Mark Paul

Mark Paul is an award-winning writer, editor, and policy expert with wide experience in journalism and California state government and politics. He is the co-author, with Joe Mathews, of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We CanFix It It (University of California Press).

Paul covered California for twenty-four years, first as editorial page editor and national editor of the Oakland Tribune, then as deputy editorial page editor and columnist for theSacramento Bee, where he wrote extensively about public finance, health care, economics, urban development, local government, politics, and political reform. He won the 2000 Best in the West award for his editorials about California policy and the administration of Gov. Gray Davis.

In 2004 Paul was appointed deputy treasurer of the state of California, where he served as policy director and executive secretary of the Pooled Money Investment Board. He left the treasurer's office in 2005 to become policy director for Angelides 2006, the California gubernatorial campaign of Phil Angelides. He was later a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and senior scholar and deputy director of the California program at the New AmericaFoundation.

Paul is the author of “Diplomacy Delayed: The Atomic Bomb and the Division of Korea,1945,” in Child of Conflict: The Korean-American Relationship, 1945-1953, BruceCumins, ed. He is the co-author, with Micah Weinberg, of “Remapping the CaliforniaElectorate,” in Remaking California: Reclaiming the Public Good, R. Jeffrey Lustig, ed.His writing on California has appeared in the Los Angeles Times; San FranciscoChronicle; Sacramento Bee; Zócalo Public Square; Boom: A Journal of California;California Journal of Policy and Politics; The American Interest, and CalMatters.Born and raised mostly in the Midwest, Paul graduated with a B.A. in history fromStanford University in 1970 and earned a Master's degree in U.S. history at Stanford in1971. He has taught 20th century U.S. history at Simon Fraser University in BritishColumbia and at Stanford. He lives with his wife in Sacramento, California.