| | | | |  | | By Emily Schultheis and Will McCarthy | Presented by Coalition to Protect Access to Healthcare | | 
Proposition numbers play a big role in how campaigns brand their ballot initiatives for voters. | David McNew/Getty Images | A PROP BY ANY OTHER NAME — The top issue in California this year is headed to the bottom of the ballot. The secretary of state last week assigned numbers to the 10 issue questions up for a statewide vote this fall, meaning the “Yes” and “No” camps can start packaging their campaigns for voters (and journalists like us can now save a lot of words describing each of them). The prosecutor-propelled initiative to reimpose tough criminal penalties will be known as Proposition 36. That places it last in a crop of measures that will appear as Propositions 2 to 6 and Propositions 32 to 36. A bill passed earlier this month assigned that first tranche of numbers to the items referred by the Legislature. The numbering on the rest of the measures picks up as usual where things left off after the last election cycle: Prop 31, which upheld a ban on flavored tobacco products, was the final issue on the 2022 ballot. That broken sequence is good news for ballot measure supporters because it means this year they can hopscotch over some dreaded integers — 8 and 13, due to their historical associations. But ballot measure backers also generally hope for lower numbers that get their causes higher up on the ballot and potentially more attention. “Do I think there’s an advantage in being listed first on the ballot? I do,” said Rob Stutzman, a Sacramento-based Republican consultant who has worked on initiatives including opposing online sports betting in 2022, which as Prop 27 sat third on a ballot of seven questions. “Is it determinative? Probably not.” Gov. Gavin Newsom had tried to win the top spot when he drafted his own rival crime measure, and he attempted to short-circuit the secretary of state’s process by preemptively naming it Prop 2 in the legislative text. But when Newsom abruptly pulled the proposal, a measure likely to win far less attention took its place at the top: a $10 billion school construction bond approved by lawmakers last week. The penultimate spot, Prop 35, went to an initiative to make permanent a tax on some health insurance plans. Brandon Castillo, the Sacramento-based consultant working to pass it, said “it’s just a number” — a proposal’s success or failure relies far more on how much money backers spend to familiarize voters with the figure. “It’s really important that you brand your number with a frame, like ‘No on 27, Stop Corporate Online Gambling,’” he said. “That’s what we put a lot of our emphasis on early: How do we brand this? And then as soon as we get a number, how do we make sure that number is attached to a brand?” NEWS BREAK — Newsom sidesteps questions in New Hampshire about a brokered convention: “Biden is our nominee” … Lake fire outside Santa Barbara burns more than 20,000 acres … Federal appeals court lifts order restricting sweeps of San Francisco homeless encampments after Grants Pass ruling. Welcome to Ballot Measure Weekly, a special edition of Playbook PM every Monday focused on California’s lively realm of ballot measure campaigns. Drop us a line at eschultheis@politico.com and wmccarthy@politico.com, or find us on X — @emilyrs and @wrmccart..
| | | | A message from Coalition to Protect Access to Healthcare: Care for fifteen million vulnerable children, seniors, disabled and low-income families on Medi-Cal is significantly underfunded. That's why an unprecedented coalition of nearly 200 groups is united in saying YES on Prop 35 to protect our health care. Prop 35 will provide dedicated resources to improve patient care without raising taxes on individuals - protecting and expanding access to care for all Californians. Get the Facts on Prop 35. | | | |  | TOP OF THE TICKET | | A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures getting our attention this week. 1. PROP 36: The prosecutor- and retailer-backed initiative will have the crime issue to itself on November’s ballot after Newsom scrapped his plans to launch a competing measure. Without a proposal of his own on the ballot, we’ll be watching to see if Newsom goes all-in to defeat this one. 2. PROP 33 & PROP 34: The AIDS Healthcare Foundation-backed rent control measure and a measure targeted at the organization’s political spending find themselves back-to-back on the ballot. Will AHF run a joint Yes-No campaign, or approach these two measures separately? 3. PROP 2: The campaign to back the $10 billion school construction bond can finally get underway after the Legislature comfortably approved it for the ballot last week. After the narrow passage of Prop 1 in March, we’re curious how the strategists running this bond campaign will navigate California voters’ wariness of government spending. 4. PROP 32: Tech investor Joe Sanberg fended off Democratic leaders trying to talk him out of his multi-year quest to pass an $18 minimum wage. Will the initiative get a second look from unions now that it sits on a ballot short on other labor priorities? 5. PROP 4: A coalition of environmental organizations, including the Nature Conservancy, California Environmental Voters and Sierra Club California, are getting behind the $10 billion climate bond. Bond issues don’t typically face strong organized opposition, but after a tax-related measure was booted off the ballot by the state Supreme Court in June, anti-spending groups will have extra resources. 6. CALIFORNIA FOREVER (Solano County): Public Access Lagoons, a seven-acre man-made lake with a beachfront recreation zone, is the latest proposed deal-sweetener from the Silicon Valley investors struggling to win voters over to their vision of a pop-up city in the Bay Area exurbs. 7. ACA 13: After some last-minute legislative maneuvering, voters will have to wait until 2026 to weigh in on this constitutional amendment, which would have raised the voter-approval threshold for other ballot measures related to voter thresholds.
| | | | Understand 2024’s big impacts with Pro’s extensive Campaign Races Dashboard, exclusive insights, and key coverage of federal- and state-level debates. Focus on policy. Learn more. | | | | | | | DOWN BALLOT | | ON OTHER BALLOTS — Backers of an effort to enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona constitution submitted around 823,000 signatures, which they said is the most signatures ever for a ballot measure in the state … Election officials in Arizona are also verifying signatures for a proposed constitutional amendment to eliminate party primaries in favor of an open-primary system … Voters in Arkansas are likely to weigh in on enshrining abortion access in the state constitution, expanding access to medical marijuana and repealing a casino license after supporters of the proposal submitted signatures … An initiative in Nebraska to require paid sick leave looks set to qualify for the ballot after supporters submitted more than 138,000 signatures … and two members of the LA County Board of Supervisors are floating an idea for a ballot initiative that would expand the size of the powerful elected board. Each supervisor currently represents about 2 million people.
