African-American voters are dissatisfied with the performance of California’s government and give the state a failing grade, according to a Field Poll released earlier this month.

Only about 29 percent of African-American voters felt that California’s government responded to their needs, while 18 percent agreed that fundamental changes to the state’s constitution needed to be made. Seventy-nine percent believed that major issues could be tackled if there was true bipartisanship.

“I think the performance of the Legislature has been terrible. They haven’t made the decisions that they’re elected to make,” said Los Angeles poll respondent Joseph Harris. “There are lots of tough decisions, there are lots of tough choices that have to be made and to me the Legislature frequently pushes those decisions off, tries to see if the people will resolve them through initiatives or other steps, but they seem to be reluctant to make those sorts of decisions themselves.”

When asked how the state’s $20 billion budget deficit could be fixed, 44 percent said it should be done mostly through spending cuts, while 12 percent agreed to mostly tax increases. Thirty-six percent preferred an equal mix of both.

“We could cut across the board,” said poll respondent Michael Durkin, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, “not just cut deep into certain things.”
Freeman Hambrick, of Fontana, does not “think the money is going in the right direction and there are a lot of important things that aren’t being taken care of or invested in. I don’t like where my dollars are going, it feels like I have no say so. They are paying all these special interests and their needs out of my money.”

Harris’ opinion was split: He believes taxes should be increased, services and programs should be cut or reduced and the rate of growth in some particular programs should be slowed until more funds are available. “Everybody,” he said, “is going to have to give up something.”

According to the poll, 63 percent of Blacks support the elimination of the two-thirds majority vote required to pass state budgets, preferring instead a simple majority vote. Ending the two-thirds requirement has been one of Assembly Speaker Emeritus Karen Bass’ top priorities while in office, and she has held several town halls, community meetings and press conferences on the matter. By doing so, Bass believes that things could get done much quicker and California’s population and economy can be governed more efficiently. Republicans, Bass charged, hold the budget process “hostage” every year, which halts funding and distracts elected officials away from other pressing issues.

Eliminating the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget would make drastic cuts to education and healthcare less likely, said Thad Kousser, political science professor at Stanford University’s Bill Lane Center for the American West, which sponsored the poll along with the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley and the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University.

Harris disagrees. “I feel like the Democrats are totally in the pocket of special interests and they would raise taxes without reservation and not make practical decisions regarding cutting benefits and programs,” he said. “I have no confidence in them where I would take that tool away from the Republicans. If they showed more responsibility I probably would be for reducing it, but probably not to 50 percent, something more attainable. I actually don’t have any confidence in either party at this juncture.”

As for the state’s performance, most African-Americans blamed elected leaders as the source of California’s problems, over the state constitution.

“You could blame the politicians, you could blame the people, blame is not going to solve the problem,” said Durkin. “But, we get what we vote for. I blame the people for not voting, the people didn’t vote in numbers like they did for the most recent presidential election.

“[Legislators] are just looking forward to the next election and they will say and do whatever they can to get elected again,” he added. “They are not out in the real world, they are in groups that think the same way they think. … They are not out talking to the constituents, they are not talking to the public to see what their needs are.”

According to Kousser, these findings show that African-American voters do not think that California government works for them and “like all voters, they are very angry at Sacramento, but they remain unconvinced that shaking up state government will actually make things better.”

The poll was designed to gauge the opinions of people who have been historically underrepresented in California surveys and was offered to voters in English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean.

Of the 1,232 randomly-selected respondents, 101 were African-American. This is a small margin, and while “it might be a stretch for me to say a large majority … I certainly found the poll to not be surprising at all,” said Bass. “I don’t think African-Americans are any different than anybody else. Everybody is dissatisfied with government right now. I’m in it and I’m dissatisfied so I don’t think that is surprising but I do think … the bottom line is that when the economy is not doing well and when people are out of work, people point to the government and rightfully so. Government is supposed to fix problems. You will find people’s satisfaction higher with state government when times are better.”