Legislative Personnel in California

Abstract

WFWTTILE it may be impossible to describe a hypothetical, composite California legislator, the chief characteristics of those who have done legislative service can be isolated and recorded. This study covers the six California legislatures in the twelve years between 1926 and 1938. Fairly complete data have been secured on the party affiliation, education, occupation, previous public experience, age, state of birth, and years in state of the Senators and members of the Assembly serving in the sessions of 1927, 1929, 1931, 1933, 1935, and 1937.1 California's bicameral legislature has an Assembly of eighty members, elected for two-year terms from single-member districts of approximately equal population as determined by the census of 1930. This gives the three metropolitan counties-Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Alameda-forty-six of the eighty seats in the lower house, for they had in 1930 three and one-third millions of the state's total population of more than five and two-thirds millions. The Senate has forty members elected for four-year terms, and apportioned according to a formula bearing