With a historic infrastructure bond package and a gubernatorial contest on this Novembers ballot, Californians will face important decisions about the state's future when they go to the polls.

Yet most voters believe the leading candidates, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic challenger Phil Angelides, are not paying enough attention to the issues that matter most to them. And California residents are deeply distrustful of state government's ability to solve their problems over the long term.

"Voters are engaged, are following election and candidate news — yet they are not only uninspired, they are turned off to the point where they may turn away," says Mark Baldessare, Survey Director for the Public Policy Institute of California.

Those were some of the more revealing findings from a series of statewide surveys that the Public Policy Institute of California is conducting this fall with a $300,000 grant from The James Irvine Foundation. The series includes three surveys in the months leading up to the Nov. 7 election and one post-election survey immediately following the election.

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As Congress debated sweeping immigration reform this spring, more than a million people took to the streets in demonstrations from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. Clearly, the extraordinary turnout reflects strong concerns by immigrants and others about the tone of the debate in Washington.

But to get a deeper understanding of the views of immigrants, one had to go beyond the placards and protest chants. Many policymakers and journalists turned to the results of a well-timed poll, released in late March by New America Media, the first major survey of the very communities that would be most affected by policies under consideration.

"The poll gave immigrants the first chance to participate in the debate rather than be targets of the debate," says Sandy Close, executive director of New America Media.

The poll's findings helped explain immigrants' hostility to the main provisions of the bill passed late last year by the House of Representatives, the harshest of the reforms under consideration, but it also revealed that neither political party gets very high marks on immigration issues.

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California entered the 21st century with one of the world's most diverse populations: 95 languages are spoken in the state and no racial or ethnic group holds a majority. Californians born in a foreign country or with parents born outside of the United States are about equal in number to those whose relatives arrived earlier. The state is a land of regional differences as well: Central Valley residents, for example, have different concerns about transportation, housing, and the environment, than those living in the rural north, urban coastal areas, or southern deserts. While the state is highly diverse, Californians are united by aspirations that transcend these distinctions. All Californians want the opportunity to earn a decent living; they want good schools for their children, affordable housing and health care, and a say in the decisions that affect their families and communities.

California is not yet that place. One-third of California high school students are not graduating. More than one in five Californians lacks health coverage, and four out of five state residents cannot afford the median-priced home. The state's physical infrastructure - school facilities, roads, water systems - is under pressure from a growing population. A dire state budget situation has squeezed the ability of the public sector to provide desired services.

Californians do not have great faith in our public institutions to address these problems. Only one-third of Californians say they trust state government to do what is right all or most of the time. And while 41 percent of Californians think the state is headed down the wrong track, most Californians are not compelled to express their opinions by voting (less than half of eligible adults regularly vote) or by contacting their elected officials. For many Californians, their needs and concerns seem far afield from what drives policymaking in Sacramento.

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Is the ballot initiative broken? Recent surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California suggest to some observers that the direct democracy tool California made famous, on display in this November's special election, may be in need of serious reform.

Californians still show strong support for the ballot initiative in principle, believing that it should have more influence over public policy than either the governor or the legislature. Yet 63 percent say the initiative process is in need of change.

Recent surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California asked: Are initiatives a tool of voluntarily engaged citizens or well-financed political operatives?

"The process seems to have evolved from its original purpose as a tool for the average citizen when the legislature isn't addressing a need, to a mechanism that's much more often utilized by well-financed individuals and interest groups," says Amy Dominguez-Arms, Irvine's Program Director for California Perspectives. "The reality is that average citizens have very little involvement in developing most initiatives and then are faced with an all-or-nothing proposition, which is very difficult to amend once passed. We're supporting the exploration of reforms that could make the ballot initiative process a more effective tool by which to realize the public's interests."

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When the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) began a campaign several years ago to pass a living wage in San Diego — a city historically known for its conservative politics and, more recently, its fiscal troubles — few would have predicted success. But succeed they did.

On April 12, 2005, by a 5 to 4 vote, the city council approved an ordinance requiring city contractors to pay janitors, security guards, and other workers a minimum of $10 an hour. The vote marked a significant step forward for low-wage workers in San Diego, the culmination of a bold organizing campaign, and a striking example of the art and power of citizen action.

Irvine's "Mobilizing Californians" strategy aims to increase the civic engagement of communities that have traditionally been underrepresented in the political process.

How did this improbable victory happen?

Not overnight, Donald Cohen, Executive Director of CPI, will be the first to tell you. Over several years, CPI and its partners beat the odds by patiently laying the groundwork for their push for a living wage. Their effort amounts to a four-part, long-term recipe for resident mobilization: research the issue, communicate the findings to focus public attention, build a broad coalition based on trust, and organize residents to act.

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"Nobody wakes up every morning worrying about what legislative district they're in," says Bob Stern, President of the Center for Center for Governmental Studies (CGS). At the same time, anyone familiar with the mapping of legislative districts will attest to its fundamental impact on decision-making in our state Capitol.

With California voters likely being called upon to vote on reforms as early as this fall, Irvine Quarterly spoke with two representative grantees of Irvine's California Perspectives program to illuminate some of the key issues involved, and how their work is informing the discussion in Sacramento.

