In the main, issues that dominate any session of the California Legislature reflect what the public and news media consider at the time to be the most burning.
That’s why, for instance, the state’s acute housing shortage will receive much attention during the final month of this year’s session.
During Jerry Brown’s first governorship four decades ago, the most burning issue was the state’s sharply rising crime rate. It decided many contests for statewide, legislative and local offices and worked particularly well for Republicans.
Brown, Republican successors George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson and legislators sharply increased penalties and built dozens of new prisons. Voters also reflected the lock-‘em-up tenor of the times with such measures as the “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” sentencing law, imposing life sentences on repeat felons. It passed by a nearly 3-1 margin in 1994.
California went from having about 20,000 prison inmates when Brown began his first stint as governor to a peak of over 160,000 before federal judges began ordering a reduction in severe overcrowding just before he returned to the governorship in 2011.
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