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Voting alignments in the California Legislature: A roll call analysis of the 1957-1959-1961 sessions

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Voting alignments in the California Legislature: A roll call analysis of the 1957-1959-1961 sessions

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Content VOTING ALIGNMENTS IN THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE
► f
A ROLL CALL ANALYSIS OF THE
1957-I959-I96I SESSIONS
by
Charles Marshall Price
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(POLITICAL SCIENCE)
September 1965
UMI Number; DP30265
All rights reserved
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DWmtaWon F y fe flis N rtg
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
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This dissertation^ w ritten by
....................Cha. rjje.s.. Ma.r.aha.ll..P.i;ic.fè....................
under the direction of hX§.....Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by a ll its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t of requirements
fo r the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
---
Dean
D ate S.e.p.tenQib.e.r»...! .9.6.5.......................
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
hatrman
PREFACE
The purpose of this study is to describe, assess,
and analyze voting behavior in the California legislature.
In doing this, three factors reported to be critical
determinants of this behavior are examined extensively:
Republican-Democratic differences, rural-urban splits, and
north-south divisions. Through the use of a roll call
analysis of conflict votes, judgments concerning the impact
of these three dichotomies on the voting behavior of the
legislature are made.
This writer wishes to thank Dr. Totton J. Anderson,
for guiding this study and offering a number of helpful
suggestions, as well as Dr. Y. Kuroda and Dr. Joseph
Boskin, who gave generously of their time. Final responsi
bility for the facts and interpretations of them, of
course, rests solely with the author.
11
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE........................... ii
LIST OF TABLES...................................... vi
LIST OF M A P S ........................................ X
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION: CALIFORNIA, A CRITICAL STATE . . 1
II. BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH.................... 10
Objectives of This Study
Source Materials and Limitations
III. METHODOLOGY EMPLOYED.......................... 33
Feasibility of Roll Call Vote Studies
Roll Call Votes in This Study
IV. POLITICAL PARTY VOTING IN THE CALIFORNIA
ASSEMBLY.................................... 52
Party Background: The Assembly
Assembly Basic Party Disagreement Votes
Assembly Moderate Party Disagreement Votes
Assembly Basic Party Agreement Votes
Assembly Moderate Party Agreement Votes
Assembly Party Cohesion
Cone lus ions
111
Chapter Page
V. POLITICAL PARTY VOTING IN THE CALIFORNIA
SENATE...................................... 99
Party Background: The Senate
Senate Basic and Moderate Party Disagreement
Votes
Senate Basic Party Agreement Votes
Senate Moderate Party Agreement Votes
Conclusions
VI. RURAL-URBAN VOTING IN THE CALIFORNIA SENATE . 116
Rural-Urban Academic Debate
Rural-Urban Background: The California Senate
Defining Rural and Urban
Senate Basic and Moderate Rural-Urban
Disagreement Votes
Senate Basic Rural-Urban Agreement Votes
Senate Moderate Rural-Urban Agreement Votes
Conclusions
VII. NORTH-SOUTH VOTING IN THE CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY 148
North-South Background
Assembly North-South History
Defining North-South
Assembly North-South Basic and Moderate
Disagreement Votes
Assembly North-South Basic Agreement Votes
Assembly North-South Moderage Agreement
Votes with Northern Minority
Assembly North-South Moderate Agreement
Votes with Southern Minority
Conclusions
VIII. NORTH-SOUTH VOTING IN THE CALIFORNIA SENATE . 172
North-South Background
Senate North-South History
Extent of the Unrepresentativeness
Senate North-South Basic and Moderate
Disagreement Votes
IV
Chapter Page
Senate North-South Basic and Moderate
Agreement V o t e s ......................... 185
Conclusions
IX. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS..................... 188
Comparison of the Three Dichotomies
Analysis of Legislation
Evaluation of Voting Trends
BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................ 217
_v_
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. Number of Republicans and Democrats in the
California Legislature in the 1957-1959-
1961 Legislative Sessions ................... 55
2. Assembly Basic Party Disagreement Votes .... 61
3. Assembly Party Votes--Jewell Definition 90
Per Cent L e v e l .............................. 62
4. Percentage of Party Votes and Ranking by
State........................................ 63
5. Comparison of the Types of Votes That Caused
Assembly Basic Party Disagreement in Califor
nia with the Other Eight States and Their
Ranking................... 65
6. Assembly Basic Party Disagreement Votes Ranked
by Percentage Order . ..................... 67
7. Assembly Moderate Party Disagreement Votes . . 69
8. Assembly Moderate Party Disagreement Votes by
Issue Category.............................. 70
9. Assembly Moderate Party Disagreement Votes
Ranked by Percentage Order ................. 72
10. Assembly Basic and Moderate Party Disagreement
Votes Combined and by Percentage Order . . . 74
VI
Table Page
11. Assembly Basic Party Agreement Votes ......... 76
12. Assembly Basic Party Agreement Votes by Issue
Category.................................... 78
13. Assembly Basic Party Agreement Votes Ranked
by Percentage Order . .......... 79
14. Number of Times on Assembly Basic Party Agree
ment Votes Two Parties Were Both Below and
Above the 80 Per Cent Cohesion Level .... 81
15. Assembly Moderate Party Agreement Votes .... 83
16. Assembly Moderate Party Agreement Vote with a
Small Minority of Republicans Voting
Against the Republican Party Majority .... 85
17. Assembly Moderate Party Agreement Votes with a
Small Minority of Republicans Voting
Against the Republican Party Majority Ranked
by Percentage Order......................... 87
18. Assembly Moderate Party Agreement Votes with a
Small Minority of Democrats Voting against
the Democratic Party Majority............... 89
19. Assembly Moderate Party Agreement Votes with a
Small Minority of Republicans Voting against
a Republican Party Majority Ranked by Per
centage Order................................ 90
20. Assembly Basic Disagreement Votes: Would Have
Been Party Votes if Either Republicans or
Democrats would have voted with Greater
Unity........................................ 92
21. Moderate Party Disagreement Votes : Would Have Been
Basic Assembly Disagreement Votes if Either
Republicans or Democrats Would Have Voted
with Greater Unity .............. ...... 94
Vll
Table Page
22. Assembly Overall Cohesion Scores for the Two
Parties...................................... 96
23. Senate and Assembly Basic and Moderate Party
Disagreement V o t e s ............ 106
24. Senate Party Disagreement Votes Listed at
Several Cohesion Levels ..................... 107
25. Senate Party Disagreement Votes by Issue
Category.................................... 109
26. Senate Basic Party Agreement Votes Ranked by
Category Compared to Assembly Ranking .... Ill
27. Senate Overall Cohesion Scores for the Two
Parties...................................... 114
28. Leading Urban States in the Country Ranked by
Urban Percentages............................ 130
29. Ten Leading California Counties Ranked by Cash
Value of Agricultural Production........... 132
30. Urban Counties................................ 137
31. Senate Rural-Urban Disagreement Votes Listed at
Several Levels of Cohesion ............... 138
32. Senate Rural-Urban Disagreement Votes ......... 140
33. Senate Rural-Urban Basic Agreement Votes
Ranked by Percentage Order ................. 142
34. Senate Rural-Urban Agreement Votes with a
Small Minority of Urban Legislators Voting
Against an Urban Majority................... 144
35. Proportion of the State’s Population in Four
Southern California Counties ............... 153
_V13.1.
Table Page
36. Assembly North-South Disagreement Votes
Listed at Several Cohesion Levels ........... 161
37. Assembly North-South Basic and Moderate
Disagreement Votes .......................... 162
38. Assembly North-South Basic and Moderate
Disagreement Votes Ranked by Percentage Order 165
39. Assembly North-South Basic Agreement Votes
Ranked by Percentage Order .................. 167
40. Assembly Moderate North-South Agreement Votes
with a Small Minority of the Northerners
Voting Against the Northern Majority .... 169
41. Assembly Moderate North-South Agreement Votes
with a Small Minority of the Southerners
Voting Against the Southern Majority .... 170
42. Ranking of the Ten Most Malapportioned State
Senates Using Varied Mathematical Tests . . . 180
43. Senate North-South Disagreement Votes Listed
at Several Cohesion Levels ................. 183
44. Senate North-South Basic and Moderate
Disagreement Votes .......................... 184
45. Senate North-South Basic and Moderate
Disagreement Votes Ranked by Percentage Order 186
46. Comparison of the Three Dichotomies in the
Assembly at Two Different Cohesion Levels . . 189
47. Comparison of the Three Dichotomies in the
Senate at Two Different Cohesion Levels . . . 192
48. Senate and Assembly Compared in Terms of the
Average Percentage for Three Sessions That
Each Dichotomy Received..................... 194
IX
LIST OF MAPS
Map Page
1. Southern Senatorial Districts .... ......... 101
2. Southern Assembly Districts .................... 102
3. North-South Definitions ................. . . . 158
X
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION; CALIFORNIA, A CRITICAL
STATE
California is criticized and praised, condemned
and exhalted by more citizens than, perhaps, any other
state in the union. Popular mass magazines have devoted
entire issues to the topic of "California living." Tele
vision shows and motion pictures produced and filmed in
Hollywood and shown throughout the world visually describe
the many attributes of the Golden State. Lured by these
exciting visions, great waves of Americans have swept into
the state yearly, seeking the "good life" of California--
the sunny warm climate, the financial prospects, the new
shopping centers, the orange groves, the back-yard barbe
cues and, perhaps, just the chance to live near such exotic
sounding communities as Bel Air, Beverly Hills, or Malibu.
The popularity of this "good life" theme is obvious: Cali
fornia during the past century has doubled its population
every twenty years--a figure far outstripping the national
growth rate.
In addition to its admitted attractions, California
has been newsworthy for other reasons. One aspect of
California life which has drawn the frequent attention of
the mass media of communication is the zany and eccentric
actions of particular portions of the state’s population.
It seems quite likely that California, and especially
Southern California, has as many crackpots per square mile
as any other comparable area in the country.^ Food fad
dists , beatnik poets, technocrats, physical culturalists,
sun bathers, movie starlets, militant pensioners, and
Pershing Square narcotics addicts are all numbered among
its citizens.
Southern California also appears to be a fertile
area for the growth and development of extremist political
movements--especially of the "far right" variety.^ For
^For an excellent description of the history of
the development of some of these unusual cults, see John
W. Caughey, California (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall, 1958), pp. 396-399; or a more popular treatment was
given in Bruce Bliven, "How Did Southern California Get
That Way?" Reporter. XXVI, (January 18, 1962), 39-40.
^Terms such as "far right" and "far left" are
bandied about today in the newspapers or on television with
example, many authorities have cited Southern California as
being one, if not the most important, of the prime centers
3
of John Birch Society activity in the country. Although
this group’s membership figures arc not public knowledge,
there is no question that in many Los Angeles suburbs the
John Birch Society is an active, militant, and thriving
organization. In the 1962 Congressional elections two
declared members of the John Birch Society, Republican
Congressman John Rousselot and Edgar Hiestand, were
defeated in their re-election efforts. However, it
appears that they lost their seats to their Democratic
opponents primarily because the Democratically controlled
state legislature had, through reapportioning, changed
their 1960 districts into 1962 Democratic strongholds. At
present, only one admitted John Birch Society member is in
very little attempt at precision. Of course, a great deal
of time could be expended in attempting to define these
words, but for the purposes of this dissertation, it was
decided to use these terms as they are popularly used;
i.e., "far right" referring to groups like the John Birch
Society, and "far left" to groups like the Communist Party.
^See T. George Harris, "The Rampant Right Invades
the GOP," Look, XXVII, No. 14 (July 16, 1963), 19-25; or
Richard Vahan, The Truth about the John Birch Society
(New York; Macfadden-Bastell, 1962).
the California legislature--Senator John Schmitz, repre
senting Orange County.
Other ultraconservative groups, such as the Chris
tian Anti-Communist Crusade, the Minutemen, the Americanism
Educational League, the National Committee for Economic
Freedom, the Free Enterprise Bureau, the Committee for the
Preservation of the Constitution, the Organization for the
Repeal of the Income Tax, the Network of Patriotic Letter
Writers, the California Chapter of the Pro-America Organi
zation, and more specialized community patriotic groups,
sometimes formed on an ad hoc basis, also have a sizeable
following in this area.
While the the far left in California probably does
not compare numerically or in influence with the far right,
it still clings to a perilous but stubborn existence. The
Communist Party’s unofficial West Coast newspaper, the
People’s World, is sold weekly on newsstands, and the great
majority of its subscribers live in California.'^ This
paradox of a flourishing far right existing alongside a
According to the circulation and fund drive fig
ures, California subscribers provided all but 2.4 per cent
of the operating budget of the newspaper this year; see
People’s World, "Standings on PW Drive," July 17, 1965,
p. 8.
small but persistent far left minority seems to be typical
of California.
Juxtaposition of extremes has helped to make Cali
fornia unique. In addition to its cranks and crackpots,
the state has had an unusually large number of Nobel Prize
winners, leading artists, eminent musicians, world-renowned
authors, and articulate and influential Republican and
Democratic leaders. It is the home of high-powered intel
lectual research centers, such as the Rand Corporation in
Santa Monica and the Center for the Study of Democratic
Institutions in Santa Barbara, as well as Hollywood and the
movie industry. It is in this state that Aimee Semple
McPherson decades ago founded the Four Square Gospel Church,
and it is also here that other equally fundamentalist
Protestant denominations have thrived and, at the same time,
there are such secular paradises as Palm Springs, Malibu,
and the Sunset Strip. It is a state noted for its commer
cial fun palaces such as Disneyland, Knotts' Berry Farm,
Jungleland, and Pacific Ocean Park; yet also within its
borders one can locate a number of the country's finest
universities and colleges. In this state, too, one can
find great natural beauty--Yosemite National Park, Sequoia
National Park, Mt. Whitney, Death Valley, and the Monterey
Peninsula--but also such man-made blight as concrete free
ways criss-crossing decaying metropolitan centers, ugly new
blacktopped shopping centers, and smog-enshrouded cities.
The state has its cosmopolitan elegance in cities like San
Francisco, Carmel, and LaJolla; it has its great middle-
class suburban sprawl surrounding the important population
centers; it has its drab squalor: in the run-down areas
of its older cities; and, indicative of its ultrarapid
growth, it has its ghost towns.
California is newsworthy and colorful for a number
of other reasons. Historically, the period of the Spanish
occupancy of California goes back as far as the English
colonial period on the East Coast. The lingering Latin
influence can be attested to by the Spanish missions, the
large Mexican-American population, city fiesta days, and
even town and street names. Besides its important Mexican-
American population, there are other sizable ethnic groups
in California, such as the Japanese, Chinese, Jewish, and
Negro minorities.
Any kind of quick thumb-nail impression of Cali
fornia must be selective and, obviously, much more could be
said of the social setting of the state. Yet one point
should be emphasized from the outset : California appears
today to be the pace-setter, the fashion leader, and to
some extent the important opinion moulder for the rest of
the country. Many of the popular writers, when describing
California, refer to living there as the future way of life
for the rest of the country--with all its vaunted assets
and impressive liabilities.^
An editorial in Esquire perhaps best sums up this
contention:
California is more than Culver City now. It is
the largest state in the union, my dear people. It
has Steve Allen and SANE and Cal Tech and the Nixons
and many Nobel Prize winners in science and also
Jack Kerouac and Poetry and JAZZ. California fur
thermore leads the way in leisure, in backyard barbe
cues, in new industries, in defense contracts, in
the culmination of the American Dream and in the pur
suit of happiness. From all over the nation come
leading citizens in the upper-mobile strata to join
our migrant and our acting coaches. A new day is
dawning, a day in which California will come to
represent FULFILLMENT of a nation's aspirations--
truly the best of all possible states. Where else
could Bishop Pike and Tab Hunter live and prosper
in the same warm climate? In what other area could
Alduous Huxley and Tuesday Weld enjoy the same bene
fits ? In what other state can you have a date-nut
malted for lunch, bouef bourguignon for dinner, and
a vegi-cutlet for a midnight snack? . . . California
will always be the OPIATE of the people, but the drug
has changed (not the dream factory of Hollywood).
America demands a new fix in these troubled times
of cold war and new frontier. Now they look to
California as the quintessence of life in a capital
istic society. "California," Esquire. February,
1963, p. 121.
g*
California is a key state for another crucial rea
son. In terms of political power, the Golden State is
second only to New York in electoral votes, number of Con
gressmen in Washington, D*C*, and delegation strength at
the presidential nominating conventions. If present popu
lation trends continue, it is sure to be the most populous
state in the union by the 1970 census when Congressional
seats will be reallocated.
The growing political power of the state is also
evidenced in the number of presidential and vice-presiden
tial candidates California has produced in the last few
years. In 1948 Earl Warren, then Governor of California,
was nominated as the Republican vice-presidential candi
date. At the 1952 Republican convention not only Earl
Warren, but Senator William Knowland, the then Republican
Senate minority leader, as well as the eventual designee
of the party, Richard M. Nixon, were all Republican vice-
presidential hopefuls. Political leaders such as Pat
Brown, Governor of California, Thomas Ruche1, Senate Repub
lican whip, and Jesse Unruh, Speaker of the Assembly, have
national political reputations. The indications are clear:
California has come of political age in national politics.
Thus, for a number of political, social, and economic
reasons, California is a critical state an% consequently,
warrants the attention of scholars.
In the next chapter the aims of this study will be
formulated and a review of the literature dealing with the
topics examined will be undertaken.
CHAPTER II
BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH
Two basic points will be considered in the first
half of this chapter: one, the objectives of the study and,
two, the source materials that are available, including
citations for California legislative politics, other legis
lative roll call studies, and comparative state government
data. Implicit in this chapter will be an attempt to justi
fy the undertaking of this dissertation topic. The re
mainder of the chapter describes some of the highlights of
California's political history.
Objectives of This Study
This study will focus upon one of the most vital
institutions in the state government of California--the
state legislature. It is in the state legislature, a
microcosm of the State's population, that the major issues
confronting the citizens are faced. The public record of
10
the discussions taking place in the corridors of the legis
lature, in a Senate committee hearing room, or perhaps on
the Assembly floor occur on what has been called the
"moment of truth," when the legislator's roll call vote is
recorded.^
Most texts and articles dealing with the voting
behavior of California legislators cite three major con
flict areas as being the most crucial and causing the most
serious differences at the state capitol. According to
this notion, when there is a disagreement among Sacramento
solons, it will generally fall along one of three divisions:
Republican-Democratic differences, rural-urban conflicts,
or north-south dichotomies.
In this study, roll call votes from the 1957, 1959,
and 1961 sessions of the legislature were examined. Votes
Several California government documents were par
ticularly helpful in this study: The Journal of the Assem
bly (Sacramento: State Printing Office), Sessions 1957,
1959, 1961; The Journal of the Senate (Sacramento: Govern
ment Printing Office), Sessions 1957, 1959, 1961. These
volumes were used to secure the roll call breakdowns.
The Final Calendar of Legislative Business (Sacramento;
State Printing Office), Sessions 1957, 1959, and 1961, were
useful in tracing the path of particular bills through the
legislative maze. The California Blue Book (Sacramento;
State Printing Office), 1957, 1959, 1961, provided informa
tion about the background of the state legislators.
12
on which 10 per cent or more of the legislators of a cham
ber voted in opposition to a majority were separated from
2
the rest of the roll calls for more careful study. The
ultimate goal, of course, was an attempt to assess how cru
cial each of the three predetermined divisions were in the
legislative process. The questions that were of central
concern throughout this study were :
1. Which of the three dichotomies appeared to be
the most important?
2. How cohesive were these voting groups ?
3. Which was the most cohesive and which the least
cohesive voting group?
4. On what kinds of issues was the conflict most
likely to be generated?
5. On what kinds of issues was there little if any
^ivisiveness?
6. On what kinds of issues did a particular sub
group muster high cohesion--or low cohesion?
7. What were the trends in the voting patterns of
the legislature?
In the last chapter an attempt will be made to answer why
more detailed description of this procedure may
be found in Chapter III._____________________________ _
13
these voting alignments were manifested and what the find
ings seem to indicate.
It is hoped that through a consideration of these
questions further insight into the nature of the legisla
tive process and its ramifications for California state
politics will be achieved. Additionally, an attempt will
be made to compile significant data from which researchers
in the area of comparative state governments will be able
to draw. After surveying and tabulating data gathered from
many states, generalizations and hypotheses could be formu
lated, for example, on the importance of parties or the
rural-urban split in our state legislatures. Political
scientist H. Douglas Price has commented:
Since each state is a system of "organized
complexity" a relatively descriptive account of
its system would permit higher-level generaliza
tions to be drawn (and then tested) about particu
lar aspects or theoretical questions (i.e., rural-
urban conflict, two-party vs. one party, etc.)^
O
H. Douglas Price, "Comparative State Governments,"
(unpublished paper presented at the American Political
Science National Meeting, 1962), p. 4.
— ïzn
Source Materials and Limitations
California legislature source
materials
Fortunately, the researcher working in the area of
California politics will find any number of books and
articles dealing with this general topic. There are many
fine secondary source texts devoted to California govern
ment, each invariably having at least one chapter dealing
with the topic of the "State Legislature." Among the
authors of these California texts are Turner and Veig;^
Hyink, Brown, and Thacker ; Harris and Rowe; Farrelly and
Hinderacker;^ Crouch, McHenry, Boliens, and Scott;® and
^Henry A. Turner and John A. Veig, The Government
and Politics of California (New York: McGraw-Hill Book
Company, Inc., 1960).
5
Bernard L. Hyink, Seyom Brown, and Ernest W.
Thacker, Politics and Government in California (3rd ed.;
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1963).
^Joseph P. Harris and Leonard Rowe, California
Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959).
^David Farrelly and Ivan Hinderacker, The Politics
of Government in California (New York: Ronald, 1951).
®Winston W. Crouch, Dean E. McHenry, John C.
Bollens, and Stanley Scott, California Government and
Politics (New York: Prentice Hall, 1960).
15
Hardy.^ Nor is this list of California government text
writers complete: these are merely some of the more popu
lar authorities in this area.
Unlike the situation in many other states, analyses
of the California political scene frequently receive na
tional attention. Articles such as those on the political
career of Jesse Unruh, state elections. Republican Party
feuds, bickering in the state legislature, and a myriad of
other items relating to California's political milieu
frequently appear in the newspapers and the popular mass
national magazines.Other more unique and specialized
aspects of California's political system, such as the
^Leroy C. Hardy, California Government (New York:
Harper and Roe, 1964).
^^Several analysts have been able to piece together
certain factors which offer at least partial explanations
for the imbroglio of California politics. For example,
Totton J. Anderson, "California Enigma of National Poli
tics," in Western Politics, edited by Frank H. Jonas (Salt
Lake City: The University of Utah, 1961), pp. 69-136,
offers some clues and insights into the California mael
strom. Another writer, Cary McWilliams makes a number of
salient observations in California, the Great Expectation
(New York: A. A. Wyn, 1949); as does Mary Ellen Leroy,
"The Party System Comes to California," The Reporter.
XVI (February 7, 1957), pp. 33-36.
16
operation of the initiative and referendum,the militant
pensioners movement,which has been a recurring phenom-
13
ena, the effects of cross-filing, the power of the public
relations firms managing political campaigns,of the
development of pre-primary endorsing extra-party organiza-
tions, have been examined closely by political scientists
and their articles on these topics have appeared in the
leading scholarly journals.
Yet not as much attention has been paid to the
political nature of the California legislature as many of
the other aforementioned topics. It is true that Young
edited a volume. The Legislature of California: Its Member-
11
Winston Crouch, The Initiative and Referendum in
California (Los Angeles: The Haynes Foundation, 1950); see
also Wallace H. Best, "Initiative and Referendum Politics
in California, 1912-1952" (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation,
Department of Political Science, University of Southern
California, 1955).
^^Robert E. Burke, Olsen's New Deal for California
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953).
l^Robert J. Pitchell, "The Electoral System and
Voting Behavior : The Case of California's Cross Filing,"
Western Political Quarterly. V (1959), 455-484.
