Political Breakdown
Join hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos as they unpack the day in politics with a California perspective. Featuring interviews with reporters and other insiders involved in the craft of politics—including elected officials, candidates, pollsters, campaign managers, fundraisers, and other political players—Political Breakdown pulls back the curtain to offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics works today.
Episodes
May 18, 2024 • 23 mins
The California Republican Party is holding a statewide convention this weekend in Burlingame. Scott, Marisa and Guy are at the convention talking with delegates, elected leaders and party officials about the fall election and their strategy for holding onto congressional seats in purple districts.
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May 17, 2024 • 31 mins
San Francisco voters will choose their next mayor this November, and we are going to bring you interviews with all of the top candidates. Today, Marisa and Scott are kicking things off with District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí. Safaí, an Iranian immigrant with a master's in city planning, was elected to represent portions of the Excelsior, Outer Mission and OMI neighborhoods in 2016.
We want to hear your questions! If you have a bur...
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May 16, 2024 • 28 mins
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has long been regarded as one of the most powerful advocacy groups in Washington. Their goal: support candidates who are strongly pro-Israel and oppose those they feel are are too critical. The October 7th attack by Hamas and Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza have intensified AIPAC’s political activities and its involvement in the 2024 election. Scott and Marisa discuss the role AI...
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May 15, 2024 • 28 mins
It’s day two of Michael Cohen’s testimony about Donald Trump’s hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. As the prosecution begins to dig into Cohen’s story and motivations, Scott and Marisa talk with Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson about the trial so far, the legal strategies on both sides and how the jury might be interpreting it all.
Check out Levinson's weekly podcast, Passing Judgment, wherever you get your podcasts....
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May 14, 2024 • 27 mins
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised state budget tackles a total deficit of $45 billion, including cuts made earlier this year. The governor is proposing to spread the pain widely, with cuts to programs ranging from healthcare and scholarships for the middle class to climate change initiatives he supports. Scott, Marisa and Guy hash out the winners and losers in the May Revise budget.
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May 11, 2024 • 23 mins
Scott and Marisa remember a Republican maverick: former Bay Area Congressman Pete McCloskey. He fought for the environment, helped write the Endangered Species Act, opposed the Vietnam War and was the first House Republican to call for Nixon’s impeachment. McCloskey died this week at age 96.
Then, KQED politics reporter Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez joins to talk with Scott and Marisa about the race for mayor of San Francisco. Mayor Lon...
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May 10, 2024 • 31 mins
Cathy Darling Allen was Shasta County’s elected county clerk and registrar of voters for two decades, and for the first part of that, like most registrars, she toiled in relative obscurity. Then came 2016, Donald Trump and a growing narrative on the right that the voting system couldn't be trusted.
Darling Allen retired on Sunday, after announcing several months ago that she's facing some serious health problems. Marisa and Scott ...
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May 9, 2024 • 30 mins
Campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, and universities' response to them, have attracted international attention. Months after it began, the movement shows no signs of slowing down, even as the school year comes to an end.
Scott is joined by two student journalists who have been on the front lines covering the protests at UC Berkeley, where the Free Speech Movement began in the 1960s, and UCLA, where the actions of police offi...
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May 8, 2024 • 28 mins
Tomorrow the California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over whether to remove a controversial constitutional amendment from the November ballot. The measure – sponsored by the California Business Roundtable – has triggered a huge battle between business on the one hand and Democrats with their allies in organized labor on the other.
Scott and Marisa are joined by Bloomberg News correspondent Laura Mahoney to talk about what...
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May 7, 2024 • 28 mins
Joe Biden narrowly won both Arizona and Nevada in 2020. Now, both states have emerged as key battleground states in 2024, as abortion, border security, election conspiracy theories and the economy are all playing out there. Scott is joined by New York Times reporter Kellen Browning to discuss what impact the two states will have on who controls the White House and Senate.
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May 4, 2024 • 6 mins
Political Breakdown started as a way to give our listeners a peek behind the curtain of politics. Over the past six years, we’ve brought you conversations with presidential candidates, governors, mayors, political consultants, pollsters and regular people involved in politics. This work is important because the policy debates that will shape our country are happening in California first. That's why this election year, we're bringin...
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May 4, 2024 • 22 mins
Scott, Marisa and Guy tackle the political intrigue behind the race for Anna Eshoo’s congressional seat, where a recount knocks out one contender. Plus, they dig into the ongoing turmoil and controversy involving campus protests over Israel's war in Gaza, how campuses are responding and the political implications for November.
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May 3, 2024 • 31 mins
As America’s presidential election approaches, we are facing an unprecedented rise in mis and disinformation fueled by populist political movements, foreign actors and online platforms. Marisa and Scott are joined by NPR disinformation correspondent Shannon Bond and University at Buffalo professor Yotam Ophir to talk about why this has become such a problem, the impact it's having and practical advice for spotting and combatting di...
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May 2, 2024 • 29 mins
When the San Francisco Chronicle recently compiled a list of the 20 most influential people working mostly behind the scenes in San Francisco, Kanishka Cheng was first on the list. She co-founded and heads the group TogetherSF Action and its sister organization TogetherSF. Like similar groups recently created in the city, TogetherSF wants to push city policy from the left toward the middle. Cheng joins Scott to talk about their pri...
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May 1, 2024 • 26 mins
California Target Book is a goldmine of information for campaigns, journalists, and political insiders. For three decades, Target Book has provided non-partisan research on voter registration, campaign contributions, candidate profiles and more. Scott and Marisa talk with publisher Marva Diaz, the first woman and first Latino to have that position.
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April 30, 2024 • 26 mins
Governor Gavin Newsom will be heading to Rome next month as one of several state and local officials invited from around the world to speak at the Pope’s Vatican Climate Summit. The governor will focus on how the changing climate is affecting California’s ability to cope with droughts, wildfires and floods. Scott is joined by Marisa and Guy to talk about the politics and policy of Newsom’s trip.
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April 27, 2024 • 24 mins
A bill to ban non-disclosure agreements while outside groups negotiate legislation failed in committee, creating some interesting alliances in the process. Meanwhile, a bill to allow licensed doctors from Arizona to perform abortions in California moves forward. Scott, Marisa and Guy discuss it all in this week's roundtable.
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April 26, 2024 • 31 mins
As protests over the war in Gaza roil college campuses from New York to California, Marisa and Scott sit down with UC Regent John Pérez, who has served on the board overseeing the University of California system since 2014 and was recently appointed to another 12 year term. Pérez was also Speaker of the State Assembly from 2010 to 2014.
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April 25, 2024 • 29 mins
As part of KQED's Youth Takeover Week, we’ll hear from young voters and what they care about most. From the war in Gaza to climate change, student debt and how they might vote in November. In addition to hearing from young Bay Area voters, Scott talks with Erin Heys, policy director and senior researcher for the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans and Saa’un Bell with Power California, which focuses on young people of color and ...
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April 24, 2024 • 29 mins
Writer Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic is known as a shrewd observer of presidents, Congressional leaders, insurgents and insiders, capturing it all in books like “This Town," which describes what he calls “the carnival that D.C. has become.” He just wrote a profile of Gov. Gavin Newsom, and he joins Scott to talk about this strange and unsettled moment in U.S. politics.
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