Mark Paul

Mark Paul is a leading expert on California policy and politics, with three decades of varied experience as a journalist, policy thinker, and state official. He is the co-author, with Joe Mathews, of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It It (University of California Press).

Paul began his newspaper career as editorial page editor of the Oakland Tribune. He later spent 19 years at the Sacramento Bee, where he was deputy editorial page editor and columnist and won the 2000 Best in the West award for his editorials on the Davis administration.

In 2004 Paul was appointed deputy treasurer of the state of California, where he served as policy director. He left the treasurer’s office in 2005 to become policy director for Angelides 2006, the California gubernatorial campaign of Phil Angelides, and was later senior scholar and deputy director of the California program at the New America Foundation. 

His recent work on California issues has appeared in the Los Angeles Times; San Francisco Chronicle; Sacramento Bee; Zócalo Public Square; Boom: A Journal of California; California Journal of Policy and Politics; The American Interest. He blogs at The California Fix.

Born and raised mostly in the Midwest, Paul graduated with B.A. in history from Stanford University in 1970 and earned a Master’s degree in U.S. history at Stanford in 1971. He has taught 20th century U.S. history at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and at Stanford.

He lives with his wife in Sacramento, California.