Robert J, Pitchell, "The Lnfluence of the Profes
sional Management Firms in Partisan Elections in Califor
nia," Western Political Science Quarterly. XI (1958),
278-300.
Francis M. Carney, The Rise of Democratic Clubs
I T
ship. Procedure, and Work;Ohminus wrote The Legislature
of California; a n d Beek published The California Legis-
1 o
lature. However, these authorities on the California
legislature generally have concentrated their attention on
the formal rules or on the legal history of the institu
tion. There certainly has been very little concern about
the motivating factors governing the voting process or, for
that matter, any real concern about discerning the voting
alignments or the power structure operating in the legis
lature .
Cresap, in Party Politics in the Golden State,
dealt, as did the other California politics texts, with a
description of the structural elements of California's
in California (New York: Holt, 1958); James J, Wilson,
The Amateur Democrat: Club Politics in Three Cities (Chi
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); and Markell C.
Ball, "The Story of the California Republican Assembly"
(unpublished study by the Republican Assembly of Los
Angeles County, 1955) (mimeographed).
1®C. C. Young (ed.). The Legislature of Califor
nia: Its Membership, Procedure, and Work (San Francisco :
Commonwealth Club, 1943).
^^Arthur A. Ohminus, The Legislature of California
(Sacramento: State Printer, 1959).
Joseph A. Beek, The California Legislature
(Sacramento: State Printer, 1942).
r s i
government, but greater attention was given in his
volume to the political milieu of the state and, in partic
ular, the voting blocs in the state legislature.^^ For
example, Cresap devoted several pages to an analysis of the
voting patterns of Republican and Democratic legislators
through his use of selected roll call vote tabulations.
Professor William Buchanan's Legislative Partisanship; The
Deviant Case of Califomia^^ is undoubtedly the most
thorough and comprehensive study of the state legislature
yet undertaken, and it has a further advantage in its cur
rency. In this monograph Buchanan traced the political
history of the legislature, indicating some of the more
important historic voting alliances, appraising the signif
icance of several voting cleavages (especially the party
division) and identifying through a cluster-type analysis
various legislators' coalescing patterns in determining
legislative voting behavior.
Although a fairly adequate bibliography on the
19
Dean R. Cresap, Party Politics in the Golden
State (Los Angeles; Haynes Foundation, 1950).
or) .
William Buchanan, Legislative Partisanship : The
Deviant Case of California (University of California Pub
lications in Political Science, Vol. XIII; Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1963).
California legislature can be compiled, and one probably
more complete than for most states, there is little doubt
that a great deal more could be learned about the state
legislature. Certainly most of the questions posed as the
central problems of this study referred to earlier in this
chapter deserve far more attention than they have been
given up to this time.
Roll call source materials
Undoubtedly political scientists, for some rather
obvious reasons, have been more interested in studying and
writing about the United States Congress than they have
been in examining the various state legislatures. The
greater substantive importance of Congressional legislation
the immediate impact that the decisions make at the nation
al level, the attention the mass media concentrates upon
national happenings, and the gravity of international
relations are all factors encouraging political scientists
to focus most of their attention on the national level.
In particular, there are a number of fine roll call analy
ses dealing with Congress in contrast to a surprising
paucity of this type of study of state governments. Most
notable among these congressional roll call studies are
Turner's Party and Constituency; Pressures on Congress,
20
21
Truman's Congressional Party, and McCrae's Dimensions of
p o
Congressional Voting.
Perhaps the most comprehensive state government
roll call study is Jewell's comparative analysis of eight
different state legislatures.^^ In addition, there are a
number of roll call analyses which have concentrated upon
particular specialized problem areas in state legislatures,
for example, the rural-urban split. Therefore, although
it is true that there are some outstanding exceptions to
this general rule, for the most part analyses of voting
patterns in the state legislatures using the roll call
technique have not been given the attention by political
scientists that they appear to warrant.
21
Julius Turner, Party and Constituency; Pressures
on Congress ("The Johns Hopkins University Studies in His
torical and Political Science," Series 69, No. 1; Balti
more: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1951)
22
David B. Truman, The Congressional Party (New
York; Wiley & Co., 1959).
23
Duncan McCrae, Dimensions of Congressional
Voting (Berkeley and Los Angeles; University of California
Press, 1959).
^^Malcolm Jewell, The State Legislature--Politics
and Practice (New York: Random House, 1962).
21
Comparative state government
source materials
The entire field of comparative state politics is
an even more neglected area needing research. Political
scientist V. 0. Key commented :
Manuals on American government and politics
commonly focus attention on the epic battle of
Republicans and Democrats for control of the
national government, on the interests clustered
around the national party banners, on the grand
policy issues that preoccupy Congress. Scholars,
like most citizens, pay less heed to the problem
of political organization and leadership for the
conduct of state governments. Yet state govern
ments perform functions of no mean significance
and determine policies of great concern to power
ful social groups.25
Some attention has been focused on this area of
research. For example, there were several important
regional and state politics books, such as Key's Southern
PoliticsLockhard's New England State P o l i t i c s .27 ^nd a
volume edited by Frank Jonas entitled Western State
nc
V. 0. Key, Politics. Parties. and Pressure
Groups (New York; Thomas Y. Crowell Co.; 4th ed.; 1958),
p. 310.
2®V. 0. Key, Southern Politics (New York: Knopf,
1949).
27
Duane Lockhard, New England State Politics
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959).
"zn
Politics.2^ Little has been attempted on a fifty state
comparative basis. The most notable pioneering works in
the area of comparative state government are Zeller's
29
American State Legislatures and Key s American State
30
Politics. In these latter two volumes some of the first
concerted attempts at comparing, for example, the legisla
ture of Pennsylvania with the legislature of Louisiana, or
the governors of Rhode Island and Wyoming, were undertaken
Stirring from their indifference in this area, in
December, 1954, the Political Behavior Committee of the
American Political Science Association called for "the
devotion of additional effort to the comparative study of
state politics" as "an especially advantageous way to
advance the margins of our knowledge of politics. An
example of this renewed interest in comparative state
28
Frank Jonas (ed.). Western State Politics (Salt
Lake City: University of Utah, 1961).
29
Belle Zeller, American State Legislatures (New
York: Crowell, 1952).
30
V♦ 0. Key, American State Politics : An Introduc
tion (New York: Knopf, 1956).
31
"Report of the Political * Behavior Committee of
the American Political Science Association," American Po
litical Science Review. XLVIII (1954), 716.
o o
politics is Jewell's American State Legislatures. which
dealt with party conflict and cohesion in eight selected
states. Another important contribution is The Legislative
System, in which state legislators from four states were
interviewed and their role concepts examined.®® Lockhard,
in an impressive volume, focused his primary attention on
the internal politics in state government, and Vines and
Jacob were the editors of a new work in which important
hypotheses were suggested. Articles in this latter book
were enhanced by the imaginative statistical formulations
found in the chapters.®®
The comments that have been made about the lack of
research activity by political scientists in the state
government area were not designed to disparage this profes
sion or to be pejorative toward any individuals for their
Jewell, OP. cit.
33
Eulau Heinz, John Wahlke, William Buchanan, and
LeRoy Ferguson, The Legislative System: Explorations in
Legislative Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1962).
^^Duana Lockhard, The Politics of State and Local
Government (New York: Macmillan, 1963).
35
Kenneth Vines and Herbert Jacob (eds.), Compara
tive State Politics (New York: Little, Brown, 1965).
24
omissions, but merely to emphasize the fact that studies
using the latest behavioral techniques are sorely needed
in the area of state politics. Hopefully, this paper will
contribute one further piece to the jigsaw puzzle of com
parative state politics.
California's Political History
California, in terms of presidential electoral
politics, is usually ranked with New York, Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan as one of the
Northerly, urban, large electoral vote states. These states
have a number of factors in common: (1) large urban con
centrations populated by citizens from a number of ethnic
minority groups; (2) heavily industrialized economies; and
(3) a multiplicity of metropolitan problems such as diffi
culties surrounding the mass transit system, air polution,
water polution, slums, crime, labor unrest, and the like.
Presidential campaigns are waged primarily in these pivotal
states because of their electoral vote power. Although
each of these states has its individual political history,
surely none is more dissimilar from the others than Cali
fornia ' s.
At the same time that citizens in the original
Z5
colonies were fighting for their independence against the
British during the American Revolution, California was part
of the Spanish domain (later part of the Mexican empire).
California was the last of the "northern" states listed
above to be admitted to statehood. California's admittance
in 1850 came some 32 years after Illinois became a state.
Since statehood, there has been a prodigious in
crease in its population. Certain periods stand out as
being especially noteworthy in this respect. There was
the gold rush period during the 1850's, the railroad boom
during the 1870*s, the oil discovery period at the turn of
the century, the dust bowl migration in the 1930*s, and the
return after World War II of servicemen who had been
stationed in California, each bringing waves of new resi
dents to the state.
During the 1870*s, one of the country*s first
workingmen*s political parties was organized under the
leadership of Dennis Kearney. This was no mere socialist
splinter faction, but was the leading political party in
California during this time. Later, as in so many other
John W. Caughey, California (New York: Prentice-
Hall, 1958), pp. 387-388.
26
states of that era, the politics and governing of the
state came, to a considerable extent, to rest upon the
railroad magnates--most notably Leland Stanford, Collins
Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins.
Probably the most lasting and important political
movement to form in California was the Progressive Party
movement led by reform governor, Hiram Johnson. The Pro
gressives were a middle-class reform movement carrying on
to an extent some of the reformist traditions of the
earlier Populists.The Progressives believed that the
best way to achieve "good government" was to give the
people the means and the power to decide important politi
cal questions. The corruption of the Eastern big city
bosses and their political machines impelled the Progres
sives to erect barriers against politicians and the polit
ical party structure in California. The Progressive Move
ment, of course, was not just a California phenomena, but
was a national movement. However, it was in California
that the Progressives achieved some of their most important
and lasting reforms. Although many reforms were included
07
Richard Hofstader, The Age of Reform (New York:
Vantage Books, 1960).
27
in the Progressive platform, such as some important pro
visions for welfare programs, the political reforms
designed to curb the power of the professional politician
were of particular significance. These were the "reforms"
which have had such a negative impact on the growth and
development of California's party system. Among the
political "reforms" introduced by the Progressives were the
following:
1. The initiative
2. The referendum
3. The recall
4. Cross-filing
5. Nonpartisan local elections
6. No party designation on primary ballots
7. No easy way on the ballot to vote a straight
ticket
8. The direct primary
The goals of the Progressives were only partially
achieved. It is true that these modifications tended to
handicap the growth of political parties, but there is no
clear evidence that having the people share directly in
the running of the government led to improved efficiency
or wiser decisions by the leaders of the state. Indeed,
28
some claim that these "reforms" had the opposite effect.®®
However, the methods that they believed would attain these
results were enacted and do shape California politics in
the twentieth century. What appears to have developed in
the absence of strong contending political parties was a
power vacuum which was filled, in part at least, by a
series of shifting business, agrarian, railroad, Hollywood,
39
liquor, oil, and other powerful lobby interests.
There is little doubt, too, that it was the Demo
cratic Party in particular which was hurt more by these
reforms. The unique cross-filing primary system was
adopted when the Republican Party dominated the state's
elective offices, and to it accrued the advantages of
incumbency. This primary system allowed party candidates
of one party to cross-file and run in the opposing party's
primary as well as their own. Incumbents were able to
38
For example. Crouch, et al.. op. cit.. maintained
that the initiative, referendum, and recall have worked to
the advantage of wealthy special interests rather than to
the great mass of California citizens. Most authorities
point out the weakness of California's parties, the
Implicit theme being that a "strong viable two-party
system" is the most desirable goal.
®^Caughey, op. cit.
2F
capitalize on their greater name recognition, their posi
tion on the ballot (at the head of the list), and their
right to use their office as part of their titles (i.e..
Representative John Smith), Thus, in the period from 1914
to 1954, when cross-filing was the rule, 70 per cent to 80
per cent of the state legislators were able successfully to
cross-file and win in the primary, for all practical pur
poses, their final election. The overwhelming percentage
of those early winners were Republicans.
Since voters had no easy way of determining the
partisan convictions in the primary elections, newspapers*
endorsements were probably more important than is custom
ary. The large influential newspapers in the important
metropolitan centers are owned by publishers who are
Republican oriented--newspapers such as the Los Angeles
Times. the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Diego Union,
and the Oakland Tribune.
Starting especially in the New Deal period of the
1930*s, the Republican domination of California began to
receive stiffer competition from the Democrats. Although
elective positions were still generally won by Republican
office-seekers. Democratic registration figures rose
steadily in proportion to Republican figures. A number of
_ ^
experts looking at this period of Republican supremacy in
elective offices and increasing Democratic registration
figures, in addition to cross-filing and newspaper influ
ence, usually cite the following as reasons for this seem
ing paradox: Republicans were better organized, ran smarter
campaigns, had more money, had less intraparty strife,
bought more billboard signs, and in generaloutclassed
the Democratic Party in candidates, strategy, and organiza
tion. Also many of the new residents coming into the
state were Democrats in name only. The typical Republican
voter was far more likely to vote, participate in the cam
paign, and urge fellow citizens to vote than the typical
Democratic voter. Additionally, because of their superior
resources. Republicans were able to buy the services of
some of the leading public relations firms in California.
By the early 1950*s registered Democrats exceeded
registered Republicans by over one million voters. Partial
electoral success could no longer be denied the Democrats
and the balance of power in the state began to shift. In
1954 the Democrats in the legislature were instrumental in
changing the cross-filing laws. Candidates were still
jr
allowed to cross-file, but the designation *’ Dem" or "Rep"
had to precede the office-seeker. The number of successful
cross-filers was cut noticeably, and the number of new
Democrats elected to the legislature was appreciable. By
1959 cross-filing was discontinued entirely and Democratic
Party fortunes have risen accordingly.
Some authorities contended that another important
reason for the resurgence of the Democratic Party in Cali
fornia could be attributed to the formation of the Califor
nia Democratic Council and its series of local Democratic
clubs. Proponents and opponents of the club movement, both
within and outside the Democratic Party, disagree sharply
as to how much effect the C.D.C. (as it is usually known)
has had on Democratic resurgence. It is true that for the
first time attempts were made in precincts considered
hopelessly lost to the Republicans to get out Democratic
Party voters and the Democrats now had a counterpart to the
California Republican Assembly which had for so long had a
monopoly on the preprimary endorsement for the Grand Old
Party.
Developing at approximately the same time as the
amateur Democrats in the C.D.C. was a revived regular
Democratic Party organization, under the leadership of
32
Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh.
Thus, Democrats have rapidly become the dominant
party in the California legislature, and they also outnum
ber their Republican colleagues by a sizable margin in
California*s congressional delegation.
It would appear that the decisive changes in the
nonpartisan. Republican-oriented political milieu in Cali
fornia came with the change in the state * s primary laws,
coupled with a revived Democratic Party organization. The
large number of Democratic aspirants successfully running
for state and national offices and the gubernatorial vic
tory of Pat Brown over challenger Richard M. Nixon in 1962
were indications of a strong resurgent Democratic Party.
Thus the time span of this study, 1957-1961, covers
a critical transitional period in this state. First, it
marks the end of the Republican Party* s control over the
state government. Second, since the Supreme Court has
ruled that states must apportion both houses of their
legislatures on an equitable population basis, it means
that these are the last years in which the effects of mal
apportionment --both rural-urban and north-south--were
registered.
CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY EMPLOYED
This study is primarily a roll call analysis of the
California legislature during the 1957, 1959, and 1961
legislative sessions. In the even-numbered year sessions
the legislature is constitutionally limited to a considera
tion of the budget, while during the odd-numbered year
sessions the full gamut of issues ranging from agricultural
pesticides control legislation to zoning regulations is
considered. Since the kinds of issues causing legislative
conflict are a major concern in this study, only the odd-
numbered year sessions have been examined.
In addition to an examination of roll calls, a
number of interviews have been conducted with present and
former state legislators, a few legislative aides, and
several professional staff members of some of the state
legislative committees. These interviews were undertaken
for two reasons; first, to provide further insights into
33
34
the California legislative process; and second, to help
determine whether the conclusions reached by roll call
study would collate with the impressions of those inter
viewed .
Tabulating legislative roll call votes is certainly
not a new methodological approach. It is merely another
attempt to quantify social science data in order to provide
a more objective body of materials from which to draw con
clusions about the legislative process. At present there
is an acrimonious debate going on within the discipline of
political science between the scientifically oriented
behavioralists and the non- or antibehavioralists. This
debate revolves to an extent around the desirability of
employing statistical techniques in the analysis of polit
ical phenomena. Nevertheless, basic statistical tabula
tions are commonplace in many of the books and articles
written in political science today.
Although there is a tendency to think of these
statistical applications as being a rather current prac
tice, A. Lawrence Lowell worked with tabulated roll call
data over sixty years ago in his study of party discipline
35
in the United States and England.^ During the intervening
years other political scientists have used roll call data
in the analysis of legislatures, especially since the
1920*s* In 1925 Rice, in an article entitled "Measuring
Cohesion in Legislative Groups," extended the frontiers of
political research by suggesting some refinements to roll
call theory studies.2 In analyzing group voting patterns
he developed two indexes; the index of cohesion and the
index of likeness. For example, in his index of cohesion,
he proposed that if all members of a group voted the same
way, this would be 100; if they were evenly divided, this
would be 0. Thus votes with 80 per cent of the northern
senators voting together in opposition to 20 per cent of
the southern senators would place the index of cohesion at
60 (i.e., 30/50 either way, 80-50=30 and 30/50 or 60--
50-20=30 and 30/50 or 60). Later Rice was to point the way
A. Lawrence Lowell, **The Influence of Party upon
Legislation in England and America," Annual Report of the
American Historical Association, I (1901), 321-542.
Stuart A. Rice, '*The Behavior of Legislative
Groups," Political Science Quarterly, XL (1925), 60-72;
reprinted in John C, Wahlke and Heinz Eulau, Legislative
Behavior (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1959), pp. 372-
377.
3 F
to further uses of statistics in political research by the
publication of his landmark work. Quantitative Methods in
Politics
More recently, there have been a number of roll
call studies published by political scientists. Keefe,
in his study of the Illinois state legislature^ and the
Pennsylvania legislature,^ examined roll call votes, as did
Lockhard in his study of the Connecticut legislature.®
Turner used roll call data in his analysis of party voting
in Congress.^ Truman developed in his text. Congressional
Party, a technique which he called cluster analysis, which
is an elaborate pairing of all the legislators in a
Stuart A. Rice, Quantitative Methods in Politics
(New York; Knopf, 1925).
^William J. Keefe, **Party, Government and Lawmaking
in the Illinois General Assembly,'* Northwestern University
Law Review, XLVII (1952), 55-71.
^William J. Keefe, "Parties, Partisanship, and
Public Policy in the Pennsylvania Legislature," American
Political Science Review, XLVIII (1954), 450-464.
®Duane Lockhard, "Legislative Politics in Connec
ticut," American Political Science Review. XLVIII (1954),
166-173.
^Julius Turner, Party and Constituency: Pressures
on Congress ("The Johns Hopkins University Studies in
Historical and Political Science," Series 69, No. 1; Balti
more; The Johns Hopkins Press, 1951).
37
Q
particular chamber on a series of roll call votes. Jewell
has used roll call votes to make cross comparisons of party
voting in several state legislatures.^ Salisbury’s analy
sis of the urban-rural voting patterns in the Missouri
legislature employed roll call data,^^ as did Ogle in his
study of the rural-urban dichotomy in Indiana,and Derge
in his article on the Illinois l e g i s l a t u r e .^2 The roll
call study most germane to this thesis is Buchanan’s
thoughtful monograph on the California legislature in which
he concentrated his attention upon "discovering" blocs of
legislators through a pairing operation of all the assem-
g
David B. Truman, The Congressional Party (New
York: Wiley and Co., 1959).
^Malcolm Jewell, "Party Voting in American State
Legislatures," American Political Science Review, XLIX
(1955), 773-791.
^^Robert H. Salisbury, "Rural-Urban Factionalism
in Missouri Papers" (unpublished report to the Mid-West
Political Science Association, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Spring
1958, p. 1).
^^Marbury Ogle, "Rural-Urban Splits in Indiana"
(unpublished report to the Mid-West Political Science
Association, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Spring, 1958, p. 1).
12
David Derge, "Metropolitan and Outstate Align
ments in Illinois and Missouri Legislative Delegations,"
American Political Science Review, LII (1958), 1065.
blymen and senators in the state capitol.
13
Feasibility of Roll Call Vote SLudles
It is not possible within the scope of this study
to comment extensively on the debate between the behavior
alists and the nonbehavioralists concerning the application
of statistical techniques in studying politics. Suffice
it to say, this study is based upon the premise that sta
tistical manipulations may contribute insights into the
legislative process. The question that must be considered
in this study is whether a roll call analysis is a valid
methodological technique.
Methodology is largely determined by what it is
that is to be investigated. This dissertation focuses upon
the determinants of legislative behavior through an examin
ation of three variables: the legislator’s party, the rural
or urban nature of his constituency, and the section of the
state he represents.
Many other approaches have been used by behavior-
ally oriented political scientists in studying legislatures
^®William Buchanan, Legislative Partisanship: The
Deviant Case of California (University of California
Publications in Political Science, Vol. XIII; Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1963).
39
such as scaling legislative voting on particular issue
categories, analyzing legislators in terms of role
theory,describing the interplay of group activity,
17 1 Q
considering personality factors, or using game theory.
These methodological techniques and others have their
advantages and disadvantages. In terms of the central
concerns of this study, it was decided that the roll call
method would provide the most meaningful data from which to
derive hypotheses concerning the importance of parties, the
rural-urban question, and the significance of the north-
south division.
Louis Guttman, "The Basis for Scalogram Analy
sis," in Measurement and Prediction, ed, by Samuel A.
Stouffer, et al. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1950).
15
Heinz Eulau, et al., The Legislative System:
Explorations in Legislative Behavior (New York: Wiley,
1962).
^^David B. Truman, The Governmental Process (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951).
^^John B. McConaughy, "Some Personality Factors of
State Legislators in South Carolina," American Political
Science Review. XLIV (1950), 897-903.
18
R. Duncan Luce and Arnold A. Rogow, "A Game
Theoretic Analysis of Congressional Power Distributions for
a Stable Two-Party System," Behavioral Science, I (1956),
83-95.
40
One political scientist. Professor Wilder Crane,
has raised several thoughtful questions concerning the
feasibility of using roll call data. His criticisms, as
well as other deficiencies of the roll call approach could
be summed as follows:
1. Measures are really decided in the legislative
committees; most authorities are convinced that
it is in these "miniature legislatures" that
the real issues are thrashed out. The roll
call vote is only a formality.
2. It would be possible, and it happens not infre
quently, that a legislator may vote against a
bill's passage in the secret committee vote,
but vote for it in the public roll call in
order to appease constituent sentiment.
3. Truly divisive bills are frequently "bottled
up" in committee and are not even allowed out
for floor action. Some crucial bills are
"marked up" by committee or subcommittee so
that final floor action on a virtually new
compromise bill has little meaning.
4. Assume there are four legislators--legislators
A, B, C, and D. A provision to increase sick
------------------------------------------ 2rr
leave pay for workers has been introduced:
a. A votes against the bill because it will
cost too much.
b. B votes against it because the watered down
bill falls short of the amount of increase
he feels is necessary.
c. C votes against it because of his party's
position.
d. D votes against it because he shares his
desk with a strong opponent of the bill.
Since he has no firm convictions on the
measure, he decided to vote along with his
friend.
These four individuals would be grouped together in the
"nay" category with the implicit assumption that they were
in agreement on this vote. Yet we know from these four
separate situations that agreement was only superficial.^^
Professor Heinz Eulau and his colleagues suggested
some further limitations in roll call analysis:
^^Wilder Crane, "A Caveat on Roll-Call Studies of
Party Voting," Midwest Journal of Political Science. IV
(1960), 1-26.
