Abstract
Established in 1957, the Assembly Fellowship Program is a highly selective, eleven-month public policy Fellowship administered by the Center for California Studies at the California State University, Sacramento. Democrats and Republicans alike are admitted to the program and placed in offices of their respective parties to gain first-hand exposure to the legislative process. Given the increasing dominance of the Democratic Party in California, this raises the question of whether the experience may be notably different for Fellows affiliated with each of the parties, and what the implications are for this important professional training program. To address the above question, I conducted background research on party dynamics – that is, the advantages that come with being part of the majority party, and some of the disadvantages that come with being part of the minority party. In addition, after conducting an in-depth literature review on public policy Fellowships in the United States, I found little research or aggregated data on public policy Fellowships studying the impact of being party of the majority or minority party. In order to answer the question, “How does party affiliation impact the Assembly Fellowship Experience and post-Fellowship career trajectory?” I conducted survey and phone interviews. I used a fifteen-question survey with the option for a phone interview. The survey was distributed to all former Fellows in the database of the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University. I received 146 responses total: 97 Democrats and 49 Republicans. I then analyzed the data in quantitative and qualitative terms. I found that despite the prevalence of party politics in the State Assembly, the vast majority of Fellows from both parties have a positive experience. The experiential commonalities between Fellows of both parties far outweighed any experiential differences: Fellows of both parties have a positive experience in the Fellowship. This speaks well to the ability of the Assembly Fellowship program to recruit, train and provide fruitful experiences to people with varying political views.