RETHINKING CALIFORNIA:
POLITICS AND POLICY IN THE GOLDEN STATE

 

CHAPTER 1: THE THREE STATES OF CALIFORNIA: AN INTRODUCTION

 

Notes from a Native Daughter Joan Didion It was very easy to sit at the bar in, say, La Scala in Beverly Hills, or Ernie’s in San Francisco, and to share in the pervasive delusion that California is only five hours from New York by air.  The truth is that La Scala and Ernie’s are only five hours from New York by air.  California is somewhere else.   Many people in the East (or “back East”, as they say in California, although not in La Scala or Ernie’s) do not believe this.  They have been to Los Angeles or to San Francisco, have driven through a giant redwood and have seen the Pacific glazed by the afternoon sun off Big Sur, and they naturally tend to believe that they have in fact been to California.  They have not been, and they probably never will be, for it is a longer and in many more ways a more difficult trip than they might want to undertake, one of those trips on which the destination flickers chimerically on the horizon, ever receding, ever diminishing.  I happen to know about that trip because I come from California, come from a family, or a congeries of families, that has always been in the Sacramento Valley. Continued at end of Chapter.

 

WEST OF THE WEST

            California has always been considered somewhat different than the rest of the nation.  It is, as Theodore Roosevelt pointed out, "west of the West."  Yet, California has emerged as a dominant trend setter, establishing models and approaches that are emulated throughout the nation.  California may be well west of the traditional centers of power, but its size and influence has surpassed all other states.  Stretching 825 miles from Crescent City to San Diego, and 215 miles from Monterey to Mono Lake, California includes 164,000 square miles and 32 million people --  12.3% of the total U.S. population.^[1] 

A Contested Terrain

            Captured by the United States in 1846 with statehood coming in 1850, California was a relative latecomer to national politics.  As a consequence of both its distance from established power centers in the East and its “frontier” culture California was seen more as a repository of rich natural resources than as a partner in policy.  California was a terrain contested by three nations and dozens of native American communities.  Between Cabrillo’s claims on the Pacific Coast in 1542 and the Mexican-American War in 1846, Spain, Mexico, and the United States maneuvered, battled, and manipulated to gain control. 

            Spanish colonization of California began in 1769 when Junipero Serra established the El Camino Real -- the Mission Trail, nine Missions whose central function was to control Indian land on behalf of Spain and convert native civilizations to Christianity.  Spain actively recruited settlers from Mexico, drawing fundamentally from the poorest mestizo communities.^[2]   Spain’s hold on California was weak, with only 3000 settlers -- most of whom were Mexican.  When Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821 California became a Mexican territory.  City names like Mendicino, Sonoma, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, and San Diego reflect it’s native American, Spanish, and Mexican heritage -- and its ethnic ambivalence.  The 46 original settlers of Los Angeles, for example, were mestizos of Indian, African, and Spanish ancestry .^[3]   This ambivalence runs deep in part because the U.S. claim on California was pushed by American squatters in what was then Mexico.^[4]

THE THREE STATES OF CALIFORNIA

Many observers have noted that California, with its complex network of communities and regional resources, may in fact be composed of three states.  That is to say, if one were to explore how California’s many communities related to each other it would be possible to identify clear regional cultures within which unique subcultures interacted.  Politically, economically, socially, philosophically, even ethnically, California is actually three different places: Southern California (San Diego north to San Luis Obispo County) Northern California (Monterey County up through Humboldt County), and the Central Valley (Kern and Inyo Counties north to Oregon).   Each of these regions maintain unique economies, idiosyncratic political cultures, unique micro-climates, even distinct language patterns and cultural reference points.  To fully understand California one must understand its separate regional identities.

Southern California

Southern California may be characterized as densely populated urban coastline, particularly between Ventura and Orange Counties.  With the notable exception of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara Counties, Southern California tends to vote republican.  As a consequence of the large metropolitan areas, Southern California remains extremely diverse ethnically and religiously.  Traditional Southern California economic engines have been manufacturing and light industry.  Since the 1970s, however, the Southern California economy has become more service oriented and corporate in nature.  The archetypal Southern California job in the 1950s was industrial (shipyards, tire manufacturing).   The archetypal Southern California job in the 1990s is service sector (low paying, including food service and retail; high paying, including international banking and consulting). 

