electoral reach. john, nice to have you back with us. >> great to be with you, thuy. >> in this final sprint toward november 8th, is it mostly about momentum at this point? is there something each candidate can do to make a big difference? >> it's momentum versus machine. donald trump feels he's got the momentum. he's going outlooking for a democratic state that he can flip. the way it is now hillary clinton could probably lose ohio, pennsylvania and florida and still win the presidency. she's out there trying to bolster the democratic fortresses they feel they've built in states like pennsylvania and michigan to keep donald trump from hitting 270 electoral votes. no matter who wins, you're going to have a substantial portion of voter who ings who aren't going accept the outcome, that the opponent won, that their candidate lost. you have donald trump talking about how the system is rigged, anticipation that he's telling people to go to the polls to look for cheaters, people trying to vote more than once. this is going -- none of this is going to go away. none of this anger, none of this frustration, none of this animosity between the two sides is going to go away on november 9th. this is a big challenge for whoever wins. i really don't know how this is going to happen, how this is going to work. this is a big challenge. >> speaking of the animosity, john, in fact, some trump supporters are already vowing unrest if hillary clinton wins. some senior republican lawmakers are already talking about impeaching clinton if she wins. where will all that lead? >> republicans already talking in the house where they're unlikely to change control. talking about they already have two years' worth of investigations into clinton's tenure at the state department. they promise hearings right off the bat in january. there's animosity. you've got republicans talking about -- including john mccain, talking about not taking up any supreme court nomination that hillary clinton makes in the next four years if she's elected. this is unprecedented sort of talk before a president comes in. it really does not bode well for whoever wins over the next four years. >> what are some of the key things we should be looking for in the next few days until election day? >> you're going to be looking at the candidates making their final push, making their final closing statements and where they do it. donald trump looking for a democratic state to turn republican. at the same time you're looking at hillary clinton sort of shoring up the democratic states. their big goal this weekend is to turn out the african-american vote for her on tuesday. >> all right. going to be a busy weekend for them and for you, john. you're out on the campaign trail as well. let's check back in on cartoonist mark fiori now, see how he's doing on that drawing. looks like he's working on something involving the california bear, not quite sure what is going to be the main gist of it. all right. we'll come back to mark later in the program and talk about the illustration he's working on for us and see the big reveal. turning now to state and local races, this tuesday will be the culmination of a long and expensive election season with nearly $500 million raised for and against 17 different statewide ballot measures. joining me to talk about the big donations and efforts to mobilize key voting groups are james taylor, director of the african-american studies program at university of san francisco. uc berkeley political science professor lisa garcia vedoya and scott shafer. let's begin by talking about money. 17 propositions. that's a heavy ballot. which measures are seeing the biggest spending? >> it's the one where big industries' profits are being threatened. drug companies are threatened by prop 61. big pharma has tribute econtribt 110 million dollar to detaet that. number two would be prop 56 the $2 a pack takts on cx on cigare. that has raised about 71 million dollar from the tobacco industry. both are vastly out spending the other side, the ones trying to get those measures passed. there are the death penalty. >> marijuana. >> surprisingly what hasn't attracted a lot of money is gun control. prop 63. a lot of what's in prop 63 is already in the the law. jerry brown signed a lot of it this year. also they looked at the polling. it was pretty clear it was going to pass. >> the soda tax measure is also seeing some money being thrown to the local measures. so lisa, how much of an impact does spending have? because for example, could it backfire? two years ago berkeley passed its soda tax measure even though the beverage industry threw a lot of money at it. >> both the measures, the big pharma one and the tobacco one are winning. people see that spending and they think this must be a good thing because there's distrust of the industry. it makes people think maybe they should pass it. >> james, speaking of big spending, there are several ballot measures that take on the issues of money and spending. we have raising taxes on tobacco which scott just mentioned, soda tax, prescription drugs. taking issue with how things are priced. what does that say about the political climate in california right now? >> it says we have a progressive electorate. that's one of the things we've been able to talk for sure in terms of the liberalization around the death penalty. right now opposition to the death