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Golden State is a California-focused, Los Angeles-based a nonprofit news, analysis and commentary platform that is building a public forum for informed and fact-based discussion and debate about the issues, ideas, policies and people shaping California and its largest metropolitan area, Los Angeles.
Golden State is published by Informed Opinion Media, a California nonprofit pending 501(c)(3) status.
Who we are
Mariel Garza
Co-founder and executive editor
Mariel Garza has been a reporter and editor for 35 years at California news organizations, including the L.A. Daily News, the Southern California News Group, the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times. Most recently, Garza oversaw the L.A. Times’ editorial board. She garnered praise from journalists around the country when she resigned in October 2024 after the L.A. Times’ owner refused to publish an endorsement of Kamala Harris for president. Mariel is a graduate of San Fransisco State University and lives in Los Angeles, way too close to Dodger Stadium.
Paul Thornton
Co-founder and editor
Paul Thornton worked for nearly 20 years at the Los Angeles Times' Opinion section, where he edited the letters page from late 2010 to early 2025. He also wrote the weekly Opinion newsletter from its inception in 2015 until his departure from the newspaper in February 2025, co-produced the award-winning video series "Hear Me Out" along with L.A. Times Studios, wrote the "Letter From" op-ed column and previously served as a researcher, writer and web editor. A native of Alameda County in the Bay Area, Paul was raised in Glendale by his Norwegian immigrant family and currently lives in the San Gabriel Valley with his wife, children, dogs and a tortoise.
Susan Brenneman
Contributing editor and board member
Susan Brenneman serves on the board of directors for Informed Opinion Media, the nonprofit publisher of Golden State. Susan was the Op-Ed editor at the Los Angeles Times until August 2025. She had been a deputy op-ed editor since 2003. Previously, she was arts editor of The Times and executive editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Brenneman was the editor of the Sunday magazine at the San Francisco Examiner, and began her career at Rolling Stone and Outside magazines. She is a graduate of Colorado College.
Connie Llanos
Strategic advisor and board member
Connie Llanos serves on the board of directors for Informed Opinion Media, the nonprofit publisher of Golden State. She is the founder and CEO of Cielo Strategic Communications, a Latina-led firm that helps leaders and organizations tell their stories with clarity and purpose to create impact and drive change. With nearly two decades of experience across the public and private sectors, Connie has shaped campaigns that advance equity, strengthen trust, and amplify the voices of underrepresented communities. A former journalist and the proud daughter of Colombian immigrants, she brings a bilingual and bicultural lens to every project she works on.
Board of advisors
Sewell Chan
Sewell Chan is a news editor, writer and innovator. He is currently a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and a visiting fellow at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Previously, Chan served in 2024-25 as editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and as an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School.
During Chan’s tenure as editor in chief of The Texas Tribune, from 2021 to 2024, the Tribune won a National Magazine Award and a Collier Prize for State Government Accountability and was a Pulitzer finalist — all for the first time. Before joining the Tribune, Chan was previously a deputy managing editor and then the editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Times, where he oversaw coverage that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2021. Chan worked at the New York Times from 2004 to 2018, as a metro reporter, Washington correspondent, deputy Op-Ed editor and international news editor.
He began his career as a local reporter at the Washington Post in 2000, where he wrote about city government, juvenile justice, mental health and social services and also helped cover 9/11 and the Iraq War.
Jean Guerrero
Jean Guerrero is a visiting professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. She is the author of "Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir," winner of a PEN Literary Award, and the acclaimed investigative biography "Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda." Formerly, she was an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Times.
A national authority on U.S. Latinos, immigration and the forces that shape belonging in America, she has been featured on MSNBC, CNN, Democracy Now!, Univision, NPR and more.
David Lesher
David Lesher is senior editor at CalMatters and director of the Digital Democracy project, which uses technology and artificial intelligence to analyze state government data for journalists. In 2015 he co-founded CalMatters, a nonprofit newsroom covering the major issues in California. He served as CEO and editor until 2018 when he continued as editor-in-chief until he launched Digital Democracy in 2023.
Lesher has more than 30 years of journalism experience, much of it at the Los Angeles Times where he was a political writer, state Capitol reporter and assistant national editor for the White House campaign. He has also served as editor of California Journal magazine and program director at the Public Policy Institute of California and the New America Foundation.
Dan Morain
Dan Morain has been a journalist in California for more than 40 years, including 27 years as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times covering policy and politics, eight at the Sacramento Bee as a columnist and later the editorial page editor, and two as senior editor at CalMatters. He is the author of the first biography of Kamala Harris, "Kamala's Way, An American Life," published by Simon & Schuster in 2021, and he is currently working on a book about the politics and history of the mental health care system to be published by the University of California Press. The book will be part personal story, as his brother spent most of his adult life in California state hospitals.
He lives in Davis with his wife, her chickens and their dog, and hosts regular sleep-overs by grandkids.
Joe Mathews
Joe Mathews is a journalist; the founder-publisher of Democracy Local, a planetary publication on local governance; and a democracy fellow at the Berggruen Institute. He serves as syndicated California columnist at Zócalo Public Square. He is author of four books, including "The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy" (2006), and "The U.S. vs Us: Essays From California As It Fights — and Leaves — America" (2025).
Since 2008, Joe has been co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, organizing 13 free public forums across five continents. He is a member of Democracy International, IOPD, Democracy R&D network, and The Harvard Crimson graduate council. As a democratic practitioner, he is a volunteer Design Advisory Partner to Engaged California, the state’s digital democracy tool, and an advisor to Rewrite LA.
Previously, Mathews was a reporter at the L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal and Baltimore Sun, and he was a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Raised in Beijing and L.A., Mathews lives with his wife and three children and coaches youth baseball in Southern California.