2016

Money changes everything, it is said, and that adage hovers conspicuously over two clashing death penalty proposals that Californians will weigh in next week’s election. Proposition 62 asks voters to abolish the state’s death penalty after 38 years. The other measure, Proposition 66, promotes a streamlining of legal proceedings so the term “capital punishment” means […]

Gov. Jerry Brown was confident his-12 point plan could reform California’s pension crisis. Five years later, the state’s unfunded liabilities continue to pile up with little change. CALmatter’s Judy Lin explains why the plan failed to progress.

For rapper Jay Z, the war on drugs is personal: “Young men like me who hustle became the sole villain.” That’s why the hip-hop mogul— who once dealt drugs in his New York public housing project and recently made a video denouncing current drug policy as an “epic fail”—is now endorsing a California ballot proposition […]

In a turbulent election year full of surprises, this much is certain: When it’s all over next week, broad swaths of California will still be represented by Democrats. The pressing question in many parts of the state: What kind of Democrat will voters send to Sacramento?Sixteen legislative races—from Northern California’s Wine Country to SoCal’s Inland […]

The scene that greeted Raymond Aguilar in his old Stockton neighborhood on his release from prison four months ago was too familiar: boarded-up windows, liquor stores, prostitutes and gang members walking the streets. Twenty-five years had passed since his conviction for second-degree murder, and nothing had changed.   “Not a lot of money is being spent on the community,” […]

In Florida, it’s Cuban Americans. Within one generation, the children of a loyally conservative immigrant group don’t feel the same attachment to the Republican Party that their parents did. In California, it’s Vietnamese Americans. And the flight from the GOP among younger Vietnamese voters appears to be happening at very rapid pace. The generational change […]

The upcoming ballot is so stuffed with complicated propositions that someone had to explain them in haiku. And song. And cartoon and emoji. The surge of creations speaks to a wave of younger, first-time and time-pressed voters who might not study the record 224-page tome that is the official California Voter Information Guide. That doesn’t […]

First-graders at Belvedere Elementary plopped down on their assigned carpet squares, chattering in Spanish as the day’s lesson got underway. Teacher Ivon Rabago displayed the book “La Historia de Martin Luther King, Jr.” as she spoke to the San Bernardino County students—both fluent English speakers and those just learning English—entirely in Spanish. Welcome to the […]

The one shred of power Republicans hold in the California statehouse—enough seats to block Democratic lawmakers from a “supermajority”—is on the brink in this election. Already California is one of only seven states in which Democrats control the legislature and the governor’s office (as compared to 23 states where the GOP holds both). Here, Republicans […]