The Third House: Lobbyists, Money, and Power in Sacramento
The Third House: Lobbyists, Money, and Power in Sacramento
Jay Michael and Dan Walters with Dan Weintraub 151 pp, Book #3974, $14.95
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Who Are These People Called Lobbyists?
Chapter 2
Who Hires Lobbyists, and Why?
Chapter 3
The Field General of Political Warfare
Chapter 4
Money, The Mother's Milk of Politics
Chapter 5
The Politics of Personal Relationships
Chapter 6
Organizing Grassroots, or Is It Astroturf?
Chapter 7
Year of Living Dangerously
Appendix
Glossary
Index
It's been said that in all respects except the technical fact that it is a state, California more accurately resembles a separate nation. Indeed, given its huge population, its breathtaking diversity, its historic independence, and its immensely powerful economy, it is the equivalent of a major European nation. Not surprisingly, there's a substantial body of scholarship and literature about the California Legislature that acknowledges the state's powerful place in national and even international affairs.
These publications include dry statistical studies, the musings of political scientists and historians and, most interestingly, insider accounts written by the odd legislator who's capable of writing a simple declarative sentence without a ghost at the keyboard. But no matter what the origin or form, they tend to focus on what politicians do, largely omitting the central role that the Capitol's 1,000-plus lobbyists play in shaping the policies that affect Californians. This book is an effort to fill the void, based on the experiences and observations of the authors, one a retired lobbyist and the other a working journalist, who collectively have well over a half-century of daily contact with what happens in the Capitol.
We hope to give readers a working knowledge of the policymaking process as it really functions, as opposed to the sanitized version one finds in civics textbooks, so they will be able to view daily accounts of Capitol events in a new and more sophisticated light. Our most consistent theme is that money is the Capitol's preoccupation, both the money to be gained or lost by interest groups in pursuing their various goals inside the building, and the money that those groups "donate" to politicians to secure access and favorable votes.
The seventh and final chapter by Dan Weintraub is adapted from a series of articles he wrote for The Orange County Register in 2000. We include it because it is an exquisitely detailed account of one lobbyist's year-long effort to enact one bill and underscores the inescapable conclusion that when moneyed interests clash with "public interest" advocates, the former almost always have their way. Public interest lobbyists just don't have all the tools—which we describe as a "three-legged stool"—that are vital to success in the California Capitol.
Jay Michael and Dan Walters
Sacramento, 2001
The origins of this book go back many years. Jay Michael left city management in 1966 to become the Sacramento representative for the University of California, and journalist Dan Walters began to cover the Capitol in 1975.
Michael arrived on the Sacramento scene just in time to see his new boss Clark Kerr fired, but stayed on to serve under Charles Hitch, whose tenure coincided with the administration of Governor Ronald Reagan. Michael left the University to serve as the chief lobbyist for the high-powered California Medical Association and—until his recent retirement—related health policy organizations.
Dan Walters' Sacramento career has spanned the administrations of Governors Jerry Brown, George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and now Gray Davis. From the Oregon line to the Mexican border, Walters has explored the forces underlying the making of California public policy. Critical, but objective, his columns constitute must reading for serious students of the state's political scene.
Together, there could be no better guides than Michael and Walters to California's "third house," the lobbyists who represent the several hundred interest groups shaping public policy in this, the nation's largest state and the world's fifth largest economy. These legislative advocates—ranging from volunteers to highly paid professionals—are at the heart of the policy process. Unrestricted by term limits, they are often the most knowledgeable individuals concerning the impact of the complex and controversial details that are the foundation of the laws and regulations (and court decisions) that affect the lives of Californians in so many ways.
In 1949, the distinguished writer Carey McWilliams described the Sacramento scene as a "marketplace," where interests not people are represented and bid for allotments of state power. Fifty years later, we know all too little about the inner workings of this "marketplace." Professor Rogan Kersh at Syracuse's Maxwell School writes, focusing on the Congress: "The influence of organized interest groups in America's pluralist political system is well chronicled by scholars. Yet interest-group lobbyists have been studied remarkably little in practice." This is no less the case for California. Studies abound on governors, the legislature, elections, political parties. But the "third house" is little examined and even less understood.
Michael and Walters address this imbalance. They draw back the curtain on the changing patterns of legislative advocacy in Sacramento—Samish and Unruh, term limits and elections, horse racing and Indian casinos, insurance and health care, changing demographics and the initiative are among the many issues and personalities that color the pages that follow. Readers will emerge with new insights into the Capitol scene and thank Jay Michael and Dan Walters for sharing their knowledge, drawn from a combined experience of more than 60 years. We are in their debt.
Eugene C. Lee
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
Director, Institute of Governmental Studies, 1967–88