As his time as governor comes to an end, Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing a life-or-death decision: whether to commute the sentences of the 547 men and 18 women in state prison who have been condemned to death.

There is good reason to believe Newsom will take that step, and there is reason to believe he won’t. Neither he nor his aides are telegraphing his plan.

A mass commutation could damage his presidential ambition. But Newsom, a life-long and outspoken opponent of capital punishment, has gone further than any California governor before him to end state-sanctioned killing.

I was part of the gaggle of reporters in the Capitol hallway outside the state Senate chambers on March 13, 2019, when Newsom, two months into his first term, strode up and made the extraordinary announcement that he was granting reprieves to California’s condemned inmates, then numbering 737.

By Executive Order N-09-19, Newsom repealed California’s lethal injection protocol, which was being challenged in court, and decreed that the death chamber at San Quentin State Prison be dismantled, its parts shipped to some warehouse. The order said:

“California’s death penalty system is unfair, unjust, wasteful, protracted and does not make our state safe.”

It bluntly continued:

“I will not oversee [the] execution of any person while Governor.”

As he announced the steps, Newsom told reporters a personal story about Pete Pianezzi, a one-time bank robber who faced the possibility of a death sentence for a double murder in Los Angeles in 1937.

Newsom’s grandfather, William Newsom, who gained wealth as a builder and the moniker “Boss” as he helped Pat Brown’s political ascent, and his father, Court of Appeal Justice William Newsom, liberal to his core, became convinced Pianezzi was innocent, and worked to prove it.

After a Mafia hitman-turned government witness revealed the identities of the true murderers to authorities, Gov. Jerry Brown granted Pianezzi a full pardon in 1981.

“I was a young man learning that life story and . . . got to know Pete,” Newsom said in March 2019. “I also had the opportunity in that spirit to start thinking and reflect upon the death penalty.”

The death penalty may not be front of mind for California voters now. Another execution is theoretically possible though highly unlikely. But regardless of their view of capital punishment, past governors have struggled with the issue.

After police and lawyers do their jobs, jurors reach their verdicts, and appeals are exhausted in the courts, the decision to take or spare the life of a convicted capital murderer rests with the governor.

Pat Brown was so haunted by the issue that he wrote a book about it, “Public Justice, Private Mercy,” published in 1989. He and his co-author Dick Adler wrote in the prologue:

“In my eight years as governor, I was obliged to consider 59 death penalty cases. I was the last stop on the road to the gas chamber for these 59 people. After much deliberation, I sent 36 of them to death and granted clemency by commuting the sentences of 23 others to life in imprisonment without possibility of parole.”

Summing up his feeling at the end of his book, he wrote:

“It was an awesome, ultimate power over the lives of others that no person or government should have or crave. And looking back over their names and files now, despite the horrible crimes and the catalogue of human weaknesses they comprise, I realize that each decision took something out of me that nothing–not family or work or hope for the future–has ever been able to replace.”

Brown’s successor, Ronald Reagan, who ran on a tough-on-crime platform, allowed one execution, that of Aaron Mitchell on April 12, 1967, for the murder of a Sacramento police officer, and granted a reprieve for a second man.

So began a 25-year hiatus, punctuated in 1972 when the California Supreme Court declared that the death penalty violated the state constitutional prohibition against “cruel or unusual punishment.”

That decision reduced the sentences of the 107 condemned inmates to life in prison. Most have died, Charles Manson among them.

One, Robert Massie, got out, killed a liquor store owner in San Francisco, was sent back to death row and executed in 2001 when Gray Davis was governor.

The most famous living member of the Class of ’72 is Sirhan Sirhan, sentenced to die for assassinating Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, the night Kennedy won the California Democratic presidential primary.

Newsom, who views RFK as a hero, blocked Sirhan’s parole in 2022. Now 82, Sirhan remains at R.J. Donovan State Prison outside San Diego.

During his first term as governor in 1977, young Jerry Brown vetoed legislation to reinstate the death penalty, only to have the Legislature override his veto.

“I hope the day will come when society will not try to use death as punishment,” Brown said, reacting to the override, as recorded by tape kept by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Brown promised to uphold the law but added:

“Society does not need the death penalty. I think we will be better off without it and some day will.”

California’s 25-year death penalty moratorium ended in 1992 after Gov. Pete Wilson denied clemency to Robert Alton Harris. Wilson, another tough-on-crime Republican, did not reach his decision lightly and cited Harris’s brutal upbringing in a statewide broadcast in April 1992.

“As great as is my compassion for Robert Harris the child, I cannot excuse or forgive the choice made by Robert Harris the man,” Wilson said in denying clemency.

Having investigated Harris’s life for the Los Angeles Times and witnessed his death, I knew the story, writing that his life began on Jan. 15, 1953, “the day a drunken soldier named Kenneth Harris kicked his alcoholic wife in the gut, sending her into labor two months early.” Harris had fetal alcohol syndrome, and a father who believed he was not his own and tried to strangle Robert with a baby blanket.

Harris was 25 in July 1978 and recently released from prison for a manslaughter conviction when he kidnapped and murdered two 16-year-old boys, John Mayeski and Michael Baker, in San Diego. Wilson was San Diego mayor at the time. As governor, he said:

“Robert Harris the child had no choice – he was a victim of serious and inexcusable abuse. Robert Harris the man did have a choice. He chose to take a life, two lives.”

As one of 48 witnesses to his macabre execution, I reported for The L.A. Times that at 3:48 a.m. on April 22, 1992, three guards led Harris into the gas chamber, strapped him to one of two chairs, and closed the door, sealing him inside.

Warden Dan Vasquez was about to flip a lever to release cyanide pellets into a vat of sulfuric acid when we witnesses heard the muffled sound of a ringing telephone. Harry Pregerson, a judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, was calling to direct that Vasquez halt the execution.

Harris, confused, was unstrapped and led out of the chamber but his final reprieve was short lived. In that early morning, the U.S. Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of stripping the 9th Circuit of its authority over the case, and guards led Harris back into the chamber.

Once he was strapped back to the chair, and the guards left and sealed the airtight chamber behind them, Harris looked over his left shoulder and caught the eye of Stephen Baker, a witness who stood as close to the death chamber as he could. Baker was the San Diego police officer who had arrested Harris in July 1978 not knowing that one of his victims was his son, Michael Baker.

“I’m sorry,” Harris said.

Stephen Baker nodded.

