The Inside Scoop

If ever politicians have thought they could get voter support to borrow billions of dollars to shore up California’s water infrastructure, the middle of a historically bleak drought is it.

But in truth, Prop. 1 isn’t a response to shrinking reservoirs and brown lawns. This $7.5 billion proposal is a modified version of an $11 billion water bond crafted back in 2010, a do-over hurriedly drafted by legislators worried that voters would balk at the higher pricetag.

The first voter they had to win over was Gov. Jerry Brown. Early on, he signaled that he’d prefer the 2010 water bond go down to defeat – he could simply say he didn’t write it – rather than take ownership of a new debt plan at the same time he was running for re-election on a platform of ... yes ... less debt.

Still, Prop. 1’s biggest challenge was history. Water fights in California are often epic battles pitting development and cities against environmental causes, agriculture, and rural communities.

The drought, though, seems to have motivated a truce in the bigger war. Prop. 1 sets aside the ongoing thorny issues about who gets water and focuses, instead, on some simple improvements in small doses: $2.7 billion for dams and groundwater supplies, $1.5 billion for river and stream protection and restoration, and smaller amounts for everything from wastewater treatment to levee improvements.

Will Prop. 1 help prepare California for more climate change? Some, it seems, but probably not enough. How will the bucks be divvied up? A state commission will decide in some cases, state agencies in others.

The measure does not, it should be noted, add any money to the governor’s much-debated plan for twin water tunnels underneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Talk about a political live wire.

Prop. 1 is a step on the path toward a more reliable water supply for California, but not a long-term solution. And it probably has such broad support because numerous interest groups believe there’s still a much larger water war yet to fight.

What are the arguments?

Supporters say ...

These projects will allow California to store more water for dry years, clean polluted water in rural communities and better provide for fish and wildlife – all without raising taxes. Plus, it requires oversight and annual audits to be sure the money is spent as it’s supposed to be.

Opponents say ...

California doesn’t need more expensive dams to provide water decades down the road, harming fisheries and creating pressure to divert more water from Northern California rivers. Instead, the state should fix its leaky and aging water infrastructure and promote regional water self-sufficiency.

Who is spending on these campaigns?

The inside scoop

California already has a state constitutional mandate to stash away money for bad times, one that voters enacted in 2004. So why are we doing it all over again?

The short answer: The old one didn’t work. Consider yourself warned about the promises of proposition campaigns, but that’s another story.

Prop. 2 is a more ironclad version of the state’s existing budget reserve fund – one that would be awfully hard to crack open when future political fevers demand the money be spent instead on the here and now.

The process of creating a rainy day fund is actually pretty straightforward: You have to agree on what tax revenues you can live without spending (by deciding what amount is considered surplus), and then you have to agree on both the rules governing how to fill the piggy bank and rules on when to break it open.

That’s where things get tricky.

State government forecasts of tax revenues are, at best, imperfect. Number crunchers can rarely say with certainty what revenues are truly extra … and what revenues are part of an upward trend that will last for years. Then, of course, every interest group seems to have a different definition of what constitutes a rainy day -- a crisis that necessitates spending the saved cash.

2004’s Proposition 58 created the existing state budget reserve. But neither the man who championed it, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, nor Gov. Jerry Brown ever pushed much money into it. It’s a piggy bank that pretty much sat empty every year. Lawmakers waived the annual transfer of funds so often that there wasn’t anything to fall back on during California’s most recent budget crisis.

Fixing Prop. 58 hasn’t been easy, though, and here’s why: Democrats and liberal interest groups have generally viewed any kind of mandatory transfer of tax revenues as a de facto cap on state budget spending – something conservatives have wanted for years to slow down (or stop) the growth of government programs.

Enter Prop. 2, a compromise led by Brown and former Assembly Speaker John Pérez that focuses on capital gains revenues, the volatile tax dollars paid by the state’s most wealthy. Yes, there were still critics … but none of them came forward to mount serious opposition. As for Brown – well, there’s nothing he loves more than a ballot measure preaching fiscal prudence to go along with his re-election campaign promising … of course … fiscal prudence.