TfT
The importance of recorded votes varies from
one legislature to another. Where the important
decisions are made in caucus and followed by
straight party line votes, these record votes
would be a poor indication of any member's con
tributions to the group's decisions. Other prac
tices that diminish the relevance of roll call
votes as an index of individual positions : auto
matic unanimous ratification of committee deci
sions; much time spent in committee of the whole,
with heavy reliance on voice votes or standing
votes ; high rates of absenteeism; "carrying-over"
roll calls from one bill to the next, thus record
ing members as for or against who have actually
left the chamber.
It was also reliably reported to this writer by one Cali
fornia Assemblyman's legislative aide that in order to have
a good voting record sometimes desk mates will vote for
absent partners. This is easily accomplished by merely
pressing the absent member's voting button and thereby
tallying his vote on the electric score board.
Price, in an article dealing with voting behavior
of southern Democrats in Congress, used a roll call anal
ysis but admitted the limitations of this approach. He
commented :
Now there are certain obvious limitations on
the value of roll call votes as basic data. Cer
tainly a simple "yea" or "nay" vote cannot express
different degrees of intensity of feeling, doubts
20
Eulau, op. cit.. p. 230.
43
about the different parts of a complex measure may
conceal the fact that the same response may come
from two legislators for contradictory reasons (as
in the not too frequent situation where two ex
tremes join to defeat a compromise proposal).
Further, there is considerable evidence that a
legislator's own personal opinion on the positions
he takes within committee may well differ from the
stand he takes on a record vote. One even hears
rumors that votes are more or less traded, as when
Western Democrats vote with the Southerners on
civil rights in return for needed Southern support
for a high federal dam in Hell's Canyon.^^
Crane argued that tabulating the number of times
majorities of Republican and Democratic legislators were
in opposition to each other or supported each other told
little about legislative behavior. Crane stated:
The roll calls do not reflect the extent to
which party may be a critical voting factor on
issues on which the majority in both parties vote
on the same side; it also reveals that party roll-
calls alone do not necessarily provide a reliable
index of the extent to which legislators respond
to perceived partisan considerations in deciding
how to v o t e .22
Professor Crane also pointed out that different methodolog
ical techniques in studying legislatures could lead to
21h . Douglas Price, "Are Southern Democrats Differ
ent?" Politics and Social Life, edited by Nelson Polsby,
Robert A. Dentier, and Paul A. Smith (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1964), p. 740.
22
Crane, op. cit., p, 13,
— — z f z r
contradictory conclusions. For example, Jewell found that
parties were important and clashed frequently in many of
the state legislatures which he examined, while Keefe,
after studying the Illinois and Pennsylvania legislatures,
negated the significance of political parties. Crane con-
cluded:
Accordingly, the differences between Jewell's
insistence on the importance of parties in state
legislatures and Keefe's denial that parties pro
vide genuine policy alternative in state legisla
tures, a claim which Jewell criticized is based
upon different methods of research which each have
employed. Jewell counted party roll calls and
found they occurred often, whereas Keefe analyzed
the issues on which party roll calls o c c u r r e d .23
The criticism of roll call studies are important
and must be recognized, but there are a number of important
arguments that can be offered in defense of this methodo
logical technique. A discussion of why this approach was
used in this study follows.
The California legislature is better suited than
many other states for a roll call analysis because of its
2^Ibid.. p. 18. Another reason for the difference
in conclusions of the two is that Jewell omitted all bills
which passed the legislature with less than 10 per cent
opposition. Keefe, on the other hand, included all roll
call votes and discovered a much lower proportion of party
votes.
ZiT
weak party structure. There are no party caucuses in the
Senate, and in the Assembly these meetings are still a
relatively new phenomenon. Sanctions are seldom, if
ever, imposed by party leaders in either house, and pres
sures for party unity are normally discreet and subtle.
It would be helpful to scholars if legislative
committees would publicly record their votes, but this is
not the case. Most of the people interviewed for this
study agreed that few important bills were kept "bottled
up," at least in the Assembly. Buchanan also made the same
point :
In Sacramento, though the Rules committees are
technically responsible for the agenda in their
chambers, they seldom use this power for the pur
pose of shaping policy. . . . Unless the author
desires otherwise, bills are considered in the
order they arrive at each point in the route: at
the desk of the presiding officer, in committee,
and on the floor. Except in rare instances, every
bill is given a hearing if the author requests,
and comparatively few measures--less than one per
cent--are lost at the end of the session because
they have not reached the c a l e n d a r .25
Some contend, however, that not infrequently bills are
passed by the Assembly, sent over to the Senate, and then
2^Senators are sometimes invited to the party
caucuses of their Assembly colleagues.
Buchanan, op. cit.. p. 94.
tabled by a Senate Committee. At least the voting align
ments in the lower house will be public record, however.
Professor Crane criticized roll call vote studies
because they failed to indicate the importance of partisan
ship, when both parties supported a measure. This criti
cism is justified. However, through a consideration of
these party agreement votes, the kinds of issues upon which
the two parties were able to unite can be determined.
Thus, although the extent of party influence on
agreement votes cannot be learned, detecting those issues
that were either nonpartisan or those where the two parties
have been able to coalesce is important. Prominent members
of the legislature interviewed for this study believed that
the number of times parties had been instrumental in secur
ing unity internally on issues where there was little inter
party conflict was not great.
Another criticism of the roll call method is that
the researcher is attempting, in effect, to add fruits and
nuts together and there is no way of measuring the signifi
cance of a vote. Although there is a problem in assessing
the importance of a particular roll call in this type of
47
study, Riker suggested one solution.
Professor H. Douglas Price stated that roll call
studies would not reveal why a legislator voted as he did
or the intensity of his convictions. However, he concluded
his discussion of roll call methodology with the following
remark: "Despite these limitations roll call votes are of
great importance in the legislative struggle and properly
used, are a very valuable source of data."^?
In concluding this section on the usefulness of
roll call votes, the authors of The Legislative System
summed up the argument for using roll call data in this
way:
. . . the [roll call vote] is undoubtedly the
authoritative decision. . . . And if one is
interested in the impact of authoritative deci
sions on the life of a community, careful analysis
of roll call votes can convey a great deal of the
legislator's place in the political system as a
whole.28
William Riker, "A Method for Determining the
Significance of Roll Calls in Voting Bodies," in Legisla
tive Behavior, edited by Heinz Eulau and John C. Wahlke
(Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1959).
^^Price, op. cit.. p. 740.
OQ
Eulau, op. cit.. p. 230.
~ z r a r
The arguments suggested above indicate a roll call
analysis of the California legislature is reasonable.
Roll Call Votes in This Study
There are literally thousands of votes taken in
the legislative sessions of the California legislature.
For example, during the 1957 session 4,520 roll call votes
were taken in the Assembly alone. The great majority of
these roll call votes dealt with relatively insignificant
matters and were passed quickly by unanimous or nearly
unanimous majorities. These votes have been omitted from
OQ
this study. These bills were deleted for two reasons :^
1. There were over 2,000 roll call votes that were
analyzed in the three sessions studied. Add
ing these nonconflict votes would greatly com
plicate the tabulation.
2. These votes had only negligible significance;
they were passed quickly and quietly with lit
tle debate or discussion.
Because the rules require a roll call vote on the final
passage of all bills, exclusion of unanimous and nearly
29
Bills with less than 10 per cent opposition.
“ 49
unanimous votes appears sensible.
Every roll call vote with at least a 10 per cent
opposition to a majority is considered a "conflict" vote.
Votes recorded were limited to substantive matters, not
adjournment motions or housekeeping votes. Assembly or
Senate constitutional amendments were not tabulated because
they require an absolute two-thirds majority for passage.
A legislator absent on a constitutional amendment vote
would, in effect, be casting a "no" vote. Problems of
evaluating the significance of the absentee legislator on
these constitutional amendments are obvious, and these
votes have been omitted purposely from this study. Senate
and Assembly bills require an absolute majority for pas
sage, and the absentee factor does not weigh as heavily in
the vote outcome.
Resolutions were also excluded from this study.
For the most part these resolutions are not nearly as im
portant as the regular bills, and furthermore it was neces
sary to keep the number of roll calls examined within
certain limits. Hardy described the various resolutions
in this way:
Resolutions for the purpose of memorializing
or of making requests of the federal government
50
and other state governments are termed joint reso
lutions. Concurrent resolutions are employed to
establish joint rules or committees, to indicate
legislative intent, or to request action of admin
istrative officers (members as well as ex-members)
or to express sorrow on their death. Lesser per
sonages arc honored or have sorrow expressed by a
single house resolution.50
In a few instances there was a series of successive roll
calls on the same measure. If five per cent of the members
shifted their position, the vote was included. If there
was no change in a long series of successive roll calls,
only the first vote was included.
Each legislator's voting record on the conflict
O 1
roll calls was punched on data cards. Card deck sub
groups were then compiled. For example, rural senators in
the 1959 session were one subgroup. The decks of data
cards were prepared to fit into the proper format for the
oo
Tab 2 Questionnaire Analysis Computer Program. This
^^Leroy C. Hardy, California Government (New York:
Harper and Row, 1964), p. 49.
The 1957 and 1959 card decks were compiled by
Professor William Buchanan with the assistance of William
Johnston and Richard Wright, graduate students at the
University of California at Berkeley. The 1961 Assembly
and Senate decks were prepared by this writer.
32
This computer program was written by Mr. Fred
White, on the staff of the University of Southern Califor
nia computer center. Mr. W. R. Larson wrote the descrip-
51
program was written especially for social science research
projects and permitted the tabulation of the myriad numbers
of computations necessary in this study. This program is
set up in such a way that analyses may be made for complete
groups or by subgroups, in terms of sorting categories.
The data derived from these computations will be examined
in the following chapters.
tion of the program and assisted this writer at several
difficult stages of the computer application.
CHAPTER IV
POLITICAL PARTY VOTING IN
THE CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY
As has been noted, throughout the first half of
the twentieth century the Republican Party dominated the
political life of California. It captured most of the
state-wide elective offices, elected majorities in the
Congressional delegations which California sent to the
United States Congress, and controlled both houses in the
state legislature. Turner and Veig summarized the Republi
can orientation of California:
For more than half a century prior to the 1958
election the Republican Party controlled the ma
jority of the political offices of the state. The
Republicans dominated the state Senate from 1891
until 1957, when the two parties divided the seats
of the Upper House evenly. With the exception of
the three elections of 1936 through 1940, the
Republicans elected a majority of the Assembly
from 1894 until 1958. For sixty years, beginning
in 1898, every California governor was a Republi
can, except Culbert L. Olson, who held the guber
natorial office for one term beginning in 1939.
To illustrate further the extent to which the
52
33
Republicans dominated the California political
scene, it might be noted that from 1890 until 1958
the Democrats were able to elect only two men to
the office of attorney general and were unable to
elect a single person to the position of secretary
of state, treasurer, and controller.
Although, on the one hand, the Republican Party con
trolled the state elective positions, on the other hand.
Democratic Party voter registration figures surged past the
Republicans for the first time in 1934 and have remained
ahead ever since. By 1952 Democratic Party registration
exceeded Republican registration by more than one million
voters, yet the Republicans that year had a 54-26 margin in
the state Assembly and a 29-11 majority in the state
Senate. Democrats through 1954, for the most part, were
unable to turn their registration supremacy into state
election victories.2 Thus most of the older text books on
political parties usually categorized California either as
being a pivotal state, or "leaning" toward the Republican
^Henry A. Turner and John A. Veig, The Government
and Politics of California (New York: McGraw Hill, 1960),
pp. 38-39.
^Charles G. Bell, "A Study of Four Selected Factors
Which Have Contributed to the Inability of the Democratic
Party to Successfully Mobilize Its Latent Majority in
California" (unpublished Master's thesis. University of
Southern California, 1949).
^ ^
P a r t y .5 in fact, Schlesinger, in an article written as
recently as 1955, still had California classified as a
Republican state.
In another respect, even though the Republican
Party did dominate state elections, undaunted by adverse
registration figures, the Democratic Party was able to
compete effectively during presidential elections for the
state's slate of presidential electors. In fact, since
1932 California, more often than not, has gone Democratic
in presidential elections. A similar phenomena, although
reversed, may be occurring in the South today, where the
Republican party has scored impressive victories in the
last several presidential elections, but has failed, for
the most part, to dent Democratic strength in state and
Congressional elections.
q
Dayton David Me Kean, Party and Pressure Group
Politics (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1949), p. 96;
and Austin Ranney and Wilmoore Kendall, Democracy and the
American Party System (New York: Hareourt. Brace and Com
pany, 1956), pp. 527-533.
^Joseph A. Schlesinger, "A Two-Dimensional Scheme
for Classifying the States According to Degree of Inter-
Party Competition," American Political Science Review.
XLIX, No. 4 (1955).
^ ' 55
With the end of cross-filing and the development of
strong Democratic precinct organizations in California,
elective victories could no longer be denied the Democrats.
In the 1959 legislative session the Republicans lost con
trol of the state legislature and in the 1960 and 1962
elections the Democratic margin was widened. Therefore,
the years covered in this study (i.e., the 1957, 1959, and
1961 legislative sessions) are significant for both parties
because they are the transitional years of growing Demo
cratic superiority in the Assembly and Senate, In Table 1
TABLE 1
NUMBER OF REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS IN
THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE IN THE
1957-1959-1961 LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS
Assembly Senate
Membership by Year
Number Per Cent Number Per Cent
1957
Republicans
Democrats
1959
Republicans
Democrats
43
37
35
45
54
46
44
56
19
21
12
28
52
48
30
70
56
TABLE 1--Continued
Assemb1 y Senate
Number Per Cent Number Per Cent
1961
Republicans
Democrats
33
47
42
58
10
30
25
75
the numerical strength of the Republicans and Democrats in
the state legislature is shown. The 1957 legislative ses
sion was the last in which the Republicans controlled the
Assembly. It should also be noted that in two of the
legislative sessions studied, the Democrats had clear
majorities in both houses of the legislature--1959 and
1961.
Because of this shifting balance of power in the
state legislature, certain questions inevitably arise : Is
the legislature becoming more partisan now that the Demo
crats have supplanted the Republicans as the majority
party? Is partisanship not as important a factor in Cali
fornia as in other comparable urban states? How frequently
do the two parties oppose each other in the legislature?
On what types of issues, if any, are differences manifested?
57
One hypothesis frequently mentioned is that the
impressive election victories achieved by the Democrats
recently have helped create a more partisan atmosphere in
Sacramento. Republicans, for various reasons, had been
among the most enthusiastic supporters of a kind of modi
fied nonpartisanship--so long as they remained in power.
In a section of Eulau's book, Buchanan noted this hybrid
Republican-nonpartisanship orientation in his interviews
with California legislators in the following remarks:
California, as we noted before, was characterized
by a party politics in transition during the 1957
session. The situation was still ambiguous enough
for a large proportion of the responses to give
party influence a rather low or negative evalua
tion. An Assemblyman who judged the parties to
have little or no influence put it this way:
"Some men come in here with considerable
party spirit but it wears off. They find
there isn't time for it--you have to get
results right away and the job is too
big. The luxury of playing at parties
doubles the time you have to spend on a
bill."
Another legislator explained: "They wave the flag
about party principles, write the platform--but
we never see it during the session." Even some
who reluctantly evaluated party influence as
increasing were cautious :
"To a degree you are a captive of your
party because you have to depend on it
3 B "
for heIp--you go along when you can do it
without hypocrisy.
Party Background; The Assembly
With the advent of Democratic supremacy several
events have occurred in the Assembly which experts on Cali
fornia politics believe are indicative of a partisan in
crease. These changes concerned the selection of commit
tee chairmen and vice chairmen and also the election of the
Speaker. Suffice it to say, the changes that were insti
tuted in the 1963 legislative session were designed to give
the Democrats greater leverage over their Republican adver
saries. Gillam reported the story of the battle over legis
lative changes ;
Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh (D-Inglewood)
plans to suggest a rule change at the 1964 legis
lative session which could give minority Republi
cans a small voice in the election of a speaker.
Assembly majority Democrats rammed through a rule
change last week providing the speaker, histori
cally elected by all 80 members, be chosen by a
majority party caucus. The Democrats presently
control the lower house by a 52-28 margin over the
GOP.
Adoption of the new rule, which also requires
all Assembly committee chairmen and vice chairmen
to be members of the majority party, caused a
Heinz Eulau, John Wahlke, William Buchanan, and
LeRoy Ferguson, The Legislative System; Expolorations in
Legislative Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1962).
59
furor that almost blew the dome off the capitol.
Republican leaders claimed they were being
"punished" because the GOP temporarily held up
final passage of Gov. Brown's supplemental state
budget by imposing a 24-hour no-vote blockade.
Unruh denied this was true, explaining the major
ity party was seeking protection against what he
called "extreme partisanship" practiced by minor
ity Republicans.°
Traditionally, the election of the speaker had been
one of the most important votes taken in the entire Assem
bly session. Election was from the floor of the Assembly
with all Assemblymen eligible to participate. Various fac
tions in the legislature contended either to get their
candidate elected or, at the least, to gain an important
bargaining position through supporting the eventual win
ner. ^ Unruh argued that his suggested rule change would
merely have the California Assembly do what the United
States House of Representatives does. Voting for Speaker
of the House of Representatives is strictly a partisan
affair, but under the former California plan, Sacramento
soIons had frequently crossed party lines in order to gain
^Jerry Gillam, "Unruh to Ask Rules Change Affecting
GOP," Los Angeles Times. August 5, 1963.
^William Buchanan, Legislative Partisanship: The
Deviant Case of California ("University of Californi
Publications in Political Science," Vol. XIII; Berkeley;
University of California Press, 1963), p. 85.
60
a more advantageous position when the Speaker's coalition
divided the spoils.
The change in the selection of committee chairman
also would make the California lower house like the United
States House of Representatives. Unlike Congress, where
accession to committee chairmanships depends upon senior
ity, selection for these posts in California had usually
gone to members of both parties--the major criterion being
whether they had been members of the Speaker's coalition.
Under the new plan, committee chairmen would come solely
from the ranks of the majority party. These changes and
other actions by the almost living symbol of the alleged
growing partisanship. Speaker Unruh (e.g., "locking in" the
Republican Assemblymen in the 1963 session over a budget
dispute), indicate the growing strife between Republican
and Democratic party legislators.
Assembly Basic Party Disagreement Votes
The first question then is: do the roll call votes
also indicate a picture of growing party strife in the
state legislature? In Table 2 partisan votes for the three
sessions are listed. A partisan vote has been defined as
one in which 75 per cent or more of the Democrats in the
5T
TABLE 2
ASSEMBLY BASIC PARTY DISAGREEMENT VOTES
Year
Total Number of
Conflict Votes
Basic Party Votes
Number Per Cent
1957
1959
1961
Total
265
430
273
968
18
60
40
118
7
14
15
Assembly voted in opposition to 75 per cent or more of the
Republicans in the lower house.
It is clear that there have been more partisan
votes in the California legislature since the 1957 session,
the last year of Republican control of the State Assembly.
The 1959 session had over three times as many, and the 1961
session had over twice as many. However, in each of the
sessions studied there were thousands of roll call votes.
In 1957, for example, there were over 4,000 separate roll
calls. Thus, on only a small fraction of votes did as many
as three-quarters of the Republicans vote against three-
32
8
quarters of the Democrats." Jewell in his studies of
political parties in the state legislatures used a higher
definition (90 per cent) for what he classified as a "party
vote.
fi9
TABLE 3
ASSEMBLY PARTY VOTES--JEWELL DEFINITION
90 PER CENT LEVEL
Year
Total Number of
Conflict Votes
Partisan Votes
Number Per Cent
1957 265 2 .008
1959 430 2 .005
1961 273 10 .04
Total 968 14
It is quite obvious that only a few votes in the
three sessions studied in California are able to qualify as
^Stuart A, Rice, Quantitative Methods in the Study
of Politics (New York: Knopf, 1928), p. 209. Rice used a
party index of cohesion of 80-100 if 90 to 100 per cent of
the members were on one side; 40-79 if 70 to 89 per cent
were on one side and 0-39 if 50 to 69 per cent were on one
side.
^Malcolm Jewell, "Party Voting in American State
Legislatures," American Political Science Review, XLIX
(1955), 773.
53
party votes using the Jewell definition. Of course, a
discussion of California partisanship without some compari
son to other analogous states would be highly sterile. In
Table 4 the percentages of party votes in the eight state
legislatures studied by Jewell are listed.
TABLE 4
PERCENTAGE OF PARTY VOTES AND RANKING BY STATE
Rank State
Percentage
of Party Votes^
1 Penn s y 1 van ia 62
2 Massachusetts 40
3 New York 34
4 Illinois 17
5 Ohio 15
6 Washington 9
7 Missouri 9
8 Colorado 7
9 California
4b
^Votes were studied from the other eight states*
1947 legislative sessions.
^The California session compared was the 1961 ses
sion- -in which there were the largest number of party votes
of the three sessions studied.
5ZT
It can be seen that California, even in a period
of partisan upswing, does not come very close to Colorado,
the least partisan of the eight legislatures. Yet these
eight states should be somewhat comparable to California*
They have mainly urban populations, competitive two-party
structures, sizeable ethnic minority groups, and are all
non-Southern. Therefore, because of the nonpartisan tradi
tion of the state legislature, the weak party structure,
and, undoubtedly, other factors which are as yet unknown,
California's legislature has manifested only minimal par
tisanship. It is much less partisan than Illinois, Ohio,
Washington, Missouri, and Colorado, and the distance from
the most partisan states studied by Jewell (Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, and New York) would almost have to be meas
ured in light years.
Although there were not many basic disagreement
votes in the three sessions studied, even with the increase
in the 1959 and 1961 legislative sessions, a good deal can
be learned about partisan differences in California by
looking at the kinds of issues which caused the Republicans
and Democrats to vote against and with each other. These
issues have been divided into 17 different categories (see
Table 5). The number of votes in each category and its
TABLE 5
COMPARISON OF THE TYPES OF VOTES THAT CAUSED
ASSEMBLY BASIC PARTY DISAGREEMENT IN CALIFORNIA
WITH THE OTHER EIGHT STATES AND THEIR RANKING
California Other Eight States
Number
Rank Issue of
Votes
Rank Issue
1 Elections--reappor 1 Elections-reappor
tionment 24 tionment
2 Labor 24 2 Labor
3 Law 19 3 Appropriations
4 Welfare 14 4 Legislative pro
5 Appropriations 12 cedure
6 Taxation 10 5 Taxation
7 State administration 9 6 Veterans affairs
8 Local administration 4 7 Welfare
9 Business 1 8 Civil service
10 Water 1 9 State administra
tion
11 Legislative procedure 0 10 Local administra
12 Fish and game 0 tion
13 Transportation 0 11 Law
14 Education 0 12 Business
15 Liquor 0
16 Agriculture 0
17 Natural resources 0
Total 118
rank may be compared to Jewell's ranking of issues com
piled in his eight state study.
There is a great deal of similarity between the
types of issues that caused party differences in Califor-
nia and in the eight other states--elections and reappor
tionment , labor, and appropriations rank at the top of both
lists. One category included by Jewell which has not been
included in the California rankings is for votes on gover
nors* appointments. Jewell's rankings are for both houses
of the legislature, and it is the upper house in most
states that votes on these appointments. Obviously, the
California Assembly had no appointment votes and thus this
category was omitted from Jewell's rankings.
Another category ranking well up on the Jewell
listing was veterans' affairs. It should be remembered
that Jewell's study was undertaken in 1947 just after World
War II at a time when veterans' activities were a critical
matter; this concern with veterans' affairs had evidently
dissipated by 1957. During the 1957-1961 period there were
only a handful of votes dealing with this topic, and these
have been listed under the miscellaneous category. Issue
categories such as education, business, and agriculture
rank near the bottom of both lists.
Ranking issues strictly in terms of the number of
votes in a classification could be considered misleading.