By 6:14 a.m., Harris stopped breathing.

Then Assemblyman Tom McClintock, now a member of Congress, carried legislation allowing for lethal injection as an alternative to lethal gas, and during the next 14 years, California put to death a dozen more men, the last one being Clarence Ray Allen when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor.

Allen was convicted of ordering from his cell at Folsom State Prison the 1981 murders in Fresno of Byron Schletewitz, 27, Douglas Scott White, 18, and Josephine Rocha, 17, The Sacramento Bee’s Andy Furillo reported on Jan. 14, 2006.

Allen was 76, legally blind, had a diseased heart and required a wheelchair, though he didn’t die easily. Executioners administered a second lethal doses before he took his final breath on Jan. 17, 2006.

That year, a federal judge, acting on a suit by a death row inmate, halted more executions, concluding that California’s method of lethal injection violated the U.S. constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2016, while the state challenged that decision, voters approved a ballot measure that promised to speed up executions and rejected one to end capital punishment.

“I want to give them another chance,” Newsom told CalMatters’ reporters as he ran for governor in 2018, contemplating another ballot measure asking voters once again whether they supported capital punishment. He didn’t follow through on that notion.

Once in office, Newsom realized that 25 men had exhausted their appeals and could be executed on his watch. As he told it, Pete Pianezzi came to mind.

Pianezzi had been arrested for the 1937 murder of Les Bruneman, a gambler who had run afoul of Los Angeles mobsters. A Los Angeles Daily News reporter described the crime in November 1952 writing that “a couple of torpedoes stitched up Bruneman with a lot of lead” at the Roost Cafe in Los Angeles and killed a restaurant worker who could have been a witness.

“Hardly anyone except the politicians, grafters and police who had profited out of Bruneman’s operations were incensed over his death,” the Daily News reporter wrote.

Evidently believing Pianezzi was innocent, the reporter called him the “Bum Rap Kid,” and quoted one of the cops who arrested him as saying he no longer believed Pianezzi did the murder.

Pianezzi was nearly sentenced to death in one trial—apparently one juror held out–but spent 13 years in prison for murders he did not commit. After being paroled from Folsom Prison in 1953, he settled in Marin County, worked as a distributor of the San Francisco Examiner, met Newsom’s grandfather and father and became a fixture in North Beach.

“My grandfather had made it a life pursuit to address the injustice of Pete’s arrest and prosecution for a crime he didn’t commit,” Newsom said in 2019.

In 1979, two San Diego Union reporters, the late John Sandefer and Carl Cannon, reported that Aladena “Jimmy the Weasel” Fratianno, a Mafia hitman, unraveled the mystery after he became a government witness, telling authorities that L.A. mob boss Jack Dragna directed that Frank “The Bomp” Bompensiero, a San Diego mobster, and Leo “The Lips” Moceri murder Bruneman for refusing to share his gambling proceeds.

Pianezzi and his friends, including former Senator and Judge Quentin Kopp and the late San Francisco journalist Warren Hinckle, pressed Jerry Brown to grant the pardon. He did so in October 1981.

The San Francisco Examiner reported that Pianezzi celebrated with a glass of white wine at La Pantera Restaurant in North Beach. Justice Newsom was there, as he was at Pianezzi’s wake in 1992, at the old North Beach hangout, Washington Square Bar and Grill.

“The guy got evidence that he is innocent,” Jerry Brown told me in 2019. “Why wouldn’t you pardon him? If you don’t pardon him, you’re doing an injustice.”

No matter what Newsom does on the clemency question, the death penalty will remain embedded in the state constitution, thanks to a 1972 ballot measure championed by Reagan and future Gov. George Deukmejian. Voters would have to decide by a ballot measure to strip it from the law.

As of today, California prisons hold 565 condemned inmates, 172 fewer than when Newsom took office. Some have had their cases overturned. District attorneys in several counties have agreed to reduce the sentences of many more, and 66 have died, including 13 during the COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin in 2020.

Newsom will face hurdles and unanswered questions if he decides to commute the remaining death sentences. It is, for example, unclear whether he could grant a mass clemency or would need to grant separate petitions.

For inmates who have no prior convictions, other than for their capital crimes, the governor could grant clemency. But for the bulk of the death row inmates, he would need to gain the approval of the state parole board, and the California Supreme Court would have to agree that he was not abusing his discretion.

Although Democratic nominees control the court, the justices’ consent is not certain. Perhaps complicating matters, two of the six sitting justices will be on the ballot in November—the 40^th anniversary of the historic election in which voters ousted Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other Jerry Brown-appointed justices over her votes against death judgments.

A commutation would not authorize the inmates’ release. They still would face life behind bars. But Anne Marie Schubert, the former Sacramento County District Attorney who is president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, pointed to the push in recent years to abolish the concept of life in prison without possibility of parole. If that effort succeeds, formerly condemned inmates could be freed.

“This is a bombshell that is waiting to explode,” Schubert said.

There could be other political consequences. Each condemned inmate was convicted of a horrible crime. Each could make for an attack ad. Some murders were especially awful, such as the 1993 kidnap and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas by Richard Allen Davis, now housed at Ironwood State Prison.

Newsom’s stand on the death penalty is in sync with other potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates. Most, if not all, oppose the death penalty.

But commutations granted by Newsom would set up a stark contrast with at least one potential Republican presidential candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis’s Sunshine State has carried out 13 executions so far in 2026.

Newsom has faced backlashes before. He incurred withering attacks, including from allies, for his decision as San Francisco mayor in 2004 to authorize same-sex marriages. But he is an agile politician who has shown an ability to read voters’ attitudes ahead of more cautious Democrats.

For a hint of what he might do as he prepares to leave office, look at what he said eight years ago as he prepared to assume office. Under questioning by Laurel Rosenhall, then of CalMatters, Newsom said he had met with the then-occupant of the corner office.

“I told Gov. Brown the other day to solve this before the next governor comes into office. … I said what are you doing, what are you going to do,” Newsom said.

Newsom would not reveal Brown’s reply. But the answer became apparent once Brown departed Sacramento for his home in the hills of Colusa County. The death sentences of 700-plus inmates were intact, waiting for Newsom.

Note: If you like what you’re reading, please look for my book, “Am I Crazy, Danny? A Family’s Search for Answers in a Broken Mental Health System.” University of California Press is the publisher. Publication date is March 2027.