| | | | A message from Coalition to Protect Access to Healthcare:   | | | | | POSTCARD FROM ... | | |  | … ORANGE — In 1990, voters in this Orange County city banned the sale of fireworks via Measure L. This year, they will be asked to partially reverse that decision — and help close a budget shortfall — by allowing schools and nonprofits to sell fireworks. An initiative placed on the November ballot by Orange’s city council would permit the organizations to sell what California law labels “safe and sane” fireworks, which include things like sparklers and pinwheels and are heavily regulated by the state. (Because the Orange ban was enacted by voters, it can only be changed with their approval.) Councilmembers argued that since state law allows cities to collect 7 percent of the proceeds from legal fireworks, that money could potentially go to the city’s general fund and help close its $19 million budget shortfall. It’s not clear whether the measure will have any kind of organized opposition, although there are plenty of Californians with a short fuse on the issue. “The idea that there can be ‘safe and sane’ fireworks, and that they can be allowed in some parts of the city and disallowed in other parts of the city, makes no sense,” Orange resident Jonathan Zimmerman said at a council meeting. Since all the surrounding cities allow the sale of fireworks, it’s hard to keep people from buying them nearby and bringing them back to Orange, council members in the city of 136,000 have noted. Legalizing some fireworks might cut down on the use of more dangerous illegal ones, officials argue. “I’m becoming convinced that this is just something that is not practical to enforce,” Mayor Dan Slater said this spring. “It’s kind of like Prohibition in the 30s.”
| | | | A message from Coalition to Protect Access to Healthcare: California’s health care system is in crisis. Hospitals are closing, emergency rooms are overcrowded, and care for fifteen million vulnerable Californians on Medi-Cal is significantly underfunded. That's why an unprecedented coalition of physicians, clinics, community hospitals, Planned Parenthood, and many more all urge: YES on Prop 35, the Protect Our Health Care Initiative.
Prop 35 will address California's most urgent health care priorities by securing dedicated, ongoing funding to improve patient care and expand access to community health clinics, emergency rooms, specialty care providers and physicians offices. If passed, this initiative would extend an existing levee on health insurance companies - without raising taxes on individuals - and dedicate these funds to protect and expand patient access to care. Join us in saying YES on Prop 35 to protect our health care for all Californians.
YES on 35 to Protect Our Health Care | | | | | BLAST FROM THE PAST | | MINIMUM WAGE — Prop 32, which would increase the minimum wage to $18 an hour, has been met with a curious lack of enthusiasm from organized labor. Unions have a long history of avoiding the question at the ballot, dating back to the first time the matter came to a vote, in 1914. That year, voters were asked whether the Legislature should be allowed to create a minimum wage for women and minors, in addition to men. Progressive activists were eager to write worker protections into the state constitution to keep state judges from following the lead of the U.S. Supreme Court, which in the previous decade had ruled that a New York law limiting bakery workers’ hours violated their freedom of contract. Delegates at the California State Federation of Labor’s convention in Stockton that October refused to follow the lead of their executive committee, which had voted to endorse the amendment. Unions representing women were among its most vocal opponents, arguing a minimum wage could undercut organizing efforts by granting non-union workers the same base as unionized ones and interfering with union efforts to negotiate wages above it. Despite disinterest from labor and aggressive opposition from traditional pro-business voices — the proposal “allows the incompetent to earn as much as the competent and destroys the employee’s incentive to do better work,” argued the Los Angeles Times — the amendment passed with 56 percent of the vote. In 1916, the Legislature would use the authority to establish California’s first minimum wage, setting it at a generous $0.16 an hour. | | | THE Q&A | | | WITH MARK BALDASSARE — Now that November’s ballot is set and prop numbers have been assigned, we spoke with Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California, about how he conducts polls on ballot measures and what to watch as campaigns get underway. (This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.) Which measures do you see as the most challenging to poll on this year? Prop 2 and 4, because of the question of how people are going to respond to the request to borrow $10 billion times two, and how people will respond to the two measures together. Prop 36, because in this case we’re asking voters to undo something that they did 10 years ago, and crime in and of itself is just a complicated issue for voters. Do you plan to poll on all 10 of this year’s measures? I do. Normally we’ve done four or five measures, but because we’re polling online and not doing live telephone interviews [this year], we’re able to ask all 10. I know that we’ll do a poll that comes out after Labor Day — by then we’ll have the ballot titles and labels — and we’ll do a poll that will be at the close of the election. What are the differences between polling issue questions and candidate races? The multidimensional nature of initiatives makes them more interesting, and what the campaigns do to move voters. It’s harder to predict the outcomes with citizen initiatives because they don’t have Ds or Rs next to them. They don’t have the usual cues that they do in partisan races, where somebody is a Democrat or somebody is a Republican and they say, “I’m going to vote for [Adam] Schiff” or “I’m going to vote for [Steve] Garvey because they’re from my party.” You’re left instead with these “Yes” or “No” questions — maybe there are candidate endorsements that go along with them, but largely it’s left up to the voter. When we think about the partisan makeup of this state, you have twice as many Democrats as Republicans … but if you look at the ideological makeup of the state, it’s about 40 percent liberal, 30 percent conservative and 30 percent middle of the road. That means a lot of things are going to be possible in terms of ballot measures.
| | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
Comments
Post a Comment