Los Angeles TimesSunday, November 15, 2009
by Cathleen Decker
(Photo © Copyright 2010 Roy Tennant)
Last week's Los Angeles Times/USC poll spilled a flood of pessimism from California voters about their state: They're troubled by its direction, upset at its politicians and sure that nothing will wrest California from the abyss.
That was about it, when it came to agreement. One always presumes a fair amount of communal thought in a state, even one this large. But apart from a shared disdain for the governor and the Legislature, there is hardly anything communal anymore in California politics . . .
Although the state is reliably Democratic at the moment, California's growth is now largely coming from the inland areas and from the Central Valley in particular, making the area noteworthy for the long term. According to a Field Poll report on California voters, 55% hailed from Los Angeles or the Bay Area in 1978. Now, 46% do. Almost three in 10 voters now reside inland, on a path winding north from the Inland Empire through the state's agricultural fields.
The conservative tendencies inland are colliding, however, with the urban problems bedeviling their residents. Air quality and health issues are profound, and shortcomings involving education and the economy have come into sharp relief during the recession.
California's inland counties have unemployment rates far higher than the state overall. In September, both Fresno and Kern counties hovered near 14%; Los Angeles, in contrast, was at 12.7% and San Francisco was below 10%.
As troubling to Central Valley analysts are education statistics. The region's teenagers are more likely than Californians overall to drop out of high school and less likely to head to a UC school or other four-year college.
"This is a recipe for disaster," said David Hosley, president of the Great Valley Center, a nonprofit think tank that studies Central Valley issues. If it's not altered swiftly, he said, "we will be in a downward spiral that will be hard to turn around."
