Author: Joe Mathews

One afternoon in July 1985, President Ronald Reagan met with his domestic policy council in the White House cabinet room. The question: should he keep

At the only gubernatorial debate this fall, Gavin Newsom was asked if Proposition 13 was on the table. His response “Everything is on the table.”

At a recent global conference on direct democracy in Rome, Erwin Mayer, who advocates for greater initiative and referendum power in his home country of

Kevin De Leon has won half of his argument with Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein counseled patience, politesse, compromise and the virtue of seniority in countering President

Ballot measures are not elections. They are lawmaking. That’s a hard fact. But it’s not how California treats ballot measures. Or how Californians think about

Salinas, California and Yuma, Arizona are quite far apart—485 miles by plane and 600 by car. But no two cities in the West are closer.

Where was the media? The Citizens Initiative Review – the best proven way we have to evaluate ballot initiatives around the world – held a

In the extended conversation that passed for a debate in the U.S. Senate race, Dianne Feinstein essentially won by not losing. In fact, watching and

Kevin De Leon likes to make history, but not like this: he could finish third in the two-person U.S. Senate race. The ballot says there