Author: Joe Mathews

I recently learned that, in the second grade, I was part of presidential history. Every morning during the 1980-1981 school year, I walked the five

California needs to take its next governor’s race more seriously. 2014’s contest between Jerry Brown and Neel Kashkari felt like an experiment in voter suppression—no

California is trapped—caught in the dangerous space between two menacingly authoritarian regimes that want to fight each other. One regime is headquartered in Beijing, and

In one American capital, the party in power is making big plans to overturn decades worth of policies, and boldly pursue controversial policies that change

This marks the eight annual version of the California Office Pool. It was inspired by the late, great New York Times columnist William Safire, who

I was tempted to nominate Dino Cortopassi, the Stockton businessman-farmer-philanthropist. He perhaps most clearly expressed the Black Bart spirit, putting forth a ballot initiative, Prop

Barbara Boxer was never a particularly effective senator. Just name a signature legislative achievement or a victory for California in her 24 years representing the

How are Californians going to save Spanish? Yes, I know that a call to preserve the Spanish language might seem ludicrous in a state whose

California’s leading Democrats and the president-elect of the United States may be headed for conflict on immigration, healthcare and climate change, but there’s at least