For example, if there are only six votes in the education
category, and all are basic disagreement votes, would this
67
not be more significant than having ninety votes dealing
with local administration in various categories with only
six in the basic disagreement category? In Table 6 a
TABLE 6
ASSEMBLY BASIC PARTY DISAGREEMENT VOTES
RANKED BY PERCENTAGE ORDER
Rank Issue
Percentage (of all votes
on this issue falling
into this category)
1 Elections and reappor
tionment 43
2 Labor 29
3 Welfare 18
4 Appropriations 16
5 Law 14
6 Taxation 12
7 State administration 11
8 Local administration 6
9 Education 4
10 Legislative procedure 4
11 Water 2
12 Business 2
B8"
readjustment is made with this consideration in mind. The
percentage for each classification is derived by dividing
the total number of votes one of the issue classifications
has in the various categories into the number found in the
basic disagreement category.
The same general ranking of issues prevails with
numerical or percentage ranking. Again, the most conten
tious classification for the two parties appears to take
place on votes dealing with the topic of elections and
reapportionment, almost one-half of the votes on this topic
being in the basic disagreement category. Votes on labor
and welfare are also important classifications in this
category.
Assembly Moderate Party Disagreement Votes
Of course, not all votes in which the two parties
opposed each other are at the basic disagreement level.
Therefore, another group of votes has been included: the
moderate disagreement category. There are two possible
voting combinations which would qualify a vote for this
category:
1. If both parties are in disagreement, but the
level of disagreement is below the 75 per cent
. ^
level but above the 60 per cent level.
2. If the two parties are in disagreement, and
one is over the 75 per cent level and the other
beneath it but still above 60 per cent.
While there are 116 basic disagreement votes in the
three sessions, there are more than twice as many in the
moderate disagreement category--275 votes (see Table 7).
TABLE 7
ASSEMBLY MODERATE PARTY DISAGREEMENT VOTES
Number of Moderate Party Votes
Year
Conflict Votes
Number Per Cent
1957 265 58 22
1959 430 127 30
1961 273 90 33
Totals 968 275
It might be hypothesized that the same kinds of issues
which are prominent in the basic disagreement category
would also be important in the moderate disagreement cate
gory. Besides the greater vote totals in the various
classifications, there are few important differences in the
70
types of issues that are found most frequently in the
moderate disagreement category. Table 8 shows the ranking
TABLE 8
ASSEMBLY MODERATE PARTY DISAGREEMENT VOTES
BY ISSUE CATEGORY
Rank Issue Number of Votes
1 Law 47
2 Labor 30
3 Appropriations 27
4 Welfare 26
5 Taxation 21
6 State administration 20
7 Local administration 18
8 Water 17
9 Education 14
10 Elections and reapportionment 13
11 Business 13
12 Transportation 12
13 Legislative procedure 5
14 Fish and game 4
15 Liquor 4
TABLE 8--Continued
71
lank Issue Number of Votes
16 Agriculture 2
17 Natural resources 1
Total 275
of issues found in the moderate disagreement category.
There appears to be a great deal of overlapping
between the votes in the basic disagreement category and
those in the moderate disagreement category. Categories
such as law, welfare, labor, appropriations, and taxation
rank high in both lists. Since such an overwhelming pro
portion of the votes in the elections and reapportionment
classification are in the basic disagreement list, this
issue does not rank too high in the moderate disagreement
rankings. Table 9 shows the ranking of votes in the
moderate disagreement category when the classifications
are listed in percentage order.
The same classifications that ranked high in Table
8 where ranking was by total number of votes are also high
on the list in Table 9--labor, welfare, law, appropria
tions, and taxation. It should also be noted that while
TABLE 9
ASSEMBLY MODERATE PARTY DISAGREEMENT
RANKED BY PERCENTAGE ORDER
72
VOTES
Rank Issue Percentage
1 Labor 37
2 Water 36
3 Welfare 34
4, Law 34
5 Appropriations 33
6 Taxation 33
7 Business 33
8 Education 30
9 Local administration 27
10 Legislative procedure 25
11 State administration 25
12 Elections and reapportionment 21
13 Fish and game 19
14 Liquor 17
15 Transportation 15
16 Agriculture 16
17 Natural resources
— —
73
the total number of votes dealing with the water question
was not great, many votes on this topic did provoke some
partisan disagreement.
By combining the percentages in the moderate and
basic disagreement tables, it can be seen in Table 10
that approximately two-thirds of the votes dealing with
the elections and reapportionment measures and labor
bills evidenced a majority of one party opposed to a
majority of the other. Also on about one-half of the
votes dealing with welfare and appropriations party dif
ferences may be noted. It is also apparent that Republi
cans and Democrats in the Assembly are seldom opposed to
each other on issues dealing with education, fish and
game, agriculture, and transportation.
Assembly Basic Party Agreement Votes
As was mentioned in Chapter III, Professor Wilder
Crane contended that one serious deficiency in most roll
call studies was the emphasis that is placed on the number
of times various legislative subgroups are in opposition
to each other. This neglects the importance a group may
have in persuading its members to vote with an opposition
group. In this study a careful examination of kinds of
74
TABLE 10
ASSEMBLY BASIC AND MODERATE PARTY DISAGREEMENT
VOTES COMBINED AND BY PERCENTAGE ORDER
Rank Issue Percentage
1 Labor 66
2 Elections and reapportionment 64
3 Welfare 52
4 Appropriations 49
5 Law 48
6 Taxation 45
7 Water 38
8 State administration 36
9 Business 35
10 Education 34
11 Local administration 33
12 Legislative procedure 29
13 Fish and game 19
14 Liquor 17
15 Transportation 15
16 Agriculture 10
17 Natural resources 0
75
issues in which various legislative subgroups were in
agreement is considered, as well as the number of times
they were in opposition to each other. Although the extent
to which party was a factor in persuading, for an example,
a Republican senator to follow his party's lead and vote
to support the Democrats may not be learned, at least the
kinds of issues helping to manifest this type of behavior
can be discovered.
In general, two kinds of votes have been included
in the basic agreement category, in addition to the two
other categories in which the parties are in agreement
which are included later in this chapter. A basic agree
ment vote is defined as one in which the two parties voted
overwhelmingly for or against a measure. For example.
Assembly Bill 2561 in the 1959 session dealt with restrict
ing the sale of liquor within a one-mile radius of the
University of California at Berkeley. On this measure, 83
per cent of the Republicans and 91 per cent of the Demo
crats voted for the bill, thus classifying it as a basic
agreement vote.
The other kind of basic agreement vote is one in
which a similar percentage of Republicans and Democrats
voted for or against a measure (within 20 per cent). An
76
example would be Assembly Bill 1745 of the 1961 session, a
bill which would provide that ''pretrial conferences in
civil cases shall not be mandatory but rather they shall be
held only on order of the court or on application of a
party." On this vote, 50 per cent of the Republicans and
60 per cent of the Democrats supported the measure. This
vote is also considered a basic agreement vote because the
two parties * percentages of support on the vote were within
the 20 per cent margin. In Table 11 the total number of
votes in the basic agreement are tabulated.
TABLE 11
ASSEMBLY BASIC PARTY AGREEMENT VOTES
Ypar Number of
Conflict Votes
Basic Agreement Votes
Number Per Cent
1957 265 127 49
1959 430 115 28
1961 273 61 23
Total 968 303
Although there were more basic agreement votes than
any other category, the sharp decline in the agreement
77
percentages in 1959 and 1961 is another clear indication of
the growing partisan spirit in the lower house.
Not surprisingly, the kinds of votes that are found
most frequently in the disagreement tables are different
from the agreement tables, although votes dealing with law
legislation and appropriation measures rank high numeri
cally on both sides. In Table 12 the issues classifica
tions are ranked in the basic agreement category.
The issue which caused the least partisanship in
the lower house occurred on votes in the transportation
classification; speed limits, highway maintenance, trucking
permits, and so on are the kinds of votes that are included
in this classification. State administration measure^
frequently appear to be nonpartisan.
In the basic and moderate disagreement categories,
ranking issues by the number of votes resulted in only
slight changes from ranking issues in percentage order.
However, with basic agreement votes there are some impor
tant differences in the order of the rankings in the two
tables. In Table 13 basic agreement votes are ranked by
percentage order.
Seldom are party differences manifested on issues
dealing with transportation, state administration, fish
TABLE 12
ASSEMBLY BASIC PARTY AGREEMENT
BY ISSUE CATEGORY
78
VOTES
Rank Issue Number of Votes
1 Transportation 50
2 State administration 29
3 Law 25
4 Appropriations 24
5 Water 22
6 Taxation 21
7 Local administration 21
8 Business 17
9 Liquor 16
10 Welfare 15
11 Fish and game 15
12 Education 13
14 Agriculture 9
15 Elections 7
16 Labor 6
17 Natural resources 3
Total 303
TABLE 13
ASSEMBLY BASIC PARTY AGREEMENT VOTES
RANKED BY PERCENTAGE ORDER
79
Rank Issue Per Cent
1 Transportation 70
2 State administration 62
3 Fish and game 58
4 Liquor 53
5 Water 45
6 Agriculture 45
7 Legislative procedure 43
8 Business 36
9 Local administration 32
10 Appropriations 32
11 Education 29
12 Taxation 26
13 Law 19
14 Welfare 19
15 Elections 12
16 Labor
9
17 Natural Resources — —
80
and game, and liquor. In each of these classifications
over half of the votes on these issues are in the basic
agreement category. There are only a few votes in the
labor or elections classifications that found the two par
ties in basic agreement.
In order to get a better understanding of basic
agreement measures, votes in this category have been
divided into the two aforementioned designations: first,
those votes in which the two parties are below the 80 per
cent level of agreement; and second, all the rest of the
votes (i.e., those in which one or both of the two parties
are above the 80 per cent level).
This division was created in order to determine if
votes--where there are considerable differences within both
parties--differ markedly from basic agreement votes where
the two parties voted with considerable unanimity and high
cohesion. In Table 14 the issues topics falling in the
basic agreement category are divided into the two divisions
and are ranked by numerical order.
In comparing the two rankings care should be taken
not to derive too much importance from the relative rank
ings of the issues in the two divisions. For the most
part, the votes are bunched together in the rankings with
81
TABLE 14
NUMBER OF TIMES ON ASSEMBLY BASIC PARTY AGREEMENT
VOTES TWO PARTIES WERE BOTH BELOW AND ABOVE
THE 80 PER CENT COHESION LEVEL
Both Parties Below
80 Per Cent Level
One or Both Parties
Above 80 Per Cent
Rank Issue Votes Rank Issue Votes
1 Transportation 31 1 State administra
tion 21
2 Appropriations 14 2 Transportation .19
3 Law 12 3 Law 13
4 Water 11 4 Liquor 12
5 Local administra
tion
5 Water 11
6 Fish and game 10 6 Local administra
tion 11
7 Business 10 7 Appropriations 10
8 Taxation 9 8 Welfare 10
9 Education 8 9 Legislative pro
cedure 7
10 State administra
tion 8
10 Business 7
11 Agriculture 7 11 Education 5
12 Welfare 5 12 Fish and game 5
13 Elections 4 13 Labor 5
14 Liquor 3 14 Elections 4
15 Legislative pro
cedure 3
15 Taxation 3
16 Labor 1 16 Agriculture 2
17 Natural resources 0 17 Natural resources 2
Totals 156 147
82
only a vote or two separating most of the classifications.
It is possible to suggest several hypotheses after exam
ining Table 14:
1. Transportation votes, although often stirring
up legislative differences, seldom elicited
sharp interparty controversy. The same might
be said of many appropriations measures.
2. There are many votes on such issue classifica
tions as state administration, transportation,
law, and liquor in which the two parties voted
with high cohesion together.
3. Essentially, the same types of issues which
caused the two parties to vote together with
comparable cohesion are the same kinds of
issues that saw the two parties vote together
with high cohesion.
Assembly Moderate Party Agreement Votes
There are a number of votes in which majorities in
the two parties supported each other, but a sizable minor
ity of Republicans or Democrats opposed the majority of
their own party. This kind of voting situation (see the
figures for this category in Table 15) has been listed in
TABLE 15
ASSEMBLY MODERATE PARTY AGREEMENT VOTES
83
Year
Votes
1957 1959 1961
Total
Total number of conflict
votes
Number of moderate agreement
votes--Republican minority
Number
265 430 273
Percentage
Number of moderate agreement
votes --Democratic minority
Number
Percentage
21
9
81
19
56
21
41
15
38
9
15
6
968
168
94
this study as a moderate agreement vote. It would appear
from this table that cohesion has certainly improved for
the Democrats since 1957, and that party disagreement votes
were minimized because of Republican intraparty differ
ences .
Assembly moderate party
agreement with Republican
minority
First, votes will be examined where the two parties
were in agreement, but a sizable minority of Republicans
opposed the Republican majority. For example, if 60 per
cent of the Republicans vote the same way as 90 per cent
or more of the Democrats, this vote would be included in
this category because a sizable minority of Republicans
opposed their party majority. In Table 16 are listed
issues where a Republican minority of at least 20 per cent
voted in opposition to the rest of its party and also a
high percentage, 90 per cent or more, of the Democrats.
Again, as in all the other tables, votes in the law
classification ranked high on the list. Law votes concern
such topics as court room proceedings, civil liberties, or
establishing penalties for particular crimes. Throughout
the latter two sessions a number of highly contentious
votes dealing with the death’ penalty were debated and voted
upon. There also appears to have been Republican intra
party strife on labor and welfare issues along with previ
ously noted interparty conflict on these issues. Republi
cans frequently voted with high cohesion on such issues as
elections, transportation, water, appropriations, agricul-
85
TABLE 16
ASSEMBLY MODERATE PARTY AGREEMENT VOTE WITH
A SMALL MINORITY OF REPUBLICANS VOTING
AGAINST THE REPUBLICAN PARTY MAJORITY
Rank Issue Number of Votes
1 Law 30
2 Welfare 20
3 Labor 17
4 Local administration 17
5 State administration 17
6 Business 15
7 Education 14
8 Taxation 11
9 Elections 5
10 Transportation 5
11 Water 4
12 Appropriations 3
13 Agriculture 3
14 Liquor 3
15 Fish and game 2
16 Legislative procedure 2
17 Natural resources
- -
Total 168
86
ture, and liquor. There seem to be indications that the
Republican minority that emerges on some of the roll call
votes can be classified as the arch-conservative wing of
the party. Many of the votes included in this table which
caused at least some of the Republicans in the Assembly to
withhold their support from party majorities were votes for
extending welfare provisions, or were votes supporting
increased unemployment provisions. The substantive
ideological differences between the parties will be ex
plored in the concluding chapter. In Table 17 the issues
in this category are ranked by percentage.
It is interesting to note that the leading classi
fications, at least in terms of percentages, are business
and education. It seems rather remarkable that intraparty
disagreement in the Republican Party appeared most fre
quently on business legislation. However, over one-third
of the votes concerning business legislation found a minor
ity faction of the Republicans opposed to the majority of
both parties. There was little intraparty conflict on
appropriations measures, however. Votes on education,
welfare, and local administration frequently found the
Republicans with divided sentiments.
87
TABLE 17
ASSEMBLY MODERATE PARTY AGREEMENT VOTES WITH
A SMALL MINORITY OF REPUBLICANS VOTING
AGAINST THE REPUBLICAN PARTY MAJORITY
RANKED BY PERCENTAGE ORDER
Rank Issue Percentage
1 Business 34
2 Education 29
3 Welfare 25
4 Local administration 25
5 Law 23
6 Labor 21
7 State administration 21
8 Agriculture 20
9 Taxation 16
10 Liquor 13
11 Water 10
12 Elections 10
13 Transportation 8
14 Fish and game 8
15 Legislative procedure 8
16 Appropriations 5
17 Natural resources
— -
Assembly moderate party
agreement with Democratic
minority
The last category of votes in this study are meas
ures in which the two parties were in general agreement,
but a sizable minority of Democrats was opposed to the
party majority. While there are 182 votes in the category
previously examined (i.e., majority agreement in both
parties with a sizable Republican minority), there are only
94 votes in which Republican and Democratic majorities are
in agreement opposed by a minority in the Democratic Party.
In Table 18, the issues are ranked by the nuber of votes in
the various classifications.
Votes in the various classifications appear to be
spread evenly over most of the issue topics. The law
category again appears near the top of the list. Inter
estingly enough, votes on fiscal matters--taxes and appro
priations --ranked near the very top of the list in Table
18. The paucity of votes in all classifications points up
the fact that the Democrats had better overall cohesion
than Republicans. In Table 19 issues in this category are
ranked by percentages.
In terms of percentages in this category, the
leading issue is agriculture. Since there are so few votes
TABLE 18
ASSEMBLY MODERATE PARTY AGREEMENT VOTES WITH
A SMALL MINORITY OF DEMOCRATS VOTING
AGAINST THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY MAJORITY
89
Rank Issue Number of Votes
1 Taxation 13
2 Law 11
3 Appropriations 9
4 Transportation 7
5 Local administration 7
6 Education 7
7 Elections 6
8 Agriculture 6
9 Labor 5
10 Welfare 5
11 State administration 4
12 Water 4
13 Fish and game 4
14 Legislative procedure 4
15 Liquor 1
16 Natural resources 1
17 Business _0
Total 94
90
TABLE 19
ASSEMBLY MODERATE PARTY AGREEMNT VOTES WITH
A SMALL MINORIK OF REPUBMCANS VOTING
AGAINST A REPM&TCAN PARTY MAJORITY
RANKED BY PERCENTAGE ORDER
Rank Issue Per Cent
1 Agriculture 25
2 Taxation 17
3 Legislative procedure 16
4 Fish and game 15
5 Liquor 13
6 Appropriations 12
7 Education 10
8 Elections 9
9 Law 9
10 Local administration 9
11 Water 9
12 Transportation 7
13 Labor 5
14 State administration 5
15 Welfare 5
16 Natural resources --
17 Business
91
in this category any type of generalization must be offered
with extreme caution. At the same time there are no votes
concerning business activities which found the two parties
in agreement opposed by a sizable Democratic minority.
Since there are so few votes in this category, the per
centages are also lower than in the other tables.
Assembly Party Cohesion
Before finishing the discussion of party voting
in the Assembly, one last topic should be enlarged upon.
This is the problem of determining the cohesiveness of the
two party groups in the years studied. It has been noted
that there were many more intraparty differences in the
Republican Party in at least one voting category already
examined.
It might be hypothesized that because the Democrats
had just taken an ascendant position in the 1959 legisla
ture after a long drought that they would be more likely to
vote together with high cohesion in order to capitalize on
their elective victories. Table 20 was compiled as another*
test to measure party cohesion. In this table votes that
would have been party disagreement votes using the 90 per
cent Jewell definition, if one or the other party had
92
TABLE 20
ASSEMBLY BASIC DISAGREEMENT VOTES: WOULD HAVE BEEN
PARTY VOTES IF EITHER REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS
WOULD HAVE VOTED WITH GREATER UNITY
Number of Party Votes if Number of Party Votes if
Democrats Would Not Have Republicans would Not Have
Been Divided Been Divided
Rank Issues Number Rank Issues Number
1 Labor 5 1 Labor 7
2 Law 4 2 Law 7
3 Water 2 3 Appropriations 5
4 State adminis 4 Election 4
tration 2
5 Election 2 5 Taxation 2
6 Welfare 2 6 Local administra
tion 2
7 Education 1 7 Welfare 2
8 Taxation 1 8 State adminis
tration 2
9 Business 1 9 Liquor 1
10 Legislative pro
cedure 1
Total 20 35
93
mustered higher cohesion, have been listed.
It appears that the Democrats had somewhat better
voting unity than did the Republicans, Nearly twice as
many votes would have been qualified as "party votes" if
the Republicans had attained higher cohesion scores.
The same higher cohesion scores for Democrats can
be seen in Table 21. In this table votes that would have
been basic disagreement votes if one or the other party
had voted with at least 75 per cent cohesion are included.
Almost twice as many votes are tabulated on the Republican
side.
In order to verify further the hypothesis that the
Democrats had higher cohesion scores than did the Republi
cans in the 1959 and 1961 session, overall cohesion scores
for the two parties are averaged out in the basic agree
ment, basic disagreement, and moderate disagreement cate
gories.^^ These figures are presented in Table 22.
It can be seen that in 1957 the Republicans had
higher voting cohesion in the basic disagreement category
and were about even in the moderate disagreement and basic
is obvious that cohesion scores in the Repub
lican minority and Democratic minority categories would be
meaningless, since there was always a minority in one party
voting in opposition to the majorities in both parties.
94
TABLE 21
MODERATE PARTY DISAGREEMENT VOTES: WOULD HAVE BEEN
BASIC ASSEMBLY DISAGREEMENT VOTES IF EITHER
REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS WOULD HAVE VOTED
WITH GREATER UNITY
Number of Basic Disagreement Number of Basic Disagreement
Votes if Democrats Would Votes if Republicans Would
Not Have Been Divided Not Have Been Divided
Rank Issue Number Rank Issue Number
1 Law 15 1 Labor 20
2 Business 7 2 Law 15
3 Education 7 3 Taxation 14
4 Taxation 5 4 State adminis
tration 12
5 Labor 5
5 Water 11
6 Appropriations 4
6 Appropriations 11
7 Transportation 3
7 Welfare 10
8 State adminis
tration 3 8 Local administra
tion 8
9 Legislative
procedure 3 9 Education 5
10 Welfare 3 10 Transportation 3
11 Local adminis 11 Business 3
tration 2
12 Fish and game 3
12 Water 2
13 Elections 2
13 Agriculture 0
14 Liquor 2
95
TABLE 21--Continued
Number of Basic Disagreement
Votes if Democrats Would
Not Have Been Divided
Number of Basic Disagreement
Votes if Republicans Would
Not Have Been Divided
Rank Issue Number Rank Issue Number
15 Agriculture
16 Legislative pro
cedure
Totals 62 122
ASSEMBLY
TABLE 22
OVERALL COHESION SCORES FOR THE
96
TWO PARTIES
Year Republican Democrat
Basic Disagreement
1957 889 852
1959 848 886
1961 890 908
Moderate Disagreement
1957 705 706
1959 708 770
1961 737 803
Basic Agreement
1957 768 772
1959 733 770
1961 719 726
97
agreement scores. However, in 1959 and 1961 as was hypoth
esized, the Democrats had higher cohesion in all three
categories. There does seem to be evidence to support the
contention that Democratic cohesion has increased at the
same time that their numbers in the legislature have multi
plied.
Cone lus ions
The following conclusions about party voting in
the Assembly can be proposed after examining the roll call
data ;
1. Partisanship has definitely increased in the
legislature during the years covered in this
study.
2. This partisanship is still minimal when com
pared with other northern urban states.
3. Issues involving elections and reapportionment,
labor, and welfare most frequently spurred
party disputes between Republicans and Demo
crats .
4. Transportation, fish and game, and state and
local administration were invariably nonparti
san type issues.
5. Democrats appear to have improved their cohe
sion vis-a-vis the Republicans over the ses
sions studied.
CHAPTER V
POLITICAL PARTY VOTING IN THE
CALIFORNIA SENATE
Observers of the California political scene have
long noted important differences between the two houses of
the state legislature. There are the obvious differences:
the Senate is only half the size of the Assembly; Senators
serve four-year terms, while Assemblymen serve for two
years; the Assembly is based upon population for its repre
sentation, while the Senate is based primarily upon area
for its representation; and, in general. Senators are bet
ter known and have more prestige than their Assemblymen
counterparts.
Party Background: The Senate
There are contrasts far more important than these
structural dissimilarities, however, which underlie the two
houses. Hardy made the following observations : "Since 1927
99
the Assembly has, in effect, represented the southern,
urban stronghold, while the Senate represents more the
northern rural forces. Los Angeles County alone con
tributes 31 of the 80 state California Assemblymen, and the
other southern urban counties also are well represented.
