As anti-establishment fervor sweeps the nation this election season – forcing the son of a former president to abandon his campaign for the White House – a contrary trend has taken hold in the California Capitol: political dynasties are going strong.
Gov. Jerry Brown, the son of a former governor, has occupied the governor’s office longer than any governor in state history. And more children of legislators now serve in the Legislature than at any point in the last hundred years.
Eight current California lawmakers have a parent who served in the state Legislature. A ninth is the son-in-law of a former lawmaker. More family members could be elected this year, with the son of a state senator and the wife of an Assemblyman running for seats in the 120-person Legislature.
“Politics is very much a family business,” said Jason Synder, an assistant professor at the University of Utah who published a study on political dynasties in 2009.
His research of Congress found that family connections are more prevalent in elected office than in almost every other profession, including doctors, lawyers, plumbers and electricians.
Name recognition, advice from a seasoned politician (usually called Dad) and a family ethos for public service have long helped the children of lawmakers get elected. Since the beginning of California statehood, some families have sent multiple generations to the statehouse.
And the trend here is increasing, said Alex Vassar, a legislative historian who writes the One Voter Project blog. He identified just 16 sets of parents and children who served in the California Legislature between the 1850s and early 2000s, noting that biographical details of many legislators who served prior to 1920 are hard to track. Since then, Vassar said, there hasn’t been a period with as many second-generation lawmakers as there is today.
Why?
Term limits could be a factor, with lawmakers elected between 1990 and 2012 limited to six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate, triggering high turnover. The rising costs of running a campaign could also contribute, because the children of power players gain access to big donors, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. And declining civic engagement may play a role too
