A time traveler might have strange feelings of dej
à vu looking at the November special election ballot. For many
of the key questions to be decided this fall have been before
voters before. The issues have not changed much; the question is
whether the voters have.
A time traveler might have strange feelings of dejà vu looking at the November special election ballot. For many of the key questions to be decided this fall have been before voters before. The issues have not changed much; the question is whether the voters have.
There’s little doubt the two most emotional issues Californians will decide Nov. 8 are embodied in Propositions 73 and 75. Proposition 73 is a parental consent abortion restriction forcing pregnant girls under 18 to get written permission from a parent or a judge before undergoing an abortion. Proposition 75 would force public employee labor unions to seek permission from their members every year before using dues money for political purposes.
Anyone who thinks these are new issues just hasn’t been paying attention.
Parental consent has never before gone directly before the voters. But indirectly, it has. That came in 1998, when conservatives viewed two of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s state Supreme Court appointees as traitors for their 1997 decision overturning a state parental consent law passed in 1987.
The California Pro-Life Council targeted both Chief Justice Ronald George and his colleague Ming Chin for judicial oblivion when they came up for routine yes-or-no confirmation votes for new 12-year terms.
Just as they do this fall, Democrats fretted in 1998 about whether the campaign against the two justices would bring large numbers of pro-life voters to the polls, worrying at the time that this could reduce the gubernatorial chances of Gray Davis. Plainly, Davis had nothing to worry about in that vote, winning handily at the same time the two justices were easily reconfirmed.
That fizzled campaign against the justices, plus their decision a year earlier to toss the existing parental consent law on personal grounds provides reason to wonder whether Proposition 73 would stand for long even if it passes.
Meanwhile, the campaign around Proposition 75 looks a bit like a rerun of what happened in another 1998 vote. Back then, many of the same anti-union activists who put this year’s measure on the ballot campaigned hard for Proposition 226, dubbed a “paycheck protection” measure just like this year’s has been. The big difference was that the 1998 measure would have affected all unions, not just those of public employees.
Where this year’s measure started off with a 57-34 percent margin in the first polls taken after it qualified for the ballot, support was even stronger at first for the similar measure seven years ago. That year, the California Field Poll showed voters favoring the measure by a 71-22 percent margin just after it qualified.
But support soon faded. Less than two months before the vote, support had dropped to 60 percent and on Election Day, it narrowly lost. That year, like this, defeating union dues restrictions was the top priority of labor unions. They spent almost $10 million to defeat Proposition 226 and they may spend more against Proposition 73, whose support also has faded from its early standing.
But just like this year, union members were not universally opposed to the measure. Only about 70 percent of them voted against it in 1998, and union leaders must at least match that performance if they hope to defeat this year’s effort to hamstring their political outreach.
And then there’s redistricting. Ex-Gov. George Deukmejian called the state’s last previous special election in 1983 expressly to try for passage of a measure taking the drawing of new legislative and congressional districts away from the politicians most affected by any plan they draw. His plan was very similar to this year’s Proposition 77, and it failed by more than a 10 percent margin.
No matter how many television commercials Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his backers may air to support this fall’s effort to change redistricting, it will never draw much more than a yawn from the majority of voters. Which means Schwarzenegger must use his personal magnetism in the effort for passage.
The question: Does he still have enough popularity to carry a cause through in what looks increasingly like a fall season of political reruns?
Tom Elias is author of “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” now in an updated third edition. Contact him at [email protected].