Donors gave Becerra’s campaign for governor $1.9 million in the first 15 days of August to Republican Steve Hilton’s $690,000 in four- and five-figure sums, reports filed with the California Secretary of State show.

The haul builds on Becerra’s substantial lead over Hilton in the money race.

• Becerra ended the first half of the year–June 30–with more than $6.2 million in the bank. Hilton had $2.1 million but also $1.4 million in unpaid bills.

• Since July 1, Becerra has raised $6 million to Hilton’s $1.2 million in four and five-figure donations.

In the first half of August, no fewer than 17 donors gave Becerra $39,200, the maximum allowed by state law in direct contributions to a statewide candidate per election, compared with six for Hilton.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Associations, the union that represents officers in state prisons, was among the donors giving Becerra $39,200. The union depends on the governor’s office to grant its members raises.

Through various entities, the California Association of Health Facilities, the trade group that represents nursing homes, has given Becerra $131,000, while alcohol manufacturer Diageo gave $25,000. Both have significant lobby efforts in Sacramento.

Campaign finance reports filed since July 1 do not reflect small dollar donations. But the mid-year filing showed that in the first half of 2026, Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, significantly outraised Becerra in donations of less than $1,000, as I detailed in this report.

Hilton spokesman Hector Barajas said the Hilton campaign has more than 100,000 donors, many of them “middle-class families, small business owners, and people struggling to make ends meet in a state that has become far too expensive.”

“That is the choice in this race: the political establishment and its insiders fighting to protect the same failed Sacramento machine, versus more than 100,000 people who pay the bills, raise families, run businesses, and are sick of paying more and getting less,” Barajas said in an email.

The California Republican Party continued to struggle reporting having raised $170,500 in larger donations.

Shiralian Enterprises Inc., which operates gas stations and is based in Fresno, gave $138,000 to the state GOP, making it by far the state party’s largest donor in 2026. Additionally, its owners gave Hilton a combined $77,400 in August.

The California Democratic raised $1.82 million in the first half of August. Its largest donor during that period artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, which gave $850,000. The California Chamber of Commerce gave the party $100,000. The chamber tilted toward the California GOP in the early 2000s, before California became a solidly Democratic state.

If it wasn’t before, a California initiative to tighten voting requirements became nationalized when Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, one of President Donald J. Trump’s large donors, contributed $6.5 million to the Yes-on-Proposition 39 campaign.

Previously, Uihlein donated $4 million in December to ensure Proposition 39’s backers gathered enough signatures of registered voters to qualify it for the November ballot.

The latest contribution, dated Aug. 4 and flagged by the California Target Book’s Rob Pyers, brings the total Uihlein has donated to the campaign to $10.5 million–half of the $21 million raised so far by the initiative’s backers led by Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, a San Diego Republican.

Proposition 39 is part of a national push by conservatives to require that voters provide proof that they’re eligible to vote before their ballots are counted, and comes as President Trump pressures Congress to approve his Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.

Trump has pushed the S.A.V.E. Act as he continues to claim without proof that large numbers of undocumented immigrants vote and Democrats rig elections—even as Trump occupies the White House, the GOP controls both houses of Congress, a majority of state legislatures, most state attorneys general, and 26 governors to the Democrats’ 24.

In an interview, DeMaio differentiated his ballot measure by saying that unlike the SAVE Act, Proposition 39 would not curtail mail-in voting.

DeMaio, a podcaster who is known in the Legislature as divisive, said he sought to avoid a “partisan food fight” by tempering his measure, and cited its support from Democrats. Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso, a former Republican turned moderate Democrat, gave $25,000 to the effort in June.

“We felt a bipartisan solution to voter I.D. was necessary,” DeMaio said. “We created a balanced approach of reforms.”

Current state law makes registering to vote seamless when people turn 18 or obtain driver’s licenses, one reason why more than 85 percent of the state’s eligible voters are registered. Californians must provide identification such as a driver’s license or Social Security number when they register to vote, and county election officials check voters’ signatures to verify they’re properly registered.

Proposition 39 would create a state constitutional amendment requiring that voters verify that they’re citizens by showing identification when they vote at polling places, or provide some form of government identification–such as the last four digits of their driver’s licenses–when they vote by mail. Voters would be required to repeat the process each time they vote in any California election, though they could obtain new state-issued voter identification cards.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that Proposition 39 would cost taxpayers “tens of millions of dollars to low hundreds of millions of dollars” to implement.

Uihlein’s $10.5 million to support Proposition 39 represents his first significant foray into California state politics. But for years, he and his wife Elizabeth have been major funders of conservative causes, particularly Republicans who embrace an America First view of domestic policies, as detailed by the investigative reporting organization, ProPublica, in 2022:

“They are major funders to groups spreading election falsehoods, including Restoration of America, which, according to an internal document obtained by ProPublica, aims to ‘get on God’s side of the issues and stay there’ and ‘punish leftists.’”

The New York Times in 2018 described the Uihleins as social conservatives, wrting that “opposing gay and transgender rights was frequently a focus” of their political efforts.

The Uihleins initially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s failed bid for the presidency in 2024, but shifted to Trump, giving $10 million to the president’s Make America Great Again political action committee in May 2024.

Additionally, the couple donated $2.5 million to the Republican Governors Association during the past decade, and through their Fair Courts American campaign committee, the couple spent millions seeking to tilt state supreme courts toward Republicans, including a failed effort in 2025 to stack the Wisconsin Supreme Court, data compiled by the nonpartisan Open Secrets organization shows.

The Uihleins list their residence as being in Lake Bluff, Ill., and own a corporation–Uline, in Pleasant Prairie, Wisc.--that provides packing material, bags and cardboard, a business that boomed as Americans shopped online during COVID-19 pandemic.

DeMaio, one of 20 Republicans in the 80-seat assembly, said he does not know Uihlein and did not solicit the donation. He also pointed to the large numbers of small dollar donations that have flowed in support of the measure.

DeMaio has shown an ability to tap into issues that appeal to conservatives, and raise large sums of money from small dollar donors, giving him his own power base. His Reform California ballot measure committee raised more than $4.6 million in the first 18 months of the 2025-2026 election cycle, $3.5 million of which came in increments of less than $1,000. Its $2.2 million in the bank is twice what the California GOP had in its account at the end of the most recent reporting period.