Consequently, the mainly rural nothem counties have a
smaller representation in the Assembly. Hyink and his
co-authors emphasized the same point :
Approximately 60 per cent of the state's
population (concentrated in Alameda, Los Angeles,
and San Diego counties) votes to fill only one-
tenth of the state Senate seats, while the remain
ing 40 per cent of the population has control
over nine-tenths of the seats. The Senator from
Los Angeles County represents more than 6 million
constituents ; but the Senator from District 28
(Alpine, Mono, and Inyo counties) represents less
than 15,000--a ratio of 400 to one I This particu
lar imbalance has the dubious honor of being more
severe than exists in the upper house of any other
legislature in the United States.^
State law requires the legislature to reapportion
Congressional and state legislative districts every ten
1
Leroy C. Hardy, California Government (New York:
Harper and Row, 1964), p. 54.
2
Bernard L. Hyink, Seyom Brown, and Ernest W.
Thacker, Politics and Government in California (3rd ed.;
New York: Thomas Y, Crowell Company, 1963), p. 105.
TOT
30 Senators
75 Per Cent
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102
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44 Per Cent
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Map 2.--Southern Assembly Districts
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3
years after each census. The Assembly has been redis
tricted several times since 1927, the year that California
adopted the ’’Federal Plan,” in order to accommodate the
growing, shifting population of the state. By 1961 some of
the new Assembly districts as drawn up by the state legis
lature placed not just one or two counties, but in some
cases a number of counties, into new Assembly districts.
For example, a northern Assembly district, the sixth, is an
amalgam of eleven different counties and the new second
Assembly district includes eight counties.
The Senate has grown increasingly poorly appor
tioned because the state constitution stipulates that no
Senatorial district can be composed of more than three
counties. Since California’s population tends to be con
centrated in a few areas of the state, and because many of
the far-flung counties are populated mainly by cattle,
rattlesnakes, and lizards, the Senate has become unrepre
sentative of the population of the state.
3
A special reapportionment commission consisting
of the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the
controller, the secretary of state, and the superintendent
of public instruction are empowered and obligated to act,
if the legislature fails to carry out the reapportion
ment .
104
In addition to the above differences in the two
chambers, there are other more subtle, but no less impor
tant, distinctions. Many of the leading members of the
California Senate were the successful cross filers not long
ago. These Senators, elected by both parties, were gener
ally imbued with the traditions of nonpartisanship in the
state legislature. Also, Senators seem to be able to run
on their personal records better than can Assemblymen;
Assemblymen are more dependent upon the party for help. An
Assembly candidate from highly populated Los Angeles
County normally must seek his party’s support, whereas a
Senator, from a northern county in particular, can be more
indifferent to partisan blandishments.
The sentiment for reviving cross-filing and depre
cating partisanship is always much stronger on the Senate
side of the state legislature, while the Assembly is the
arena at which thunderous charges of partisanship have been
leveled. Certainly there is no position in the Senate as
powerful politically as the Assembly Speaker. In the lower
house the two parties meet separately in party caucuses,
plan their strategy, and attempt to present a united front
in their deliberations on the Assembly floor. In the upper
house there are no caucuses, no party meetings, no attempts
. " T oy
to impose even nominal party discipline. Positions of
Senators on measures coming up for votes are fairly well
established and known by the other membersIn this
atmosphere it is not too surprising that party allegiance
is not as important in the Senate as in the Assembly and
party voting is infrequent.
Senate Basic and Moderate Party
Disagreement Votes
This impression of nonpartisanship and unanimity
can also be noted in the roll call votes of the three
Senate sessions examined. In Table 23 party division votes,
both basic and moderate, in the two houses may be compared.
It can be seen that conflict votes and party disagreement
votes were much more common in the state Assembly.
There were over ten times as many party division
votes in the Assembly as in the Senate during the 1957
session, six times as many in the 1959 session, and eight
times as many in the 1961 session. Even taking into ac
count the smaller number of overall conflict votes in the
This statement was made to this author by a Cali
fornia Senator during an interview. Although not an
actual quotation, it paraphrases in content the Senator’s
views on voting in the upper house.
106
TABLE 23
SENATE AND ASSEMBLY BASIC AND MODERATE
PARTY DISAGREEMENT VOTES
Year
Number of
Party Votes
Per Cent
Number of
Conflict Votes
Senate
1957
1959
1961
Total
7
24
11
42
4
15
11
137
189
100
426
Assembly
1957
1959
1961
Total
76
187
130
393
29
43
49
265
430
273
968
upper house, the Senate is still much less partisan as can
be seen in the percentage tabulations.
As in the Assembly, there does seem to be increas
ing partisanship in the Senate, although it is very slight.
Both houses witnessed a gradual Democratic Party take-over
during the three sessions studied. By 1961 there were 30
107
Democrats in the upper house as compared to only 10 Repub
licans, The change in party control very likely contribu
ted to the awakening partisan feelings in the upper house.
On only a few votes was even moderately high cohe
sion attained by the two parties in the interparty battles.
The handful of votes that did provike some decided party
differences are tabulated in Table 24.^
TABLE 24
SENATE PARTY DISAGREEMENT VOTES LISTED AT
SEVERAL COHESION LEVELS
Number of
Year Conflict
Roll Calls
Jewell'
Number
Per
Cent
Basic
Dis-
agreementb
Number
Cent
Moderate
Dis
agreement^
Number
Per
Cent
1957 137 0 0 2 1 5 2
1959 189 0 0 6 2 18 9
1961 100 3 3 4 4 7 7
Totals 3 12 30
a
b
c
90 per cent
75 per cent
60 per cent
^Because there were so few party conflict votes,
the various cohesion levels were included in one table.
108
Observations of various authorities appear to be
quite sound: there is a very low level of party sentiment
manifested in the California Senate.
Generalizations about the kinds of issues which
might stimulate party conflict are difficult to formulate
because of the paucity of votes. Certainly, there appears
to be no issue topic in the Senate which can automatically
arouse party antagonism as there appears to be in the
Assembly. Table 25 has been compiled in order to determine
what issues might stir party disputes. In order to have
more data with which to work, all votes having the two
parties in opposition are included, no matter what the
cohesion might have been.
Not too surprisingly, in the Senate it is on wel
fare measures that the two parties are found in most out
spoken opposition. The Democrats in the upper house, for
the most part, sought to include more citizens in new
welfare programs, and also generally supported the exten
sion of benefits in some of the already established pro
grams. Republicans in the Senate were certainly far less
enthusiastic about promoting or extending the welfare
programs of the state. Generalizations about the kinds
of issues causing party conflict most frequently in the
TABLE 25
SENATE PARTY DISAGREEMENT VOTES
109
BY ISSUE CATEGORY
Rank Issue
Number of
Votes
1 Welfare 12
2 Education 8
3 Law 8
4 Water 8
5 Elections 7
6 Labor 6
7 Taxation 5
8 Local administration 5
9
Transportation 3
10 Agriculture 3
11 State administration 2
12 Fish and game 1
Total 68
YYQ-
Senate must be tentative and qualified because there were
so few votes separating the various issue categories in the
rankings. It may be said, however, that the same kinds of
issues causing party conflict in the Assembly caused inter
party disruption in the Senate, with one exception. Educa
tion bills, which rank high on the Senate list of party
conflict issues, are far down on the Assembly list. Edu
cation’s high rank in the Senate appears to have been
caused by several votes dealing with school district reor
ganization. This aroused the opposition of some of the
northern, rural, mostly Republican Senators.
Senate Basic Party Agreement Votes
In looking at the votes where the two parties were
in basic agreement, a similar overlapping of issues between
the Senate and Assembly is also manifested. In Table 26
basic agreement votes in the Senate are listed by issue
category, along with the Assembly order of issues in the
basic agreement classification.
Votes in categories such as transportation, law,
and state administration seldom elicited any partisan con
flict in either the Assembly or the Senate. The two par
ties were seldom in conflict on water roll calls either in
TIT
TABLE 26
SENATE BASIC PARTY AGREEMENT VOTES RANKED
BY CATEGORY COMPARED TO ASSEMBLY RANKING
Rank
Senate Ranking
Assembly Ranking
Issue Number
1 Water 26 Transportation
2 Law 21 State administration
3 State administration 19 Law
4 Transportation 17 Appropriations
5 Education 14 Water
6 Liquor 12 Taxes
7 Business 10 Local administration
8 Taxation 8 Business
9 Local administration 8 Liquor
10 Welfare 8 Welfare
11 Elections 8 Fish and game
12 Labor 6 Education
13 Fish and game 6 Legislative procedure
14 Agriculture 5 Agriculture
15 Appropriations 2 Elections
16 Legislative procedure 0 Labor
17 Natural resources _0 Natural resources
Total 170
— --------- ■ “ m ”
the Assembly or in the Senate. It is true, however, that
among the few party conflict votes in the Senate, votes on
water roll calls were near the top of the issue rankings.
There were only two votes in the Senate dealing with appro
priations measures while, in the Assembly, appropriation
bills were a major category, with 27 separate roll calls.
Why there should be so many more appropriation roll calls
in the Assembly than in the Senate is a matter for specula
tion. This may verify a factor that other experts have
suggested: in the Senate many of the crucial votes take
place in committees instead of on the floor of the Senate.
Bills finally clearing committees may be more likely to
receive strong or overwhelming nonpartisan support at the
open roll call stage.
Senate Moderate Party Agreement Votes
The number of votes in the Senate with a strong
Democratic majority voting in agreement with a Republican
majority opposed by a sizable Republican minority were few
and isolated. In all, 21 votes fell into this classifica-
^Perhaps this might be further evidence to support
the hypothesis that the Senate is interested primarily in
maintaining the status quo.
rrj
tion, with the leading issue categories being law, taxes,
and state administration--each with four roll calls. On
the other hand, there were 37 votes with a Democratic
majority and a strong Republican majority opposed by a
Democratic minority. This is one indication that the
Republicans may have had slightly higher cohesion than did
the Democrats in the Senate. In the Assembly the Democrats
appeared to have somewhat higher cohesion. In order to
appraise this consideration better, cohesion scores of the
Republicans and Democrats were tabulated from the agreement
and disagreement tables. The scores recorded are the
average cohesion measure for all the roll calls in the
particular classification.
In the Assembly, voting cohesion of the Democrats was
noticeably high in the various vote classifications. How
ever, in the Senate no readily ascertainable pattern of
cohesion is apparent. Cohesion scores for the two parties
are reasonably even in each of the three sessions studied.
It might be suggested that when there is conflict in the
Senate on a roll call. Republicans seem to be more cohe
sive and unified--especially as witnessed by voting in 1959
and 1961 on disagreement votes and on the number of votes
with Republican or Democratic minorities opposed to
T W l
majorities in both parties.
TABLE 2?
SENATE OVERALL COHESION SCORES FOR
THE TWO PARTIES
Year Republican Democrat
Disagreement Votes
1957
1959
1961
677
731
795
681
707
762
Agreement Votes
1957
1959
1961
766
797
777
774
761
786
Conelusions
1. There were very few votes registering any kind
of party dichotomy in the California Senate.
The Assembly had many more votes that showed
party splits.
2. The few votes that did show some party dis
harmony were similar to the types of issues
----
causing conflict in the Assembly. Welfare
measures were the most contentious party issue
in the Senate.
3. Cohesion of the two parties was similar,
although there are indications that on the
crucial conflict votes the Republicans, as the
minority party, may have had the edge in party
unity.
4. There has been some increase in party votes in
the Senate.
CHAPTER VI
RURAL-URBAN VOTING IN THE
CALIFORNIA SENATE
The political party allegiance of a legislator is
normally considered by experts to be one of the crucial
factors helping to determine voting behavior in two-party
states. However, since party discipline is by no means
complete in any state legislature, factors other than party
must contribute to the voting decision of the representa
tive. Factors in a state--such as its regional divisions,
speaker's coalitions, or even personal factions --have all
been considered important in shaping voting and this is
true in California as well as in other states.
Rural-Urban Academic Debate
With the exception of party affiliation, the next
most frequently mentioned factor helping to influence
voting behavior in state legislatures is the rural or urban
116
117
nature of a legislator's constituency. In fact, some
authorities contend that the rural-urban question is more
significant than party membership in determining a legis
lator's votes most of the time. Generally, the treatment
of the rural-urban syndrome is handled in the traditional
state government texts in the following way:
1. In most state legislatures rural soIons are
vastly over-represented and urban legislators,
consequently, under-represented.
2. Rural legislators are able to have a decisive
influence on the legislative process due to
this unfair advantage.
3. Rural legislators, therefore, are able to pass
many measures favorable to their local inter
ests, and help to kill legislation benefitting
urban needs.
The recurring theme of most of these commentators
is that rural and urban legislative blocs, transcending
party ties, wage frequent internecine warfare in the state
legislature on a wide range of issues. This viewpoint is
found in most of the traditional government texts, both
state and city, either implicitly or explicitly. In Urban
Government, Baker made the following statement about the
118
rural-urban conflict:
City dwellers are in a majority. Yet in most
states the rural interests are overwhelmingly
in control of at least one legislative house,
and overweighed, if not dominant, in the other.
In MacDonald's American State Government and Admin
istration, the author emphasized the same point :
These clauses serve to neutralize the effect of
city growth and enable the rural districts to
retain control of the state legislatures despite
the decline of rural population.^
Zink, in his text. Government of Cities in the United
States, in similar fashion, wrote:
The opposition of rural legislators to any plan
which would give cities their fair share of
seats in the state legislature arises out of
sheer selfishness and a general distrust of cit
ies. Having tasted political power the rural
sections of states are naturally loathe to sur
render their dominance to cities.3
Other authorities on this topic stated in even
bolder terms their belief that rural and urban blocs of
legislators are in frequent conflict in state legislatures.
^Benjamin Baker, Urban Government (Princeton: D.
Van Nostrand and Company, 1957), p. 326.
2
Austin F. MacDonald, American State Government and
Administration (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1960^7
p. 242.
^Harold Zink, Government of Cities in the United
States (New York: Macmillan Company, 1948), p. 125.
^rr?-
Gosnell and Holland, in State and Local Government in the
United States. for example, wrote:
Rural areas effectively vote together to
control state policy even though they may be
unorganized. . . . the collective feelings
against urban areas are more than enough to coor
dinate their efforts.
Phillips, in the same vein, in State and Local
Government in America, stressed a similar conviction:
There is considerable evidence that a very large
percentage of legislative business involves urban
problems and that rural representatives are not
equipped to deal adequately with these measures.
Furthermore, it is frequently obvious that rural
legislators approach such problems with prejudices
that block efforts at municipal industrial im
provement . ^
Baker, one of the leading experts on the rural-
urban controversy, stated in his book. Rural versus Urban
Political Power :
. . . the conflict between urban and rural inter
ests is, in fact, a far-reaching and increasingly
important struggle for power in American politics
--national, state, and rlocal.
^Cullen Gosnell and Lynwood Holland, State and
Local Government in the United States (New York: Macmil
lan Co., 1948), p. 50.
^Jewell Cass Phillips, State and Local Government
in the United States (New York: American Book Co., 1954),
p. 57.
^Gordon E. Baker, Rural versus Urban Political
Power (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1955), p. 27.
120
In explaining why this conflict had emerged. Baker said:
While urban areas have grown to a predominant
position in terms of numbers, their political role
has generally remained subordinate. Rural domi
nance was natural and logical in the nineteenth
century, so long as the nation was largely agrar
ian. But the failure of state representative
bodies to reflect the changing character of soci
ety has resulted in a number of problems for a
modern industrialized age. . . . As a result of
this situation a strategic political advantage is
enjoyed by powerful groups in a position to profit
by a distortion of representation.'
Other reasons for this rural-urban split are
offered by Graves in American State Government. He argued
that rural people tend to regard cities as places of vice
and immorality where cynical political machines run by
powerful political bosses hold sway. Graves ended his
argument as follows :
The line-up is regularly the one or two largest
cities against the rest of the state, the small
and medium-sized cities lining up with the rural-
ities against the big city.^
The results of this rural domination, in the
opinion of many authorities, have had far-reaching effects
on the shape of legislation which has emerged in the
^Ibid., p. 3.
8
W. Brooke Graves, American State Government
(Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1953), p. 326.
121
states. In analyzing the impact of this rural domination
on the legislative process Kneier argued:
The limitation of urban representation appears in
some states to be part of the liberal-conservative
division over economic and social welfare legis
lation. . . . The urban representative is more
likely to be influenced by organized labor. . . .
On labor legislation, minimum wage laws, a fair
employment practice act, and civil rights legisla
tion, there is usually a division between the
representatives from liberal urban districts and
those from rural districts, who tend to look upon
such legislation as "radical" or "left-wing."^
Jewell, in his excellent introduction to The
Politics of Reapportionment, a volume he edited, cited a
number of potential and real conflict areas dividing rural
and urban legislators. A legislature dominated by members
from farm areas is not likely to be very responsive to the
needs of the cities, according to Jewell. Home rule legis
lation, slum clearance projects, metropolitan transit, and
annexation are examples of legislation which have often
failed to pass state legislatures because of the intransi
gence of this farmer faction. Jewell argued that this
rural-urban schism is especially noticeable on fiscal
issues :
9
Charles ïüieier. City Government in the United
States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947), p. 127.
122
Cities are often seriously handicapped by the
state legislatures in the type of taxes they can
levy and the size of the tax rates permitted.
Perhaps the most direct evidence of discrimination
against urban areas lies in the formulas estab
lished by state legislatures for the distribution
of state aid or of certain proportions of state-
collected taxes. When state aid is distributed in
greater amounts to counties with lower total
assessed property, urban areas sometimes suffer
because their rate of assessment is generally
higher. The distribution of school funds often
neglects the needs of the urban areas, particular
ly those school districts burdened by heavy con
struction costs. Probably the most wide-spread
discrimination is in the distribution of some
proportion of the gasoline tax for road building.
The formula used often favors rural counties
because it gives little weight to population,
while in some states none of the tax receipts are
available to cities for their road needs.10
Perhaps De Grazia best summed up the emphasis that
many scholars placed on the rural-urban question. He
stated:
. . . the struggles in this half century have been
rural versus urban. Every American state with any
considerable urban population has undergone pro
tracted conflict between rural and urban blocs,
often regardless of their party lines.
^^Malcolm Jewell (ed.), The Politics of Reappor
tionment (New York: Atherton Press, 1962), p. 19.
^^Alfred De Grazia, "The General Theory of Appor
tionment," Law and Contemporary Problems. XVII (1952),
126c
123
Current evaluation
Recently a growing number of scholars have begun
to question the theory that rural and urban blocs are fre
quently at odds in state legislatures. Using modem sta
tistical techniques, such as roll call tabulations or scale
analyses, several of these authorities have raised serious
questions concerning the validity of the supposed rural-
urban dichotomy. The major thesis of these writers is that
the rural-urban split which supposedly divides country and
city legislators is not nearly as simple or clear-cut as
was once believed. In fact, these authors suggest that the
rural-urban conflict has been grossly overemphasized.
Salisbury, in a paper presented to the Mid-West
Conference of Political Science meeting at Ann Arbor,
Michigan, 1958, dealing with voting patterns in the Mis
souri legislature, pointed out:
Missouri is a state which, according to image
concerning American politics, should exhibit sub
stantial cleavage between the rural and urban
interests. . . . Yet the evidence seems to point
the Other way; rural-urban conflict is at most
latent and is normally obscured by other politi
cally more meaningful conflicts.
Robert H. Salisbury, "Rural-Urban Factionalism
in Missouri Parties" (unpublished report to the Mid-West
Political Science Association, Spring, 1958), p. 1.
124
Marbury Ogle, in a study of the rural-urban con
flict in Indiana, came to many of the same conclusions as
did Salisbury. Ogle summarized his conclusions in this
manner :
In summary, it appears that no clear-cut case for
the existence of a rural-urban split can be found
by examination of the economic structure of the
state or by analysis of voting records of rural
and urban areas.
Derge, who did a roll-call study on the Illinois
and Missouri legislatures, believed that there has been
too much attention given to the rural-urban question and
not enough to the conflict between the major metropolitan
complex and the rest of the state. Derge's work is one of
the most comprehensive roll call voting studies of a state
legislature that has yet been undertaken. His study cov
ered five biennial sessions of the Illinois legislature
from 1949 to 1957, in which every roll call vote with at
least a ten per cent opposition vote was tabulated. The
Chicago delegation to the Illinois legislature is consid
ered the urban bloc; the other state legislators are
classified as nonmetropolitan. Derge's findings included
^^Marbury Ogle, "Rural-Urban Split in Indiana"
(unpublished report to the Mid-West Political Science Asso
ciation, Spring, 1958), p. 23.
125
the following:
1. Neither the metropolitan bloc of legislators,
nor the nonmetropolitan bloc voted with high
cohesion.
2. Metropolitan legislators, when they voted with
high cohesion invariably were victorious.
3. The urban delegation usually divided along
party lines as did the nonmetropolitan repre
sentatives .
In addition to these surprising findings, some
other experts in their discussion of the rural-urban split
have suggested that underlying this division is a party
conflict. Babcock, for example, stated:
The Republicans are traditionally stronger in
the rural areas and the Democrats in the cities,
but in the two-party states the legislators fear
of increasing the strength of the opposition and
lessening that of their own party by redistrieting
or reapportionment may be as compelling a reason
for the majority in the legislature to fail to
reapportion as is the maintenance of the power
distribution between the city and the country.
David Derge, "Metropolitan and Outstate Align
ments in Illinois and Missouri Legislative Delegations,"
American Political Science Review. LII (1958), 1065.
^^Robert Babcock, State and Local Government and
Politics (New York: Random House, 1957), p. 161.
126
Jewell, too, stressed the idea that what appears to be a
rural-urban dichotomy may actually be a Republican-Demo
cratic clash. Jewell noted:
Part of the confusion about the importance of
urban-rural difference arises from those states,
like New York, Massachusetts, or Michigan, where
the representation of metropolitan areas in the
legislature is overwhelmingly Republican. This
may result from the way district lines are drawn
or from the strength and weakness of various party
organizations. The result is that the metropoli
tan legislators may appear to speak with a voice
because some of the high-income, suburban areas
may be swallowed up in larger districts and may
lack a Republican spokesman. Likewise what looks
like a unity of non-metropolitan legislators may
be fundamentally the unity of Republican legis
lators. Moreover, in those states where each
party represents a rather homogeneous group of
voters, conflicts between the two groups over
issues may be intensified.
By no means has this disagreement over the nature
of the rural-urban conflict been settled. This is not a
case where the empirically trained political scientist has
demonstrated conclusively that rural-urban conflict is
largely myth. New, seemingly contradictory, findings have
been presented by several experts. The conclusions reached
were quite different and the significance of the rural-
^^Malcolm Jewell (ed.), The State Legislature:
Politics and Practices (New York: Atherton Press, 1962)
p. 19.
127
urban conflict is still an open question.
One team of political scientists operating on a
grant from the Political Behavior Committee of the Social
Science Research Council interviewed state legislators
in four separate states and found that in California 67
per cent of the members of the Assembly and 75 per cent
of the members of the Senate felt that the rural-urban
question was "important. Friedman argued that as
long as legislators consider the rural-urban conflict
important, "it is incumbent upon political scientists
to probe the role that these phenomena play in poli-
tics.”18
Frost, in a critique of the Derge findings, claimed
that the rural-urban conflict was crucial in state legis-
17
Heinz, Eulau, John Wahlke, William Buchanan,
and LeRoy Ferguson, The Legislative System: Explorations
in Legislative Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1962), p.
425.
18
Robert Friedman, "The Urban Rural Conflict
Revisited," Western Political Quarterly. XIV (June, 1961),
495.
