This week is a personal milestone, marking a half-century of writing about California’s ever-changing political atmosphere.
The Sacramento Union’s move to the Capitol Bureau on March 3, 1975 was part of an effort to increase its competitiveness with the Sacramento Bee.
The bees had a large Capitol staff and believed that the only real competition in the political field was in the Los Angeles era. Al Donner, the union’s only capital reporter, and I decided to change the situation.
As the Capitol was experiencing one of its regular political upheavals, in a journalistic sense it was a target-rich environment. Jerry Brown, the 36-year-old son of former governor Pat Brown, was founded as governor just two months ago and was already becoming a political pop star.
Jerry’s vague, left-leaning political persona was in contrast to that of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, who made waves by filling his administration with civil rights defenders, farmworker sympathizers and environmental enthusiasts.
Brown’s fellow Democrats had a majority in both Houses of Congress, but he had campaigned to portray Congress as a spiritual plate of corruption that was unpopular and needed cleansing. He successfully completed the Political Reform Act, a voting law of 1974, limiting the campaign contributions and what lobbyists could spend on legislators to “two burgers and cokes.”
The light-heartedness of Brown’s youth and silent capitol protocols has inspired a Congress, consisting almost entirely of middle-aged or older white men. The year Brown was born, when one senator was first elected to Congress in 1938.
There were several women in Congress, but the first woman was not elected to the Senate until 1976. Meanwhile, Brown has appointed many women to posts in major administrations. Most notably, Rose Byrd, who was later appointed as the Supreme Court Supreme Court Supreme Court, and Legislators’ Light Corn for winning legislators’ Light Corn to intensify new, free construction.
Brown’s clash with Congress, his two presidential campaigns, and the battle between the two parties for control provided a great opportunity for scoop-oriented journalism, as the donor and I fought a guerrilla war with the bees. For several years, we beat everyone to the state budget, before it was officially released by Brown.
The donor and me, and later the third union reporter, were a lot of fun back then. But after covering the Capitol for several years, I came to believe that California politics needed a different approach and began writing daily columns about California’s evolution and the relationship between its politics.
The column, which began in January 1981, lasted for three years and more than 33 years with the union, counting around 11,000 lines so far before changing venues again in 2017.
Among other things, this column allowed us to appreciate the great contrast between Brown’s first governor and his second governor decades later.
However, the contrast is beyond brown persona. As California’s demographics evolved, so did Congress. Many white men, more women, Latino, Asian Americans, and many have sexual identities and sexual orientations in 1975 that people were not tolerant of.
That said, while today’s Congress is not overtly corrupt, it is more secretive and less deliberative than it was 50 years ago. The committee’s hearing on the bill was really relevant back then, but now it’s a charade that makes little sense.
California has almost twice as many people as they did in 1975, and its demographic attributes and its economy are undergoing major transformations. Sadly, Capitol’s ability, or willingness to address the political issues arising from these changes, has diminished.
