers. But the news programs provide little in the way of important political information. The halfhour news format is crammed with commercials, weather reports, entertainment news, sports coverage, and a host of other topics that do little to inform the viewer about the political problems that affect the state and the nation. Those topics that are reported with any depth are calculated to achieve ratings and are structured to last over several newscasts. Each local station has its own version of some type of   “action” news team or consumer protection group bringing audiences the latest artificially hyped crisis. From the nature of the issues covered, it is clear that local television, for the most part, has made a concerted effort to treat political news as a secondary issue. Issues related to political parties, government, or interest groups in California don’t have the power to reach and energize large populations on a day-to-day basis. Local television stations focus our attention on issues such as crime in a way that government representatives cannot. Sensational undercover stories are frequently broadcast, such as the financial deceptions practiced by automobile dealers, the un­­ sanitary conditions in local restaurants, and the health risks of cosmetic surgeries. These exposés help identify dishonest practices in our communities, but they are also examples of how the ability to identify important political issues has passed from the political parties to the media. The media place an issue on the agenda, often based more on its sensational appeal than its practical importance, and the next day government representatives are telling the public what must be done to fix the problem. They are reacting to the media’s promotion of the issue. In California, where voters have the ability to put statutes and constitutional initiatives on the ballot, local television plays a major role in disseminating information to voters about these issues through extensive advertising campaigns. These messages are drafted and paid for by the interest groups that support the initiatives, and the political parties may or may not play a role in the process. The broadcast media have the power to reach a vast audience, something the parties cannot do on their own.

Newspapers The number of newspapers across the United States has fallen during the last 25 years, and newspaper circulations have steadily declined in every recent year as well. Those who claim they get most of their information about politics from newspapers dropped from 87 percent in 2007 to 73 percent in 2010 to 66 percent in 2014.28 Newspapers still remain active in identifying political corruption, reporting the workings of state and local government, covering political campaigns, and helping keep the public focused on important political issues. But in the final analysis, newspapers are businesses and must be able to generate revenues and profits. To adequately cover state government, reporters and news staff have to be located in Sacramento. At the same time, on-the-spot coverage of county and local government requires a second set of reporters and news staff. The expense is prohibitive, and, over time, newspaper coverage at the state and local levels has noticeably de­­ clined. The public is not as fully informed about the activities of its various levels of

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government as it needs to be. The Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee cover dev­­elopments in Sacramento more extensively than other newspapers, but both have become victim to cost pressures and the need to reduce news reporting staffs. The drive for profits has reduced the news-reporting capabilities of broadcast and print media, which cover only the big stories at the state government level. Ultimately, this means the public receives little information about the political activities of state and local government. This leads to a public that constantly finds itself surprised by political crises that seem to develop suddenly, such as rising state deficits, electricity shortages, declining state bond ratings, school facilities that are falling apart, and an overwhelmed freeway system. But for all their failings, broadcast and print media still play an important role in the election process and in formulating the political agenda. The media continue to identify the major political issues, report on the political progress of candidates at all levels, question the candidates and officeholders, and edit the replies the public is allowed to hear and read. These powers continue to undermine the role of political parties in California. With Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election as governor in October 2003, the public gained a renewed interest in state politics. People were curious. A few stations that had closed their Sacramento news bureaus announced their reopening. This wasn’t surprising: nationally known figures have generally drawn more media attention than regional or local personalities. There was more coverage of governors Edmund G. Brown, Ronald Reagan, and Jerry Brown, each of whom was a presidential contender, than of governors Deukmejian, Wilson, and Davis, who were not.29 As time passed, however, though the increase in coverage remained, it was due no longer to Schwarzenegger’s celebrity but to the state’s economic woes: record budget deficits, sinking bond ratings, high unemployment, and staggering foreclosure filings. These concerns still persist today under Governor Jerry Brown. Local government, interest groups (especially public employee unions whose members are affected by the budget deficits), and the general public have turned to Sacramento for solutions. Economic, environmental, and social justice issues are the big concern, not the political personalities to whom have been thrown the responsibility for resolving these problems.

The Internet Online and digital news are the only forms of news media that have increased in the number of users over the past six years. Americans are turning more frequently to their tablets and smartphones to obtain news—64 percent of tablet owners and 62 percent of smartphone owners use these devices to get their news on a weekly basis, while 37 percent of tablet owners and 32 percent of smartphone owners use them for news on a daily basis.30 Smartphones and tablets offer instant access to political information and the opportunity to quickly communicate one’s views to political leaders, news outlets, interest groups, and other individuals through blogs, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, other social media channels, and YouTube videos. Twitter and Facebook have become instrumental in organizing campaigns. The “share” function on Facebook and “retweet” feature of   Twitter allow like-minded activists to easily share news and information such as fund-raising appeals and get-out-the-vote efforts. The Internet doesn’t change politics, but it does make it easier for elected officials to share with the public their opinions unfiltered by traditional media, and for the public to share their unfiltered opinions with public officials.

