Capitol Weekly Podcast

On November 5, 2020, Capitol Weekly and the McGeorge Capital Center for Law & Policy presented a Post-Mortem of the 2020 Election. This episode of the Capitol Weekly Podcast broadcasts audio of Panel 2: The Face of the Electorate, featuring Shakari Byerly, EVITARUS; Mindy Romero, Center for Inclusive Democracy; Roger Salazar, ALZA Strategies; Rob Stutzman, Stutzman Public Affairs. Moderated by...

On November 5, 2020, Capitol Weekly and the McGeorge Capital Center for Law & Policy presented a Post-Mortem of the 2020 Election. This episode of the Capitol Weekly Podcast broadcasts audio of Panel 3: The Ballot Propositions, featuring Brandon Castillo of Bicker Castillo & Fairbanks; Jim DeBoo of DeBoo Communications; Mary-Beth Moylan of McGeorge School of Law and Robin Swanson of Swanso...

On November 5, 2020, Capitol Weekly and the McGeorge Capital Center for Law & Policy presented a Post-Mortem of the 2020 Election. This episode of the Capitol Weekly Podcast broadcasts audio of Panel 1: Polling, featuring Ruth Bernstein of EMC Research; Mark DiCamillo, of the Berkeley IGS Poll; Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc.; and Ben Tulchin of Tulchin Research. Moderated by Marisa Lagos...

David Cruz is the head of the Economic and Business Development Council for the League of United Latin American Citizens; LULAC, as it is known, is the oldest Latino civil rights organization in the country. While LULAC itself has declined to take a position on California's hotly-contested Proposition 22, the Economic and Business Development Council has endorsed the measure. The proponents of Pro...

Veteran political data expert Paul Mitchell sat down with us on Friday to chat about early vote turnout, the partisan breakdown of those votes and how California compares to the national picture. Record turnout among early voters is a story being played out across the country and California is no exception. In 2016 and 2018, less than 20,000 voters returned their ballots within the first week of r...

Our guest today is Caitlin Vega, a longtime labor activist who got her start as a Teamsters organizer when she was still in her teens. Vega is currently the legislative and political adviser to the UFCW Western States Council. She spent 16 years with the California Labor Federation, ultimately working her way up to Legislative Director, before striking out on her own. As the November election appr...

Shawnda Westly is a familiar figure in California politics. From 2009-2018 she served as executive director of the state Democratic Party and "right-hand" of then-Party leader John Burton, overseeing both campaign strategy and day-to-day operations of the party. Westly's tenure saw a massive expansion in Democratic representation in the legislature, with the party surging to supermajorit...

Longtime Sacramento journalist Joe Barr is Capital Public Radio’s strategic leader for content creation for CapRadio News, CapRadio Music and Capradio.org. While most news organizations have seen a stark decline in staffing over the past decade, Barr has led a major expansion in the station's news department. He also developed CapRadio's statewide news service, the Capital Public Radio Network, wh...

Citing a global emergency caused by climate change, Governor Gavin Newsom issued stunning news today, announcing an Executive Order that would outlaw sales of new gasoline-powered cars and trucks in the state by 2035. California, the most populous state, home to one in eight Americans, is already the largest market for zero-emission vehicles in the country; half of all electric vehicles sold in th...

This is a special edition of the Capitol Weekly Podcast, broadcasting a panel from our annual look at health care in the Golden State. We focused this year on the unprecedented public health emergency: COVID-19. Exactly six months and one day after the first Shelter-in-Place order, we examined the response to the crisis and looked at what comes next. A digital version of the program for the event,...

This is a special edition of the Capitol Weekly Podcast, broadcasting a panel from our annual look at health care in the Golden State. We focused this year on the unprecedented public health emergency: COVID-19. Exactly six months and one day after the first Shelter-in-Place order, we examined the response to the crisis and looked at what comes next. A digital version of the program for the event,...

This is a special edition of the Capitol Weekly Podcast, broadcasting a panel from our annual look at health care in the Golden State. We focused this year on the unprecedented public health emergency: COVID-19. Exactly six months and one day after the first Shelter-in-Place order, we examined the response to the crisis and looked at what comes next. A digital version of the program for the event,...

