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California’s Voters Are Difficult To Pigeonhole

June 10th, 2010

By Bill McEwen, THE FRESNO BEE

Welcome to California, where the “C” stands for contradictory — when it comes to politics.

I dare you to identify a common thread in Tuesday’s election results.

We were told that this election was all about money. Big money was a factor. It helped billionaire Meg Whitman smash Steve Poizner to smithereens, and it sustained Carly Fiorina, especially when her main rival, Tom Campbell, ran low on campaign cash.

But big money didn’t produce the desired results for Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Mercury Insurance. Voters saw through their fake concern for consumers and shot down two special-interest ballot measures.

Proposition 16 opponents earned a place in political history, raising just $90,000 to defeat an initiative that PG&E backed with $46 million.

And unsung Brian FitzGerald may win a close race to become the Republican nominee for state insurance commissioner — over Assembly Member Mike Villines of Clovis — despite spending just $4,000 on his campaign.

Are you kidding me?

A family with teenage drivers probably spends $4,000 a year on car insurance.

It has been said many times that California is too big and too diverse to reach political consensus. Yet when asked if they wanted an open primary, voters in 56 of the state’s 58 counties resoundingly said yes.

Only ultra-liberal San Francisco and ultra-conservative Orange County voted against Proposition 14 — giving credence to the suggestion that a majority of Californians are more moderate than the extremists running the state’s Democratic and Republican parties.

Now, for the contradiction of the Prop. 14 results: the open- primary effort was led and funded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose public approval rating is 23%.

Turns out, voters can love a message without loving the messenger.

We’ll see if Prop. 14 forces Republican and Democrats to move to the political center, as proponents claim. Or, if open primaries are much ado about nothing — as has been the case in other states.

One thing for sure: if we had an open primary in Tuesday’s 19th District Congressional vote, two Republicans — Jeff Denham and Jim Patterson — would have moved on to the November election. In finishing second on the Republican ballot, Patterson received more votes than Democratic nominee Loraine Goodwin.

Political analysts also have been saying that voters are angry and hungry for change. In contrarian Fresno, that wasn’t the case in two City Council races.

Sal Quintero, a former two-term council member, led all vote-getters and qualified for the runoff in District 5. Mike Briggs, a former council member and state lawmaker, received the most votes in District 3 and made the runoff, as well.

At the same time, nearly 65% of voters said they like the City Council the way it is with seven members and increased the population trigger that will expand the council to nine seats.

So, the thread of this election is that there is no thread.

We like who and what we like. We know it when we see it.

And we can’t be bought or fooled by big-dollar candidates and corporations.

Some of the time, anyway.

The columnist can be reached at bmcewen@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6632.

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Voters Get Wise To Sly Corporate Power Plays

June 10th, 2010

By Dan Morain, THE SACRAMENTO BEE

Once again, California voters delivered a two-edged message, or so it seems.

Republicans nominated two deep-pocketed former chief executives who had spent heavily on their campaigns to be their standard bearers for governor and U.S. Senate.

At the same time, Californians sent two heavily funded initiatives backed by individual corporations down to ignominious defeat.

Proposition 16, backed by PG&E’s $47 million to the opponents’ $90,000, and Proposition 17, backed by Mercury Insurance’s $16 million to less than $1 million for its foes, lost by nearly identical margins.

PG&E and Mercury join a select few corporations that came up with way-too-clever concepts, then tried to sell them to a supposedly disengaged electorate notorious for deciding weighty issues based on 30-second television ads, only to find out that we Californians aren’t so gullible after all.

Both initiatives had powerful themes. PG&E was promising Californians the right to vote on issues related to government expansion into power generation. Mercury promised most auto insurance customers a break on their rates.

But once voters scratched below the surface, they were able to sniff out the true intent – corporate grabs to solidify and expand their markets.

“It’s hard to con voters into voting yes,” said Robert Stern, an initiative expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. “The default position is ‘no.’ If voters are confused, they will vote ‘no.’ ”

Gale Kaufman helped organize the No-on-16 campaign by using $90,000 to pay for a poll and consumer activists. She didn’t have money for television, and instead bought Internet ads.

“There is a growing anger and huge skepticism about who is paying for what goes on the ballot,” Kaufman said. That attitude seems to be growing, especially as initiative promoters devise ideas that clearly benefit a particular company or industry.

Chris Lehane, who helped run the campaign against Proposition 17, said a change is taking place in the world of initiatives. Voters are relying less on traditional television advertising about ballot measures and are looking elsewhere for information, including news accounts and editorials in mainstream publications.

Voters also are becoming more attuned to bogus endorsements, he believes. In PG&E’s case, the company touted the endorsement of an entity that called itself a consumer alliance. But no one from established consumer groups had ever heard of it.

So what does all this mean for former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina? It might not be a good sign.

Whitman and Fiorina won in a closed Republican primary in which 1.7 million Republicans voted.

A far larger group of roughly 4 million voters including Republicans, Democrats and people who state no party preference voted down Propositions 16 and 17.

A look at how counties voted sheds more light. Propositions 16 and 17 lost big in Democratic parts of the state. In San Francisco and Yolo counties, for example, the initiatives were trounced by 2-to-1 ratios. Proposition 16 lost by 42 percent to 58 percent in Sacramento County, another Democratic bastion.

In the Republican areas of the state, including Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, both measures won by significant margins. The pattern played out in much of the rest of the state, where counties that have Democratic majorities opposed the measures and voters in Republican-leaning counties approved them.

Republicans have nominated Whitman and Fiorina, but neither has won office in an election that includes Democratic voters and people who decline to state party preferences.