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At the state level, Californians are at the forefront in experimenting with the Internet by using crowdsourcing techniques and wiki-style web sites to reach into the political arena. While still in its infancy, crowdsourcing is proving to be a useful fund-raising tool. In 2012, Steve Hansen was running for the Sacramento City Council. Hansen, a young openly gay Democrat, had very little name recognition or backing from community leaders. But that didn’t stop him. “In just one day, Hansen built a web site on WordPress, joined MailChimp, and set up an account on Rally. Hansen’s campaign raised more than $80,000 from donors who contributed $250 or less.”31 He now sits on the Sacramento City Council. In the California state legislature, Assemblyman Mike Gatto became the first law­­maker nationally to utilize the Internet to encourage citizens to craft legislation. In 2016, for the second session in a row, Gatto encouraged individuals to draft legislation directly by going to a “Wikibills” web site which has an interface similar to Wikipedia’s. There the users could propose, draft, or edit the bill, which, after a consensus emerged, Gatto committed to introducing. We have no analytics on the number of respondents, but the outcome appears to be Assembly Bill no. 83, which requires businesses and corporations to strengthen privacy standards for personal information including social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial information, medical information, and travel information (such as one’s Uber trip log). The bill made it through the Assembly (66 yea, 4 nay) but ended up on the in­active file in the Senate.32 The most ambitious use of the Internet came in 2014, when Tim Draper, a Cali­­ fornia venture capitalist, initiated a campaign using a web page to gain support for a ballot initiative. The measure was to divide California into six states. The effort failed and didn’t make it to the ballot. But this didn’t stop Draper. In 2015 he founded a nonprofit organization called Innovate Your State and launched a web site (www .fixcal.org ) to allow citizens to help draft what would become the first crowdsourcing initiative in the nation. The idea, in Draper’s words, “bridges private sector innovation and ingenuity with policy and government to improve the lives of constituents through a ‘Venture Governance’ approach.”33 One such idea is the Fix California Challenge. The campaign has already generated over 300 ideas, and as it picks up steam, Draper plans to select the best ideas for a 2018 ballot initiative. So far most of the suggestions fall into three categories: improve representation and the legislative process (42 percent), address infrastructure and water conservation problems (22 percent), and enrich the state through business incentives (14 percent).34 Political consultants and elected officials are watching this campaign and, if it is successful, will likely consider incorporating some sort of crowdsourcing approach to drafting future legislation and initiatives. Many experts see the Internet as a catalyst for enhancing the democratic process. It offers candidates the opportunity to communicate rapidly with supporters and to recruit campaign workers. During the presidential election season, it has proven to be an excellent tool for raising campaign funds. The Internet offers political parties the opportunity to disseminate their issue positions quickly and inexpensively to millions of potential voters. Whether it will restore some of the power that political parties have lost remains to be seen. The Internet is open to all users, and in that en­­­ vironment, political parties will still have lots of competition over control of the po­­ litical agenda. Even with these innovative uses of the Internet, when it comes to social media, politics still lags behind other domains such as advertising and marketing. Most

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often, political campaigns use the Internet to develop web sites that outline a candidate’s or party’s position on important issues in hopes that possible supporters will visit the web sites and donate to the campaigns that they represent. However, campaigns are beginning to recognize and harness the power of social media networks and digital media to influence the electorate. The example of Proposition 32, a 2012 initiative, demonstrates how the strategic implementation of new media campaigns can transform voting behavior. Proposition 32 sought to limit the money that unions could spend on lobbying and prohibit them from putting money that had been gained through automatic dues deductions from members’ paychecks toward campaign contributions. By the end, the amount spent in the election was great—$75 million against and $60 million for the proposition. Midway through the campaign, however, with support for the “No on Proposition 32” cohort lagging, union leaders concluded that young voters—those under 30 years old—weren’t being influenced by the union television ads because they weren’t watching them. Therefore, the unions switched tactics. Employing sophisticated data-mining techniques and research via Facebook, they identified patterns of behavior among younger voters that gave clues about their political beliefs. In turn, the unions began speaking the language of these voters through their medium of choice, particularly through smartphones and tablets, in an attempt to influence their voting. They sent online messages, ads, and even some direct mail to individuals whom they had targeted through their research. Within a couple of weeks, support for “No on Proposition 32” among young voters rose from 40 percent to 60 percent, and the measure was ultimately defeated in the statewide election.35 With the growth of social and digital media, access to California’s political and news sources has expanded exponentially. Today, major newspapers provide daily emails that focus on topics of the reader’s interest, while research organizations, libraries, and blogs provide political information, background, and research. A list of some of the major sources covering California politics is provided in Table 3.7.