128“
1Q
latures. ^ In his study of the New Jersey legislature he
found that the fairly apportioned lower house was much more
favorably inclined to pro-city measures than the rurally
dominated New Jersey Senate*
After studiously examining the arguments pro and
con on the rural-urban question in a current work on state
government. Dye summarized his findings:
. . . it is safe to say that legislators from
large, central cities and those from rural areas
and small towns differ over the following: housing
and welfare measures, aid for urban renewal and
mass transit, the division of the state's tax
dollar, state aids to schools, the location of
highways, and regulatory authority granted cities.^0
In this chapter an attempt is made to analyze the
extent to which any rural-urban split is operating in
California and to suggest some hypotheses about this ques
tion relevant to other states as well.
Rural-Urban Background:
The California Senate
According to the 1960 United States census, Cali-
^Richard Frost, "On Derge's Metropolitan and
Outstate Legislative Delegations," from Communications
Section, American Political Science Review. LIII (1959),
792-795.
20
Kenneth Vines and Herbert Jacob (eds.), Compara
tive State Politics (New York: Little Brown, 1965), p. 321.
I2T
fornia had 2,1 per cent of its population classified as
farm population, and another 11.5 per cent were classified
as rural-non-farm. Thus, the total rural population of
California was only 13.4 per cent. This makes California
one of the most urban of the 50 states (see Table 28 for a
list of the ten most urban states in the Union).
It might appear, by looking only at the heavily
urbanized population figures, that farming and agricultural
production and processing would be unimportant in Califor
nia. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Even
though California has a minuscule farm population in pro
portion to the total state population, it leads all the
other states in the cash value of its farm products. Farm
ing in California is done frequently by large-scale,
corporation farmers who are highly mechanized and auto
mated. This accounts, in part, for the very small farm
population, and also for the high productivity and profit
ability.
Generally speaking, when one thinks of a rural
population, he thinks of farmers. Certainly, one of the
tacit assumptions concerning the rural-urban imbroglio is
that farm interests have a strangle-hold over most state
legislatures. Yet, in California at least, most urban
130
TABLE 28
LEADING URBAN STATES IN THE COUNTRY
RANKED BY URBAN PERCENTAGES^
Rank State
Per Cent of
Urban Population
1 New Jersey 88.6
2 New York 85.4
3 California 84.6
4 Rhode Island 84.6
5 Massachusetts 83.6
6 Illinois 80.7
7 Connecticut 78.3
8 Hawaii 76.5
9 Texas 75.0
10 Utah 74.9
Figures taken from U.S., Department of Commerce
and Bureau of the Census, County and City Data Book (Wash
ington: Government Printing Office, 1962).
131
counties as well as the rural counties have a considerable
agricultural base. According to all the definitions of
urban (with the Derge metropolitan thesis being an excep
tion) , Fresno County, with a United States census figure
of 66.3 per cent urban, would be considered urban. In
addition, the population of the city of Fresno would rank
it as the 92nd most populous city in the country. On the
other hand, Fresno County has led the country's counties in
the cash value of its agricultural production. In Table
29, the top ten farm counties are listed in terms of the
cash value of their total agricultural production.
Six of the ten are classified as Standard Metro
politan District Areas, and it is also an interesting fact
that the state's most populous metropolitan area, Los
Angeles County, ranks first in the value of its dairy
products. (Dairy products in Los Angeles County were
valued at 55 million dollars; Stanislaus County ranked
second with a total cash value of 24 million dollars for
its dairy products.) Los Angeles County also ranked second
in the value of its poultry production. Thus, it appears
likely that agricultural interests might have some access
to these urban county representatives. Unlike some urban
representatives in other states, most of California's urban
T3T
TABLE 29
TEN LEADING CALIFORNIA COUNTIES RANKED BY
CASH VALUE OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION®
Rank County
Cash Value
in Terms of
Millions #f Dollars
Per Cent
Urban
1 Fresno^ 213,000 66.3
2 Kern^ 162,000 68.4
3 Tulare 145,000 44.0
4 San Joaquin^ 97,000 73.3
5 Monterey 69,000 59.5
6 Riverside^ 64,000 67.6
7 Los Angelek 62,000 98.2
8 Ventura 62,000 61.9
9 Santa Clara^ 60,000 95.5
10 Kings 58,000 41.7
Figures taken from U.S., Department of Commerce
and Bureau of the Centus, County and City Data Book (Wash
ington: Government Printing Office, 1962).
^These counties are considered Standard Metropoli
tan Statistical Areas by the United States Census of
California of 1960.
133
delegation has the agricultural industry as one of its
vested interests. Any kind of legislation dealing with
agricultural matters, such as use of imitation ice cream
or the color of oleomargarine, would affect local inter
ests. In California, obviously, the supposed rural-urban
split would not likely fall along a city versus farm
dichotomy, and if the pattern is not farm interests versus
city interests, does this not greatly complicate any kind
of supposed rural-urban split?
Defining Rural and Urban
In addition to the aforementioned difficulties in
delimiting rural and urban interests and representation,
there are other problems involved with defining rural and
urban constituencies, such as:
1. What is the proper cut off point in determining
whether a community is rural or urban? (The
United States Census Bureau used 2,500 popula
tion.)
2. Should we consider a county urban if 51 per
cent of the residents are classified as urban?
Should this figure be higher ? How much higher ?
3. Should we think of urban solely in terms of
T32n
the central core city or cities--the megalop
olis ?
4. Should we consider a population rural if the
inhabitants live a particular distance away
from the major urban center? How many miles
away?
Any definition of the terms, rural and urban, must
be arbitrary and no definition will be acceptable to all
concerned. After considering the many definitions of
these terms used by various authorities, it was decided
that, for the most part, the formula best suited for this
paper was the classification used by the United States
Census Bureau called the Standard Metropolitan Statistical
Area. The following explanation of this term (S.M.S.A.)
is found in the introduction of the United States Popula
tion figures by the Census Bureau for California in 1960:
21
This definition is generally the one proposed by
Richard Frost. Frost argued that the Derge findings were
biased by his definition of urban. Frost contended that
when writers discussed the rural-urban split, they were
thinking of conflict between cities of substantial size
and the other parts of the state. See Frost, op. cit.,
p. 795.
135
It has long been recognized that for many
types of social and economic analysis it is
necessary to consider as a unit the entire popu
lation in and around the city whose activities
form an integrated social and economic system.
Except in New England, an SMSA is a county or
group of contiguous counties which contains at
least one city of 50,000 inhabitants or more or
"twin cities" with a combined population of at
least 50,000. In addition to the county, or
counties, containing such a city or cities, con
tiguous counties are included in an SMSA if,
according to certain criteria, they are essen
tially metropolitan in character and are socially
and economically integrated with the central
city.22
There is a long series of other qualifications,
such as :
1. At least 75 per cent of the labor force of the
county must be in the nonagricultural labor
force.
2. If two or more adjacent counties each have a
city of 50,000 inhabitants or more and the
cities are within 20 miles of each other (city
limits to city limits), they will be included
in the same area unless there is definite
evidence that the two cities are not economi-
^U.S., Bureau of the Census, United States Census
of Population; 1960 California (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1960), pp. ix-x.
rSFH
cally and socially integrated.
In Table 30 the California counties that are included in
the urban classification as Standard Metropolitan District
Areas and their urban percentages arc listed.^3
In an informal check with members of the legisla
ture, most concurred that the above-indicated list of
counties would be considered urban. With the exception of
Fresno County, these urban counties in the California
S.M.S.A. are all grouped around the two great metropolitan
centers, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The average urban
percentage of these counties is 84.4. In addition to the
above counties, three others were arbitrarily classified
as urban: Yolo County, 69.1 per cent urban; Ventura
County, 62.9 per cent urban; and Monterey County, 59.5 per
cent urban. Two of the last three counties named, Yolo and
Ventura, are satellite counties surrounding the large urban
centers of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Urban percent
ages are high in these counties and they also have a high
proportion of workers engaged in nonagricultural occupa
tions. On this basis, twenty of California's Senatorial
23u,S., Department of Commerce and Bureau of the
Census, County and City Data Book (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1962).
T3T
TABLE 30
URBAN COUNTIES
County Urban Percentage
Alameda 98.6
Contra Costa 81.1
Fresno 67.3
Kern 68.2
Los Angeles 98.8
Marin 87.2
Orange 95.8
Riverside 67.6
Sacramento 84.8
San Bernardino 74.4
San Diego 88.9
San Francisco 100.0
San Mateo 97.5
San Joaquin 74.3
Santa Barbara 68.0
Santa Clara 95.5
Solano 79.1
138
districts are classified as "rural" and twenty as "urban."
Senate Basic and Moderate Rural-Urban
Disagreement Votes
The most significant finding derived over the three
sessions was the fact that very few votes showed any appre
ciable rural-urban cleavage. ^ Since the rural legislators
comprised half of the upper house and were in a position to
defeat supposedly pro-city legislation, lack of disagree
ment between the two camps is significant. The number of
roll calls showing rural-urban differences is small, how
ever, and votes for the three sessions, therefore, have
been added together and the breakdown for the various
categories given in Table 31.
TABLE 31
SENATE RURAL-URBAN DISAGREEMENT VOTES
LISTED AT SEVERAL LEVELS OF COHESION
Level Number Per Cent
Jewell--90% 0 0
Basic disagreement--75% 0 0
Moderate disagreement--
60% 6 1
Total Conflict Roll Calls 426
139
Although it seems clear that on only an infinites
imal part of the conflict votes in the Senate were rural-
urban voting patterns able to be discerned, it would be
helpful at least to recognize the issue topics which might
potentially arouse rural-urban differences. In Table 32
every vote which had a rural majority opposed to an urban
majority is tabulated, regardless of the cohesion of the
two blocs.
Because of the paucity of votes in this category
it would be hazardous to generalize about the kinds of
issues causing rural-urban splits. It is obvious that
there were very few votes in which majorities of rural and
urban opposed each other. The few votes that did elicit
some differences were predictable--a few on water, some on
local administration, a handful on transportation and roads
for the state, and several votes dealing with school dis
trict boundary lines. This list is certainly not very
imposing. It appears that even adjusting the definitions
of "rural" and "urban" would not change the main conclusion
appreciably.
Because the rural side would be so vastly out
numbered in the lower house, 17 members out of 80, and due
to the advice of those interviewed, it was determined not
to investigate rural-urban matters in the Assembly. If
140
TABLE 32
SENATE RURAL-URBAN DISAGREEMENT VOTES
Category Number of Votes
Water 8
Transportation 4
Education 4
Law 3
Local administration 3
Labor 2
Welfare 2
Business 2
Fish and game 2
Taxes 2
Agriculture 2
Elections 1
State administration 1
Total 36
Senate Basic Rural-Urban Agreement Votes
Rural and urban legislators were in basic agreement
on most of the legislation facing the upper house. In
Table 33 basic agreement votes of the rural and urban blocs
are listed, as well as the percentages of votes in the
basic agreement classification for each of the issue cate
gories. (Percentages are not listed in those issue cate
gories with less than 15 votes.)
On most of the issues there was substantial agree
ment between the rural and urban factions. There does seem
to be evidence, though, that on votes dealing with water
legislation and, to a lesser extent, tax bills, some minor
differences between the rural and urban blocs are mani
fested.25
rural-urban conflicts are to occur in the California legis
lature , they would have to emerge in the Senate.
n c
These findings are in accord with Jacob's con
clusions. Using a Spearman rank order coefficient of
correlation, Jacob found that malapportionment had no
measurable effect on policy outcomes. He stated, "Policies
seem to be formulated as a result of temporary coalitions
constructed by interested pressure groups or molded by a
particularly strong governor. Under these circumstances
where legislators come from matters less than who they are
associated with and to whom they are willing to listen."
Herbert Jacob, "The Consequences of Malapportionment,"
Social Forces. XLIII (1964), 256-261.
142
TABLE 33
SENATE RURAL-URBAN BASIC AGREEMENT VOTES
RANKED BY PERCENTAGE ORDER
Issue
Number of
Votes
Per Cent of Votes
in Category
Law 47 85
State administration 44 95
Education 33 78
Liquor 30 81
Water 28 59
Local administration 22 78
Transportation 22 85
Elections 19 90
Business 17 85
Taxes 18 69
Labor 15 75
Fish and game 10
- -
Agriculture 6
- -
Natural resources 5
- —
Appropriations 1
- —
Legislative procedure 0
- -
Total 317
............ — ...... ^ -1431
Senate Moderate Rural-Urban
Agreement Votes
There are just a few votes in which the two sides
are in agreement, but with a sizeable urban minority oppos
ing an urban majority and an overwhelming rural majority.
Table 34 lists the votes in this category. In a sense,
these are the votes indicating differences within the urban
faction, and, hence, lower cohesion. During the three
Senate sessions studied votes on water legislation were
the most contentious of the rural-urban questions.
There were too few votes with a rural faction
opposing a rural majority on votes where rural and urban
majorities were in agreement to attempt to classify them.
In the three sessions studied only 10 votes qualified for
this category, three of them being on legislation dealing
with water. There thus seems to be evidence that the very
important split in the California Senate is not rural-
urban , but rather intra-urban. The rural side showed
remarkable unanimity.
Conclusions
1. California is such an overwhelmingly urban
state that practically all legislators must
deal with urban problems in their home
TABLE 34
SENATE RURAL-URBAN AGREEMENT VOTES WITH
A SMALL MINORITY OF URBAN LEGISLATORS
VOTING AGAINST AN URBAN MAJORITY
144
Rank Issue Number of Votes
1 Water 8
2 Liquor 7
3 Taxes 6
4 Labor 3
5 Law 3
6 Education 3
7 Local administration 3
8 Agriculture 3
9
Appropriations 2
10 Elections 1
11 Welfare 1
12 Business 1
13 Fish and game 1
Total 42
145
constituencies. Also, since many California
urban counties are important agricultural pro
ducers, there is seldom a factory versus farm
orientation in the legislature,
2. Those authors who describe rural-urban con
flicts in state legislatures with rural areas
suppressing the legitimate interests of urban
representatives, would have grave difficulty
proving that this kind of situation exists in
California, If the urban delegation is united
and agrees on what needs to be done, there is
no rural blockade.
3. Only a handful of votes showed a rural-urban
voting pattern--most frequently on water (al
though this may actually be more of a north-
south division since many rural senators come
from northern counties), Even on those few
votes where there was a rural-urban cleavage
the cohesion of the two sides was very low.
Generally, urban bloc cohesion was lower than
the rural delegation,
4. Hostility between the two giant metropolises,
Los Angeles and San Francisco, contributes to
146
low urban cohesion.
5. On the basis of the interviews it might be
speculated that competition among rural sena
tors for road money might be keen. Urban sena
tors might support these road funds because of
pressures from constituent hunting and fishing
interests. This is indicative of the complexity
of the matter.
6. Intraurban distinctions will have to be made in
order to understand the legislative process
better. Do the urban legislators represent
downtown slum districts, low-income working-
class neighborhoods, new suburban tracts, or
older established suburban communities? Sena
tor Thomas Rees, Democrat of Los Angeles
County, represented them all.
7. Those differences that do emerge are probably
explained better by party differences or north-
south differences than by the rural or urban
O
nature of a legislator's constituency.
A few decades ago there were real differences in
— — 1 3 7
rural and urban people, such as the way in which they
dressed, their talk, their moral philosophies, and their
ways of life. These differences are today minimal. Modem
communications, such as radio, television, and telephones,
mass circulation periodicals, improved transportation, and
automobiles and roads have brought the farm to the city.
There are few truly isolated communities today, even in the
immense distances of California. The way of life of the
average city dweller does not differ greatly from that of
the resident of a rural area. Perhaps this factor is as
important as any in explaining the fuzziness of the rural-
urban split in California.
CHAPTER VII
NORTH-SOUTH VOTING IN THE
CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY
Up to this point, the two most frequently mentioned
dichotomies affecting California legislative voting behav
ior have been examined: the Republican-Democratic division
and the rural-urban split. These two divisions are also
invariably cited by writers examining voting patterns in
other state legislatures as well. This allows analysis of
the impact of these two items on the California legislature
with comparisons of other state legislative bodies.
North-South Background
A third schism long reputed to play a significant
role in the California legislature is the north-south
cleavage. While references to a north-south split are more
uniquely a California phenomenon than the other two dichot
omies, several other state legislatures also appear to have
148
-
a similar north-south sectional division. Derge, in his
roll call study of the Illinois legislature, organized the
framework of his study around two legislative subgroups:
the Chicago metropolitan delegation and the other state
legislators, mainly down-state solons.^ Havard and Beth
in their analysis of Florida politics concluded that the
north-south division was of prime importance in the penin-
2
sula state. Indeed, there are several interesting paral
lels that can be drawn between the states of Florida and
California. Both, for example, have witnessed recent rapid
population growth (much higher than the national averages)
and, in many cases for the same general reasons : new jobs,
investment possibilities, retirement opportunities, and the
sunny warm weather. As in northern California, northern
Florida is dominated by rural, status quo interests which
have fought to retain their political power against the
expanding populous power of the southern regions by
David Derge, "Metropolitan and Outstate Align
ments in Illinois and Missouri Legislative Delegations,"
American Political Science Review. LII (1958), 219.
^William C. Havard and Loren P. Beth, The Politics
of Mis-Representation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni
versity Press, 1962), p. 21.
150
opposing reapportionment. An indication of the similar
problems and patterns in the two states' political back
grounds can be noted from the following quotation:
What emerges from this analysis of regional
ism in Florida politics is a significant but com
plex combination of rural versus urban political
interests with an older and possibly diminishing
conflict of North Florida--representing the old
ante helium slave-owning South--and South Florida,
which is "New" Florida, Yankee-dominated and
tourist centered. These two patterns of conflict
cut across each other in a complicated fashion,
but some of the effects are clear. More and more,
the major state-wide elections reflect the voting
dominance of urban South Florida, and the result
is that the governor in recent times--and this is
particularly the case of Dan McCarty and LeRoy
Co1lins --tends to represent the interests of the
urban voters.^
On the other hand, there are many important differ
ences between the political patterns of the two states, not
the least of which is the recalcitrant opposition of
northern Florida to integration efforts, but some of the
analogies are striking. To summarize, it would be fair to
state that there are indications of north-south splits in
several other states, but these are the exceptions rather
than the rule.
Almost all California government text book writers
— Ï5T
have referred to this third division as being of consider
able importance in influencing California legislative
behavior. For example. Walker and Cave stated:
The manner in which legislative district lines
are drawn always has a vital effect on the balance
of power among rural and urban interests, sections
of the State, political parties, and even major
interest groups in the State. In California the
principle divisions, since 1910, have been between
urban and rural interests, and between northern
and southern California.4
The same general theme was repeated by two other
keen observers of California politics when they stated:
Existing evidence indicates that the manner
in which the senatorial districts are constituted
has a definite bearing on the legislation enacted
and, consequently, upon the fruition of the polit
ical and economic aspirations of geographic
regions of the state, or rural and urban interest
groups, and even of the political parties.5
The north-south division is thus probably as pro
nounced in California as in any other state, primarily
because California stretches father in a north-south
direction than other states, and secondly because the two
regions of the state are quite dissimilar. California is
4Robert A. Walker and Floyd A. Cave, How California
Is Governed (New York: Dryden Press, 1953), p. 131.
^Henry A. Turner and John A. Veig, The Government
and Politics of California (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964),
pp. 92-93.
T52
over 800 miles long and its coastline extends almost 1200
miles. This is a mileage distance of the same proportion
that on the east coast would be the distance from Boston,
Massachusetts, to Charleston, South Carolina. Almost un
avoidably, this great distance encourages a disparateness.
During the nineteenth century the major flow of
population into the state was into the San Francisco Bay
area and the gold fields inland. However, in the twentieth
century the major influx of population into the state has
been directed to the southern part of the state, most
notably to the Los Angeles County metropolitan complex, and
extending into Orange and San Diego Counties, It is the
southern part of the state which is today the most popu
lous region.
To evidence the spectacular growth rate of some of
the southern counties. Table 35 has been compiled. In it
the proportion of the population in California of four of
the fastest growing southern California counties has been
compiled in chronological categories.
Attempts at reapportioning the state to give the
urban population in the south more representation have
frequently foundered upon the shoals of the north-south
dichotomy. Many northern political leaders, fearing the
153
TABLE 35
PROPORTION OF THE STATE'S POPULATION
IN FOUR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
COUNTIES*
Year Cent of
State Population^
1930 47
1940 48
1950 49
1960 54
^The four counties are: Los Angeles
San Diego
San Bernardino
Orange
^Data compiled from California Abstract (Sacra
mento : Economic Development Agency, Printing Division,
Documents Section, 1962), p. 51.
political weight of Southern California's exploding popula
tion and insistent on retaining their earlier voting
supremacy in the legislature, have opposed all reapportion
ment efforts.
Assembly North-South History
From the very beginning of California's statehood
history, there has been friction between the northern and
154
southern regions of the state. California became a United
States territory as one of the treaty conditions of the
war between the United States and Mexico. The southern
regional leaders wanted California to remain a territorial
government, maintaining close ties with Mexico and having
only a loose association with the United States, but the
northern political leaders fought for and demanded state
hood. The north at that time was more populous and was
able, therefore, to send a majority of the delegates to the
convention called by Military Governor General Bennet Riley
to determine California's future. At that convention, the
delegates voted to approve a state constitution which was
modeled to a considerable extent on the New York and Iowa
constitutions. The new California constitution was ap
proved by the voters in 1849, and the "Golden State" was
admitted to the Union the next year.
Throughout this century there has been a competi
tive rivalry which has marked the relations of the two sec
tions of the state. This keen rivalry has been enhanced
by the feud between cosmopolitan urban San Francisco
(north) and middle-class suburbia, Los Angeles (south).
While Los Angeles was developing into a notoriously anti
union city, San Francisco, on the other hand, witnessed
155
during the middle 1930's the country's only city-wide
work stoppage. Adjectives that San Franciscans might use
to describe (and have used to describe) Los Angeles would
include : anti-intellectual, crass, smoggy, ugly, and banal.
On the other hand, a loyal Angeleno might use the following
epithets against San Francisco : smug, ostentatious, foggy,
and pretentious.
Although trivial normally, the competition between
I
the two areas of the state can be noted in one of the
unwritten rules of California politics, i.e., there should
be some kind of parity between northern and southern
California in terms of political positions. For example,
if one of California's United States Senators comes from
southern California, the other Senator should come from the
north. This sentiment can be noted, too, in the two par
ties ' elections for governor and attorney general or in the
selection of the parties' national committeeman and commit-
teewoman. The principle which is usually recognized in
these position selections is that there should be a balance
of power between the two sections.
Athletic rivalries between the Los Angeles and San
Francisco professional sports teams, or school competitions
between the University of California (Berkeley) and the
r5"6n
University of California (Los Angeles), also help to
heighten the identification of the citizens of this state
with their regions. Newspaper reporters and college profes
sors, pundits and average citizens, all could testify to
the different attitudes found in each of the cities.
Whether there really is such a great difference between the
two sections and the two cities is actually a moot point;
the fact is that many people believe there is an important
difference--and this is significant.
Defining North-South
Just as there was a problem in defining the terms,
rural and urban, coming to grips with the equally vague
north-south identification proved formidable. Several
definitions might have been used. One possibility was the
Mayo-Breed line, which is used by the State Division of
Highways. Under the quota established by this office 65
per cent of the operating funds for state highways comes
from south of the line and 35 per cent from north of it.
Yet it disburses money to countiés for road construction
and maintenance in terms of a 55-45 southern-northern
ratio. The Mayo-Breed line formulation divides the state
in half, using as its basis a synthesis midpoint of the
state's population distribution as well as its geography.
If we were to consider population concentration as
the sole determinant in dividing the state into comparable
northern and southern regions, it can be seen from the
map (Figure 3) that the seven most southern counties have
approximately one-half of the state's total population,
while geographically the midpoint would run somewhere along
the northern boundary lines of Inyo, Fresno, San Benito,
and Monterey Counties.
The boundary line dividing the north from the
south which is used in this study is a compromise line
drawn between the extremes of the other possible boundary
lines. Of necessity, it is arbitrary, but there is justi
fication for its use. Certainly, it would be reasonable to
consider San Francisco County and all the counties to the
north of it as being northein^ while Los Angeles County and
all the counties to the south of it as southern.