Add to these structural phenomena the unique architectural and cultural edifices, and the Southern California character is complete.  Since the region grew extremely quickly -- exponentially increasing in population between 1940 and 1990 -- effectively planning infrastructure was impossible.  The result is evident in both land planning and transportation. The mini-mall, a Southern California invention, has come to dominate the landscape.  These strip malls, which typically include some combination of convenience store, donut shop, dry cleaners, and hair & nail shop, were in many ways predetermined by Southern California’s geography: quick growth and conservative politics tends to preclude land and architectural planning; warm weather encourages convenience shopping in open air storefronts; the reliance on cars makes parking lots a necessity; and, the relatively cheap land in outlying areas encourages the construction of multi-unit retail space (e.g., mini-malls) on speculation by small investors.

Southern California is defined in many ways by its freeways.  This, however, was not always the case.  As early as 1924, Southern California’s Red Car system carried 100 million riders annually between San Fernando, Newport Beach, Pasadena, and San Bernardino -- covering an area from Los Angeles and out some 75 miles in all directions.   The fate of mass transit in Southern California was doomed, however, for two central reasons.  First, the short term success of the Red Car actually precluded long term success.  This because the system encouraged building out rather than building up, as in most cities.  Home builders built large tracts on cheap land, advertising “live in the country, work in the city.”  The Red Car made it possible to buy a house in an inexpensive area, while commuting into the city.  However, as development grew beyond train stations in outlying areas, mass transit became less attractive.  By the 1940s, home builders were advertising garages with driveways rather than proximity to train stations. 

Second, as a relatively new urban area, Southern California’s major investment in its transportation infrastructure came at time when cars were increasingly inexpensive and roads were relatively uncongested.  Related issues such as energy and air quality were not yet significant concerns.  In 1926, when Angelenos were asked to vote on bond measures that would define Southern California’s transportation infrastructure for the next century, rail construction lost out to freeway construction.  This was perhaps preordained.  Who in 1926 could have predicted the growth Southern California would achieve over the next half century.

In addition, Southern California’s weather -- with a year round median temperature in the mid-70s and little rainfall -- encourages an outdoor lifestyle.  The architecture reflects this, as does the fashion, and even the vernacular.  Housing tracts -- reflecting two bedroom Spanish style bungalows in the 1920s and 1930s, larger “modern” ranch style houses boasting three bedrooms and two bathrooms in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and even larger Mediterranean styles in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s -- all suggest a Southern California style.  Frontyards are dominated by garages and driveways, with the notable absence of porches, suggesting a space of utility rather than socializing with neighbors.  Backyards are dominated by “family space,” including BBQ areas, swingsets, and dog runs. 

The warm weather and proximity to a swimmable coastline ensures an enduring relationship with the beach and ocean.  While the Aloha shirt may of may not be fashionable throughout the state, it has never lost favor in Southern California. Southern California vernacular has consistently included outdoor references.  From the Annette Funicello/ Frankie Avalon beach party movies to Bay Watch, Southern Californians have long had to balance externally imposed stereotypes with organic homegrown lifestyles.  This hasn’t been easy, in large part because the Southern California media persists in celebrating the Bay Watch ideal, and because of the high number of transplants who have flocked to Southern California in search of this idealized lifestyle.  While many outsiders see Malibu or Santa Monica as quintessential Southern California, the real Southern California is a quilt of cultures, alive and well in places like Ventura and Oxnard, San Fernando, Inglewood, Monterey Park, San Pedro, Long Beach, San Clemente, and Oceanside. 

Northern California

Mark Twain once commented that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.   Where Southern California is often warm and dry, Northern California is often cold and damp.  But the differences go far beyond weather.   Northern California tends to vote democratic, albeit with distinct enclaves of conservative voters.  While architecture dominates the Southern California landscape, in Northern California landscape dominates architecture.  The “Little Boxes” that dot Daly City’s residential tracts are dictated by the urban density of the San Francisco peninsula.  Bordered by the Bay and the Ocean, the available space to build is severely limited.