Media and Political Campaigns Running for office is a very expensive endeavor, and it requires highly focused po­ litical messages. Because of these requirements, electronic media are the media of choice to reach large numbers of citizens. The media are also very useful in mobilizing supporters on Election Day. Mobilizing a candidate’s base of support is essential to winning elections. Without the media, no effective message is conveyed to the electorate, and consequently no money can be raised to fuel the modern type of me­­ dia campaign that candidates must use to get elected. In some cases, the media themselves and their coverage can become a central issue in the campaign, with a candidate running against the media and positioning him- or herself outside the political establishment. During the recall election of 2003, the Los Angeles Times ran a story just before the election about inappropriate sexual behavior on the part of Schwarzenegger during his acting days. Many citizens reacted by asserting that the newspaper was taking incumbent Governor Gray Davis’s side, not that it was uncovering important information that citizens might want to consider in their voting decisions.36

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TABle 3.7  ● Online Sources Covering California Politics MAJOR NEWSPAPERS Capitol Weekly (www.capitolweekly.net) Los Angeles Times (www.latimes.com) Sacramento Bee (www.sacbee.com) San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfgate.com) Organizations Around the Capitol (www.aroundthecapitol.com) Calitics (www.calitics.com) Calbuzz (www.calbuzz.com) California Political Review (www.capoliticalreview.com) California Watch (www.californiawatch.org) Flashreport (www.flashreport.org) Fox & Hounds (www.foxandhoundsdaily.com) Rough & Tumble (www.rtumble.com) Public Policy Sites Public Policy Institute of California (www.ppic.org) California Health Care Foundation (www.chcf.org) California Policy Center (http://californiapolicycenter.org) Universities University of California at Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies  (http://igs.berkeley.edu) California State University Bakersfield (www.csub.edu/library) Major Columnists Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfgate.com) George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times (www.latimes.com) Dan Walters, Daniel Weintraub, and Dan Morain of the Sacramento Bee  (www.sacbee.com)

Interest-Group Politics in California: Where Are We Now? Interest groups play an important and often dominant role in California politics. The continued growth in the number of groups and their lobbying expenditures attests to this fact. Moreover, if the past decade is any indication, the number of interest groups doing business in Sacramento will continue to grow, and lobbying expenditures will continue to increase. The size and structural deficit of the state budget, weak political 70 / Chapter 3  /  Interest Groups and the Media in California

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parties, mandated term limits, the increase in public interest groups, and the continued dependence of local governments on Sacramento for financial assistance are all factors that will continue to promote interest-group politics. Much of the time, these groups are self-regulating, checking one another and forg­­ing broad-based coalitions of interests to achieve important policy decisions. Of course, interest groups will always be able to win on narrow issues affecting their members, and the most powerful will generally be the most successful, as long as they can convince a group of legislators to fall in behind them. That’s why interestgroup disclosure rules, campaign expenditure limits, and other reporting requirements are necessary. They enable us to keep these groups in check. That’s the theory, at least. Today, however, there is a disjunction between theory and practice. Interest groups have undue influence on politics in the state. Without some limit on the amount of money an interest group can spend on lobbying and campaign contributions, the only check on their power may be divided government, whereby one party controls the executive and one controls one or both houses of the legislature, so that no single interest or coalition of interests can ride roughshod over government. That’s the state of affairs in California today. California’s politics is not broken, but unless these concerns are addressed, California will continue to hobble along, and interest groups will continue to flourish and prosper at the expense of the general public.

* w

Study Guide For Further Reading Alexander, Robert, Interest Group Involvement in Ballot Cam­ paigns. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Baldassare, Mark. The California Initiative Process—How Dem­ ocratic Is It? Public Policy Institute of California, Febru­ ary 2002. www.ppic.org/content/pubs/op/OP_202XXOP .pdf. Accessed 11/16/16. Boyarsky, Bill. Jesse Unruh and the Art of Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Gerber, Elisabeth R. Interest Group Influence in the California Initiative Process. Public Policy Institute of California, 1998. www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=49. Accessed 11/16/16. Lajos, Maria, “California Interest Groups Hedge Their Bets, Give Cash to Anyone in Power.” KQED News, May 14, 2015. McWilliams, Carey. California: The Great Exception. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Michael, Jay, Dan Walters, and Dan Weintraub. The Third House: Lobbyists, Power, and Money in Sacramento. Berkeley: Berkeley Public Policy Press, 2000. Miller, Kenneth P., Thad Kousser, and Frederick Douzets. The New Political Geography of California. Berkeley: Berkeley Public Policy Press, 2008.

