The list is considered the barometer of Capitol power, and as such, it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those named to the list are more likely to have their calls answered and see an uptick in business just by virtue of being included.

But this year’s most vocal critic wasn’t concerned about her own perceived influence. She was frustrated by the lack of women overall. Just 29 women were named to the 2013 list of Sacramento’s 100 most powerful.

The #Unlisted Women

So, in an insomnia-inspired Twitter tirade, lobbyist Jennifer Fearing assembled a rival tally of the #unlisted.

“Chief to @KamalaHarris, top aide to @Schwarzenegger & @JerryBrownGov: @eashford is #unlisted,” Fearing tweeted at 1:25 a.m., the morning after the Capitol Weekly Top 100 Party. “Widely considered the hardest working person at Mercury Public Affairs: Becky Warren is #unlisted.”

In addition to Elizabeth Ashford and Becky Warren, Fearing’s counter-list included a few of Capitol Weekly’s most glaring omissions: Dana Williamson, the governor’s cabinet secretary; Ana Matosantos, the state’s finance director; and Anne Ravel, the state’s elections ethics watchdog who was recently promoted to the Federal Elections Commission.

“The Capitol Weekly Top 100 list has chronically underrepresented the contributions of women in Sacramento,” Fearing explained. “But this year’s omission of several key female political and policy leaders struck me as a ‘doubling down’ by the list makers on what is a challenging environment in Sacramento with regard to gender equity.”

Capitol Weekly Top 100 List: 5 Years of Mostly Men

It’s a frequent complaint. Following the inaugural list released in 2009, Sacramento political consultant Robin Swanson chided the newspaper for including just 14 women.

“This list was so disturbingly off-kilter, it gave me a ‘Back to the Future’ vibe that had me looking around the coffee-shop envisioning the women in poodle-skirts rather than pant-suits, waiting for Biff to bust through the door at any moment and take his ‘girl’ to the dance,” Swanson, who recently stepped down as the chief spokeswoman to the Speaker of the Assembly John Perez, wrote in a 2009 opinion piece published at Capitol Weekly.

The opinion piece was titled, “I thought ‘we’d come a long way baby,’ until I read CW’s Top 100 list.” The following year, the insider publication more than doubled the number of women on the list, from 14 to 31.

In the list’s five year history, men have been added at a more than 2 to 1 rate, with 355 of the 500 slots claimed by men, according to a CalWatchdog.com review of the five Capitol Weekly Top 100 lists. Last year, the list featured 67 men and 33 women, down from an all-time high of 38 women in 2011.

Capitol Weekly, however, doesn’t consider its 71 percent male to 29 percent female overall average as a “perennial lack of women.”

“’Perennial lack of women’ is not a particularly accurate way to characterize the list,” said Capitol Weekly’s Tim Foster. “Nearly a third of the Top 100 list are women. To put that in context, the top 100 list has about 5% higher percentage of women than serve in the CA legislature.”

Foster added that “half of our top 10 are women.”

List reflects lack of women in the profession

Others say that the list’s biases demonstrate the problems facing women writ large in Sacramento.

“The lack of women is a problem in the profession, not of the list,” Scott Lay, the influential publisher of AroundtheCapitol.com and #82 on the Capitol Weekly Top 100 list. “Were people left off, including people that I would rank higher than myself if I was doing the list? Sure. I don’t even know some of the people on the list. However, I doubt anyone could do a better job than the editorial team at Capitol Weekly.”

Fearing believes that Capitol Weekly’s omissions, along with the lack of women on political conference panels, undermines women’s professional opportunities in politics. “These omissions affect perception, and ultimately, women’s opportunities,” she said.

Women political professionals face a host of obstacles to career advancement. A recent CalWatchdog.com analysis of legislative payroll data found that female employees are paid less than their male counterparts, are less likely to serve in leadership roles and remain stuck in secretarial positions. The 10 highest-paid employees of the state Assembly are all men, while women fill only a third of chief of staff positions.