The earthtones of Marin architecture, and the unobtrusive style of Big Sur architecture reflect the regions comfort with nature -- and its desire to live within, rather than in place of, the traditional landscape.  This is itself a function of lower density and cooler weather.  Southern Californians spend much of the year indoors to avoid the heat.  Northern Californians spend much of the year indoors to avoid the rain.  Each climate requires a different architectural response.  Functional fashion may be a result as well.  Hiking boots and flannel make more sense in Humboldt than in San Diego.

Northern California may itself represent two different places.  The Bay Area is distinctly different than the north coast.  The high tech industries along the San Jose-San Francisco corridor lead the nation in new technology Research and Development and in high tech manufacturing.  The income generated in Silicon Valley is illustrated by a local housing market that is two to three times higher than the Bay Area generally.  At the same time, the timber based economy of the north is extremely vulnerable.  Median income in Santa Clara County (including Silicon Valley) is $54,672.  Median income in Glenn County is $25,648.^[5] 

In the same way, Northern California’s urban centers reflect the diversity of Southern California, but its rural northwest does not.  The Bay Area is extremely diverse, incorporating strong and politicized Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American communities.  Cities like Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose are among the nation’s premier Multicultural centers.  At the same time, the northwest coast from Mendicino to Crescent City looks more like Oregon than California: predominantly white, modest incomes, largely Christian. 

If there is a unique vernacular to Northern California it may be due to politicized university students from Santa Cruz, Stanford, Berkeley, San Francisco, San Jose, Hayward, Sonoma, and Humboldt State.  These institutions have a long history of activism, particularly with regard to environmental issues and civil rights.  A case in point: the tired phrase “politically correct” originated on Northern California campuses as an affectionate jab by campus leftists at their more programmatic colleagues.  In a bit of Orwellian double-speak, it has since been highjacked by conservatives to marginalize progressive concerns generally.

The Central Valley

The Central Valley is California’s Heartland.  It is primarily agricultural, with small cities separated by miles of farmland.   Density is low outside of its major cities.  It is the home of the Central Valley Project, the primary delivery system for agricultural water diverted from the Sacramento Delta. The relatively narrow valley, bordered east and west by mountains is home to a thick, pea soup fog every winter.  This Tule fog is both an institution and a hazard.  Most of us know the Central Valley at 70 mph as we drive between the Bay Area and Southern California along Interstate 5.  Relatively few travel off the Interstate, making the Valley unknown to most Californians. 

The Central Valley includes vast rural areas, with growing urban areas in Bakersfield, Fresno, and of course, the greater Sacramento Area.  Fresno and Sacramento are among the state’s ten largest cities, with populations of 405,100 and 396,000 respectively.  Fresno County is one of the state’s fastest growing areas, predicted to grow from its current population of 765,000 to 2.5 million over the next forty years.^[6]  And, while many small cities in the Central Valley are predominately white and Latino, the larger cities are extremely diverse.  Bakersfield, Fresno, Stockton, and Sacramento reflect the diversity of the rest of the state.  Stockton, for example, is 23% Asian, comparing to San Francisco’s 29%, and greatly exceeding Los Angeles’ 9.6%.  55% of Stockton’s 48,000 Asians are Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, and Laotian.^[7]

Politically, the Central Valley tends to be split.  The agricultural counties tend to vote Republican, the urban counties vote Democratic.  The Central Valley’s economic engine is primarily agricultural, from the farms in Kern, Kings, and Fresno Counties in the South up to the northern counties that unfold along the Sacramento River -- Colusa, Butte, and Tehama Counties.  Stockton and Sacramento remain active port cities, with light industry and related services.  The Sacramento, American, and Feather Rivers spill into the Sacramento Delta, a vast maze of bayous and tributaries, invoking the flavor of Louisiana in California. 