penalty and commuting sentences to life without the possibility of patrol role is wg by 3 percentage points. >> we're also seeing more silicon valley involvement in politics. peter teal has donated more than a million dollars in support of donald trump, not directly to him, but to groups supporting him. facebook cofounder has pledged $20 million to groups that support hillary clinton. could this election be a turning point for silicon valley involvement in politics? >> peter teal is basically a libertarian, an openly gay libertarian. i think what you're seeing in this campaign is more mobilization because of donald trump in part. you know, i think he is so anathema. trump's position on immigration and trade and diversity in general i think is really something that silicon valley shudders when they think about that. i would also say even in the primaries larry ellison gave $5 million to marco rubio. that was not a great investment. they've been also very engaged in some of the issues on the ballot, the propositions. >> you could see it as a maturation of silicon valley. they have policy needs they want to see addressed. they're seeing the political system where they need to make these investments now. they're getting more fixed and they noknow what they want. >> silicon valley has been pretty bipartisan in a lot of ways. rand paul when he was running went down there. paul ryan goes down there and raises money. it's possible that the republicans would still be in control of congress. >> silicon valley again seems to reflect the progressivism of the state. over 90% of these contributions are coming for the democratic and liberal causes and liberal angle of the state's politics. and so it seems to me that silicon valley is certainly, as lisa said, realizing that politics sb importais important of getting in the game. >> let's go ahead and talk about the congressional race between mike honda and his challenger. about $6 million spent by both campaigns combined. a lot of money there. why is that race seeing so much attention? >> it's the second time around. they've fought before. and this is the second time. and they're going to -- you know, it was close last time and it's close this time. >> i think ro canna has been seen as a rising star in politics. he's close to the tech industry. mike honda they feel is not the best representative for them from silicon valley. they have raced and spent 6 million bucks. there's a race down the coast that has attracted $6 million in outside spending, which is much more. in part because it's two democrats. in a lot of ways groups that care about democratic issues don't really care who wins because it's going to be a democrat. down the coast -- >> it is an interesting political landscape. especially with the top two system here. talk about how that's changing. on the one hand with the demographic changes we're getting more diverse races. we have mike honda, an asian-american versus another asian-american. we have two democratic women running for the senate. >> women of color. >> yes. in san francisco running for the state senate we have a gay man versus an asian woman. weiner versus kim. are voters having a hard time distinguishing between those candidates, though? is it a matter of trying to decide which one is more liberal? >> i was going to say it makes things much harder for people. most people use party queucues signal a set of party interests. if you don't have that cue, you have to do a lot of research. it raises the par for votbar fo. the second part at least in the polling on the senate race, about 20-30% of republicans say they're not going to vote in that race because they have no one to vote for. that's troubling. >> the other thing that happens is when you have two candidates in the same party that don't really differ that much, it becomes really bitter. >> i hosted a debate last week on campus. the thing that came out of that was it just got really personal. one of our local journalists said when people are so closely aligned ideologically, they have to go personal. >> we're seeing more of these democrat on democrat races. you're seeing a bit of a fracture within the party. you've got the moderate probusiness democrats and the more liberal coastal democrats. there's some concern in the democratic party that increasingly you're going to see that democrat on democrat fighting with each other. >> i think that played out nationally with hillary and bernie. we're going to see that more and more especially in places like california where you have this top two system. in georgia a colleague of mine in atlanta said the same thing is happening in georgia where have rs going up against rs. >> let's get back to some of the key measures. a lot of them are getting attention, things involving criminal justice reform, the death penalty, marijuana. do these indicate a public shift? >> absolutely. most of them -- marijuana is winning pretty handily at this point. significantly different from the last time it was on the ballot. >> six years ago people rejected a similar measure. >> absolutely. people under 40 are much more likely to support it. people who use marijuana also more likely to support it. it does speak to a different -- people often talk about demographic shifts and we don't often talk about the policies. it is a fundamentally different way of seeing what the role of the state is and