It is Election Week in California! Huzzah! I thought for the occasion we should bring in one of the wisest and most seasoned observers of California politics, policy and society you’ll find anywhere: Dan Walters.
Dan is based in Sacramento, where he writes for the indispensable California news website CalMatters. Prior to that Dan worked for nearly 35 years at The Sacramento Bee, and prior to that he covered the State Capitol and wrote columns for the late, lamented Sacramento Union. As a long-time columnist on all matters relating to California, Dan once told me he knows more about California than anybody else—and I believe him. (He has a chance to explain in our interview, by the way.)
Dan has been in the journalism business in one way or another since roughly 1960. He was at one time the youngest newspaper editor in the United States, as a 22-year-old leading the Hanford Sentinel, down in the Central Valley. As of next year, 2023, Dan will have been in Sacramento for a half-century. He covered the first Jerry Brown administration, from 1975-1983, and he covered the second Jerry Brown administration, from 2011-2019. Dan has seen it all, and he has chronicled those observations in what he estimates to be more than 10,000 columns over the years. But who’s counting, right?
As a native Sacramentan, I have known the name Dan Walters and the work of Dan Walters as long as I can remember. So I wanted to bring Dan on to talk not only about the stakes and subplots of the 2022 elections, but also about California over the years. And of course we get to hear Dan’s own California story, from his first news job in Humboldt County to his inside jokes with Gov. Brown and, of course, his favorite Californian.
Thank you for listening! Make sure you vote, and keep your eye on the bear! 🗳 🐻 ❤️
Episode Notes
Dan Walters is a California political columnist for CalMatters.
I’ve argued on many occasions that politics is not a leading-edge occupation. It doesn’t lead. It follows. It reacts rather than acts. I think we in the media depict politicians as the people at the head of the parade—the drum majors strutting along and leading the parade. Really, they’re the people at the end of the parade with the scoop shovels, when you think about it.
Notes and references from this episode:
@DanCALmatters - Dan Walters on Twitter
Dan Walters column archive - CalMatters
Episode 1: Gov. Jerry Brown - What is California?
The New California: Facing the 21st Century, by Dan Walters
"Gavin Newsom’s keeping it all in the family," by Dan Walters, CalMatters
Episode 32: Allison Arieff - What is California?
“Is California strangling its golden goose?”, by Dan Walters, CalMatters
“New tests underscore California’s educational crisis,” by Dan Walters, CalMatters
Hugh J. Glenn - Wikipedia
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