7.4: Interest Groups in California

History

Any discussion of interest groups in California often begins with two stories: one about the power of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1870 to 1910 period and the other about Artie Samish, an influential lobbyist who manipulated the legislature between the 1920s and early 1950s.

The Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) was the most potent organized interest in California history between the 1870s and 1910. Originally started as the Central Pacific, the "Big Four" (Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, and Mark Hopkins) constructed the western half of the first intercontinental railroad. They then built and controlled fourteen thousand miles of track in the western United States, plus ferry boats, steamships, and other ventures. With land grants from the federal government, they owned about eleven million acres of land in California. Their monopoly power allowed them to control freight rates throughout California. The SP controlled much of the state's politics through bribery and manipulation. After the infamous 1880 Mussel Slough incident in which farmers died protesting high land sale prices from the railroad, critics branded the Southern Pacific the "Octopus" for its stranglehold on commerce and politics throughout the state. California could not effectively regulate railroad routes until the Progressives came to power in 1910 (Howe).

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The "Octopus" (public domain; Junkyardsparkle via Wikimedia)

As the economy grew and diversified in the twentieth century, the landscape of California interest groups became far more complex. Agriculture, mining, industry, real estate, transportation, entertainment, and many other groups exercised influence in Sacramento politics. Their lobbyists could legally give legislators unlimited gifts and campaign contributions without any required disclosure to the public.

The most infamous lobbyist of the first half of the twentieth century was Artie Samish. Raising money from his interest-group clients, he paid for politicians' campaigns. He kept a secret book of everyone's habits, legal and illegal, to help bargain in the backrooms of Sacramento bars. He was so powerful that in 1949, he boasted in Collier magazine, "I am the governor of the Legislature, to hell with the governor of California." He even pulled out a ventriloquist's dummy in the same interview, which he called "Mr. Legislature." Eventually, Samish ended up in jail for federal tax evasion ("Lobbyist's Ego").

The situation began to improve in the 1960s. Speaker of the State Assembly Jesse Unruh spearheaded constitutional reforms (Proposition 1A passed in 1966) that replaced the part-time state legislature with a full-time one. Legislators were paid better salaries with professional staff to attend to the business of lawmaking. A few years later, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, promoted by then-Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, voters passed Proposition 9, the Political Reform Act of 1974. All contributions and lobbying had to be reported to a new state agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission. Public disclosure reduced corruption and restored faith in the democratic process by creating accountability to the public.