If there is a “beltway” in California it is Sacramento.  With the high number of state offices, and the influx of representatives, staff, lobbyists, and the public, Sacramento at times looks more like Washington than the sleepy Central Valley river town it once was.  As the political nexus of the state, downtown Sacramento has been able to remake itself in the image of every Californian.  This is remarkable considering how different Californians are from one another.   The warm weather and urban sprawl is familiar to Southern Californians, the heavy tree covering and lush gardens is familiar to Northern Californians, and to the Central Valley, Sacramento is -- well, home.

How Many Californias?

Some observers see even more than three states within California’s borders.  Philip Fradkin, for example, identifies seven.^[8]   Fradkin sees differing landscapes as critical determinants of cultural expression.  Fradkin’s first California is the Deserts, along the south eastern corridor of the state from Mono Lake south to the Salton Sea.  The Deserts are defined by drought, little population, untamed open space, and ghosts of past civilizations.  His second California is the Sierra, encompassing the Sierra Nevada from Donner Pass to Bakersfield.  This 430 mile long mountain region is distinguished by vast wilderness, even fewer people, and characterized by a pioneer past.  The Sierra Nevadas, while never tamed, had to be understood to allow westward immigration.  The hard lessons of the Donner Party^[9] underscore life in this California. 

Fradkin’s third California, “the Land of Fire,” is the volcanic Cascade region in the northeastern most section of the state.  His fourth California, “the Land of Water,” is the northwest coastal area from Crescent City to Point Arena.  This California is dominated by forests, wind, fog, and rain.  The population is centered in Crescent City, Arcata, Humboldt, and Eureka.  Separated by thick forests from the rest of the state there is a palpable sense of isolation. California number five is the “Great Valley.”  The central valley between Redding and Bakersfield is the state’s bread basket, making up one of the largest regions of sustained agriculture in the nation.  Population is greatest in the greater Sacramento area, inclusive of Stockton, and in the Fresno/ Bakersfield area, which is the fast growing region of the state, but  is distributed throughout the region.  California number six includes the northern California coastline from Point Reyes to Point Conception.   The “Fractured Province” is defined in large measure by the frequency of earthquake fault lines. 

Finally, California number seven, Southern California from Point Conception to San Diego, is Fradkin’s “Profligate Province.”  This region is the most populated, and in Fradkin’s view, the most wildly extravagant.  The cycle of earthquake, fire, and flood is somehow a function of Southern California’s hubris.  In this Fradkin anticipates Mike Davis’ Ecology of Fear.^[10]  Whether one accepts the notion of multiple California’s or not, it is clear that regional difference has emerged as an important element of California’s diversity.

Urban California, Urban Peripheries, and Rural California

Some observers note that while there are different Californias, it is not geography that distinguishes them.  Rather, the very different types of cities and towns throughout the state can be included in communities of interest based on economic base, demographics, and size.   More specifically, communities throughout the state can be divided into Urban California, Urban Peripheries, and Rural California.  According to this analysis, cities of like size, demography, and structure have more in common than those cities that share a geographic region.  San Francisco, for example, has much more in common with Los Angeles than with Willits, a small lumber town in Mendicino.  Similarly, Vista, in northern San Diego County, has much more in common with Concord, in the Bay Area, than with San Diego. 

Urban centers tend to share common concerns, as do urban peripheries, and rural areas.  Urban cores are concerned with race relations, economic revitalization, international commerce, crime, and crumbling school districts.  Urban peripheries, those suburbs that ring urban cores, depend on the central city for economic sustenance, but struggle with issues of open space, zoning, and retail “flavor” of boutique downtown areas.  Crime is a major preoccupation, but typically in the context of containing “city crime” from spreading into the periphery neighborhoods.  Rural areas share a concern for agricultural and timber resources, tend to oppose environmental restrictions, and fear the continual spread of “urban sprawl,” where urban peripheries begin to extend into agricultural areas.  At the same time, rural communities battle periphery cities over open space issues.  Newly incorporated cities in outlying areas hope to preserve open space in perpetuity, while rural communities often assert a right to develop open space as the market dictates. 