how we should be punishing people and the kinds of policies we should have in the long-term. >> i would just add to what you said that there are also regional differences. inland empire and central valley were very much opposed to legalizing pot. now it's split right down the middle. >> are these issues, criminal justice reform for example, marijuana, death penalty -- are these issues mobilizing black and latino voters? >> i can't speak to latino voters. but in terms of plaque voblack don't think so. i don't think these particular issues are driving them at all. so i think one of the things we should be careful of is what happened in 2012 throughout the country was people underestimated the black turnout and black performance. and it actually out performed its expectation twice in a row. some of it had to do with these voter id laws around the country. and here we go before that generation passes, the baby boomer generation, they might lose the vote again. and i think people came out unexpectedly in support of the ways in which black voters perform. i would suggest that there may be a situation in which blacks will out perform their expectations where they're not being detected. latinos and blacks are notoriously under sampled in a lot of the polling. >> it's prop 55 that's going to mobilize latinos. the prop 55 campaign and their coalition partner, they're going to call pretty much every voter in the state of california this year. >> what about the equal education measure? >> absolutely. those are the things that look at. they're the things that really matter. education is almost always one of the top issues latinos care about. these are the kinds of things that really hit home for people. >> over shadowing all of that is probably trump for latinos. not to say what you're describing isn't important. if you look at the registration numbers in california they really went way up among latinos after the republican convention, the democratic convention and some of the debates as well. we'll see if those first time voters vote, but they did register. >> i'd be interested in looking at the patterns. you might have one story, latinos or women responding to trump. and locally it may be a very different pattern where you have the physically disabled. i don't know in terms of measuring how you know people sample or whether the physically disabled are actually studied as a national study of any sort. but when donald trump spoke out and offended this group, it crosses every racial category that exists. i think there will be one big story, a national story as to what the media tells us is the outcome and then there will be all of these subtexts throughout the country, 50 different subtexts. asians may have influence in some places, disabled in some places, but the media will tell us initially this is what happened. then they will base that on exit polling. then a month or two later the political scientists will come in with the census data. >> what about the statewide story? are we moving more to the left. over the beginning of the '90s and roughly two decades thereafter we saw a number of conservative measures pass. we had the three strikes law. we had prop 187 which essentially denied public benefits do illegal grants. we had prop 227 the bilingual education ban. 209. >> that might be the stuff that can help donald trump because of the way in which people -- there might be a backlash. here in california in the '90s we saw l.a. blow up in 91, 92, rodney king. white voters responded in this -- >> in the '90s there was crime waves and serial killings. we're moving to the left but other states are ahead of us on marriage, on legalizing pot, gun control. >> i would go further back to the '70s. we had tax revolts, all of these conservative policies and the change in our electorate has changed the policy environment in california. that's important to note. >> okay. a lively discussion. much to talk about. tried to get through as much as we could. thank you to all three. scott shaffer, james taylor and lisa garcia vedoya. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> earlier in the show we saw mark fiori working on his latest cartoon. the pulitzer prize winner is -- let's take a look at the finished drawing. mark is already in our studio. hi, mark. finishing up his sketch. let's do the big reveal. >> here it is. the one i'm working on is a prop 64 cartoon, because it's sounding like it's going to pass. >> that's the marijuana measure. that's pretty calm, relaxed, happy looking bear there. >> a very happy bear, a hungry bear. >> you know, you have so much great work. i often wonder about your artistic process. how long does it take you to go from concept to a finished sketch? >> it depend on the issue and the cartoon itself. generally i want to leave between three hours to five hours start to finish from the sketch book, coming up with the thought and the idea behind the cartoon to actually finishing it. >> so you did this pretty fast for us. thank you for speeding up the process. >> bears. i'm fast with that. >> i interviewed the sacramento b's cartoonist earlier this year when he won the pulitzer prize. he said he often gets ideas from walking around the newsroom. where do you get your ideas from? >> it's good to hear about jack too. congratulations again to jack oman. he's a good friend of mine. the usual way that i'm coming up