But for most of the years when the list has come out, the main narrative in Sacramento hasn’t been the impediment to good governance presented by powerful unions. It has been the difficulty of raising taxes, even though the state’s taxes in many cases are among the highest in the nation. The L.A. Times even once had as the lead story in its entire newspaper an analysis piece by Evan Halper making this point — without even alluding to the headaches caused by union power.

So on the one hand, John Howard and the Capitol press corps know where the real power lies. But on the other hand, for years they’ve accepted the union theory that the biggest problem facing the Golden State is the two-thirds threshold to the Legislature’s raising taxes — not the trillion different ways that having teachers and other public employees control Sacramento is bad for budgets, bad for government performance and bad for prospects for reform.

Back to this year’s list, released this week. It’s also extraordinarily telling in how John Howard presents what is apparently the conventional wisdom about George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times.

“We’ve thought that the best newspaper columnists are solid wordsmiths and aren’t predictable, repetitive or doctrinaire, and the L.A. Times’ George Skelton passes the test.”

What? What?? WHAT???

Skelton just hasn’t encountered anyone who’s against higher taxes

As an example of Skelton’s unpredictability, Howard does come up with a good one — Skelton noting the dishonesty and spin of the governor’s and the attorney general’s refusal to defend Proposition 8.

But that’s not the normal Skelton. The normal Skelton frequently verges on self-parody with the quasi-religious way he reflexively offers up Democratic conventional wisdom on the big issues of the day. Can you ever remember him writing that hey, it’s crazy how hostile California is to business? Or, hey, why do the teachers unions get to tell Tom Torlakson how to be superintendent of public education? Or, hey, why does Torlakson listen?

Or course not.

The example of Skelton servility/conformity that will never be topped came on Dec. 16, 2011. I wrote about it at the time for calwhine.com.

“In fall 1972, legendary New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael expressed amazement after reading that Richard Nixon was a heavy favorite for re-election. Why? Because she didn’t know anyone in her Manhattan circles who was voting for the president. In his Monday column, the L.A. Times’ George Skelton exposed his Kael-style bubble for all the world to see, and in so doing confirmed what I’ve been writing for years: Sacramento’s Democrats and the Sacramento media establishment generally believe the exact same things. So much for any hope we’ll get honest, neutral coverage of state government.

“Skelton confirmed this sad state of affairs in a column that ripped Jerry Brown for saying in 2010 while running for gov that he wouldn’t back ‘new taxes unless the people vote for them.’

“This was an unfortunate promise Brown made when running for governor in a too-clever-by-half effort to undercut opponent Meg Whitman’s false characterization of him as a liberal tax and spender. …

“It’s hard to find anyone around the Capitol outside the governor’s office who doesn’t think the promise was wrongheaded.”

“LOL! A little more than one-third of all state legislators and their aides firmly support the idea that Californians be given a de facto veto over higher taxes. These people are called ‘Republicans.’ In Skelton’s world, they either don’t exist, or they agree with him on the need for higher taxes but just won’t say so.

“But what’s even more groan-worthy about this is that it ignores the sentiment of millions of California voters, not just Republican officials. In May 2009, exit polls showed Democrats, Republicans and independents alike rejected higher taxes proposed in a special election. Why? Because they know that California has among the nation’s highest income, sales and gas taxes, and the highest business taxes in the West, and they think the state government should be able to function on the revenue from these sky-high taxes.”

The allegedly great columnist who touts the lazy union narrative

If George Skelton is a very good columnist, as Howard asserts, how could he write such tunnel-vision drivel?

Because Skelton is the voice of a Sacramento media-political establishment that has long parroted the lazy, union-promoted narrative that Proposition 13/anti-tax sentiment is the devil in California — not public employee unions, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Skelton may retire any day now. He’s been at it a long time. But the Sacramento establishment needn’t worry. As I wrote earlier this week, the Sac Bee’s Dan Morain is spoiling to take Skelton’s place as establishment stenographer. The Skelton tradition will carry on, for worse and worse.