Dan Walters reviews Bill Boyarsky‘s Big Daddy: Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics in the Sacramento Bee. Here’s a snippet that begins by refering to Unruh’s promises to the people of the fruits of the full-time legislature he helped create:
Initially, the promises appeared to be coming true as Sacramento generated an outpouring of legislation on civil rights, mental health reform, consumer protection and even environmental enhancement – interesting enough with conservative Republican Reagan in the governor’s chair.The moment was short-lived, however, because the Legislature saw a huge turnover of membership in the mid-1970s, thanks to a court- ordered redistricting plan that ignored incumbents’ preferences and a Democratic wave that swept over the nation in the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam War. And the new legislators were professional politicians, many of them segueing from the legislative staff, more interested in careers than policy.
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.