The problem, however, is where the boundary line
should be between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Any num
ber of observers have argued with this writer that the
cities of Santa Maria and Pismo Beach in southern San Luis
Obispo County are still part of "southern California"; but
that the cities of San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay in North
■ ~ r 5 8 '
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North-South Definitions
I m +41H f HI Mayo - Breed Line
_______ Population--midpoint
...... Geographical - -midpoint
v\ a/ vwva< v\ Tehachapai Mountains
xxxjfxxxx This study
Map 3.--North-South Definitions
---------------- _______ rsy
San Luis Obispo County mark the beginning of "northern
California." The criteria for this kind of classification
are, at most, hazy. What should be included as part of
each section is probably as much a problem of psychology
as geography or population. After much consideration, the
boundary lines to be used in this study to divide north
from south California appears eminently reasonable. This
line runs along the northern border of San Luis Obispo,
Kern, and San Bernardino Counties and has the effect of
putting 45 of the Aseemblymen in Sacramento into the south
ern delegation and 35 Assemblymen into the northern group.
This dividing line closely follows the north-south division
of the state along the Tehatchapi Mountain range line,
which is another one of the commonly used definitions of
the north-south divisions. An example is the way in which
Professor Anderson analyzed the north-south divisions of
the state:
The Tehachapi Mountains constitute the south
ern boundary of the Great Valley, creating a nat
ural geographic, economic, and political barrier,
dividing the state in two. The fourty-four coun
ties in the north surround the vital trade area of
metropolitan San Francisco, while the fourteen
counties in the south are oriented toward the
giant, sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles,
160
constituting the second primary trading area of
the state.
Assembly North-South Basic and
Moderate Disagreement Votes
There were not a great number of north-south disagreement
votes in the California Assembly during the three sessions
of 1957, 1959, and 1961, but there were certainly more
than there were in the rural-urban vote totals. Since
there were not too many of these votes. Table 36 has been
compiled to show the significance of the north-south
division at several different levels of cohesion.
It can be seen from the table that north-south
differences were at their peak in 1959. When party
division votes were examined, there was a steady trend in
the direction of more of these votes. This does not hold
true for north-south votes. It seems likely that the
reason that the 1959 legislative session showed such
relatively high north-south differences was because of the
importance of water legislation during that session. Plans
for piping water from northern California to southern
^Totton J. Anderson, "California Enigma of Na
tional Politics," in Western Politics, ed. by Frank H.
Jonas (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah, 1961), p.
72.
161
TABLE 36
ASSEMBLY NORTH-SOUTH DISAGREEMENT VOTES
LISTED AT SEVERAL COHESION LEVELS
Cohesion Level 1957 1959 1961 Total
Total number of conflict
roll calls
Jewell--90 per cent
Number
Per cent
Basic disagreement--75
per cent
Number
Per cent
Moderate disagreement-
60 per cent Number
Per cent
265
0
0
430
0
0
273
0
0
3
1
16
6
9
2
68
16
6
2
17
6
968
0
18
101
California were before the lower house.
Now that the overall significance of north-south
division votes has been examined, issues that tended to
provoke north-south antagonisms will be analyzed. Table
37 has been constructed with the various issues ranked on
north-south disagreement votes.
TABLE 37
ASSEMBLY NORTH-SOUTH BASIC AND MODERATE
DISAGREEMENT VOTES
162
Rank Issue Number
1 Appropriations 15
2 Taxation 15
3 Transportation 14
4 Water 13
5 Local administration 11
6 Law 9
7 Education 7
8 State administration 5
9 Fish and game 5
10 Business 5
11 Welfare 5
12 Labor 5
13 Elections 5
14 Liquor 4
15 Agriculture 3
16 Natural resources 1
17 Legislative procedure 0
Total 119
T6 3
North-south division votes occurred frequently on
fiscal issues--questions on the allotment of money for
various projects or on questions concerning taxing policy.
Two other categories which were cited frequently by author
ities on California legislative politics as being sources
of important north-south differences were transportation
and water legislation. One of the problems facing Cali
fornia to which reference has already been made is the
allotment of road fund money listed under the transporta
tion classification. Southern Assemblymen are critical
of the dividends received by northern Assemblymen for road
money in areas of meagre population. Senator Vernon
Sturgeon, of San Luis Obispo County, however, argued in
the following way:
The conflict over the allotment of road funds
has been over-emphasized and is not as clear-cut
as you might believe. Go to any resort spot in
out-of-the-way places in northern California.
What car licenses do you see there? Why, mainly
Southern Californians, These people are just as
anxious for good roads in these resort and hunt
ing and fishing areas as are thé native citizens
of that area.7
Other issue categories ranged down the list, with
only a few votes separating the various issue categories
_ ^ -T6zn
in the rankings. With the exception of one vote, the first
four issues categories monopolized all of the votes at the
75 per cent cohesion level. In order to get a slightly
different perspective on the kinds of issues causing north-
south conflict, the percentage of times votes causing
splits in the various issue categories were divided into
the total number of votes in each category, and the tabula
tions from this computation can be seen in Table 38.
It can be seen that on almost one-third of the
votes dealing with water matters, a north-south split was
in evidence. In California the northern part of the state
has a water surplus and the arid southern section has a
water deficiency. Fighting over the allocation of this
water surplus has provoked some of the most serious north-
south disputes in the Assembly.
It is interesting to note that fish and game legis
lation, although not a large category in terms of the total
number of votes dealing with it, ranked second on the list.
This type of legislation would, obviously, most directly
affect the rural northern counties. Items such as the
length of the hunting season for bears in Humboldt County
or the price of a fishing license for out-of-state resi
dents may appear to be trivial, but these were concerns
TABLE 38
ASSEMBLY NORTH-SOUTH BASIC AND MODERATE
DISAGREEMENT VOTES RANKED BY
PERCENTAGE ORDER
r63“
Rank Issue Per Cent
1 Water 31
2 Fish and game 27
3 Appropriations 25
4 Transportation 23
5 Taxation 20
6 Agriculture 20
7 Education 19
8 Local administration 19
9 Liquor 19
10 Business 12
11 Election 11
12 Law 9
13 Welfare 7
14 Labor 7
15 State administration 7
16E
which showed different voting patterns in the two regions
of California.
Assembly North-South Basic
Agreement Votes
As has been stated previously, on the great major
ity of votes taken during the three Assembly sessions,
northern Assemblymen and southern Assemblymen voted along
similar lines. This may be seen clearly in Table 39, in
which the various issue categories are ranked by the per
centage of votes each had in the basic agreement classifi
cation.
A high percentage and ranking on the list indicate
fewer north-south division votes for a particular issue.
It is interesting that votes dealing with transportation
matters ranked as low as they did. There does seem to be
an indication, then, that transportation legislation is an
I
even more divisive issue than water measures, since this
was the only category in which less than half of the votes
were in the basic agreement classification. As can be
seen, transportation, water, fish and game, and agricul
tural legislation provoked the most consistent conflict
between the northern and southern delegates.
TABLE 39
ASSEMBLY NORTH-SOUTH BASIC AGREEMENT
RANKED BY PERCENTAGE ORDER
167
VOTES
Rank Issue Per Cent
1 Welfare 87
2 Labor 87
3 Elections 85
4 Law 84
5 State Administration 84
6 Business 80
7 Liquor 80
8 Appropriations 73
9 Taxation 72
10 Local administration 66
11 Education 65
12 Agriculture 60
13 Water 59
14 Fish and game 57
15 Transportation 40
16F
Assembly North-South Moderate
Agreement Votes with
Northern Minority
There were not many votes during the three sessions
where a northern minority opposed majorities in the north
ern and southern delegations. Again, this shows the lack
of disagreement of both delegations on most issues. Those
few votes that were included in Table 40 were predictable—
a few votes on water, transportation, and law.
Assembly North-South Moderate
Agreement Votes with
Southern Minority
There were 16 more votes in this classification
than the previous one, and this is one indication that the
northern bloc of assemblyment had somewhat higher unity
than did the southern faction. The greatest number of
votes in this classification were in the transportation
category dealing with the allocation of money for road
construction and maintenance. Fights between the northern
and southern delegations were frequent on this issue but
also differences within the southern delegation itself were
also prominent.
169
TABLE 40
ASSEMBLY MODERATE NORTH-SOUTH AGREEMENT VOTES
WITH A SMALL MINORITY OF THE NORTHERNERS
VOTING AGAINST THE NORTHERN MAJORITY
Rank Issue Number of Votes
1 Water 6
2 Law 5
3 Transportation 5
4 Local administration 3
5 Fish and game 2
6 Appropriations 2
7 Agriculture 2
8 Labor 1
9 Welfare 1
10 Business 1
11 Taxation 1
12 Education 1
13 Natural resources 1
Total 31
170
TABLE 41
ASSEMBLY MODERATE NORTH-SOUTH AGREEMENT VOTES
WITH A SMALL MINORITY OF THE SOUTHERNERS
VOTING AGAINST THE SOUTHERN MAJORITY
Rank Issue Number of Votes
1 Transportation 11
2 Education 6
3 Labor 4
4 Law 3
5 Business 3
6 Water 3
7 Local administration 3
8 Elections 2
9 Welfare 2
10 Fish and game 2
11 Taxation 2
12 Agriculture 2
13 Natural resources 2
14 State administration 1
15 Legislative procedure 1
Total 47
171
Conclusions
1. North-south division votes in the Assembly were
few and infrequent. There were four times more
Republican-Democratic disagreement votes.
2. Of several thousand roll calls in the Assembly
only 18 showed north-south splits with the two
sides at the 75 per cent level of cohesion.
3. North-south conflict occurred most frequently
on transportation, water, and fish and game
legislation along with a fair number dealing
with fiscal matters.
4. There were no clear indications as to whether
north-south voting splits were becoming more
frequent over the sessions studied.
5. On most legislation there was considerable
agreement or, perhaps more aptly, little dis
agreement among the northern and southern
blocs.
CHAPTER VIII
NORTH-SOUTH VOTING IN THE
CALIFORNIA SENATE
North-South Background
Experts on California politics have long maintained
that north-south voting patterns and rural-urban splits
are most pronounced in the upper house of the California
legislature. For the reason, they contend that it is due
to the grossly malapportioned, unrepresentative California
Senate. It was noted previously, in Chapter VII, that the
boundary line used to divide the state into northern and
southern halves as constructed in this paper resulted in
the following divisions in the state legislature: in the
Assembly there were 35 northerners and 45 southerners ; in
the Senate there were 30 northerners and 10 southerners.
To put this another way, the southern ratio over the north
in the Assembly was 4 to 3, but in the Senate the advantage
accrued to the north by a 3 to 1 margin.
172
173
Senate North-South History
The contrast in population make-up of the two
houses has not always been as severe as this. Until 1927
the California Senate, like the Assembly, was based upon
population for its representation and, therefore, the two
legislative bodies were comparable in composition. As
Southern California*s population began to mushroom, north
ern political leaders began to cast about for plans which
would shore up their threatened political power. The so-
called ^‘ Federal Plan” was eventually devised and introduced
as a constitutional amendment. Under this plan, the lower
house was to continue to be based on population for its
representation, but the Senate was to be changed dras
tically. In the upper house, each county would send one
senator to Sacramento, with only the sparsely settled
counties combined into senatorial districts. The maximum
number of counties composing a senatorial district was
limited to three. This gave the north a great advantage :
first, because northern counties generally are much smaller
geographically than the southern counties, and, second, for
the most part they are less densely populated than the
southern metropolitan counties.
X74n
Since the adoption of the Federal Plan there have
been many attempts made to change the elective system
devised for the upper house. Most of these efforts have
been led by Los Angeles interests--the county which has
been most adversely affected by the adoption of the Federal
Plan. In 1928 a stateTwide referendum was proposed and
defeated, and in 1948 an initiative campaign was organized,
again without success.
A number of factors could be offered in explanation
for the failure of these plans :
1. The power of northern rural counties would have
diminished in any kind of plan to increase
representation of the urban areas, especially
southern areas, and they have generally opposed
any kind of elective reforms in the Senate.
2. Los Angeles political leaders have not been
united in their efforts to change the power
structure of the Senate.
^One excellent description of the various plans to
change the power structure of the Senate can be found in
Gordon E. Baker, "The California Senate: Sectional Con
flict and Vox Populi," in The Politics of Reapportionment,
edited by Malcolm Jewell (New York: Atherton Press, 1962),
pp. 51-63.
175
3. Many political leaders from urban counties are
jealous and suspicious of the ambitions of Los
Angeles leaders and have been reluctant to see
this county obtain such a powerful voice in
both houses of the legislature.
4. There is a superficial reasonableness to the
Federal Plan. However, the analogy of a coun
ty ' s relationship to the state government
being comparable to the state governments*
relationship to the national government is
quite inaccurate; counties have always been
merely administrative districts of the state
and never sovereign.
5. Business groups and farm interests, and at
times even labor unions, have been reluctant
to incur the wrath of the incumbent senators
by proposing plans for their political demise.
In fact. Democratic party leaders and union
leaders, normally supporters of reapportion
ment, were confronted with an upper house in
1961 that was three-to-one Democratic. Any
kind of rearrangement of the power structure
would have been purchased at the prohibitive
— — 1761
cost of angering many important senators.
Yet the impact of this malapportionment was still a
contentious issue for many southern urban leaders. As one
writer pointed out :
Despite similarity between urban and rural
partisan political sentiment, certain urban groups
and related farm groups feel that they have very
difficult sledding in the rurally dominated upper
house. During the decade from 1935 to 1946, for
example. Assembly bills regulating wages and hours
and working conditions, particularly of women,
children and farm labor, were killed in the
Senate. In the last décade many Assembly bills
providing improved or expanded health and welfare
benefits were defeated in a Senate committee or on
the floor. Until 1958 this was also true of bills
creating a fair employment practices commission.
In rebuttal, excepting only the farm labor issue,
it would also be fairly stated that the Senate has
approved such welfare measures, but frequently--
say critics--too little and too late.^
Since 1948 almost biennially efforts have been made
to change the Senate * s power structure. In 1960 a system
of redistributing Senate seats (usually described as the
BoneHi Plan) was introduced in an initiative petition.
Under this plan there would have been 20 northern senators
and 20 southern senators. Los Angeles would have been
allotted seven senators, three other southland urban
^Composition on Legislative Reapportionment :
California (New York: National Municipal League, 1960).
177
counties would have received additional representation.
This plan was defeated by a 2-1 margin of voters of the
state and, as the next move. Governor Pat Brown requested
the formation of a nine-member reapportionment study com
mission in 1961 to propose recommendations for some kind
of Senate election reform.^
In 1962, another initiative amendment was put on
the ballot by the same Los Angeles interests which had
supported the earlier reapportionment efforts and again the
measure was defeated in the state-wide vote. Defeat this
time hinged, in part, on the opposition of a number of
influential California firms who contributed generously to
the campaign to defeat the reapportionment measure. Two
keen observers of the California political scene pointed
out :
A supposition regarding these contributions is
that the addition of several urban senators would
upset the delicately coordinated channels to
political power in the state legislature currently
enjoyed by the economic interests
3
Baker, loc. cit.
^Totton J. Anderson and Eugene Lee, "The 1962
Election in California," Western Political Quarterly. XVI,
Pt. 1 (1963), 398-420.
ITS
At the time this chapter is written, no elective
solution has yet emerged. Several recent Supreme Court
decisions, most notably the Baker vs. Carr decision, may
very well alter this situation. In this case and in sever
al other recent decisions, the Court has argued that if a
state legislature failed to reapportion itself fairly on a
population basis, the federal courts would have to step in
and ensure a fair election.
Although not clear at first, the series of subse
quent decisions by the Court on reapportionment now also
indicates that both the lower and the upper houses of the
various state legislatures must be reapportioned. These
Court decisions are now being challenged in Congress and a
number of state legislatures where constitutional amend
ments have been proposed to limit the jurisdiction of the
Court in this area. The final outcome of the Court * s
incursion in this area, of course, is still very much in
question, but it seems likely that in the not too distant
future most state legislatures will have to be reappor
tioned, if not voluntarily, then under Court order.
According to the definitions established in this
paper for north-south, there are 10 southern and 48
northern counties. In terms of population the counties
179
classified as southern in this work had 9,733,351 residents
or 59 per cent of the state total, while the northern coun
ties had 5,987,509 people, or 41 per cent of the California
population.^ Of course, underlying this population dispar
ity was the fact that the northern counties were mainly
rural, and the southern counties were primarily urban.
Extent of the Unrepresentativeness
In a recent article. Professors Schubert and Press,
using some highly imaginative statistical techniques, have
measured the extent of the unrepresentativeness of all the
state legislatures.^ In Table 42 we see a ranking of the
ten most malapportioned upper houses, using three differ
ent quantitative measurements.
To explain in any great detail the computations
necessary to derive these formulations would be inappro
priate in this study. Briefly, however, a low inverse
coefficient of variation (I.C.V.) indicates malapportion-
5
U. S., Bureau of the Census, United States Census
of Population: 1960 California (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1960).
^Glendon Schubert and Charles Press, "Measuring
Malappor tionraen t, * * American Political Science Review,
LVIII (1964), 302-327.
RANKING
16ST
TABLE 42
OF THE TEN MOST MALAPPORTIONED STATE SENATES
USING VARIED MATHEMATICAL TESTS^
Rank State
Inverse Coefficient
of Variation
1 California .2950822
2 Nevada .3397351
3 Arizona .3535464
4 New Mexico .3950909
5 Florida .4267358
6. Montana .4349539
7 Oklahoma .4521801
8 Idaho .4582692
9 Georgia .4592377
10 Kansas .4853394
Rank State Skewness
1 California 5.4394092
2 Minnesota 4.9967158
3 Kentucky 4.1624178
4 New Mexico 4.1341645
5 Alabama 3.9555078
6 Oklahoma 3.6939135
7 Kansas 3.5405495
8 South Dakota 3.0599798
9 Montana 2.8133181
10 Florida 2.7307594
Rank State Kurtosis
1 California 29.7892981
2 Minnesota 29.7465438
3 Indiana 22.3989337
4 Kentucky 19.3547055
5 New Mexico 18.3434493
181
TABLE 42--Continued
Rank State Kurtosis
6 Alabama 16.8197286
7 Kansas 13.6147078
8 South Dakota 9.9592983
9 Tennessee 9.5570304
10 Florida 8.7673628
a,
Compiled from computations for all 50 states in
Glendon Schubert and Charles Press, '^Measuring Malappor
tionment ," American Political Science Review. LVIII
(1964); computations.
ment, the closer one approaches the figure of 1.00 the
closer the score is to perfect apportionment. For example,
the Massachusetts Senate had an inverse coefficient of
variation of .8656090, which was the highest score of any
state senate. Professors Schubert and Press explain the
other statistical rankings in the following words :
The index of skewness indicates whether the
variance for units on one side of the mean is
less than that for units on the other side; and
if imbalance exists, the index identifies which
has the greater variance. . . . The index of
kurtosis tells us whether the distribution is
relatively flat or peaked, in comparison to the
182
normal curve, for which has a value of
zero.^
The significant factor is that on each of these
measures, the California Senate ranked as the most malap
portioned upper house in the United States. This is espec
ially noteworthy since sixteen states made at least one of
the rankings, and there was great diversity as to an indi
vidual state's place in each of the rankings. The over
representation of the northern rural forces in the Cali
fornia Senate certainly clearly resulted in gross total
misrepresentation.
Senate North-South Basic and Moderate
Disagreement Votes
In order to appraise the significance of north-
south division votes in the California Senate, Table 43
has been constructed. By comparing the percentages found
in this table with the number and percentage of party
division votes, it seems clear that north-south split
votes occurred as frequently and were as important in the
California Senate as party division votes. It might also
be mentioned that while there were higher percentages of
^Ibld.. p. 320.
183
TABLE 43
SENATE NORTH-SOUTH DISAGREEMENT VOTES LISTED
AT SEVERAL COHESION LEVELS
Cohesion Level 1957 1959 1961 Total
Number of Conflict roll
calls 137 189 100 426
Jewell--90 per cent
Number 0 0 0 0
Per cent 0 0 0
Basic disagreement--75
per cent
Number 4 13 7 23
Per cent 3 7 7
Moderage disagreement--
60 per cent
Number 8 29 14 52
Per cent 6 15 14
north-south disagreement votes than party disagreement
votes, they were not much higher in the upper house.
Generally, the same issue categories eliciting
north-south division votes in the Assembly also provoked
north-south splits in the Senate. In Table 44 the various
issue categories are ranked in terms of the number of
TABLE 44
SENATE NORTH-SOUTH BASIC AND
DISAGREEMENT VOTES
MODERATE
184
Rank Issue Number of Votes
1 Water 14
2 Welfare 12
3 Taxation 10
4 Law 9
5 Transportation 8
6 Business 6
7 Education 5
8 Labor 3
9 State administration 3
10 Local administration 3
11 Agriculture 1
12 Liquor 1
Total 75
185
north-south division votes in each one of them. Again,
the same general issues causing north-south splits in the
Assembly sessions ranked high in the Senate listings:
water, taxes, and welfare were the leading categories. In
Table 45 the percentage of disagreement votes in the
various issue categories is tabulated.
Senate North-South Basic and Moderate
Agreement Votes
On most issues there was no regional northern-
southern division on votes with the exception of the few
issue topics noted in the previous list. Agreement was
high between the two scales on the other issues.
Two vote classifications included in prior chap
ters have been omitted from this chapter. These two deal
with the minority faction opposed to a majority of its
own delegation, when the majority of the delegation has
voted in agreement with the other bloc of legislators.
There were only a handful of votes where a sizeable fac
tion of northern Senators opposed a majority of northern
Senators and southern Senators.
TABLE 45
SENATE NORTH-SOUTH BASIC AND MODERATE
DISAGREEMENT VOTES RANKED BY
PERCENTAGE ORDER
186
Rank Issue Per Cent
1 Appropriations 100
2 Fish and game 100
3 Liquor 97
4 State administration 94
5 Local administration 93
6 Agriculture 89
7 Labor 83
8 Welfare 75
9 Law 75
10 Business 70
11 Education 66
12 Transportation 65
13 Water
"'J
14 Taxation 50^4
T8T1
Conclusions
1. North-south differences are equally as crucial
as party splits in the California Senate,
roughly about one-fifth of the disputed votes.
2. Issues such as water, transportation, and
taxation caused north-south splits in the
Assembly as well as in the Senate.
3. North-south differences are more important in
the Senate than in the Assembly.
CHAPTER IX
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
There will be three major sections in this conclud
ing chapter: (1) a comparative analysis of the three afore
mentioned dichotomies will be undertaken; (2) an investiga
tion will be made of the Assembly and Senate bills of the
1961 legislative session which provoked sharp legislative
conflict on one of these three vote divisions; and (3) an
evaluation of present voting patterns and possible future
voting trends in the state legislature will be attempted.
Comparison of the Three Dichotomies
In the preceding chapters the Republican-Democrat
ic, rural-urban, and north-south voting splits were
examined individually. The first task of this chapter,
therefore, will be to compare the relative importance of
each one of these divisions with each other. Table 46 has
been designed especially for this purpose with comparisons
188
189
'
TABLE 46
COMPARISON OF THE THREE DICHOTOMIES IN THE
ASSEMBLY AT TWO DIFFERENT
COHESION LEVELS
Year
Republiean-
Democratic
Rural-
Urban
North-
South
Percentage of Disputed Votes at 75 Per Cent
Cohesion Level--(Basic Disagreement)
1957 6 0 1
1959 13 0 2
1961 15 0 2
Percentage of Conflict Votes at the
Moderate Disagreement Level
1957 22 2 6
1959 30 1 16
1961 33 1 6
Percentage of Conflict Votes at the
Combined Basic-Moderate Disagreement
Level
1957 28 2 7
1959 43 1 18
1961 49 1 8
T90
at the basic disagreement and moderate disagreement levels
of cohesion.