California Divide

Whether one agrees with Fradkin’s borders, or a more modest set of borders, there clearly are significant regional differences within the state.  With 58 distinctive counties this is, perhaps, no surprise.  How these different communities interact as a common state, however, often is.  Intraregional relations, interregional relations, and region to state relations all depend on the unique cultures and politics that dominate the region.  As we explore these relationships we must keep an eye toward the regional idiosyncracies which make California unique.

THE STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK

This book explores the evolving role of politics and policy in California.  To achieve this the book seeks to do the impossible: to convey the taste, smell, and feel of the state at the dawn of the 21st century.   As the most populous state, California has emerged as a leader of national and international politics, economics, and culture.  The following chapters review California's unique institutional structure on both the state and local levels, as well as California's unique cultural legacy.  

Part One provides an overview of California’s unique history and culture, with special attention paid to political culture, people and diversity, and politics and economics.  Part Two introduces the institutional infrastructure.  These chapters explore the Constitutional makeup of California, the governor, state legislature, and state judiciary, as well as local governments.  Part Three focuses on the policy players -- those individuals and organizations who work to influence politics and policy throughout the state, including interest groups, the media, parties, campaigns, and elections.  Part Four assesses the major policy issues affecting the state, including education, environment, immigration, and civil rights.  California’s political culture is as vast and complicated as its terrain.  It is its people that make it special, and its natural resources that make it unique.  The following pages will introduce you to the personalities and ideas that are essential to an understanding of the Golden State, from its early history to the controversies that shape political conflict in the present day.

Continued from page 1.    Reading 1:               

“Notes from a Native Daughter,” Joan Didion
From Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968)
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Incorporated, this edition 1990)
Reprinted by Permission (pending)

                       

You might protest that no family has been in the Sacramento Valley for anything approaching “always.”  But it is characteristic of Californians to speak grandly of the past as if it had simultaneously begun, tabula rasa, and reached a happy ending on the day the wagons started west.  Eureka -- “I Have Found It” -- as the state motto has it.  Such a view of history casts a certain melancholia over those who participate in it; my own childhood was suffused with the conviction that we had long outlived our finest hour.  In fact that is what I want to tell you about: what it is like to have come from a place like Sacramento.  If I could make you understand that, I could make you understand California and perhaps something else besides, for Sacramento is California, and California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspension that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.

In 1847 Sacramento was no more than an adobe enclosure, Sutter’s Fort, standing alone on the prairie; cut off from San Francisco and the sea by the Coast Range and from the rest of the continent by the Sierra Nevada, the Sacramento Valley was then a true sea of grass, grass so high a man riding into it could tie it across his saddle.  A year later gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills, and abruptly Sacramento was a town, a town any moviegoer could map tonight in his dreams -- a dusty collage of assay offices and wagonmakers and saloons.  Call that Phase Two.  Then the settlers came -- the farmers, the people who for two hundred years had been moving west of the frontier, the peculiar flawed strain who had cleared Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri; they made Sacramento a farm town.  Because the land was rich, Sacramento became eventually a rich farm town, which meant houses in town, Cadillac dealers, a country club.  In that gentle sleep Sacramento dreamed until perhaps 1950, when something happened.  What happened was that Sacramento woke to the fact that the outside world was moving in, fast and hard.  At the moment of its waking Sacramento lost, for better or for worse, its character, and that is part of what I want to tell you about.

But the change in not what I remember first.  First I remember running a boxer dog of my brother’s over the same flat fields that our great-great-grandfather had found virgin and had planted; I remember swimming (albeit nervously, for I was a nervous child, afraid of sinkholes and afraid of snakes, and perhaps that was the beginning of my error) the same rivers we had swum for a century: the Sacramento, so rich with silt that we could barely see our hands a few inches beneath the surface; the American, running clean and fast with melted Sierra snow until July, when it would slow down, and rattlesnakes would sun themselves on its newly exposed rocks.  The Sacramento, the American, sometimes the Cosumnes, occasionally the Feather.  Incautious children died every day in those rivers; we had read about it  in the paper, how they had miscalculated a current or stepped into a hole down where the American runs into the Sacramento, how the Berry Brothers had been called in from Yolo County to drag the  river but how the bodies remained unrecovered.  “They were from away,” my grandmother would extrapolate from the newspaper stories. “Their parents had no business letting them in the river.  They were visitors from Omaha.”  It was not a bad lesson, although a less than reliable one; children we knew died in the rivers too...

