A Capitol Valentine’s Day Story

Over the years, members of the Legislature have engaged in any number of trysts, affairs and relationships, licit and illicit. Some were discovered, some weren’t.

But few resulted in anything remotely permanent.

One of the few was Jean Moorhead, formerly Macpherson, and Gordon Duffy.

 A Stanford grad with a masters in public health, Moorhead, a nurse, met Duffy, an optometrist who had been a Republican lawmaker from Hanford since 1964, in the mid 1970s when she was a Sacramento State nursing professor. Moorhead, who knew nothing of the Capitol, was charged with trying to change the mind of Assemblyman Duffy, [....]

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Sound Familiar?

“The time has come for us to decide whether collectively we can afford everything and anything we think of simply because we think of it.  The time has come to run a check to see if all the services government provides were in answer to demands or were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment.  The time has come to match outgo to income, instead of always doing it the other way around.

“The cost of California’s government is too high; it adversely affects our business climate.  We have a phenomenal growth with hundreds of thousands of people joining [....]

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Happy Birthday Mr. President! (and Governor)

Ronald Reagan, California’s 33rd governor and the 40th President of the United States, was born in Tampico, Illinois 101 years ago on February 6. 

A number of books have been written about the actor-turned-politician. Among the best are those by Reagan biographer Lou Cannon. 

Rather than rehash territory well covered by others, here’s a brief Reagan anecdote from February 1981, upon the occasion of his 70th birthday:

Speaking to a Washington Press Club dinner on February 4, the GOP president noted that the group was founded by six Washington newspaperwomen in 1919. After a slight pause: “Seems like only yesterday.”

As for middle age: “(It’s) [....]

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Healthier Than a Chaw or a Cigarette, Though

“Wood shavings littered the floor of the (legislative) chambers because whittling was a favorite pastime of some legislators. Eventually, small blocks of wood had to be supplied for that purpose so that the desks, chairs and other fixtures would not be carved to slivers,” writes Mary Jo Ignoffo in Gold Rush Politics, California First Legislature.

“When meetings were declared adjourned there was a mad rush for the doors. One observer called the legislators ‘overgrown schoolboys’ hurrying and pushing each other to get out of the schoolhouse. If one of the Assemblymen or Senators was trying to convince his colleagues to [....]

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Can’t Improve on the Lede of This Article

Jan. 8, 1976, Page C-2 

By Nancy Skelton, McClatchy Newspaper Services 

Sacramento – Peyote. Snakes. Pocketknives. Pregnant goats.

An odd combination to begin with.

Odder, still, when they come up, front and center, at a Governor’s Prayer Breakfast.

But these were subjects chosen this morning by anthropologist-writer Gregory Bateson, who delivered the main address at the annual gathering held to seek God’s help for state leaders during the coming year.

His aim, he indicated in a text released earlier, was to show that the words “religion” and “prayer” have a lot of different meanings to a lot of people.

Some [....]

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From 1850: A History of California’s First 27 Counties

Among the tasks of lawmakers during California’s first legislative session, which began December 15, 1849, was naming the state’s counties.

Twenty-seven counties were established. Mariposa, for example, was the largest covering one-fifth of the state. Twelve subsequent counties were created in whole or in part out of Mariposa. Some original counties didn’t survive like Branciforte which became Santa Cruz.

On April 15, 1850, the Select Committee on the Derivation and Definition of the Names of the several Counties of the State of California filed its eponymous report.

The select committee was chaired by Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, a California native and one of [....]

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The More Things Change…

As adopted December 19, 1849 – four days into California’s first legislative session – the 6th Rule of the Senate reads:

“No member shall speak to another or otherwise interrupt the business of the Senate or read any newspaper while the journals or public papers are reading and while the President is putting a question, no senator shall walk out of, or across the house, nor while a senator is speaking pass between him and the chair.”

Englishman William Kelly in his exhaustively titled Excursion to California Over the Prairie, Rocky Mountains and Great Sierra Nevada With a Stroll Through the Diggings and [....]

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