Morain, Dan, “An Out of Control System Creates Instant Cam­­ paigns and Candidates.” The Sacramento Bee, June 4, 2016. www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/dan-morain /article81726957.html. Accessed 6/4/16. Rasky, Susan F. “Covering California: The Press Wrestles with Diversity, Complexity, and Change.” In Governing Califor­ nia: Politics, Government, and Public Policy in the Golden State, edited by Gerald C. Lubenow and Bruce E. Cain, 157–88. Berkeley: Institute of Government Studies Press, University of California, 1997. Samish, Arthur H., and Bob Thomas. The Secret Boss of Califor­ nia. New York: Crown Publishers, 1971.

On The Web Around the Capitol. www.aroundthecapitol.com. Accessed 11/16/16. A portal to California legislative information. Capitol Alert. www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government /capitol-alert/. Ac­­cessed 11/16/16. California and national po­lit­ical news and commentary. Capitol Weekly. www.capitolweekly.net. Accessed 11/16/16. Lobbying activity. http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/lobbying. Ac­­cessed 11/16/16. The secretary of state’s office reports on lobbying in California politics.

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Summary I. Interest groups are at the center of California’s campaign and lobbying activities. A. Interest groups are associations of individuals who join together for the purpose of influencing govern­­ mental or legislative policy. They can be individual businesses, trade and professional associations, or labor unions. B. Some believe that interest groups play a necessary role in our democratic society, advocating a pluralist theory to explain their power. C. Others see them as detrimental to our political sys­­ tem, because only a few, elite groups have power. II. The number of interest groups (and registered lobbyists) has grown substantially in each legislative session since 1990. A. In the 2013–14 legislature, interest groups employed over 3,600 lobbyists. B. In the same legislature, interest groups spent more than $500 million on lobbying activities. C. Interest groups have proliferated over the past three decades for four reasons: weak political parties, growth of government, term limits, and a greater number of public interest groups. III. Lobbyists do the work of interest groups. There are three different categories of lobbyists: citizen lobbyists, contract lobbyists, and in-house lobbyists. A. Citizen lobbyists are individuals who have an interest in an issue and want to make their view known to their public official. B. Contract lobbyists and in-house lobbyists are pro­­ fessionals who must register with the secretary of state and submit a variety of disclosure statements yearly regarding their activities. IV. Lobbyists perform a variety of activities to accomplish their goals. A. The first job of the lobbyist is to know the interest group’s objective. B. The lobbyist must also identify other organizations that could support or oppose their goals. C. Lobbyists may work with a grassroots network of activists in a legislator’s district to establish a rela­­ tionship with a legislator. D. Lobbying the executive branch is more difficult to coordinate because of the large number of regulatory agencies and commissions within the branch.

V. There is a strong correlation between lobbying expen­­ ditures and campaign contributions. A. Interest groups that invest heavily in lobbying also invest heavily in political campaigns. Interest groups contribute to candidates’ and officeholders’ cam­ paigns to leverage their influence. B. The California Correctional Peace Officers Associa­ tion (CCPOA) is a prime example. VI. Many efforts have been made to regulate the relation­ ship between lobbyists and legislators. A. The Political Reform Act of 1974 was passed to regulate lobbying practices and requires the disclo­ sure of lobbying financial activity. B. Proposition 34, the most recent amendment to the act, includes new restrictions: 1. Lobbyists cannot contribute to the campaigns of anyone for whom they are lobbying. 2. Lobbyists are limited in the amount of money they can contribute during any election cycle. VII. The media are important vehicles for mobilizing and informing voters and candidates’ supporters. A. Television and newspapers have traditionally had the greatest influence on politics. B. Today the Internet and social media, as well as the increased use of smartphones and tablets, are chang­ ing the way political messages are conveyed. Given the current growth in usage of these devices, digital media, among specific age groups, has surpassed all other media as the primary source for political news and campaign management. C. Little of this mobilization, however, comes from news programs, which generally provide scant political in­­ formation. Television news programs cover scandals and dishonest practices of politicians and focus viewers’ attention on the latest special investiga­­ tion, which indirectly mobilizes citizens. D. California politicians are at the forefront among those in other states in using social media to raise money for campaigns and to enlist citizens to help draft legislation and initiatives. This demonstrates how the power to set the political agenda has passed from the political parties to the media.