Notice how Prop. 2 mandates that some of the money in the early years go to paying off debt – that’s a key part of Brown’s current governing philosophy.

In fact, the biggest flash point over Prop. 2 – if there’s one at all – is over its creation of a new cap on the size of local school district cash reserves. Yes, that has nothing to do with the state’s budget reserve. But it was a political concession, during the 2014 budget negotiations in Sacramento, one championed by the powerful California Teachers Association.

(And by the way, why are two propositions numbered differently from all the rest? The legislature and governor numbered them that way, ostensibly to offer them as a package deal to voters. But they’re not; Prop. 1’s water bond and Prop. 2’s budget reserve formula do not depend on each other’s passage to take effect.)

What are the arguments?

Supporters say ...

A strong rainy day fund will protect schools and taxpayers from the boom and bust cycles that can lead to devastating budget cuts and unnecessary tax hikes. The mandated debt payments will cut the state’s debt faster, to free up money down the road and stabilize budget-making in Sacramento.

Opponents say ...

A dangerous provision inserted into the proposition would limit how much money schools can keep in their own reserves, eliminating the cushion that allowed schools to survive state budget cuts and delayed payments in recent years. Sacramento shouldn’t be allowed to deny schools their own source of financial stability.

Who is spending on these campaigns?

The inside scoop

Call it the accidental initiative.

The backers of Prop. 45 – a proposal to give California’s independently elected insurance commissioner greater power over health insurance rates – expected it to be on the November 2012 ballot. That was a presidential election with the largest voter turnout in California in years, at a time when the future of federal health care reform was a very big – but not quite settled – issue.

Trouble was, backers submitted voter signatures so late that election officials couldn’t verify them in time for 2012. That pushed the proposal to this fall.

And that’s an important piece of history. The Affordable Care Act’s impact in the state, through the Covered California exchange, is now much more solid than it was in 2012 - and as such, some question whether Prop. 45’s time has come and gone.

Prop. 45 would essentially shift and consolidate some - but not all - of the power over health insurance rates into the hands of the independently elected insurance commissioner. For years, that power has been dispersed between the commissioner, who is elected by voters, and the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, under the control of the governor.

And therein lies the fight over Prop. 45. Supporters say this power shift would be a good thing, while critics say it would be a disaster. And the truth: No one knows for sure.

It’s true that Prop. 45 could create some wrinkles in the way Covered California operates, especially if health insurers decide to simply pull out of the state exchange if they dislike a ruling by the newly empowered insurance commissioner.

It’s also true that incumbent Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, a proponent of Prop. 45, has clashed with Covered California’s leaders several times in the past year over insurance rates that the exchange has negotiated; this initiative would give him some new muscle.

And it’s true that analysts have raised questions over language in the initiative that refers to 2012 insurance rates in the individual and small business markets. Remember, this was supposed to be on the 2012 ballot. Would that mean the insurance commissioner could retroactively go back and start cancelling existing rates … and possibly ordering refunds from insurance companies?

Prop. 45 was modeled on the 1988 initiative that established a system to review and reject auto and home insurance rates deemed too high. The backers of that 26-year-old initiative are the same ones behind this expansion into health care.

In the end, voters have to decide whether to bestow some new power on the insurance commissioner over the cost of health care, or whether this initiative’s 2012 expiration date has long since passed, making it unworkable in 2014.

What are the arguments?

Supporters say ...

Now that everyone’s required to have health insurance, it’s even more important to stop excessive and unreasonable rate hikes. Auto and home insurance companies have to justify their rates and get permission to raise them; health insurers should, too.

Opponents say ...

This isn’t about keeping health insurance rates down; it’s about who has power to regulate them. The state has an independent agency charged with negotiating reasonable rates and offering affordable plans in the state marketplace, Covered California. We shouldn’t pass a measure that conflicts with the agency’s mission.

