Californians who want Al Gore to run for president have begun a grassroots intiative to Draft Gore onto the California Primary Ballot. We need support! We need as many people as possible to gather petition signatures from voters in every single county. JOIN US IN THIS STATEWIDE INITIATIVE, and be a part of history as, CALIFORNIA DRAFTS AL GORE!
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The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg penned a column about the California Republican Party's attempt to siphon off what could be roughly twenty of California's fifty four consistently Democratic electoral votes. Naturally, they are using the initiative process to try and do this.
Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California's electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes-votes that it wouldn't get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union.
The Republican lawyers behind this convoluted effort, Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, were deeply involved in the 2003 recall campaign against Democratic Governor Gray Davis that propelled current Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger into power.
It is no surprise that the law firm created a ficticious front group, Californians for Equal Representation, to do their bidding because they have a history of it.
As the race in California's 37th District showed (to a certain extent), wealthy Indian tribes are no match in the electoral arena for the boots on the ground and organization provided by labor. With this in mind, the February Presidential primary just got a whole lot more interesting:
A coalition of labor and horse racing interests announced Friday that it will ask voters to pull the plug on a huge tribal gambling expansion negotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The owner of two racetracks and the hotel workers' union will team up on a campaign that could put four new initiatives on the February ballot and cost tens of millions of dollars. Some tribes with casinos that are not part of the expansion said they might join the effort.
The tracks and union seek to undo legislation Schwarzenegger signed into law July 10 to allow four tribes in Riverside and San Diego counties to more than double or triple the number of slot machines in their casinos.
A few points:
• Unite Here has a lot of organizational muscle and will have enough money to get out the message of how these rich tribes will be expanding their gaming operations at the expense of workers. The Bay Meadows racetrack concern is on board because they believe this expansion will hurt their gambling business.
• This will be an EXPENSIVE referendum if it gets on the ballot. Labor and the richer tribes can raise gobs of cash. This will suck up all of the oxygen on initiatives as much as the alternative energy proposition did last year. This will impact...
• The term limits initiative, which will suddenly have less of an impression on voters. Considering that it's written as a limiting rather than a relaxation, that may bode well for it. But the ballot could be extremely crowded.
People are gathering signatures for 17 other measures, and backers of 11 others are waiting for the approval to begin signature-gathering to try to get their measures on a ballot next year. Those potential initiatives include measures to ban gay marriage, overhaul the state's tax structure, ban cruelty to farm animals and curb government employee pensions.
My calculus is that the more that's on the ballot, the less people want to support them. And the long ballots of the past couple years have been exercises in futility. The direct democracy bug everyone caught with the recall in 2003 has turned into a flu.
A proposal to increase funding for community colleges has qualified for the February ballot. Here is the title and summary:
Establishes in state constitution a system of independent public community college districts and Board of Governors. Generally, requires minimum levels of state funding for school districts and community college districts to be calculated separately, using different criteria and separately appropriated. Allocates 10.46 percent of current Proposition 98 school funding maintenance factor to community colleges. Sets community college fees at $15/unit per semester; limits future fee increases. Provides formula for allocation by Legislature to community college districts that would not otherwise receive general fund revenues through community college apportionment. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: Potential increases in state spending on K-14 education of about $135 million in 2007-08, $275 million in 2008-09, and $470 million in 2009-2010, with unknown impact annually thereafter. Annual loss of fee revenues to community colleges of about $71 million in 2007-08, with unknown impacts annually thereafter. (06-0030.)