“Proposition 39 has the most diverse small-dollar donor base of all the initiatives put on the [2026] ballot,” DeMaio said. “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of contributors and the average contribution is $67 per individual over the past 12 months. … This is fueled by a grassroots, small-dollar donor base.”

The Yes on 39 is vastly outraising the opposition–and that probably will continue as donors who might otherwise spend money opposing the initiative are focused on congressional races and Proposition 40, the initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot to impose a tax on billionaires.

The ACLU has been leading the campaign to defeat Proposition 39, having donated most of its money, $265,000. The No on 39 campaign had $249,000 in the bank at the end of June, the most recent report showing cash on hand.

Update:

• On the day I posted this piece, Delaney Quinn, a liberal donor in Oakland who has contributed millions to her causes, contributed $1.5 million to the No on Proposition 39 campaign. A day later, Aug. 11, the California Teachers Association gave $500,000 to oppose the initiative. The Yes on 39 campaign still has vastly outraised the opponents. . But it looks as if there will be a fight.

• Carl DeMaio criticized me for describing him as a “podcaster who is know in the Legislature as divisive.” He called that description “absolutely unprofessional.” I answered his text by saying I didn’t mean to offend him. I should note that in the first reference I described him simply as a San Diego Republican. Later, I described him as being able to raise significant sums from small donors, which gives him a power base.

DeMaio lost twice in court last week, as reported by Courthouse News Service.

Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang of Sacramento sided with Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, who sued over what was to be backers’ claims in the voter pamphlet sent to all registered voters that Proposition 39 would save money and make voting easier.

Chang wrote:

“It is hard to conceive how it would be ‘easy’ or ‘easier’ to vote if a voter has to take the extra step of either bringing government-issued identification when voting in person or search for their government-issued identification and supply the last four digits if they vote by mail.”

In a separate case, Superior Court Judge Jennifer Rockwell of Sacramento upheld the official title and summary for Proposition 39 written by Attorney General Rob Bonta, which reads:

“Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”

The Yes-on-39 campaign had proposed:

“Establishes additional voter identification and citizenship verification requirements.”

DeMaio’s response:

“California politicians know that a supermajority of California voters support Prop 39’s bipartisan solution for voter ID—so now they are corruptly trying to rig the election by putting a biased and dishonest title on this common-sense measure.”

Note: This article has been updated with additional information about Steve Hilton’s fundraising.

The Republican National Committee is rolling in money, while the Democratic National Committee struggles. Not so in California.

Here, where Democratic voters vastly outnumber Republicans, the California Democratic Party’s main fundraising committee hauled in $17.4 million in the first six months of 2026 and had $25.5 million in cash on hand heading into the November election.

The California Republican Party took in a paltry $119,893 in the first half of the year and had $1,032,694 in the bank at the end of June, not sufficient for a single competitive assembly race.

For California’s once Grand Ole Party, it’s even worse than it seems. Mid-year campaign finance reports show:

• The state Democratic Party raised six-figure sums from at least 51 major donors in the first six months of 2026.

• Fighting what likely will be a losing battle to win even a single statewide office, the state Republican Party received no donations of $100,000 or more in the first half of this year.

• Between April 19 and June 30, the GOP disclosed only two donations–$5,000 from AT&T and $10,000 from the Association of California Life & Health Insurance Companies. However, it refunded money to other donors, leaving the total take during that period at $6,980.

Donors have given more money to the California Republican Party’s federal account, which can spend money on congressional races. But that federal account ended June with $490,000 in the bank, a federal election commission filing shows.

California Republican Party spokesman Matt Shupe declined to be interviewed but sent a 235-word email citing the national party’s fundraising prowess, and saying:

“The short snapshot of time in the state financial reports reflects the ebbs and flows of political fundraising and the hard-fought final days of a Republican primary for governor without a self-funded candidate.”

In the past, the state party and legislative leaders raised money jointly. But there has been a split over money allocation, and former Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher and Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones established a joint political action committee, overseen by veteran campaign manager Marty Wilson.

The Legislative Action PAC has raised $3.7 million so far in 2026 and had $4.9 million in the bank as of June 30. Many donors—oil, tech and pharmaceutical companies—are sending money directly to the legislators’ leadership committee, rather than the state party. Google, for one, gave $300,000 to the legislative leaders, and AT&T gave $200,000 in June.

Note: The following section has been updated:

Separately, drawn by the promise of power, donors contributed $11 million to Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee for governor, in the six-week period ending on June 30, compared with $4.4 million for his Republican opponent, Steve Hilton.

More than half of Becerra’s sum--$5.6 million—flowed into his campaign account between June 2 when he emerged as the top vote-getter in the primary and June 30. Hilton raised $1.9 million during that period.

By the end of June, Becerra had $6.2 million in the bank. And his fundraising hasn’t slowed. In July, the frontrunner to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom raised no less than $2.9 million, other campaign finance reports show.

Hilton’s mid-year report showed he had $2.1 million in the bank but debts of $1.4 million, with outstanding bills to consultants, lawyers, American Express and various other vendors.

Although Becerra is outraising Hilton, Hilton is raising large sums from small-dollar donors. Of the $1.9 million Hilton raised between the primary on June 2 and the end of the filing period, June 30, $984,000 came in increments of less than $1,000, and more than a third of that came from outside California.

Small dollar donors are important to candidates as they can tap large numbers of such contributors for regular if small sums.

California’s campaign finance reports include a category called unitemized receipts of less than $100. Becerra’s mid-year report showed he raised $278,000 in such increments. Hilton reported $765,000 in that same category.

Hilton spokesman Hector Barajas attributed the large number of small donors from outside California to Hilton’s background as a Fox News host, his presence on social media and the concern that California’s policies and problems will spread beyond its borders.

Separate late contribution reports show Hilton raised an additional $427,000 in July, though those reports only count donations of $5,000 or more. Becerra raised almost seven times that sum in July in increments of $5,000 or more.

The California Republican Party’s fundraising hasn’t always been so pitiful. In the 2005-2006 cycle, when Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for reelection, the California Republican Party raised $45.5 million, and tapped all manner of interests, from tobacco and oil companies to gambling and insurance concerns. Such donors are all but absent in 2026.

Individuals’ expiring biological clocks exacerbated to the GOP’s decline. A. Jerrold Perenchio gave the state Republican Party almost $5.4 million in 2005-2006. He died in 2017. Texan T. Boone Pickens gave $3 million to the California GOP during Schwarzenegger’s 2006 reelection. He died in 2019.