Who is spending on these campaigns?

the inside scoop

Make no mistake about it; the central fight in this complex initiative is whether to raise California’s 39-year-old cap on the amount of money that courts can award for pain and suffering to a victim of medical malpractice.

That’s not to say that Proposition 46’s two other big proposals – a mandatory check of a statewide database to prevent prescription drug abuse, and new drug testing for doctors – aren’t interesting or important; they are.

But this initiative reached the ballot because of what failed to happen at the state Capitol in 2013. Last year, legislators were unable to broker a deal between trial lawyers and doctors over the state’s 1975 cap on damages for pain and suffering in medical malpractice lawsuits. Lawyers wanted to lift the $250,000 cap to at least $1 million, doctors objected - and so the question shifted to this fall’s ballot.

Prop. 46 supporters have emotion and anger on their side, led by initiative proponent Bob Pack, a Bay Area man whose two young children were killed by a driver later found to have abused prescription drugs. Pack has long crusaded for a higher cap on medical malpractice awards, and for forcing doctors to run a patient’s name through a prescription drug database before handing over more pills.

Prop. 46 opponents have the money to promote their message: that the initiative is overly complex and, perhaps, deeply flawed. By a factor of almost 10-to-1 over supporters, doctors and insurance companies have bankrolled a campaign that claims rising malpractice premiums will drive doctors away from the profession, and that Prop. 46’s rules on the database and the drug testing are poorly written.

The rhetoric on both sides is overheated, so here’s what we know for sure:

Is California’s cap on medical malpractice awards for pain and suffering lower than other states? Yes. Might a looser cap mean more lawsuits? Yes, but not necessarily more successful lawsuits.

Do both sides see merit in the prescription drug database? Yes. Has the database project been plagued with technical glitches? Yes. Should doctors who are under the influence treat patients? No. Is there currently some professional policing of this behavior? Yes. Is that policing enough? It depends on whom you ask.

Does any other state have mandatory doctor drug testing? No. Does Prop. 46 mean tipsy physicians will get caught? Not necessarily. Do some doctors simply oppose it on principle? Perhaps.

That last part of Prop. 46 – doctor drug testing – is the real political powder keg in this initiative. Even Bob Pack, the longtime crusader, conceded in his interview with KQED that the idea was a late addition to his quest. Critics put it more bluntly: having doctors “pee in a cup” was a political sweetener designed to put Prop. 46 over the top.

You’ll hear a lot about Prop. 46 between now and Election Day. And it’s just the kind of proposal, regardless of its merits, that frustrates voters who simply want to do the right thing - but don’t know whether the proposal in front of them will do that.

What are the arguments?

Supporters say ...

The $250,000 cap on damages for pain and suffering was set in 1975 and has never been adjusted for inflation. Prop. 46 could help reduce prescription drug abuse, and it will require doctors to be tested for drug use, just as people in other sensitive professions are.

Opponents say ...

This measure isn’t about protecting patients; it’s about making it easier to sue doctors. Doctors and hospitals that pay their own medical malpractice could see premiums go up. State and county hospitals that self-insure could see legal fees mount.

Who is spending on these campaigns?

the inside scoop

In a state where voters are usually asked to get tougher on crime, Prop. 47 does just the opposite: It asks voters to, in some cases, loosen things up. And, thrown in for good measure, it also promises more financial help for schools.

The initiative’s backers say too many taxpayer dollars are spent to send people convicted of some property crimes to either a local jail or state prison. They argue that Prop. 47 will allow many of those crimes to be treated as misdemeanors, with the savings funneled into California schools.

Prop. 47 comes at a time when Californians are wrestling with the high cost of jails and prisons, and comes just two years after voters relaxed the three-strikes law – a tough-on-crime initiative passed in 1994. As such, it’s possible that the state’s voters may be loosening their historically “punishment only” attitude.

