Joe Mathews is a journalist, a fourth-generation Californian, and an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank. Until March 2008, he worked as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, covering Gov. Schwarzenegger, ballot initiatives, labor, and national politics. He also served as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the Baltimore Sun. He is author of The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy (PublicAffairs Books, 2006).