A few major donors have switched allegiances. Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso, for example, gave the state GOP $240,000 in 2005-2006. Now a moderate Democrat, Caruso backed San Jose Mayor Matt Mahon’s candidacy in the primary for governor.

The state GOP had been a money player during the 2025 redistricting fight when it raised $18.4 million--though that experience that may have further soured the GOP’s big donors from spending in California.

Answering President Donald J. Trump’s demand that leaders in conservative states gerrymander congressional maps to favor Republicans, California voters overwhelmingly approved Newsom’s Proposition 50 to redraw this state’s congressional boundaries to favor Democrats

Chevron had given the state Republican Party $400,000 in 2025 and the California Real estate political action committee added $350,000. Large though those donation were, they didn’t match sums given when Schwarzenegger held office. Chevron gave the state GOP $900,000 in 2005-2006, and the California Real Estate political action committee gave $643,000. Neither has given to the state GOP in 2026.

Schwarzenegger predicted as much a year after his reelection. As detailed by the political affairs reporter Carla Marinucci, then of the San Francisco Chronicle, Schwarzenegger appeared at a 2007 GOP convention in Indian Wells and told the party faithful:

“In movie terms, we are dying at the box office. We are not filling the seats.”

He urged the GOP to take moderate stands by accepting climate change solutions and acknowledging the need for affordable healthcare. Not only did the party fail to heed his warning but the party embraced Trump, an extraordinarily polarizing politician.

The Democratic Party’s fundraising has expanded, though there have been notable changes. A decade ago, in the first six months of 2016, Democratic Party raised $12.7 million. Back then Chevron was a major donor, giving $415,000 to the California Democratic Party.

Having relocated its corporate headquarters from San Ramon to Texas, Chevron has given zero to the Democratic Party in 2026, though it did contribute $500,000 to an independent campaign that boosted Becerra’s candidacy in the primary.

PG&E was another major donor in the past, giving the Democratic Party $920,000 in 2015-2016. PG&E spent almost $19 million in the first half of 2026, but most of that went into a campaign to derail billionaire Tom Steyer’s gubernatorial campaign. PG&E has given nothing to the state Democratic Party in 2026.

Organized labor remains the California Democratic Party’s largest source of money. But the state party also draws significant sums from business interests.

The California Real Estate PAC was the state Democratic Party’s largest donor the first half of in 2026, at $875,000, followed by Airbnb, at $675,000, the American Beverage Assn., at $650,000, the California Hospitals Association at $600,000, the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation at $580,000, and the California Teachers Association at $525,000.

A few donors who have cozied up to Presidential Trump also gave to the California Democratic Party—once more illustrating that power draws donations.

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, for one, contributed $125,000 in 2026 and another $125,000 in 2025 to the California Democratic Party, though Bezos’ donations here don’t rival the $1 million he gave to Trump’s inaugural committee, or the estimated $75 million Amazon paid for the rights to and marketing of the Melania Trump movie. Amazon gave $125,000 to the Republican legislative leaders campaign committee in June.

No office holder can match the power of a president. With Trump as president and Republicans controlling Congress, the Republican National Committee had $128 million in the bank at the end of June. As of June 30, the struggling Democratic National Committee reported having $30.5 million cash on hand, only $5 million more than its California counterpart.

GOP spokesman Shupe’s email noted:

“We are aware California Republicans face an uphill battle, but our advantage is that we are not trapped defending failed Democratic policies that are driving up the cost of living and declining the quality of life of every Californian.

“We are building the aggressive, responsible operation it will take to fight in the general election and win. We are determined to hold Democrats accountable for their failed policies so we can turn this state around and make it a place everyone can be proud of.”

I write about this now after Padilla attacked President Donald J. Trump’s latest rant delivered in prime time last Thursday about his wholly unproven claims that large numbers of undocumented immigrants vote.

Padilla is the son of immigrants, a father who was a cook at Du-par’s in Los Angeles and a mother who cleaned houses. He entered kindergarten speaking Spanish, got into MIT where he studied engineering, and like many Latinos of his generation, became politicized during the fight against Proposition 187 of 1994, a cruel idea.

By promising to deny all public funds to undocumented immigrants, it would have barred children whose parents brought them here without authorization from public schools, essentially turning teachers into immigration officers. The sick could have been denied government-funded health care, including elderly people in nursing homes. After voters approved it in the Republican wave of 1994, courts rightly struck it down, though the battle continues 30 years on.

Padilla, meanwhile, rose in politics, working as a Los Angeles field representative for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, winning a Los Angeles city council seat in 1999 and becoming its president, and winning the state senate seat in 2006 representing his hometown of Pacoima.

Then the young man on the rise had the fright of his life. On Dec. 5, 2006, a day after being sworn in, Sen. Padilla had a headache and thought he had the flu. It was far more serious. Diagnosed with a malformation in the outer lining of his brain, known as dural arteriovenous fistula, he underwent surgery.

Although we didn’t know one another, Padilla trusted me enough to sit down with me over coffee in Sacramento a few weeks later and tell me about it. I wrote a story, which ran on Dec. 14, 2006. He was at work when the Legislature convened that January.

In the Legislature, Padilla gained a reputation as a moderate Democrat. The engineer-politician carried business-friendly legislation on telecommunications, energy and the power grid, though he regularly returned to topics closer to his heart, health care and children who are English language learners.

In 2009, when I decided to leave The Times, Padilla surprised me by sponsoring a proclamation acknowledging my 27 years at his hometown paper. I found it awkward to be honored on the Senate floor by politicians I covered, but appreciated his thoughtful gesture then, more so now that I’ve left the daily news business.

I was The Sacramento Bee’s editorial page editor in the election year of 2014 when he decided to run statewide, seeking to become Secretary of State, the office that oversees that most American of functions–voting.

For the first time, California was holding an open primary in which the top two vote getters faced one another in the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. Dan Schnur, a one-time Republican who dropped his party affiliation after serving as chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission, ran as a no-party preference candidate for an office that ought to be nonpartisan. Schnur might have gotten my vote in the general election, but ran fourth in the primary behind Democratic Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco.