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Practice Quiz 1. The term third house refers to which of the following entities? a) judicial branch b) executive branch c) interest groups d) media 2. Over the past two decades, interest-group expenditures in California have a) declined. b) increased. c) remained relatively the same. d) fluctuated from year to year. 3. An individual who offers his or her lobbying services to multiple clients at the same time is called a(n) a) contract lobbyist. b) “hired gun.” c) citizen lobbyist. d) in-house lobbyist. 4. The principal function of an interest group is to a) provide its members with educational and social opportunities. b) contribute money to candidates for public office who favor its programs. c) attain favorable decisions from government on issues that it supports. d) seek to inform the public on the role of interest in the economy. 5. Political action committees (PACs) a) have declined in popularity in recent years. b) must disclose campaign contributions and expenditures in connection with state and local elections. c) may make unlimited contributions to political candidates. d) provide candidates with public funding for their campaign.

b) The ratings for political and governmental news are lower than other kinds of news, such as the weather, consumer news, and sports coverage. c) So many news programs cover California political and governmental news that there is little for each station to report. d) Political and governmental news, except during election campaigns, does not lend itself to sensational coverage. 7. Which former speaker of the California Assembly said “Money is the mother’s milk of politics”? a) Jesse Unruh b) Willie Brown c) Antonio Villaraigosa d) Fabian Nuñez 8. Over the past two decades, the number of newspapers across the United States has _____, and newspaper circulations have _____ in every recent year as well. a) risen, increased b) remained the same, increased c) risen, declined d) fallen, declined 9. What is the process called of obtaining ideas, fundraising contributions, or policy support by enlisting online a large group of people? a) direct appeal b) crowdsourcing c) web-based business pattern d) outsourcing 10. Many experts see digital media as a catalyst for _____ the democratic process. a) threatening b) enhancing c) having little effect on d) undermining

6. According to the text, all of the following factors are in­­ volved in the media’s decision not to cover more political and governmental news except: a) Californians are not that interested in political and governmental news.

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Critical-Thinking Questions 1. Over the past several decades, interest groups have grown and expanded their influence over public-policy decisions in the legislature and at administrative agencies. Identify the reasons for this phenomenon. 2. Interest groups use a variety of techniques to accomplish their goal. Suppose you worked for an interest group that opposed stricter requirements for the recycling of plastic bottles. Outline a campaign to achieve your goal. Justify why you would take the action you propose. 3. Some people argue that interest groups provide citizens with another way to become involved in the political process.

Others argue that interest groups undermine the political process. Discuss the arguments for both positions. Give your opinion on the controversy. 4. Interest groups play a significant role in the funding of political campaigns. Should more restriction be put on their activity? If you decide that interest groups should be limited or altogether prohibited from contributing to political campaigns, how would this policy affect political campaigns? What would be the outcome of this reform? 5. What are the factors that have led to relatively low levels of media coverage of politics and government in California?

Key Terms California Political Reform Act (p. 61) citizen lobbyist (p. 53) contract lobbyist (p. 53) crowdsourcing (p. 68) elitism (p. 48) independent expenditure committee (p. 63)

in-house lobbyist (p. 53) interest group (p. 47) lobbying (p. 49) media (p. 65) pluralism (p. 48)

political action committee (PAC) (p. 55) public interest group (p. 53) third house (p. 48) trade association (p. 50)

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4

Parties and Elections in California WHAT CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT DOES AND WHY IT MATTERS California is a trendsetter in many ways: culturally, economically, and politically. Since it is the most populous and diverse state in the nation, laws passed in California attract a lot of national attention. Initiatives passed by California voters often set a trend as other states adopt similar ballot measures. This means that the voters of California can influence politics way beyond their state border. This is quite a responsibility! In spite of their influence, California voters are somewhat lackadaisical about voting. A recent study by Nonprofitvote.org ranked the 50 states and Washing­­ton, D.C., according to the percentage of eligible adults who actually voted in the 2012 presidential election. California ranked 41st—nearly at the bottom! While 76 percent of the eligible voters turned out to vote in Minnesota (ranked number 1), less than 60 percent of Californians voted. This ranking, moreover, was determined during a presidential election, when voter turnout is highest. During less exciting elections, such as primaries and midterm elections, the turnout rate is much lower. For example, the June 2014 statewide primary election had the lowest turnout rate in California’s history, at less than 20 percent. Only 14 percent of eligible voters in Los Angeles, the state’s largest county, cast ballots. And in one of the more bizarre results of the June primary, candidate Leland Yee finished third in a field of eight candidates for the office of secretary of state, despite having publically withdrawn from the race after being indicted on charges of political corruption and conspiracy to run guns. He received nearly 400,000 votes. However, it must be noted that the June 2016 presidential primary was an election that did engage voters: Nearly 50 percent of those registered turned out

/  75

to vote. Why such a high turnout for one of the last primaries held in the nation? One reason is that people knew their votes would matter. Votes cast in the hardfought Sanders versus Clinton primary impacted that race, giving the nomination to Clinton. Lots of media attention generated voter excitement, resulting in nearly 650,000 Californians registering to vote in the final six weeks of the registration period. November’s general election had 54 percent of eligible voters participating. This high-profile, media-driven, controversial presidential election resulted in a lower-than-usual voter turnout—not surprising considering the high negative ratings of both candidates and the fact that the presidential contest was not competitive in California. If voting, and particularly the voting choices of Californians, is so important to the American democratic process, why aren’t more Californians paying attention to and participating in elections? This chapter will look at the many factors that affect patterns of voting in California.