Later, when I was living in New York, I would make the trip back to Sacramento four and five times a year (the more comfortable the flight, the more obscurely miserable I would be, for it weights heavily upon my kind that we could perhaps not make it by wagon), trying to prove that I had not meant to leave at all, because in at least one respect California -- the California we are talking about -- resembles Eden: It is assumed that those who absent themselves from its blessings have been banished, exiled by some perversity of heart.  Did not the Donner-Reed Party, after all, eat its own dead to reach Sacramento?

I have said that the trip back is difficult, and it is -- difficult in a way that magnifies the ordinary ambiguities of sentimental journeys.  Going back to California is not like going back to Vermont, or Chicago; Vermont and Chicago are relative constants, against which one measures one’s own change.  All that is constant about the California of my childhood is the rate at which it disappears....

It is hard to find  California now, unsettling to wonder how much of it was merely imagined or improvised; melancholy to realize how much of anyone’s memory is no true memory at all but only the traces of someone else’s memory, stories handed down on the family network.  I have an indelibly vivid “memory,” for example, of how Prohibition affected the hop growers around Sacramento: The sister of a grower my family knew brought home a mink coat from San Francisco, and was told to take it back, and sat on the floor of the parlor cradling that coat and crying.  Although I was not born until a year after Repeal, that scene is more “real” to me than many I have played myself.

I remember one trip home, when I sat alone on a night jet from New York and read over and over some lines from a W.S. Merwin poem I had come across in a magazine, a poem about a man who had been a long time in another country and knew that he must go home:

            …But it should be

            Soon. Already I defend hotly

            Certain of our indefensible faults,

            Resent being reminded; already in my mind

            Our language becomes freighted with a richness

            No common tongue could offer, while the mountains

            Are like nowhere on earth, and the wide rivers.

You see the point.  I want to tell you the truth, and already I have told you about the wide rivers.

It should be clear by now that the truth about the place is elusive, and must be tracked with caution.  You might go to Sacramento tomorrow and someone (although no one I know) might take you out to Aerojet-General, which has, in the Sacramento phase, “something to do with rockets.”  Fifteen thousand people work for Aerojet, almost all of them imported; a Sacramento lawyer’s wife told me, as evidence of how Sacramento was opening up, that she believed she had met one of them, at an open house two Decembers ago. (“Couldn’t have been nicer, actually,” she added enthusiastically.  “I think he and his wife bought the house next door to Mary and Al, something like that, which of course was how they met him.”)  So you might go to Aerojet and stand in the big vendors’ lobby where a couple of thousand components salesmen try every week to sell their wares and you might look up at the electrical wallboard that lists Aerojet personnel, their projects and their location at any given time, and you might wonder if I have been in Sacramento lately.  MINUTEMAN, POLARIS, TITAN, the lights flash, and all the coffee tables are littered with airline schedules, very now, very much in touch.

But I could take you a few miles from here into towns where the banks still bear names like The Bank of Alex Brown, into towns where the one hotel still has an octagonal-tile floor in the dining room and dusty potted palms and big ceiling fans; into towns where everything -- the seed business, the Harvester franchise, the hotel, the department store and the main street-carries a single name, the name of the man who built the town.  A few Sundays ago I was in a town like that, a town smaller than that, really, no hotel, no Harvester franchise, the bank burned out, a river town.  It was the golden anniversary of some of my relatives and it was 110  and the guests of honor sat on straight-backed chairs in front of a sheaf of gladioluses in the Rebekah Hall.  I mentioned visiting Aerojet-General to a cousin I saw there, who listened to me with interested disbelief.  Which is the true California?  That is what we all wonder.

Reprinted from Joan Didion, “Notes from a Native Daughter,” from Slouching Towards
Bethlehem (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 1961, 1965, 1968.