The chief backer of the measure is George Gascón, the district attorney of San Francisco. And Prop. 47 has bipartisan support, with backers arguing that the state needs to make the punishment fit the crime. Certainly schools could use the money Prop. 47 would save (the independent Legislative Analyst’s Office ventures only a guess of “hundreds of millions of dollars” annually for local and state governments). But a number of Prop. 47’s supporters see this more as a common sense, punishment-fit-the-crime kind of thing.

The real source of opposition, to the extent opponents have the resources to actually run a campaign, seems to stem from Prop. 47’s provision that allows a second chance in court for felons already serving time for these lower-level crimes. They point out that not all nonviolent offenders are nice people, and they argue that the Prop. 47’s new thresholds for punishment (based on the value of the item or the harm done) are way too arbitrary.

The Prop. 47 campaign, on both sides, has far less money to blast these pro and con messages onto the airwaves than others on the November ballot. As a result, this could be a real sleeper debate by the time votes are counted on Nov. 4. the approval of the Legislature.

What are the arguments?

Supporters say ...

It will reduce prison spending overall and stop wasting prison funding and space on petty criminals. That means spending can focus on serious and violent crimes, and the most dangerous criminals will stay locked up. Money saved will go to programs that help kids stay in school, and to crime victims and drug and alcohol treatment.

Opponents say ...

Stealing a gun that costs less than $950 should not be a misdemeanor; neither should possession of a date-rape drug. Reducing penalties for these crimes doesn’t make the public safer. The measure would also require the release of dangerous criminals who could appeal their sentences, and it would give judges little discretion to keep them in prison.

Who is spending on these campaigns?

the inside scoop

This measure is a referendum, which means that voters have a different question posed to them: Do you agree or disagree with the Legislature’s decision to approve a new tribal casino in Madera County?

If a majority of voters say NO, the casino won’t be built.

North Fork has tribal land in its tiny Sierra Nevada home, but it’s not truly a reservation… and even then, it’s on a remote, rocky hilltop. The site designated for the casino, sitting next to Highway 99, has been approved by the feds as tribal land. But despite local and state support, critics say it’s a bad move. Hence the referendum.

In this case, it’s all about whether you believe the backers of the casino – that it’s all about just one casino – or opponents, who argue that it’s a precedent for casinos built on land that isn’t a designated Native American reservation.

California voters have ratified tribal gaming twice, in 1998 and again in 2000. Now, 60 tribal casinos operate across the state, a multibillion-dollar industry that has been both complimented and criticized for its impact on Native Americans and the communities in which those casinos operate.

But this project, a proposed new casino owned by the Central Valley’s North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians, is different: It would be the first “off reservation” casino in California, situated on land near Highway 99 north of Fresno. The casino’s supporters may dispute that it’s an “off reservation” project, but that term is a fair one based on how the tribe got the land: The federal government approved the tribe’s acquisition of land that was neither an existing reservation nor land given to a technically landless tribe.

The referendum was filed by a longtime critic of tribal gaming expansion, but there are signs that a few existing gaming tribes – that may see more strict rules as a way to limit competition – are pondering a paid campaign to persuade Californians to vote "no" on this referendum.

The project has also found a powerful opponent in U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who criticized the federal approval of the tribe’s new land and remains at odds with Gov. Jerry Brown on his agreement to a casino compact.

So is the North Fork project an anomaly or a precedent? That’s really the crux of Prop. 48, and the only two players who know the answer are the U.S. secretary of the Interior and Brown.

The feds control whether or not a tribe gets new land that’s approved for building a casino. And as governor, Brown has the sole power to agree to – or reject -- a formal gaming “compact” with a tribe.

Even then, no Las Vegas-style tribal casino can be built in California without the approval of the Legislature. Only one other off-reservation project – proposed for a site in rural Yuba County – has ever gotten the blessing of the governor, and it remains in limbo in the Legislature precisely because of this fight over the North Fork deal.