Political Parties A political party is an organization of people with roughly similar political or ideological positions who work to win elections in order to gain greater control of the government and change public policy. Political parties perform many valuable functions in a democratic society. One of their most important roles is to mobilize voters at election time. They are directly involved in political campaigns: providing workers, raising money, and identifying important political issues. In theory, parties help bring about consensus on important political issues and serve as twoway communication channels between government and the people. Consequently, most political scientists consider them vital to the health of a democratic state. California has a winner-take-all system of voting in which the candidate re­­ ceiving the highest number of votes wins the election. Political scientists have long known that such a system promotes two dominant political parties, and,  as  ex­­ pected, the Republicans and the Democrats dominate the political process in California. But as you will discover below, California has what is considered a weak political party system, a consequence of the reforms brought about by the Progressive movement, which took a considerable amount of power away from organized political parties.

The Progressive Impact on Political Parties The Progressive movement (1890s–1920s) viewed political parties as corrupt or­­ ganizations operating in concert with big corporations to control and manipulate the political system for their own benefit. Spencer Olin describes the attitude of Progressives toward political parties: Accompanying their democratic faith in the wisdom of the individual voter was a distrust of formal party organizations, which were viewed as the media of specialinterest power. . . . Furthermore, it was argued by progressives that science and

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efficient management would solve the problems of government; parties were irrelevant and unnecessary.1

The Progressives attacked the power of the political parties with reforms such as party primaries. Primary elections are used to select the party candidate who will run for office against candidates of opposing parties in the general election. Before primaries were established, party leaders typically selected their candidates in proverbial “smoke-filled rooms,” outside of public view. Primaries were designed to allow voters, not parties, to select candidates for office. The primary system also opened up the opportunity to run for office to anyone capable of meeting the basic qualifications, which included age and residency requirements. Historically, the party leadership and their corporate allies had selected candidates and subsequently ma­­ nipulated them while they held office; with the Progressive reforms, the people could participate in a whole new class of elections, forcing candidates to direct their political messages and loyalty to the average voter. The Progressives also introduced a new type of ballot, the office block ballot. This type of ballot made it difficult to vote the straight party ticket, a method pop­­ ular in many other states where ballots list all the candidates running for each office by party. Political parties preferred this party column ballot because it made it easy for voters to select only candidates from their party. The use of the office block ballot in California discourages such behavior by listing each office separately and has resulted in more split-ticket voting, where people vote for candidates from different parties. Another Progressive reform was the introduction of nonpartisan elections, which further weakened parties by preventing party designations from appearing on the ballot for most local contests (city councils, board of supervisors, school boards, and judges). Instead, voters were given only the current occupational status of the candidate, and thus could no longer use their party loyalties to make voting decisions at the county and city level on Election Day. The Progressives wanted the electorate to research the candidates by reading up on them or attending forums. Political scientists believe that the weakening of political parties through nonpartisan elections at the county and city levels has an impact on voters. Despite the hopes of the Progressives, most voters do not devote a lot of time to conducting research on each candidate to determine how to cast their vote. County and city races are typically low profile, so forbidding party labels on ballots further di­­ minishes the voters’ already limited information. Voters who identify with a political party view the party affiliation of candidates as important and rely on it to make their voting decisions. As Schaffner, Streb, and Wright describe it, “Party identification is a, or even the, central component of voter decision making. As an effective attachment, it motivates individuals to participate as a display of party support.”2 Therefore, nonpartisan elections may have lower turnout rates than partisan ones.

The Democratic and Republican Parties in California Currently, California is considered a very Democratic state. Democratic candidates running for the presidency are fairly confident that they will win the popular vote in California (e.g., Clinton won 62 percent of the vote), and they visit our state not to sway voters but to hold expensive fund-raisers. Republican candidates don’t spend too much time campaigning in California, as they are certain they will lose the popular vote—although, like Democrats, they do visit to collect campaign Political Parties  /  77

contributions. For over 20 years, our state has had two Democratic U.S. senators and the Democratic Party has controlled the state legislature. But California has not always been in the Democratic camp. From 1952 to 1988, Republican presidential candidates won every presidential vote in California except for one (Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeated Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964). Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were both hugely popular in California: Nixon represented California in both the U.S. House and Senate before being elected president, and Reagan served two terms as governor of California before serving in the White House. What caused the Republican Party to lose support? Many experts believe that demographic changes in the state help explain the ascendancy of the Democratic Party. White and older voters, an important part of the Republican Party coalition, are declining in numbers. As of July 2014, Latinos are the largest ethnic group in California, just edging out the white population. It is projected that by 2060, Latinos will comprise 49 percent of the state’s population. Young and ethnically diverse voters prefer the Democratic Party. Non-whites now amount to a majority in the state, and these voters have not supported some of the more strident anti-immigrant policies touted by Republican candidates. Conservative, right-wing Republicans do not do well in statewide elections: California voters largely prefer centrist leaders who advocate moderate policies. And, California appears to be a harbinger of national trends. As one analyst proclaimed, “Where L.A. goes is where the rest of the state goes and where the rest of the country goes,” he said. “We announce, demographically speaking, the future for the rest of the country.”3