Bob Stern and Dr. Bruce Cain

Bob Stern has served as General Counsel of CGS since its founding in 1983, and was named its President in 2000. Stern has co-authored a number of CGS reports in the areas of campaign financing, the initiative process, and electronic filing of disclosure statements. He also served as General Counsel of the California Fair Political Practices Commission for nine years, and has authored a number of statewide initiatives enacted by Californians, including the Political Reform Act of 1974. He is joined in the interview below by Jeannie Wilkinson, CGS Project Manager for California Governance, who co-authored CGS's report, Drawing Lines: A Public Interest Guide to Real Redistricting Reform.

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The goal of Irvine's California Perspectives program is to inform public understanding, engage Californians, and improve decision-making on significant state issues. With a $750,000 grant to the New America Foundation in 2004, Irvine established a California-based Fellows Program that will support a new generation of public policy writers and thinkers to help create solutions to California's most pressing problems. Irvine Quarterly brought together the first two of what will be seven Irvine Fellows to discuss their work and how they hope to influence public debate on some of the state's most pressing issues.

Joel Kotkin and Gregory Rodriguez

Joel Kotkin, Irvine Senior Fellow, is an internationally recognized authority on global economic, political, and social trends. He is the author of six books, including the bestseller, The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape. A leading expert on the evolution of cities, towns, and rural places, Kotkin has written major reports on the future of New York, St. Louis, rural North Dakota, and the Inland Empire region of Southern California. He is a contributing editor to the Sunday Opinion Section of the Los Angeles Times, and has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Inc. Magazine, and the American Enterprise, among other publications. He lectures widely in Asia, Europe, and in North America.

Gregory Rodriguez, Irvine Senior Fellow, has written widely on issues of race, immigration, ethnicity, politics, and America's changing demographics in such leading publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, where he is a contributing editor. The Economist has praised him for "decisively changing the understanding of the Latino experience in the United States," and Esquire Magazine recently listed him among the "Best and Brightest" Americans under 40 who will revolutionize the way we think. His essay "Mongrel America," which first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, was included in "The Best American Political Writing of 2003."

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Sandy Close, executive director of New California Media, got a taste of the power of polling when she saw the headline in The Wall Street Journal. "Bush Gambit to Woo Hispanic Voters Fizzles." The article described mixed reactions among Latinos to the Bush Administration's new immigration proposals, citing a recent New California Media national poll as a main source. Weeks later, the president amended a specific portion of the proposed legislation. It was a striking example, says Close, of how "unmediated voices can have direct impact on policy."

The immigration survey was part of a major effort by New California Media to tap the opinions of ethnic populations, in California and nationwide. Large numbers of residents have been excluded from traditional polls because the surveys are not given in their primary languages. Nowhere is this truer than in California, where demographic shifts have rendered the state "majority minority." New California Media is conducting multilingual "flash" polls designed to capture the opinions of ethnic groups affected by major events—and to do so quickly, while the events are still newsworthy.

Polls have long been used by politicians and journalists to track shifts in public opinion about various issues of the day. Now they're being used as a tool to bring once-quiet voices into the center of public debate.

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As network television news divisions struggle to attract a dwindling share of television audiences, and major print and online media outlets fold or merge to stay alive, California has become the epicenter of a nationwide explosion of ethnic news organizations. Fueled by the rapid growth of ethnic minority populations over the last decade-in California, according to Census 2000, ethnic minorities comprise 53 percent of the state's 35 million residents-this vast alternative media landscape now commands larger audiences than mainstream media in key metropolitan regions of the state.

Some 84 percent of Hispanic, Asian and African-American residents of California (close to 17 million) report that they access ethnic media outlets regularly, and 54 percent cite a specific television or radio program, website or publication as their primary source for news every day, according to a survey of 2,000 ethnic households in 12 languages commissioned by New California Media (NCM) in April 2002.

ACLU's national director Anthony Romero (r), discusses the impact of post-9/11 policies on ethnic Californians at a 11/02 forum hosted by New California Media.

These numbers alone suggest that ethnic media-long ignored or trivialized-are emerging as the most powerful new force in American journalism since the flourishing of alternative media in the 1960s and 1970s.

Now these media are joined together as New California Media, a consortium of more than 400 ethnic news organizations founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service.

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Statewide budget choices have a direct connection to the economic prospects and quality of life for all Californians, and especially for low- and moderate-income residents. Yet budget deliberations have become a closed and highly technical set of negotiations from which the public is largely excluded.

Californians, generally, appear to have little understanding of how federal, state, and local budget and economic issues and choices are related, along with an inadequate understanding of where State money is spent, and how local governments and school districts are funded. Moreover, there appears to be little understanding of where the leverage points are in economic and budget policy for improving the economic prospects for low- and moderate-income residents.

For example, nearly all economists agree that federal employment policies have the most impact on the wages and employment status of low-wage workers, yet this connection is often ignored in the ongoing debate about how to improve the economic prospects for low- and moderate-income residents. Since full employment policies benefit most residents through raising incomes and spending, greater focus on this connection could help build consensus across party and ideological lines.

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