California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris may be leading the field statewide in 2016 race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer – we won’t actually know until we see some public polling data – but it appears that among Latino voters who say they’re likely to vote, former Los Angeles […] Read more »
Top-two primary system hasn’t worked as proponents promised
… After years of partisan squabbling, massive budget deficits and general haplessness in Sacramento, voters grew fed up and decided it was time for a government makeover. One result was Proposition 14, passed in June 2010 and intended to help bring a new breed of more accommodating, less ideological lawmaker […] Read more »
Changing The Way We Vote Isn’t Getting More People To Vote
California is the closest thing we have to a political lab for engineering a solution for the country’s voter apathy problem. From permanent absentee voting to term limits and redistricting reform and now a top-two primary system, California has tried just about every remedy imagined to help boost voter participation […] Read more »
California: Record-High Approval for Gov. Brown, Bipartisan Support for His Budget
Californians give Governor Jerry Brown a record-high job approval rating and his budget proposal has strong bipartisan support in a statewide survey released today by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), with support from The James Irvine Foundation. Strong majorities of state residents favor the governor’s plan to require […] Read more »
Political deal on California offices could hold peril for Newsom, Harris
The planned retirement of Sen. Barbara Boxer and rare opportunity to pursue an open U.S. Senate seat in California has produced an avalanche of speculation and enough what-ifs to stretch from Eureka in the far north to Yucaipa in the south. Most of that conjecture has centered on Lt. Gov. […] Read more »
Boxer Retirement Provides Overdue Opportunity for Minority Democrats
It’s a stunning fact that a Republican Party that still depends on whites for 90 percent of its votes has more viable minority leaders to consider for its 2016 presidential ticket than do Democrats. Much of that imbalance can reasonably be attributed to California. The announcement by Sen. Barbara Boxer […] Read more »