The following hypotheses can be suggested after
perusing the tabulations in Table 46:
1. Party differences between Republicans and
Democrats accounted for the overwhelming pro
portion of the conflict votes in the Assembly.
By 1961 there were party differences at the 75
per cent level of cohesion on 15 per cent of
the roll call conflict votes in the Assembly,
and at least minimal party differences on
almost half the disputed votes.
2. There appears to be no important rural-urban
division voting pattern operating in the Assem
bly. Even at the moderate disagreement level
of cohesion, there was only a handful of votes
in which rural and urban legislators voted as
blocs opposed to each other.
3. North-south voting splits, although more impor
tant than rural-urban divisions in the Assembly,
occur infrequently on isolated votes. Only a
few votes in this category were recorded with
cohesion above the 75 per cent mark. The
_ - r 9 T i
relatively high percentage of north-south split
votes cast during the 1959 session can be
explained, in part, because of the controver
sial legislation that was debated extensively
during this session concerning water bills.
4. North-south and rural-urban voting divisions
remained relatively stable during the three
sessions studied, but there was a steady in
crease in party division votes over the same
period.
A somewhat different voting pattern prevails in the
upper house of the California legislature when we make the
same kinds of comparisons of the three dichotomies, as
presented in Table 47. Several rather obvious conclusions
about the voting patterns in the California Senate can
be suggested after examining the figures in this table.
First, it can be noted that partisan votes of Republicans
versus Democrats occurred less frequently than did north-
south division votes in the upper house. This is quite
unlike the Assembly where party conflict votes were easily
the most important category. Second, north-south divisions
were more prevalent and were of greater critical importance
in the Senate than in the Assembly, although the difference
192
TABLE 47
COMPARISON OF THE THREE DICHOTOMIES IN THE
SENATE AT TWO DIFFERENT
COHESION LEVELS
Year
Republican- Rural-
Democratic Urban
North-
South
Percentage of Conflict Votes at 75 Per Cent
Cohesion Level--(Basic Disagreement)
1957 2 0 3
1959 6 0 7
1961 4 0 7
Percentage of Conflict Votes at the
Moderate Disagreement Level
1957 2 0 6
1959 9 2 15
1961 7 3 14
Percentage of Conflict Votes at the
Combined Basic-Moderate
Disagreement Level
1957 4 0 9
1959 15 2 22
1961 11 3 21
193
between the two houses was not as great as might have been
expected. Third, rural-urban voting clashes proved to be
as insignificant in the upper house as they were in the
lower house, which again is somewhat surprising since many
authorities would probably have ranked this division as
being of prime importance in the upper house. Fourth, as
in the Assembly, the impact of the rural-urban and north-
south conflicts in terms of the percentage of disputed
votes remained relatively stable during the three terms
examined. Fifth, party conflict did not increase from
session to session in the Senate as it did in the lower
house, and it never approached the much higher percentages
of conflict found in the Assembly.
In order more effectively to appraise the overall
significance of these dichotomies in the two houses. Table
48 has been compiled. In this table the percentage of
moderate and basic disagreement votes cast out of all
those with at least 10 per cent opposition during the
1957-1961 period, has been averaged for both the Assembly
and the Senate in the three dichotomies. The same
general conclusions that have been discussed above could be
repeated after examination of this table.
" T9î
TABLE 48
SENATE AND ASSEMBLY COMPARED IN TERMS OF THE
AVERAGE PERCENTAGE FOR THREE SESSIONS
THAT EACH DICHOTOMY RECEIVED
Republican- Rural- North-
Democratic Urban South
Assembly 40 2 11
Senate 10 2 17
Analysis of Legislation
Now that the significance of the three divisions
in the California legislature have been evaluated, both
individually and comparatively, a further step must be
undertaken. This is to describe and analyze the Assembly
and Senate bills that tended to provoke sharp conflict in
one of the three dichotomy categories. Bills analyzed in
this next section were taken solely from the 1961 legisla
tive session, the one this author personally examined.^
William Buchanan, in his monograph. Legislative
Partisanship : The Deviant Case of California ('^University
of California Publications in Political Science," Vol.
XIII; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), has
already examined these bills in the 1957 session.
1951
Party conflict bills
In Chapters III and IV it was found that party
division votes in the Senate and Assembly usually occurred
over the following issue topics: elections and reapportion
ment, labor, law, and social welfare bills. Two leading
authorities on the California legislature, Cresap and
Buchanan, in earlier studies discovered the same kind of
issues operating in the legislative sessions they analyzed.
As far back as 1949, Cresap had made an analysis
of the kinds of bills that tended to promote party con
flict. Cresap reported that on the following votes 95 per
cent or more of the Republicans voted against a majority
of Democrats :
1. urgency clause--chiId care centers
2. withdraw from committee--unemployment compensation
bill
3. withdraw from committee--prepaid health insurance
4. change in state income tax laws
5. reconsider change in state income tax law
6. disciplining of state employees
7. proposal for punch card method of voting in state
elections
8. resolution in regard to prayer
9. election procedures for election to county central
committee
10. assembly constitutional amendment dividing legis
lative sessions into two time periods^
^Dean Cresap, Golden State Politics (Los Angeles:
Haynes Foundation, 1954), p. 58.
196
At the same time, 95 per cent or more of the Democrats
voted against a majority of the Republicans on the follow
ing votes :
1. child care centers
2. disability insurance
3. amendment to disability insurance
4. public housing bill
5. aid to needy children
6. workmen's compensation
7. change in state income tax laws
8. initiative and referendum
9. aid to needy persons
10. hardship and destitution aid
11. election to county central committee
12. reapportionment vote
13. grants of federal aid^
Many of the same kinds of bills that Cresap dis
covered tending to cause Republican-Democratic voting divi
sions in 1949 were prominent in Buchanan's study of the
1957 legislative session. Bill topics such as welfare
measures or election procedures were mentioned most
frequently. In his recent study of the California legis
lature, Professor Buchanan established three general clas
sifications of Assembly and Senate bills which served to
foment party conflict. First, there were a number of votes
dealing with elections, reapportionment, and party organi
zation. Although these bills have no substantive policy
concerns, they could, if enacted, affect the balance of
^Ibld.. p. 59.
- - 197
voting power in the legislature. However, Professor
Buchanan noted that at times it was difficult to determine
why the legislators would consider a vote on a particular
election modification or party organization bill as giving
one party a certain added advantage--yet they frequently
did.
The same type of legislation causing Republican-
Democratic divisions in the 1949 and 1957 legislative
sessions continued to generate party disharmony in 1961.
For example, out of the handful of bills causing party
conflict at the 75 per cent level of cohesion during the
1961 session were the following bills which the Republicans
favored and the Democrats opposed:
1. Challenging a voter at the voting precinct on
the grounds that he cannot read as required by
the Constitution.
2. Restrictions on the political activities of
public employees.
3. Absentee ballots to be returned five days
before the election.
On the other hand. Democrats gave solid support to the
following measures on which the Republicans were in oppo
sition:
rws
1. Deputized persons can act as voting registrars.
2. Reconsider vote on No. 1.
3. Reapportionment bill.
4. Board of supervisors may submit to the electors
the election of designated county officers.
5. Selection of delegations to national party
conventions and the selection of unpledged
delegations at the presidential primary elec
tions .
Under Buchanan's classification, the second group
of votes provoking party conflict were those which involved
the traditional "ins" versus "outs" controversies. On
these votes, Buchanan noted, one or the other party at
tempted to take advantage of a voting situation to embar
rass the opposition.
In the 1961 Assembly session there was a series of
votes dealing with Democratic Governor Pat Brown's appro
priation requests for certain state projects. Democrats
in the lower house gave these appropriation measures hearty
support, while the Republicans vigorously opposed them.
Whether Republican opposition to this series of appropria
tions roll calls was brought to bear because this was an
attempt to embarrass Governor Brown and the Democratic
199
leadership in the state legislature, or merely because
Republicans are traditionally more opposed to spending
measures, is not easy to determine. Perhaps this was a
combination of both factors. Aside from this series of
votes, however, there were few roll calls in 1961 which
could be grouped into this category. Why was there a
drop-off of these politically inspired votes from 1957 to
1961? Perhaps this can best be explained by noting that in
1957 Democrats in the legislature (especially the Assembly)
were very conscious of making a party record. Although
they were still a minority in 1957, a number of new Demo
cratic legislators had been elected to the state legisla
ture during the past two elections and were beginning to
"flex their muscles." On the other hand, in 1961 the
Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate, now acting as
a minority, were perhaps not used to thinking in political
terms because of their long domination of the legislature
under their ostensibly nonpartisan administration. Thus,
there were only a handful of votes in which the "ins"
versus the "outs" conflict showed up in the later session.
The third classification of bills used by Buchanan
in classifying party conflict votes were those in which
there was a substantive issue at stake. The bills con
200
sidered in this category, all taken from the Assembly of
1961, were as follows:
1. Separate itemization of all welfare payments.
2. Cost of county hospitalization shall not
constitute a lien against real property.
3. Increase provisions for old age assistance.
4. Workmen's compensation to provide rehabilita
tion benefits.
Not too surprisingly, the Democrats in the Califor
nia legislature, as a whole, supported the extension of the
benefits or an increase in the compensation of, social wel
fare legislation, while the Republicans, generally, were
less enthusiastic about enlarging these programs. The
staunch support given these measures by the Democrats and
the coolness of the Republican attitude toward them is, at
least since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New
Deal program of 1932, consistent with the two parties'
national positions.
Another classification of bills would be useful in
considering party conflict legislation. This category, in
addition to Buchanan's three, might be labeled as the legal
or due process legislation category. During the 1961 ses
sion there were several votes taken dealing with abolishing
__ 2un
the death penalty; in addition, there were several amend
ments to this bill such as on one vote which would have
provided for a four-year moratorium on capitol punishment.
Another due process bill dealt with the legal rights of the
plaintiff, and still another with certain technical provi
sions as to where court proceedings should be held for
certain types of cases. For the most part, on these legal
party conflict votes. Democratic legislators were more
concerned with the legal rights of the individual, while
the Republicans appeared to be more interested in protect
ing the safety of the citizens of the state through strong
laws.
Rural-urban conflict bills
As it was pointed out in Chapter V, no rural-urban
vote divisions ever reached the 75 per cent level of cohe
sion, and there were only a few votes in which a slight
majority of rural legislators opposed a small urban major
ity. The eight rural-urban votes listed below were those
in which these two blocs, voting against each other,
registered their highest cohesion:
1. Claims against public officers and employees.
Eliminate requirement that claim be filed as
TOI
prerequisite to commencement against public
officers,
2. Obligations under bonding law.
3. Fish and game code exemptions for Indians to
apply only on reservation of which he is a
member.
4. Uses of imitation milk products.
5. Prohibits loans under Davis-Grunsky Act for
irrigation or municipal distribution system
projects except those involving public health.
6. Codeine compounds with not more than two grains
xJ
of opium per ounce within a compound exempted
from triplicate blank requirement.
7. Prohibits use of school material for election
purposes.
8. Supervision of charitable trusts. Authorizes
the attorney general to levy charges on char
itable trusts which he administers under the
law to defray administrative expenses.
It appears clear that there is no easily discern
ible pattern in the measures which provoked rural-urban
controversy--at least during the 1961 session. It is true,
on the one hand, that several of these votes appear to fall
2031
logically into this rural-urban conflict category. For
example, number 4 in the above list deals with the use of
imitation milk products ; not unexpectedly, the rural bloc
opposed this type of product and sought through various
restrictions to limit their sale. Quite obviously, most
urban legislators did not view these products with the same
jaundiced eye as their rural counterparts. Too, the
prohibition of loans for irrigation purposes under the
Davis-Grunsky Act in number 7 also clearly affects rural
interests, and the majority of farm soIons opposed this
measure. The other bill which directly affects rural
interests in number 3. On this, the rural bloc voted to
oppose restrictions on Indians* fish and game code privi
leges. Perhaps rural legislators voted in support of
Indians * rights because they form part of some of the rural
legislators * constituencies, or perhaps farm legislators
are instinctively more zealous in protecting Indian hunting
and fishing privileges.
The other measures listed do not appear, at least
on the surface, to involve traditionally rural-urban con
cerns. It is likely that chance played some part in the
grouping of these other votes. Perhaps party affiliations
(the majority of rural legislators were Republican and most
20ZT
urban soIons were Democrats) may offer a partial explana
tion for these other votes as well.
North-south conflict bills
North-south votes occurred more frequently and with
higher cohesion in the Senate than in the Assembly. The
overwhelming proportion of these high cohesion north-south
division votes came on water legislation. Of the eleven
votes with the highest north-south cohesion, six were on
Assembly or Senate bills dealing with water questions.
The water votes were as follows:
1. Adds "watershed protection" and "county of
origin" provision to California Water Resources
Act.
2. Appropriations of water. Establishes provi
sions for application to appropriate water.
3. Financial assistance for local water projects.
Authorizes grants under the Davis-Grunsky Act.
4. Prohibits Department of Water Resources from
contracting for delivery of water from Delta
in excess of 4 million acre feet.
5. Requires Department of Water Resources Devel
opment System to apply surplus system power
205
revenues to reduce only big users' rates.
6. Prescribes pricing policy for delivery of sup
plemental water for agricultural use.
The other high cohesion north-south division votes
dealt with a hodgepodge of substantive issue matters:
1. Reapportionment.
2. Public Utilities Commission impositions of
$5,000 fines on highway carriers.
3. Property taxes.
4. Supervision of charitable trusts.
5. Minimal requirements on farm labor buses.
Aside from the legislation dealing with water, which
was also an important factor in the Assembly as well, there
was little of substantive content which could be said
frequently to divide cohesive blocs of northern and southern
legislators. Reapportionment, of course, would affect the
northern delegation because of its overrepresentation in
the Senate and was a contentious issue. It is also true
that northern senators frequently represented rural dis
tricts and, therefore, several votes dealing with agricul
tural questions were also important issues.
206
Evaluation of Voting Trends
Republican-Democratic
Most of the recent commentary written about the
California legislature emphasized one point: the California
Assembly, and to a lesser extent the Senate, since 1957
have become highly partisan.^ This can be noted by consid
ering several factors. First, since 1957 there has been a
steady increase in party voting in the legislature.
Second, cohesion of the two blocs, while not very high in
comparison with other urban states, was much higher than
the other two vote dichotomies and also was increasing
throughout the three sessions studied. Third, several
personal conflicts, which have taken place in the legisla
ture since the 1961 session, also attest to this growing
party conflict.
In a special session of the 1963 legislature called
by Governor Brown, this growing partisan conflict was
especially highlighted in the vote on the budget bill. In
order to pass a budget bill in the Assembly, 54 votes are
needed out of a total of 80 (an absolute two-thirds
'^Buchanan, op. cit. . pp. 123-134.
207
requirement). Republican Assemblymen, for several reasons,
were opposed to Brown*s budget bill and refused to vote,
thus preventing passage of the bill. Jesse M. Unruh,
Democratic Speaker of the Assembly and a living symbol of
this new partisan atmosphere, through a clever parliamen
tary procedural tactic, had the legislature locked in the
chamber until at least some of the recalcitrant Republicans
c
were willing to vote. The Republicans countered by stat
ing that these were the pressure tactics of a "political
boss. After 27 hours the Republicans agreed, reluctant
ly, to vote. The budget bill was finally passed and the
lock-in was called off.
In 1964 Speaker Unruh promoted two new rule changes
later approved by the Assembly. The Republicans claimed
that these rules were imposed as a punishment for their
actions on the budget bill. Speaker Unruh discounted this
Republican contention, explaining that the majority party
was seeking protection against what he called the "extreme
^A good discussion of the rise of Jesse Unruh and
the partisan overtones can be found in Buchanan, op. cit.,
p. 132.
^Lawrence E. Bavies, Los Angeles Times. August 2,
1964, p. 1.
208
partisanship" practiced by the minority Republican Assem
blymen. ^
The first rule change had to do with the election
of the Speaker of the Assembly. Prior to 1964, Speakers
had been elected by a vote of all the assembled members of
the lower house. A great deal of Jockeying went on among
the various contenders, with promises of chairmenships,
vice-chairmenships, or key committee assignments being
part of the bargaining quid pro quo used by the Speaker
o
candidates. Because the Speaker was elected in this
fashion, the Assemblymen*s party membership was not usually
the crucial factor determining the legislators* votes, but
other, more personal reasons accounted for the vote.
Indeed, on several occasions, a member of the minority
party was elected Speaker of the lower house. The change,
as proposed and approved by the Assembly, was to have the
two parties caucus separately, select their Speaker candi
date, and then in a joint meeting of the two parties in the
Assembly go through the formality of electing a Speaker--
^Jerry GilIan, Los Angeles Times. August 5, 1963,
p. 9.
8
Buchanan, op. cit.. pp. 84-91.
209
although obviously the majority party's candidate would be
the victor.
The second rule change had to do with the Speaker's
selection of committee chairmen and vice-chairmen. Tradi
tionally, members manning these positions were part of the
Speaker's election coalition. There were both Republican
and Democratic chairmen, no matter which party had the
majority in the Assembly. The new rule change stipulated
that only members of the majority party could be chairmen
or vice-chairmen. Four Republican chairmen lost their
chairmanships under this new rule provision.
Although these were indications of increased par
tisanship in the California legislature, several important
mitigating factors can be noted. Even by the end of the
1961 legislative session, California was far less partisan
than any of the eight states studied by Jewell. The in
crease in partisanship from 1959 to 1961 was minimal and
may very well indicate a leveling off of party voting in
the legislature. Jesse Unruh, leader of the staunchly
partisan Democratic faction, has been far more circumspect
in his dealings with the Republicans recently. The Los
Angeles Times Sacramento Bureau chief, Robert Blanchard,
wrote the following about the 1964 legislative session and
— no-
Mr . Unruh:
It [the legislative session] also projected a
new image for Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh who,
up to now had been characterized as the iron-fisted
ruler of the lower house who locked Republicans up
for 27 hours to gain his way. This time Unruh got
along far better with the Republican leadership
than he did with some members of his own party--
Governor Brown, State Finance Director Hale Cham
pion and State Controller Alan Cranston.^
When he announced that he was appointing Milton
Marks, Republican Assemblyman from San Francisco, as a
chairman of the newly reactivated Committee on Government
Reorganization in 1964, Unruh said:
I have selected Assemblyman Marks for this
important assignment because of his outstanding
work at the helm of this Committee during the 1963
session and his previous record as chairman of the
Assembly Committee on Constitutional Amendments.^®
Whether this marks a diminution of partisanship in
the legislature or the beginning of an attempt by Speaker
Unruh for building bipartisan support in seeking higher
political office is not altogether clear.
California's legislature is still far less partisan
than any other urban state legislature. Certainly the
^Robert Blanchard, Los Angeles Times, May 24,
1964, Sec. A, p. 5.
l°Ibid.. July 7, 1964, p. 8.
211
nonpartisan Progressive Party legacy is still being per
petuated. In concluding, it might be said that there is
little doubt that the legislature is more partisan than it
was just a few years ago, but it appears rather unlikely,
after examining the voting trends and the personal factors,
that in the near future California's legislature will soon
approach other urban states in terms of the bitterness of
the Republican-Democrat conflict.
Rural-urban
Certainly the conclusion of this study that the
rural-urban dichotomy's importance has been greatly over
rated in this state agrees with the findings of other polit
ical scientists in their recent roll call studies of other
state legislatures. It is true that on a few specialized
votes dealing, for example, with agriculture or state
highway taxes, most of the rural legislators will vote
together but seldom against a united city bloc. In fact,
there were only a few agricultural bills in which conflict
occurred. This may indicate the preeminence of the nation
al government on this subject area.
It might be suggested that if legislation is
defeated in the California legislature on bills which would
212
benefit urban metropolitan areas such as legislation for a
mass transit system or a slum clearance bill, the measures
are defeated primarily by a division within the urban
ranks rather than by rural soIons.
It is quite likely that rural-urban votes will be
even less crucial in the future than they are today.
Agricultural trends in the country as well as in this state
indicate that fewer farm workers will be needed because of
new mechanical labor-saving devices; also, the size of the
average farm has grown larger for this same reason. This
means a dwindling farm population and a mushrooming urban
population in thé country. In addition, it appears that
the recent Supreme Court decision on reapportionment will
affect the size of the rural delegation in the California
Senate and will probably mean that the number of farm
solons will be pared down even further. New highways and
modern communications have the effect of minimizing the
differences between the attitudes and outlooks of the aver
age "hayseed" and the "city slicker," and, one would pre
sume, their representatives. Certainly the belief that
there are two highly cohesive rural and urban blocs that
wage frequent internecine warfare on a wide range of
issues in the California legislature has little substance
213
in fact.
North-south
North-south voting had more significance in the
California Assembly than rural-urban voting, and much less
importance than party voting. Enmity between northern and
southern California is still a factor in the state and in
the current legislature. Seldom are cohesive voting blocs
evidenced, however, except on water legislation where
rather clear-cut differences do exist.
In the 1965 legislative session there has been a
great deal of debate and discussion in the California
Senate over dividing California into two separate states--
one northern and one southern. A number of northern Sena
tors have gone on record as supporting this program. In a
recent news story, a southern Senator, Senator Alvin C.
Weingand of Santa Barbara, also endorsed this division:
When residents of this coastal city speak of
"going to the city" they mean San Francisco (380
driving miles to the north) rather than Los
Angeles (94 miles to the southeast).
Thus State Sen. Alvin C. Weingand, Santa
Barbara, explained yesterday at a news conference
to spell out his support of a bill to divide
California into two states.
"The culture of Santa Barbara County is much
more compatible with the north than with the
south," Weingand said.
2 I Ï 1
’‘ Traditionally, when anyone in Santa Barbara
says ‘We are going to the city,‘ he means San
Francisco, not Los Angeles,” he said.
"I don’t want Los Angeles to dominate the
government of California and that is why I beeame
a co-author (of the bill,” Weingand said.
“Everyone knows Los Angeles, Orange and San
Diego counties will control the state if reappor
tionment becomes a fact.”
The bill sponsored by State Sen. Richard E,
Dolwig, R-Redwood City, which Weingand admitted
has little chance of passing the Assembly, would
include Santa Barbara County in North California
although it is often, if not generally, thought of
as a part of Southern California,
Other differences between the northern and southern
blocs in the state Senate, although operating at lower
levels of cohesion, included several bills in the fish and
game, transportation, taxation, and agriculture categories ;
and in the Assembly in the appropriations category.
It seems likely that north-south voting divisions
will become less prominent if Southern California’s water
deficiency problem is overcome. Certainly great progrès
has been made on this problem in two general areas: first,
the Feather River Water Project, costing some 1.75 billion
dollars, will bring water from the north to Southern
12
California, helping to alleviate the letter’s plight;
^^Los Angeles Herald Examiner. January 16, 1965,
p. 5,
12
Leroy C. Hardy, California Government (New York:
Harper and Row. 1964). p. 105.
215
second, progress has been made in the use of converting
ocean water to fresh water through a desalination process
At the moment the expenses for this conversion makes water
costs prohibitively high, but progress through research is
making desalination more economical.
The disparity in the populations of northern and
southern California; the "bonus” received by the north in
gas tax revenue allotments; the rural, isolated, more
tradition-oriented north versus the bustling new metropoli
tan south are all factors which mitigate against the devel
opment of a truly homogeneous state. Thus, differences in
voting behavior between the two blocs of legislators will
probably continue to manifest themselves, although seldom
in clear-cut voting splits and on only a few selected
issue topics.
Of course, the critical factor influencing future
voting patterns in the state legislature will be reappor
tionment. Party line-ups will be altered, undoubtedly, and
there will be significant changes in the composition of
rural-urban and north-south political forces in Sacramento.
l^Ray Herbert, Los Angeles Times. January 18,
1965, Pt. 2, p. 1.

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Creator Price, Charles Marshall (author)

Core Title Voting alignments in the California Legislature: A roll call analysis of the 1957-1959-1961 sessions

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

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