To challenge California's gubernatorial candidates to speak clearly to the people of California about the real issues facing us and to speak plainly about how they propose to lead us in solving them

The Stakes are High in this Make-or-Break campaign for California's survival

We begin by asking each journalist to think back to that precious moment in your life when you decided to choose journalism as your field of study and your future career.

We urge you to renew and allow that inspiration to guide you to do your best to assure the People of California get what they need and deserve in our forthcoming gubernatorial campaign. The new governor will inherit a crisis, and must lead through perilous times. We ask you to take the lead by enlisting yourself in educating Californians regarding the nature of the crisis and how each candidate substantively responds.

Every California voter has a right to have every candidate for governor of California talk straight to them about the issues we face, and the specifics by which they propose to govern, before he or she asks anybody for their vote! The people depend on California journalists to ask the right questions and get real answers.

The People of California have the right to ask that each candidate publicly and immediately, authentically and comprehensively, tell California voters:
- precisely how much each of them knows regarding the state of the State of California today, its impending crises and challenges, and
- precisely how each of them proposes to address and help resolve those major current crises and challenges!

So far, the major candidates seem to be singularly engaged in savaging each other, with not one of them having publicly spoken much, if at all, regarding the most basic tough issues facing the State and People of California, much less about how each of them proposes to address those issues.

Journalists have the proud role and responsibility for publicly and immediately, boldly and effectively,
demanding of each of California's gubernatorial candidates - that he or she speak in real world specifics to the People of California throughout the course of this year's gubernatorial campaign, starting right now.

Only the media have the actual effective power to demand and obtain this from California's gubernatorial candidates. The People of California simply cannot afford to have you fail us here and now!

As Californians who have invested much of our lives in pursuit of good governance for the State and People of California, we feel it is our responsibility to present this challenge to you, and through you, through you, to the candidates. We've done some homework to help you get started.

We have attached a list of 20 basic sample questions that we hope you will present to the candidates and demand they answer with specific proposals regarding each of them. Their campaigns may have a contrary interest in controlling or defining the issues by sound bites and cliché; your job is to insist on real answers.

You will thereby have performed a great public service to the people of California.

You have the power to change and constructively shape this coming campaign for selecting California's next governor, into an actual debate over solutions. Please do not let us Californians down!

William Bagley
Former Assemblyman (R-Marin)

John Vasconcellos
Former Senator (D-Silicon Valley)

For more information, and to find out ways in which you can get involved, please contact Executive Director Jason Spencer at jason@politicsoftrust.net.