Yee’s footnote in California history is that while running for an office that monitors honesty in politics, he faced a federal racketeering indictment alleging that in the Legislature, he traded votes for campaign donations. He pled guilty a year after the primary, and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Padilla was the top primary vote getter, narrowly, 30.2 percent to 29.7 percent for his Republican opponent, Pete Peterson, a smart and accomplished academic. In The Bee’s editorial endorsement interviews, I asked candidates a basic question: How many additional voters would they expect to register during their terms. Padilla responded by saying he’d register another million voters. We on the editorial board approved and in April 2014 wrote:

“It’s expected that Padilla will run for U.S. Senate at some point. But that’s a plus: He will have to do more than a mediocre job as secretary of state if he wants voters to endorse him for a more powerful position.”

In 2014, California had 17.8 million registered voters, 73 percent of the eligible adults. By the end of Padilla’s first term four years later, an additional 1.5 million citizens were registered to vote. By 2021, when Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Padilla to the U.S. senate seat vacated when Kamala Harris became vice president, California had 22 million registered voters, almost 88 percent of all eligible adults.

As secretary of state, Padilla had embraced automatically registering citizens when they apply for drivers licenses, and promoted pre-registration. When 16 and 17-year-olds apply for learners permits, they get pre-registered, so they are signed up to vote when they turn 18. He also presided over another far less noticed change, one I especially appreciated, though he would have had no way of knowing why.

For almost 20 years, I was my brother Frank’s conservator, first with our father and later on my own. By law, Frank and I would appear once a year in front of a superior court commissioner to renew that conservatorship.

Conservatorship forms enumerated rights Frank, like all people who are conserved, forfeited: the right to own a gun and have a drivers license were two. A third was the right to vote. The form read: "The conservatee is not capable of completing an affidavit of voter registration," and: "The conservatee is disqualified from voting." In other words, “conservatees” routinely lost their most basic right to speak through the ballot box. It was an unnecessary indignity.

Frank viewed himself as a Republican, knew the names of presidents, and held a healthy disdain for politicians. Despite his brain injury, Frank knew enough to vote. Each year, at my request and at Frank’s, the commissioner would make a note specifically allowing Frank to vote.

In 2015, 15 years after Frank died, a source in Padilla’s office called to alert me to legislation backed by Padilla that would grant citizens who are conserved the right to vote. The bill by Assemblyman Marty Block, a San Diego Democrat, passed over the objections of several Republican legislators. Foreshadowing the future president, they claimed without evidence that Democrats would manipulate the votes of such people. I wrote in a column supporting the bill, pointing out that if all citizens who are conserved voted, their collective voices might nudge politicians to pay attention to their needs.

Knowing Sen. Padilla, I was pained when I saw the video of federal agents tackling and cuffing him as he tried to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem amid the immigration raids in Los Angeles in 2025. I think today what must have gone through his mind when he saw images of Liam Conejo Ramos, the bundled-up 5-year-old boy with the Spiderman backpack and blue knit cap with floppy bunny ears being detained in Minneapolis by immigration agents earlier this year.

And I listened to Padilla’s comments on Trump’s bogus claim that hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants are registered to vote in California and other states:

“Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about the integrity of our elections are false. We cannot and will not let him erode trust in American democracy.”

Trump cannot square his claim of voter fraud with the reality that Republicans control both houses of Congress, for now, and that he won the presidency in 2016 and 2024 when Democrats held the White House, but lost in 2020 when he was President. Of course, his claims are fantasy. And so the son of immigrants, a politician who helped millions of citizens register to vote, defends our most fundamental right.

I write about it for two reasons:

• First, Crowell, whose history was posted earlier in July, has a fascinating story to tell. In the middle 1960s, she worked to find the exact home addresses of every patient at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk so that once patients were released, Los Angeles County could provide care–and how that care never truly materialized. In later years, she witnessed as the Los Angeles County jail gained the reputation for being the largest asylum in the nation–although the Cook County jail and Rikers Island competed for that same ignominious distinction.

• Second, Open California was able to present her story—and the stories of more than two dozen other consequential Californians—thanks to modest grants from the California State Library.

Open California, a nonprofit journalism organization, had the world-class journalist Lowell Bergman interview U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson. Acclaimed Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, who died recently, interviewed President Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese III, and Stuart Spencer, who managed Reagan’s campaigns for governor and president. Mary Louise Frampton interviewed Abby Abinanti of the Yurok Tribe.

Former San Francisco Chronicle Managing Editor Jerry Roberts interviewed John Burton. Political reporter Carla Marinucci interviewed Barbara Boxer and Ace Smith, among others. I was able to interview Ward Connerly, Curt Pringle, Don Novey and another pioneer, Leona Egeland Rice, who was an assemblywoman for three terms in the 1970s and chaired a subcommittee on mental health.

We had hoped to continue the series but journalism isn’t free, even at not-for-profit sites such as Open California.

Private donations matter. Lately, as a former colleague Jim Boren recently wrote, the state of California stepped in. The new budget earmarks $25 million for various local journalism projects. Former Sen. Steve Glazer, Rebuild Local News, educators and assorted journalists pushed for the funding. CalBizz is preparing to allocate millions more to news organizations.

Assemblyman Chris Ward, a San Diego Democrat, is carrying Assembly Bill 2222 to create tax credits worth about $50 million annually for news organizations that hire reporters, reasonable in a state that grants $750 million in tax credits to encourage entertainment corporations to film movies and television shows in California.

Back to Areta Crowell. Her name may not be well-known today. But she was a pioneer. She ran mental health departments in San Diego, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, was called up to advise legislators, and always battled for more funds and better care for people who through no fault of their own could not care for themselves.

From the start, she saw that the big flaw in the system was the lack of appropriate housing for people with severe brain disorders.

“The thing that we missed most in the '80s and '90s was how important it was to be able to control and have housing that you could assure people could have a house. Then you can do an awful lot with peer support to keep that community constructed and working,” she said.

Crowell’s wisdom remains relevant today. Please take the time to listen, and while you’re at Open California, check out the other oral histories.

I titled the book “Broken, A story of family, the politics of the mental health care system, and hope.” I didn’t love it but couldn’t think of a different title. Smart marketing folks at UC Press dug into the body of the book and pulled a line from a scene I wrote about involving my brother, Frank. I had taken him out of the East Oakland institution where he was living for a movie and lunch. We were at a Denny’s, and he was eating his regular—a burger, fries with lots of ketchup, coffee with even more sugar and a strawberry milkshake—when he surprised me by asking, “Am I Crazy, Danny?”

Hence, the new title, “Am I Crazy, Danny? A Family’s Search for Answers in a Broken Mental Health System.”