Again, a vote in support of Prop. 48 endorses the Legislature’s action on the Madera County project; a vote in opposition tells lawmakers that they made a mistake.

What are the arguments?

Supporters say ...

The new casino will provide needed jobs and economic growth in an area of high unemployment. It will generate money for tribes, promoting self-sufficiency at no cost to taxpayers. The money will be shared with a non-gaming tribe that has few opportunities for economic improvement. The agreement with the tribe calls for annual payments to the state, to cover the costs of the casino operation.

Opponents say ...

The new casino breaks a promise made to Californians: that tribal gaming would remain limited, and restricted to original reservation lands. Prop. 48 would allow the state’s first off-reservation casino, opening the door to other tribes that want to locate a casino closer to freeways, cities and urban neighborhoods. A new casino will only siphon jobs from other casinos nearby, not provide real job growth.

Who is spending on these campaigns?

The Inside Scoop

Make no mistake about it: the 2014 governor’s race is a referendum on the incumbent and on the pace of California’s economic recovery.

Few California politicians have ever captured the fascination of the public more than Edmund G. Brown, Jr., who has never denied the advantage gained by being the scion of a famous political family. (He publicly thanked his mother, after winning his first statewide election in 1970, for giving him his father’s ballot-tested name.) For more than 40 years, Brown has been on a personal and political odyssey – two terms as governor, three campaigns for the White House, Calcutta with Mother Teresa, the mean streets of Oakland as mayor and in 2010 another stint as governor.

And three terms as governor is enough, says challenger Neel Kashkari. Kashkari is a GOP newcomer, a former investment banker whose claim to fame is his role as the assistant U.S. Treasury secretary who wrote the 2008 bank bailout, TARP.

Kashkari’s campaign seems centered on refuting Brown’s quip in January that “California is back.” He points out, accurately, that a lot of Californians still don’t have much to cheer. One in four live in poverty, and the jobless rate remains above average in 34 of the state’s 58 counties.

Brown’s reply: the state is on the right track to recovery, and he’s the guy to keep it there. He points to the 1.4 million new jobs created since 2010, the balanced state budget and the new program he led to spend more education dollars on children from low-income and non-English speaking families.

What else is big in this race? Kashkari would abandon the state’s high-speed rail project (Brown says it’s an essential part of the state’s transportation future). Brown says November’s water bond will boost supply and reliability (Kashkari says it scrimps on money for reservoirs and dams). Kashkari says the state shouldn’t be spending money to help offer legal services to the recent flood of migrant children (Brown says it’s a humanitarian crisis).

Neel Kashkari faces daunting odds: a big gap in opinion polls, a 20-to-1 fundraising disadvantage and a Republican party more focused on legislative and down-ticket races than helping him. And so the question for the voter: do you like what Jerry Brown has done and believe he’s the guy to keep the recovery going? Or does the state need a reboot by an outsider who promises to re-examine and reshape its future?

The Inside Scoop

If this race finds you asking yourself, “What does the lieutenant governor do?” you’re not alone. Ostensibly the second-in-command, the person nicknamed “lite guv” has very few formal duties. The lieutenant governor serves as: president of the State Senate, acting governor when the chief executive leaves the state, a UC regent and a CSU trustee and has a few other small duties here and there.

Still, it’s a job with fairly high visibility and a potential stepping stone to being governor, and voters on Nov. 4 will either keep it in the hands of Democrat Gavin Newsom or give it to Republican Ron Nehring.

Newsom, the one-time mayor of San Francisco and a brief candidate for governor in 2010 , has admitted that he’s found it hard to find his footing playing second fiddle to Brown (and the two have a complicated relationship that certainly isn’t helped by style and generational differences). Nonetheless, Newsom has spent time talking about using technology to boost government and has railed against UC and CSU tuition increases. Recently, Newsom has urged legalizing marijuana and suggested – in a break with the governor – that the state should re-think high-speed rail.