Third Parties in California The American political system, which is a federal system, delegates power to three levels of government: national, state, and local. One of the powers that states retain is to determine how political parties may organize and gain access to the ballot. By dominating the legislature in California, Republicans and Democrats have not made it easy for third parties to qualify for the ballot, and consequently the two parties dominate California politics. Third parties then are defined as any party other than Republican or Democrat. Traditionally, third-party candidates do not win in a winner-take-all system, a fact that both major parties emphasize to warn voters against throwing their votes away. However, a significant percentage of voters continue to vote for third-party candidates anyway. There are two ways in which political parties can qualify to get on the ballot in California. The first method is by registration; the second is by petition. Both methods are based on a percentage of those persons who voted in the preceding gubernatorial election. In the election held in November 2014, 7,513,972 persons turned out to vote. To qualify a new party by the registration method, the law requires that .33 of those who voted in the 2014 gubernatorial election officially register with the new party. The law also requires that voters complete and mail their registration by the 154th day preceding the upcoming primary. The petition method is just as difficult and tedious. It requires that a new political party petition to be included in the upcoming primary; the party must collect signatures equal to 10 percent of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election. Currently, that number stands at over three-quarters of a million signatures. Qualifying as a new political party clearly is not an easy task and requires time, personnel, expertise, and resources. In 2016, 78 / Chapter 4  /  Parties and Elections in California

TABLE 4.1  ●  Qualified Political Parties in California, 2014 AMERICAN INDEPENDENT PARTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY GREEN PARTY LIBERTARIAN PARTY PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY REPUBLICAN PARTY

www.aipca.org www.cadem.org www.cagreens.org www.ca.lp.org www.peaceandfreedom.org www.cagop.org

California had six qualified parties (see Table 4.1): the American Independent Party, the Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Republican Party. So what is the role of third parties in politics, particularly in California? One theory is that third parties act as spoilers, drawing enough votes from one or the other of the two major parties to alter the election outcome. Third parties also help focus public attention on important political issues. Once an issue attracts enough public attention, it will be taken over by one or both of the two major political parties. Sometimes, third parties can motivate people who do not usually vote to turn up at the polls because the third-party candidate better represents their views than the established Democratic or Republican candidates do.

Party Affiliation of California Voters A plurality of California voters identify with the Democratic Party. As of Octo­­ ber  2016, about 45 percent of voters are registered with the Democratic Party compared to 26 percent registered with the Republican Party. A substantial 24 per­­ cent of voters have no party preference, and 5 percent identify with one of the minor third parties. It should be noted that the name of one of these minor third parties, the American Independent Party, has confused voters who thought they actually were registering as independent voters (no party preference). Because the word independent appears in the party’s name, tens of thousands of Californians mistakenly registered with this party that espouses ultraconservative, antigay, and antiabortion positions. After the Los Angeles Times4 brought to light this confusion on the part of voters, nearly 32,000 voters who had previously registered with the American Independent Party changed their political party registration. The American Independent Party, however, still attracts over half a million voters, the most of any of the minor parties. Party affiliation is fairly easy to determine because people are asked to declare political party affiliation when registering to vote (one of the options, however, is no party preference. As Figure 4.1 illustrates, since 1998 registration in the two major political parties has declined. The percentage of voters registering with the Democratic Party fell by 2 percentage points, while registrations with the Republican Party fell by 10 percentage points. The most dramatic change has been among those who have no political party preference (also referred to as independent voters). This group has nearly doubled its size over the past 20 years; nearly one in four voters now claim no party preference when they register to vote. Political Parties  /  79

FIGURE 4.1  ● Changes in Party Registration, 1998 versus 2016

50%

1998

2016

40

30

20

10

0

Democrat

Republican

Other

No Party Preference

SOURCE: California Secretary of State, www.sos.ca.gov/elections (accessed 11/04/16).

