CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2012, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2012, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D.
ELIAS
“PROPOSITIONS SPLIT ON A DAY WHEN THEY
WEREN’T THE FOCUS”
Neither Proposition 28 nor 29 on the
June 5 ballot
aroused any significant emotion – and maybe that’s why the limited proposition
action in this primary resulted in one smashing victory and one very close
call.
Term limits had been a sacred cow in
California for 22 years since they were adopted via the 1990 Proposition 140.
But with little interest and low turnout in the spring election, there was
virtually no resistance to the alterations in Proposition 28. The large margin
by which it passed, almost 2-1, suggested to some that many voters may not have
understood it completely.
Similarly, not even the $47
million-plus pumped into the anti-Proposition 29 campaign by tobacco companies
could create much excitement. And while taxes remain unquestionably unpopular,
smoking apparently is almost as disliked.
Both these measures, then, possessed a
stealth factor. But things will be very different this fall, when voters will
see not only a presidential election (yes, California did stage a presidential
primary, one that mattered not a bit), but at least six propositions will stir
passionate campaigns. These will cover subjects from taxes to car insurance
prices to the three-strikes-and-you’re-out law, the death penalty, political
contributions by labor unions (via a measure sometimes called “paycheck
protection”) and health insurance prices.
There could be even more action than
that, depending on whether other measures still out gathering signatures
qualify. These include a ban on selling previously-voter approved high speed
rail bonds, labeling of all genetically engineered foods and shareholder
approval of political donations by corporations.
The concentration of heavy-duty issues
on the November ballot is the choice of the Democrats who now control
Sacramento: Knowing there would be no significant presidential primary in their
party, they figured turnout would be low. They also reckoned they will need a
high turnout of motivated voters to defeat the third coming of paycheck
protection, a conservative-backed measure aiming to curtail labor union
campaign donations by forcing union leaders to obtain members’ permission
yearly in order to use some of their dues money for politics.
Democrats knew that measure would
qualify in time for the primary, but didn’t want the vote in June. They
couldn’t single out one measure for delay. So they opted to delay almost
everything. Only time will tell if their strategy succeeds.
Meanwhile, voters were left to
concentrate on congressional and legislative primaries in the spring.
That basically left initiatives of
major interest only to smokers or political junkies.
Who but folks in the Legislature and
the most seriously wonkish others cared much whether lawmakers are limited to
serving 14 years in the Legislature, as was previously possible (the time
limited to six years in the Assembly and eight in the state Senate), or 12
years, all of which can be in one house.
True, Proposition 28 allows more
continuity and could give legislators much more chance to develop expertise on
the issues they confront daily. That could allow them to depend less on
non-term limited staff members who sometimes let their own agendas color the advice
and information they give their bosses. Those staff members often seem to
survive and thrive while their employers move on every few years.
Proposition 28 also may slow the
perpetual Sacramento game of musical chairs which has seen most lawmakers start
angling for their next sinecure even before they’re sworn in for a first term.
But the suspicion remains that most voters simply believed 12 years is less
than 14.
If voters were
really interested in preventing the sorts of problems term limits have brought,
they might never have passed them 22 years ago, as they overwhelmingly did.
Then there was Proposition 29, seeking
to add a dollar a pack to the cost of cigarettes and raising the tax on other
tobacco products commensurately. It aimed to make the cigarette tax $1.87 per
pack, with the extra money going to cancer research.
At its current level, the cigarette
tax significantly reduced smoking-related death and illness in California over
the last 15 years; a higher tax might have moved even more smokers to quit.
One major flaw in Proposition 29’s
plan for spending the estimated $735 million per year it would have raised was
that for-profit corporations could have gotten as much as $500 million per
year. Nothing guaranteed that big pharmaceutical companies who make most
chemotherapy drugs would not use that state money to replace other research
dollars, which would then be added to their already-large profits.
But distaste for smoking almost proved
strong enough to push this seriously flawed measure through, even with Big
Tobacco spending more than $40 million against it.
It’s understandable that voters
couldn’t work up much steam about these measures. But November will be very
different, featuring almost unending fodder for passions of many kinds.
-30-
Elias is author of the current book "The Burzynski
Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign
to Squelch It," now available in an updated second edition. His email
address is tdelias@aol.com
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