Ron Nehring has served as a San Diego County school board trustee, but is really known in political circles as the former chairman of the California Republican Party. Among GOP loyalists, he has strong name recognition, but beyond them he’s relatively unknown. Nehring supports lower taxes, less government spending and says he’d try harder than Newsom to use the lieutenant governor’s chairmanship of a state economic commission as a jumping-off point.

This is a classic Democrat versus Republican race, with strong liberal and conservative positions on both sides. It’s been 20 years since California had a governor and lieutenant governor from different parties – even longer since the lieutenant governor was a complete newcomer to statewide elected office. Will 2014 be any different?

The Inside Scoop

What a difference four years makes.

In 2010, Democrat Kamala Harris eked out a narrow victory in the race for attorney general, defeating Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley by less than 75,000 votes out of more than 8.7 million cast.

This time, Harris has drawn a Republican challenger whom most reporters couldn’t even find using a Google search prior to the June primary.

GOP candidate Ron Gold, who briefly was a deputy attorney general and is otherwise a come-from-nowhere challenger, holds positions on a few issues that are not only unconventional for a Republican, but also stand in stark contrast to the cautious and careful incumbent Harris. Gold advocates legalization of marijuana and a much more limited use of the death penalty than in current law. Harris has avoided comment on either.

Harris has used her first term to wage high-profile battles against mortgage lenders and drug traffickers, and has crafted the ensuing PR so well that she’s managed to generate buzz both in Sacramento (a possible candidate for governor in 2018?) and Washington, D.C. (the new U.S. attorney general? A future nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court?).

Harris carefully navigated the broad powers given to the attorney general, declining to help save the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage but defending the existing rules of teacher tenure stricken down by a Los Angeles judge this summer.

And because challenger Ron Gold has both limited resources and a smaller resume, odds are Kamala Harris runs a stealth campaign, relying on the generally good reviews she’s gotten on a few key issues to ask voters for another four-year term.

The Inside Scoop

This is one of only three “open” races on the statewide level, where an incumbent is stepping down in 2014 due to term limits. And this race was a crowded contest in the June primary: five candidates, one of whom was an independent and another who was indicted on federal corruption charges before Election Day.

The two men left standing represent a real insider-outsider choice for voters when it comes to the job of chief elections officer.

Democrat Alex Padilla blazed a trail through the political world at an early age, quickly rising through the ranks of the Los Angeles City Council en route to eight years as a state senator.

Republican Pete Peterson is a newcomer, a leader of a civic engagement think tank at Pepperdine University and a marketing and communications guy before that.

Both men promise to be reformers when it comes to money in politics and voter engagement. But that’s the “bully pulpit” potential of the job; a Secretary of State is a bit more of a person who’s tasked with making the trains run on time when it comes to elections and other duties like business LLC filings.

Even so, the next secretary will face some unique challenges: the state is way behind on updates to a statewide voter database system mandated by the federal government. Its campaign finance filing and reporting database runs on outdated computer code. And wide swaths of Californians seem so apathetic that they don’t even register to vote. Can one of these guys fix that? That’s the big question in 2015 and ahead.

The Inside Scoop

The state controller is California’s chief financial officer and paymaster, and it’s another of the limited open seats this fall. The race received an awful lot of attention this summer, when two prominent Democrats vying for one of the two spots on the November ballot were locked in a close recount of votes.– a recount that didn’t change the June 3 results.

With the Democratic vote split, the top vote-getter in June was Republican Ashley Swearengin, the mayor of Fresno. She watched for weeks as the two Democrats attacked each other and sweated out the vote tally. The eventual victor of that duel was Democrat Betty Yee, a longtime member of the state Board of Equalization.

Both women come with credentials that they argue will help them do the job. Yee has had a hand in state government finances for some 15 years and comes across as a low-profile policy wonk. Swearengin is a charismatic Central Valley politician who touts her executive leadership at the helm of one of the only California cities with a strong mayor charter. Both pledge to use the controller’s audit powers to further shed light on questionable spending of tax dollars.