I told him no, which was accurate. But as with all matters of the brain, the truth was complicated. Frank was the victim of brain injury, the result of a car accident when he was 22 in 1969. Some of his symptoms mimicked those of people diagnosed with mental illness. Other symptoms were similar to some people who have developmental and intellectual disabilities. But he fell under the same law that governs people with mental illness, the one signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1967 that accelerated the emptying of state hospitals.

Frank, who died in 2000, was unusual in many ways. One was that while asylums were closing, and people with various brain disorders were populating streets and jails, he remained in institutions—Agnews, Stockton, Camarillo and Napa state hospitals—for most of his adult life. The state provided his care, but he always had family—first our mother and father, then our father and me after mom died, and finally me—to advocate for him, and provide many of his wants, Tareyton cigarettes, Cheez-its and chocolate chip cookies.

I tell the story of Frank and my parents in the book, but I don’t view it as a memoir. My goal was to place my family story in the broader context of the mental health care system, and to show what motivated politicians who wrote the laws that drove mental health care policy, what some of the reverberations have been, and, to an extent, how we might fix this crisis that is six decades in the making, though there is no quick fix.

California is a character in the book. It’s a place I know, having spent four-plus decades as a journalist writing about its policy and politics, and because the national story of deinstitutionalization is best told from here. California led other states in emptying its state hospitals, beginning when Pat Brown was governor, and accelerating during Ronald Reagan’s eight years in Sacramento. Ever since, governors, no matter their party, generally followed their lead, with the exception of Gavin Newsom.

I began thinking about this project in the pandemic year, 2020, shortly after I left my last paying job, one at CalMatters. I got diverted when the great Simon & Schuster editor Priscilla Painton gave me the unexpected gift of asking me to write “Kamala’s Way, An American Life.”

Returning to what became “Am I Crazy, Danny” in 2021, my friend, the author and journalist Mark Arax, said it would be like an archeological dig into my family history. It was that. I learned things about Frank and my parents that neither I nor my sister Julie knew.

At UCLA’s special collections library, I read about the early years of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. That included the papers of an organization called Parents of Adult Schizophrenics. My parents were early members of that organization. Its founders became founding members of NAMI. I was heartened when Jessica Wilson, leader of NAMI-California, told me she asks that people who are newly hired at NAMI watch, “When Medicine Got it Wrong,” a 2009 documentary about that organization.

At the California State Archives, and in the reading rooms of the Bancroft Library, Hoover Institution, University of Southern California and Reagan Presidential Library, I found revelatory details about Jerry Brown, Gov. and President Ronald Reagan, and lesser known but important figures, most notably Frank Lanterman, the Republican assemblyman, who wrote landmark legislation on developmental disabilities and mental health care. The Lanterman Petris Short Act of 1967, a bill of rights for people with severe mental illness, became a template for laws in several other states and parts of it became part of my family’s life.

UC Press’s process requires that books be peer reviewed. Three peers read drafts of the manuscript and liked it. One of those reviewers offered wise suggestions, so I retooled and resubmitted it. Next, it went to the University of California Press faculty review panel, which approved it for publication. I never know what I find to be interesting will strike chords with readers. So I was especially pleased to read what the panel wrote:

“This is a unique, extraordinary book. It is not an exaggeration to say that the history of deinstitutionalization in California could not have been written in this compelling a way by anyone else. Dan Morain’s close personal and long-term connection to the realities it produced, his unique perspective as a California news insider developed over the decades he covered critically important issues, events, and people in the state, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the Sacramento political world are all brought to bear here. I cannot argue with Morain’s stunning claim, that ‘the way deinstitutionalization was carried out may have been the worst public policy debacle of the last 60 years’ (p. 7). No one has adequately told this story and, as I say, I do not think anyone could tell it with the force and effect Morain has.”

Reporting and writing a book is a solitary undertaking and a communal effort. I spent many days alone in archives, and many more writing in a converted bedroom and in libraries. It could not have happened without the support of my family and the help of people who took the time to tell me their stories and provide their insights. I thank them all.

Mary Lynne Vellinga and I joined several hundred volunteers on Jan. 26, 2026, for Sacramento’s Point-In-Time Count, and wrote the following essay about what we saw. Mary Lynne is a former city editor of the Sacramento Bee and was chief of staff to ex-Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. The Golden State Report, a great new journalism start-up, published the piece first. Please subscribe to it.

On a brisk Sacramento evening in late January, we joined hundreds of volunteers carrying flashlights and wearing reflective vests and armbands, looking to find the people left behind, the ones most of us usually avoid.

A 74-year-old man rearranged items in his home, a 1997 GMC Sierra pickup truck with expired registration tags.

A 37-year-old woman whose possessions filled a shopping cart said she had never lived indoors after leaving her childhood home.

A man told us he had mental health issues and a developmental disability but no problems with substance abuse. He was sitting next to a wine bottle and holding a pipe.

As thousands of people prepared to bed down in cars, tents or on the bare ground in California’s capital city, we roamed vacant lots, shopping center parking lots, roadsides and parks looking to tally them for a point-in-time count, or PIT. This census is conducted each year or two in communities around the state and country to measure the problem of homelessness and to satisfy federal funding requirements.

We — two former newspaper journalists, along with one Episcopal priest — were one team among about 800 volunteers who participated in this year’s bi-annual Sacramento County PIT Count, organized by the nonprofit group Sacramento Steps Forward. In 2024, the census yielded a count of 6,615 people. Of these, 3,944 were living outdoors or in vehicles, a 41-percent drop from 2022.

Since then, the number of people engaged with the Homeless Response System in Sacramento County has grown, reaching 9,049 at the end of December. But that growth could be the result of greater efforts to get people enrolled in services and may not signal an increase in the PIT Count.

The results of this year’s count are scheduled for release in May.

Our team had considerable experience with the issue of homelessness — either in helping craft policy, writing articles and a book or providing direct services. Yet our experience on this single evening was illuminating — a reminder that everybody has a story to tell, and if you stop and listen, those stories can touch your heart.

It was also a reminder that the variety of individual circumstances that put a person on the street makes the problem maddeningly difficult to solve.

Homelessness is a housing problem. It’s a poverty problem. It’s an education problem. It’s a job-market problem. And it’s a problem of substance abuse and mental illness.