A special edition of the Capitol Weekly Podcast broadcasting panels from our annual look at health care in the Golden State. We focused this year on the unprecedented public health emergency: COVID-19. Exactly six months and one day after the first Shelter-in-Place order, we examined the response to the crisis and looked at what comes next. A digital version of the program for the event, with spea...

Lobbyist Jennifer Fearing operates Fearless Advocacy, a small "white hat" lobbying outfit that represents nonprofits, animal rights groups, environmentalists and other clients with feel-good causes. With clients like these, Fearing isn't the highest-billing advocate on the block, but her record at the capitol is the envy of many of her peers. She shared her most immediate concern: the pa...

Republican political strategist Jon Fleischman has been a significant voice in California conservative circles for well over a decade; he formerly served as the Executive Director of the state GOP and his Flash Report blog, founded in 2005, was one of the first (and for a time, perhaps the most influential) insider political blogs in the state. While Fleischman is a rock-ribbed conservative with p...

Last week saw dramatic developments in the ongoing Dynamex/AB5/gig economy saga: following the August 13 ruling that confirmed an August 20 deadline for Uber and Lyft to reclassify their workers as employees, the two companies announced that they planned to cease operations in California rather than comply. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo issued statements calling o...

Lobbyist Aaron Read is the definiton of "venerable" in Sacramento's Capitol Community: he began his lobbying career advocating for California state employees while Reagan was governor and Willie Brown was still just the Assemblyman from the 13th District. Read formed Aaron Read and Associates in 1978 and has been a major force in Sacramento ever since. He has a bevy of clients, many of w...

It's that time of year again, and Capitol Weekly's Top 100 is upon us! Once again, we take our annual stab at outlining the semi-visible UN-elected power structure that surrounds the elected officials who make legislation, regulations, etc -- the lobbyists, staffers, donors, lawyers, activists, campaign strategists, labor and business leaders and even journalists who play a HUGE role in the develo...

Today's guest is Dr. Barbara O'Connor, a Professor Emeritus at CSU Sacramento, and a household name for folks with deep roots in California public policy. She worked the McGovern campaign, has been an AARP board member, and was named one of Newsweek’s “50 for the Future,” a feature on the 50 people who will set policy and direction for global communications. And, she started Sacramento's first NPR...

The COVID-19 pandemic has created havoc for California’s economy and closed thousands of schools across the state. Families, students and business owners are relying more heavily than ever on high-speed internet connectivity - but for many Californians, access to this essential technology is limited. Many do not have access to high speed broadband or lack the essential computers/cell phones to uti...

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented heretofore-unseen challenges to students and teachers who have suddenly found themselves the "guinea pigs" in a massive distance learning experiment. With coronavirus infections and deaths climbing in California, a growing number of districts have said they will not be returning to in-person classes in the fall, leaving teachers scrambling to create co...

California's Citizens Independent Redistricting Commission is generally regarded as a model of its kind, achieving balance and representation through a carefully constructed mix of quotas, political gamesmanship and random selection. How then, did the first round of new commissioners selected on July 2 (eight of a total of 14)fail to include a single Latino, the state's largest ethnic group? When...

Senator Kamala Harris looms large on Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden's list of potential VP picks - he has said that he will pick a woman as running mate, and Harris is leading the 'pundit polls' as the most likely choice. If Harris is selected, and the Biden/Harris ticket goes on to win the November election, she will vacate her Senate seat in January 2021, with Governor Gavin Newsom ta...

Longtime Clean Air activist Bill Magavern joins us to chat, and brings some welcome good news: with the COVID-19 pandemic keeping people out of their cars, many areas of California have seen a decrease in air pollution. Those gains may dissipate as Californians return to the roads, but two coming environmental rule changes could have a big impact going forward: the Advanced Clean Truck Rule will r...

Politics often get ugly, and there is nothing uglier than Opposition Research: digging up dirt on your opponent - or sometimes your own candidate. No one knows Oppo better than Joe Rodota, who honed his dark art in the Reagan White House, the Schwarzenegger campaign and other high-profile races in California and across the country. Joe just launched a new podcast, Oppo File, where he examines the...