The job of controller is much more prominent than it used to be, in large part because of the state’s fiscal crises of the 2000s, when the controller was embroiled in fights over issuing IOUs and unpaid government invoices. There was also a brief clash in 2011 about whether legislators deserved their paychecks after they passed a budget later vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Democrats are concerned a Swearengin victory would give her the platform to run for governor or U.S. Senate in years to come. Republicans will no doubt seek to call Yee another example of the state Democratic Party status quo when it comes to managing California’s finances.

The Inside Scoop

This is technically an open seat in November, but it feels very much like a race with an incumbent because the Democrat who hopes to become the state’s banker has spent the past eight years as the state’s paymaster.

John Chiang, who served two four-year terms as controller, now wants to move to this position. Not a single Democrat challenged his plan in the primary season, and Chiang now sits on an impressive pile of campaign cash and is the undisputed favorite to win the race.

Republican Greg Conlon, a Bay Area accountant who briefly served on the state’s Public Utilities Commission, draws the short straw to take on Chiang in this race. He argues the controller’s office has not been run as well as it should have been these past eight years – proof of why Chiang should not get to move over to the job of treasurer.

The Inside Scoop

This is one of those statewide offices that doesn’t quite do what you think it might. The insurance commissioner oversees the regulation of some, but not all, kinds of insurance offered in California. Most notably, the office does not have full oversight of health insurance, which also falls under the supervision of the governor’s administration.

The incumbent, Democrat Dave Jones, is seeking a second four-year term and has spent a great deal of time maneuvering himself to play a role in California’s implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act. That’s meant sparring occasionally with the state agency overseeing the process and sponsoring Proposition 45, this fall’s initiative that would expand his power over health insurance rates.

Jones is a former state legislator, and his challenger also comes from the ranks of the legislature: Republican Ted Gaines. Gaines is also an insurance broker, and promises to change – mainly by speeding up – the way the Department of Insurance approves new insurance products.

Bottom line: one candidate wants a hand in shaping the state’s health insurance future, the other wants to ease what he sees as the bureaucratic burdens imposed by state officials on the insurance industry.

The Inside Scoop

Two things make this race, which is historically one of the most ho-hum on the California ballot, one of the best races to watch this fall.

First, this is a nonpartisan office – which means voters don’t have a “D” or “R” label on which to rely. And as it happens, both men in this fall’s race are Democrats: incumbent Tom Torlakson and challenger Marshall Tuck.

And they have very different takes on the value and future of teacher tenure – an issue highlighted by this summer’s blockbuster ruling in Vergara v. California that found the state’s strong tenure law a burden for ensuring equal access to good teachers for kids in poor communities. Tuck has applauded the ruling; Torlakson has criticized it, and supports the state’s decision to file an appeal.

The ruling has sparked a new discussion about the power of the state’s two biggest teacher unions and the need for education reform. And given its timing, it has helped fuel the idea that incumbent Tom Torlakson could find himself ousted if the political winds blow the right way.

Torlakson has had a long career in local and state legislative office, and, as a one-time teacher, is a loyal ally of the powerful California Teachers Association – which spent heavily to boost his campaign in the June primary. In his criticism of the Vergara ruling, Torlakson has insisted it’s not the existing teacher tenure rules that are the cause of problems in schools.

His challenger, Marshall Tuck, sees himself as an advocate of systemic change in education. Most notable on his resume was a stint as CEO of the non-profit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, the public-private effort launched by former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to improve conditions at some of the city’s most failed schools. Tuck is trying to use the Vergara ruling as a springboard to point out how the problems facing K-12 education in California can’t be solved by those who helped build the existing infrastructure.

The superintendent of public instruction, in truth, has limited power over California schools, even though the position does lead the state Department of Education. Still, the job offers a pretty sturdy soapbox from which to lead public discussions about the future of education. And this race may hinge on the larger debate about teachers and failing schools.