We were assigned to survey a part of the city around Sacramento Executive Airport, where there aren’t large encampments. We found people tucked out of the way, in ones and twos, and we interviewed a half dozen of them at length, tapping their answers into an app on our phones.

One of the questions was what they thought society could do to help them exit homelessness. Each person interviewed received a $10 Subway gift card. All were friendly and seemed eager to talk. We did not record their names. Organizers of the count promised anonymity, so we are not including names here.

A man in his mid-60s initially saw us approach and stepped out of his vehicle, asking if we “had a problem.” When we told him we had come to learn how he could be helped, he readily told his story.

He said he had lost his construction job during the pandemic, and then his home. He was living on Social Security, but it wasn’t enough to pay rent. At first, he had lived in an RV. But he lost all his belongings when it was towed. Now he lives in his car. He said he would love to work again if someone would give him a chance. He suggested job training and more affordable senior housing would help. We shook his calloused hand and moved on.

Nearby, we found the 74-year-old man, who parked his pickup behind a south Sacramento strip mall, past dark storefronts save for one with a neon sign advertising “Massage.” He said he had bought the truck in the late 1990s for work, but now uses it as his home. His eyes welled up as he described how he wakes up every 15 minutes in fear, and how his untreated hernia makes controlling his most basic bodily functions difficult. As he answered our questions, he fiddled with a stretch of twine around his waist, unsuccessfully trying to cinch it into a makeshift belt.

He spoke about his father, a factory worker in the industrial East Bay city of Pittsburg, and mentioned a three-year stint in prison.

When he was young, he had a business selling and installing hot tubs. He landed on the street when his beloved brother, with whom he’d lived, died, and he could no longer afford the rent they’d shared.

Lately, he said, he’d become so depressed and lonely he’d begun talking to himself. If he could find an apartment he could afford, he would be glad to get off the streets. Even a safe place to park the truck at night, he said, would be a big improvement.

We had to go. He invited us to visit him again.

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Next, in the parking lot of a rundown apartment house, a young man with dreadlocks sat with his girlfriend in a 1990s sedan. They said they were living in the car and both agreed to take the survey.

We cut our questions short after a young woman appeared, walking unsteadily toward the car and clutching her abdomen. Her face glistened with sweat. She said she was homeless too and would happily answer the survey except that she was in labor, and the man in the car and her sister in the passenger seat needed to take her to the hospital.

After giving them Subway gift cards, we wished them good luck. Clearly, they hadn’t seen much of that in their lives.

We drove off into the night toward our warm beds.

So it is with this boulder of mine.

I have been exploring the politics and history of the mental health care system for my book tentatively titled, Broken, since 2021, though really for years before that. After interviewing scores of people, visiting several archives, reading many thousands of pages of legislative, congressional and personal records, and writing 100,000 words, I emailed my manuscript to my editor at the University of California Press in November.

Her initial reaction was that the manuscript was much longer than the 80,000 words I had contracted to deliver. None of my words are written in gold. Every piece of writing needs editing, and any piece can be cut. But I encouraged her to read the prologue and one chapter I especially liked.

She read the entire book, liked it, and told me she didn’t see much to cut. I nonetheless went through it once more and pared it back. There will be many more edits and hurdles between now and when I finally manage to push this rock to the summit. I trust it won’t be an eternity, though it may feel that way.

As is the University of California Press’s practice, the book is being peer reviewed. Once that is done, a faculty panel will review it. I fully expect they will have comments and suggestions, and I welcome them. I want this book to be the best that it can be.

The book is part history and politics. I got to know more about President Kennedy and the Kennedy sisters—Rosemary and Eunice—who inspired him, Govs Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan, Presidents Carter and Reagan, and many other figures such as Frank Lanterman and Art Bolton, who are less well known, or known only to their immediate families and circles of friends. Three especially helpful sources died during the course of my reporting, George Steffes, who was Gov. Reagan’s first legislative affairs secretary, Stu Spencer, who helped elect Reagan as governor and president, and Dr. Cap Thomson, who was involved in early efforts to shape California mental health care law. They were giants.

The book also is a story about my brother Frank, who was nine years my senior and suffered a severe head injury when he crashed his car at age 22. Frank spent most of the rest of his days in California state hospitals, Agnews, Stockton, Camarillo and Napa. It’s also about my parents, Frances and Frank, who battled to ensure their eldest had the best possible care. They’re all gone now, and so my reporting was in part an archeological dig. One important discovery was a video of Frank taken by his therapists at Napa.

I knew my parents were active in a nascent movement by parents to provide better care for people with mental illness and, by extension, brain injury. I did not know my mother joined other moms at a sleep-in at Gov. Jerry Brown’s office in 1975 seeking improved care for people with brain disease and injury. I had no idea that a letter my father wrote in 1977 was part of the records of President Jimmy Carter’s commission chaired by Rosalynn Carter on mental health care, and knew little about the history of 1977 legislation my mother proposed and lobbied for, and that Jerry Brown signed into law. It was a small piece of legislation but still delivers help to people in California state hospitals.

I was busy in college and building my career in journalism, and only became more involved in Frank’s care after our mother died in 1980. I was his conservator first with my father and then on my own, until Frank died in 2000.

The book is California-focused, in part because it’s a place I know and have written about for more than 40 years, but also because the story of the broken mental health care system is well told from here. California led all other states in deinstitutionalization, some of it for the good and much of it not.

No politician wanted what we have now–open-air asylums and 40 percent of the inmates in California state prisons having a diagnosis of a mental illness. They had the best of intentions. But with a few notable exceptions, politicians didn’t see the upside to focusing on the issue.

We’ll never return to the days of large state asylums, and we shouldn’t. But in recent years, California has altered laws in ways that will make it easier to house and care for people who are too ill to know that they need help.

Whether you approve or disapprove of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stand on a variety of issues, there is no question that he has devoted more time, thought and money to improving the broken mental health care system than any governor since deinstitutionalization. There is much left to be done. Fixing a broken system cannot happen in two four-year terms. But there are reasons for hope, and that is part of the story I am telling too.

The daily newspaper reporter in me wishes the book could be published today. But I don’t expect to see it in print or in e-book or hear it in audio form for a year or so. That means that for the next year, I will be doing more reporting and writing on the topic.

I look forward to gauging the level of commitment on the part of candidates seeking to replace Newsom. Their commitment will determine the outcome of changes that have been made. I will write what I find as I continue, with the help of many of you, pushing this rock of mine.

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