with my cartoons and the ideas is anywhere from reading what's out there online or listening to the news or really a lot of it is just being out there, talking to friends, talking to people that are just in your neighborhood. walking around the city, people are going to give you stories. >> boy, has that election season given you a lot of material 3717 propositions on this year's ballot. you've done illustrations referencing some of them, including prop 60 which would require performers in adult films to wear condoms. was it challenging to find a way to -- >> it was either doing the route that i went with that cartoon or doing lots of pixelation and black bars. there's other issues besides condoms and porn where you don't want to actually show what's going on. sometimes you can have a stronger idea for that cartoon if you leave it up to the reader. >> you also found a clever way to talk about how times are changing in california, especially in our attitudes art marijuan about marijuana. you also had another cartoon about prop 64. tell me about the one we're looking at here then and now. reflecting a change in the times. >> it feels like we're really there right now. we're hearing about all the great wonders of tax revenue coming from legalizing pot. you know, first it was medical marijuana. now it's recreational marijuana, if it passes. you're going from this being a terrible, terrible thing to oh, wow, we could really close some budget loopholes here and close some gaps and actually make a lot of money with this too. instead of people being those stoners down the street, they're actually contributing to california society. >> speaking of changing attitudes, plastic bags. we've used those for decades. now we've got competing measures for plastic bags on the ballot as well. do you think this election more than others is causing confusion for voters? we also have competing measures on the death penalty. >> i think that plastic bag one is one of the best examples. if you look at the propositions, they were both sponsored by the plastic bag industry. they both sound like they're very do-gooder propositions, but one is basically to do away with plastic bags kbientirely. the other one is to essentially have the money go to good environmental stuff. if you dig a little deeper, why are these guys putting that on the ballot? >> what do you see the role of political cartooning in democracies? >> i think overall the role of political cartooning in democracies is to really make people stop and think and to question. i mean, i -- often times draw to the bay cartoons that i'm doing are not necessarily political. when they are political or political cartoons in general are really designed to hold people's feet to the fire whether it's the leaders or corrupt politicians or corporations or even to put a question out there and get people paying attention to a certain issue that they aren't. >> you're a bay area resident. some of your cartoons poke fun at the culture here in the bay area and some of the problems we have, especially traffic which is getting worse and worse. >> yes. and it's all tied in too to so much other that's actually happening in the bay area right now, whether it's the tech boom. a lot of that is because of the tech boom. that's one of the things i love about doing drawn to the bay cartoons is that it's this area that i've fallen in love with probably when i moved here when i was 12. it's so amazing here. it's such a place where there's so much diversity. sadly some of that diversity is in a really, really wide income spread. that's one thing talking about walking around and getting cartoon ideas. >> what are the responses you get when you're poking fun at life in the bay area? >> it's varied. generally it's people sharing their stories. like the traffic cartoon you were talking about. it's the responses and the comments on facebook or wherever the cartoon appears, people say, no, my commute is much worse. that's what i'm trying to do, is bring people to these cartoons so they can actually talk about them and share their stories. >> your drawings always make me chuckle. are you a funny guy when you're not working? >> it depends on when you find me. when i'm doing a hard hitting skewering a politic cartoon like i've done for a lot of years, the cartoons might not be funny and so nice. it was actually one of the fun yir thi funnier things my wife told me when she met me, your cartoons are so much more mean than you are. you don't want go out daggers drawn. you want to have a conversation. >> mark fiori, pulitzer prize winning cartoonist and a nice guy. >> thanks for having me. >> check out our online voter guide illustrated by mark fiori. we'll have live results for all of the bay areas nine counties. i'm thruy vu. thanks so much for watching. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ there's nothing unusual about alcohol being on many college campuses across the country. that one drink could lead to "oh come on, let's have another shot." we'll show you how harmful partying hard can be. and what we need to do to fix the issue students are facing today. on this edition of equal time. [music] hello and welcome to the campus of san jose state university and this edition of equal time. i'm your host, journalism school director bob rucker. tailgating, binge drinking, the culture of alcohol on many college campuses.