Now let us look at political-party affiliation and some demographic factors. Figure 4.2 presents the results of a California statewide survey conducted in October 2016 that asked respondents about their party affiliation, age, gender, race, educational level, and place of birth. The results suggest that over 40 percent of all young, middle-aged, and older Californians prefer the Democratic Party. A recent California Field Poll (2011) found that the Republican Party is becoming the party of senior citizens. Currently, those 50 years of age or older make up 54 percent of the party, and this number is growing annually as the population ages. Many are questioning what the Republican Party of the future will look like in California with the passing of these older Republicans. Will the party be able to survive this demographic trend? Another important trend is young voters’ movement away from organized parties to register instead as independent voters; nearly as many stated no party preferences (36 percent) as did those stating an affiliation with the Democratic Party (41 percent). We also observe gender differences in party affiliation, with more women affili­­ ating with the Democratic Party and more men than women registering as independents. The Democratic Party has more support than the Republican Party regardless of educational level. Race is also a key predictor of party identification, with Latinos preferring the Democratic Party at a much higher rate than whites do (58 percent compared to 38 percent). Some of these demographic trends suggest that politics in our state will change in the future. Older white males’ proportionate decline in the population will continue to have an impact on the Republican Party as it loses a large segment of its support. Another important demographic change is the increasing Latino population. Data from the Census Bureau demonstrate that from 2000 to 2015 the Latino population grew by nearly 30 percent to 15 million, whereas the white population 80 / Chapter 4  /  Parties and Elections in California

FIGURE 4.2  ●  Party Registration by Demographic, 2016

60%

Party registration by age Democrats

Republicans

Another Party

50

Independents

Party registration by gender

50

46 41

60%

Democrats

Republicans

Another Party

Independents

49

41

40

37

40

36

34 29

30

28

30

27

27

24 20

22

17

10

16

4

2 0

0 18-34

60%

35-54

55+

Men

Party registration by education Democrats

50

Republicans

Independents

45

58

Democrats

Republicans

Another Party

Independents

44

41

50 38

40

31 25

24

24

22

34

30

26 22

20

10

70% 60

28

Women

Party registration by race/ethnicity

Another Party

40

30

8

10

6

5

20

20

5

7

4

13

10

3

6

0

0 High school or less

Some college

College or postgraduate

Latinos

Whites

Party registration by nativity 60%

50

Democrats

Republicans

Another Party

Independents

55

40 40

30 30

17

20

10

25

24

6

4

0 U.S.-born

Immigrant

SOURCE: Public Policy Institute of California, October 2016 survey of 1,358 registered voters.

Political Parties  /  81

declined more than 5 percent to just under 15 million. Currently, Latinos favor the Democratic Party over the Republican Party by sizable percentages, and there is no reason to expect this to change in the future. Thus many are predicting an even stronger Democratic Party presence in the state in the future. THE RED AND THE BLUE IN CALIFORNIA  You may recall that most television programs focusing on the 2016 presidential election exhibited a color-coded map of the United States which represented the states that voted Republican as red and the states that voted Democratic as blue. The map nicely illustrated the national split between urban areas and rural, agricultural, and suburban areas: the West Coast, most of the Northeast, and the major urban areas of the United States were blue; the South, the agricultural regions, and the Great Plains states were red. As the map in Figure 4.3 illustrates, the same geographic split appears within the state of California, between the coastal counties and the inland counties. Most of the Democratic counties are coastal and encompass major urban areas, whereas most of the Republican counties are inland and rural. As reported by the Los Angeles Times: Over the last decade, Republican influence has grown more concentrated in conservative inland California—largely the Central Valley and Inland Empire but also the Antelope Valley, the Sierra and rural north. . . . At the same time Democrats have strengthened their domination of counties along California’s coastline, building overwhelming advantages in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas as Latino voters have expanded the party’s base. And from San Diego’s beachfront suburbs to the Central Coast, Democrats have eroded Republican support among moderates, especially women.5

What does this split mean politically? Overall, the Democratic Party has an electoral advantage in California; nearly 70 percent of the state’s population resides in Democratic-leaning coastal regions. Republicans have an uphill battle to win statewide elections and are more likely to succeed if they nominate ideologically moderate candidates who are able to gain the support of Democratic voters. The fact that the urban and coastal population centers are largely Democratic and moderate to liberal, coupled with the tendency of the majority of independent voters to lean toward the Democratic Party, suggests that California will remain a distinctly blue state. However, this ideological split has potentially negative consequences. As de­­ scribed by Mark Baldassare, California seems poised to maintain its blue status this fall (2016). However, the geo-political segregation of the state—with Republican pockets of strength in California’s northern, inland, and rural regions—means that federal and state legislators will be elected to represent the views of voters who are worlds apart. Indeed, the political polarization and antipathy of this year’s election may result in a California Congressional delegation that will contribute to Washington gridlock and a California Legislature that will struggle to find common ground on solutions to the many challenges facing California’s future.6

This is not to imply, however, that all populated coastal regions are the same politically and ideologically. As the next section illustrates, there are some interesting variations. 82 / Chapter 4  /  Parties and Elections in California

FIGURE 4.3  ● Percent Difference between Democratic and Republican Registration by County, 2016 Presidential Election

Siskiyou

Del Norte

Modoc

8%

4%

28%

22%

Lassen

Shasta 23%

Trinity

Humboldt

28%