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About the Archive
of Campaign Promises
This year, for the first time, CVF's California Online Voter Guide includes an
Archive of Campaign Promises, designed to give voters additional tools with which
to hold their elected officials accountable after the election.
The archive features campaign "promises" -- also called campaign statements,
agendas, issue positions, and platforms -- from 31 major party candidates for congressional
and state legislative office in California's 2000 general election.
The promises in this archive address the seven quality of life issues identified
as important to Californians by The James Irvine Foundation and the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation's California 2000 Project, namely: affordable housing; clean air
& water; jobs and the economy; neighborhoods; parks and open space; schools and
education; traffic and transportation. Candidates may have made statements addressing
other issues that are not included in this archive.
For more information about the archive, read CVF's June
25th press release.
Which candidates are included in the Archive
CVF limited the scope of our first Archive of Campaign Promises to include only
major party candidates in California's most competitive congressional and state legislative
races, in part because we found that candidates in competitive districts were much
more likely to have developed web sites for their campaigns than candidates in non-competitive
districts.
Several factors contributed to a district being labeled competitive, such as the
district's party registration and balance, whether it was included in the California
Journal magazine's list of "hot" races, and how much money was being raised
and spent by candidates in that race.
After building a list of competitive districts, we determined which candidates in
those districts had official campaign web sites. Not all candidates had sites, so
although we inititially targeted more districts, this archive covers candidates in
a total of 31 districts, including 15 congressional, 7 state senate and 9 state assembly
districts. Only the promises of the winning candidates are included.
How we collected the promises
CVF staff and interns gathered campaign promises from each candidate's web site,
re-formatted the statements and posted them on our web site. The text of the statements
has not been edited and appears just as it appeared on the campaign web sites as
of November, 2000.
If you are interested in knowing which candidates kept their complete campaign web
sites online after the election, see our listing of campaign
web site addresses with links to sites that were still being maintained as of
the launch of this directory.
View the Archive
There are two ways to view CVF's Archive of Campaign Promises. For a list of candidates
grouped by contest and district, use the following links:
For a list of candidates by last name, go to the alphabetical
directory.
CVF received funding for our Archive of Campaign Promises from The James Irvine Foundation.
If you have any questions or suggestions for this web site, or would like additional
information about CVF's Archive of Campaign Promises project, please contact us via
email at info@calvoter.org.
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This page first published June 20, 2001 -- last updated July 9, 2001