The general election campaign is now in its second day, way too early to gauge who will win. But at least on primary election day, voters took a very dim view of corporate interests.

dmorain@sacbee.com

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California Voters: Props On Their Proposition Votes

June 10th, 2010

Editorial, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

The electorate shoots down two propositions that had been heavily funded by corporate backers. But the balloters couldn’t be bought.

Props to California voters. They are smarter than most pundits and political consultants (and sometimes editorial pages) give them credit for being, as evidenced by two failed attempts to buy their votes in Tuesday’s election.

The conventional political wisdom suggested that Propositions 16 and 17 would be tough to beat, given that their corporate backers — Northern California utility Pacific Gas & Electric and Mercury Insurance, respectively — poured buckets of money into deeply misleading ad campaigns. Opponents, meanwhile, raised barely enough to print lawn signs. Yet both measures lost by a margin of more than 4 percentage points.

Does this mean that voters are getting their information from someplace other than TV commercials? Or that money can’t buy elections? Or that there is a new anti-corporate mood riling the electorate, to go with the anti-incumbent sentiment that is sweeping politicians out of power across the country?

Maybe, but we’re not going to say so. We’ve seen enough puzzling election results to know that what holds true in one contest probably will be contradicted by the next one. Yet there are some truisms that help explain Tuesday’s results, such as the one that suggests money is far less effective in passing initiatives than in defeating them. Voters are naturally skeptical of ballot measures, especially complex ones on such arcane topics as public electricity ventures (Proposition 16) and auto insurance discounts (Proposition 17). Ad campaigns can fuel that skepticism to make voters defeat even beneficial initiatives, but ads urging a yes vote are given more scrutiny, especially when they’re funded by a single source.

Only 24.8% of California voters cast a ballot, and such low-turnout elections tend to attract older, better-informed voters — the population least likely to be swayed by misleading campaign ads. And early polling suggested that Proposition 16, in particular, was attracting little support. PG&E doubtless thought it could overcome that initial distaste by pouring $46 million into the campaign, but even the shiniest paint job can’t make a Yugo look like a Bentley.

Those who follow politics tend to develop a jaundiced view of the initiative process, but Tuesday’s results should make anybody interested in good government a little less cynical.

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Savvy Voters Saw Through Two Bad Initiatives On Ballot

June 10th, 2010

Editorial, THE FRESNO BEE

Hiram Johnson might be smiling. The California governor introduced the initiative as a reform tool, a way for citizens to wrest power from railroads and other powerful interests that held sway over the Legislature in the late 19th century.

But in recent years, the people’s tool has been co-opted by the power players. In this election, the poster child for this was Proposition 16, the measure bankrolled by PG&E to shield the utility giant from competition.

But the voters proved they were smarter than PG&E’s campaign henchman. Despite spending $46 million to pass the initiative, Proposition 16 went down to defeat.

The utility’s stockholders should take note. Proposition 16 failed most heavily in PG&E service areas. In Fresno County, 61% of voters opposed the measure. In San Francisco, where PG&E is headquartered, it was voted down by 68%.

How can PG&E fend off competition? By simply providing better service and cheaper rates.

In the wake of Proposition 16’s defeat, it’s also time for the utility’s stockholders to hold its CEO, Peter Darbee, accountable. It was his idea to spend tens of millions of dollars on a dishonest campaign that voters ultimately rejected. In the end, Proposition 16 served to tarnish PG&E’s reputation and make its CEO look foolish.

Voters also wisely rejected Proposition 17, which like 16, was an initiative put on the ballot by a self-serving business. Mercury General, an insurance company, spent $16 million to pass Proposition 17 but lost in the end.

Voters can sometimes be bamboozled into approving bad initiatives. But this time they saw through the smokescreens. Good for them.

Tell us what you think. Comment on this editorial by going to fresnobee.com/opinion, then click on the editorial.

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Victory! California Voters Reject Two High-Priced Corporate Attempts to Hijack Democracy

June 10th, 2010

By Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet.org

On Tuesday voters squarely rejected two corporate-backed measures that would have cost ordinary Californians millions of dollars.

Proposition 16, cleverly disguised as the Taxpayers’ Right to Vote Act, was placed on the state ballot as a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote to create public power districts or allow local governments to purchase their own renewable power. In other words, it was a way for electric utility behemoth PG&E to further protect its monopoly. PG&E saw such potential for its bottom-line that it spent $45 million to persuade voters to approve the measure. But 52.5 percent of California voters saw through the language and knocked it down.

Similarly, Proposition 17 was framed as an opportunity for auto insurance companies to overturn a state law that prohibits insurance companies from extending “loyalty discounts” to customers even if they switched insurance providers. While Mercury Insurance, which spent nearly $16 million on the measure, claimed this was a way to lower rates for drivers, consumer advocates were successful in making the case that in turn, existing consumer protections would be weakened and insurance companies would be able to charge drivers as much as double premiums for making late payments. Prop. 17 failed, too, with 52.1 percent of voters nixing it.

The success achieved by the underfunded activists at the opposing campaigns — No on 16 and Stop Prop 17 — is all the more impressive considering the minuscule amounts of money they spent relative to the corporations that financed the measures. Put simply, the myth-busting worked, even in the face of millions of dollars.

What makes the defeats of Props 16 and 17 especially interesting is that they took place in an election that had an appalling turnout — about one-third of voters came out — when corporate money normally has the most sway, says Rick Jacobs, founder and chair of the Courage Campaign, a progressive advocacy group in California with 800,000 active members. “But we saw that people are smart. They looked through the smokescreen these two companies were using and said no,” he says.

Jacobs believes the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling certainly affects voters’ views of corporate influence in elections. But he also thinks progressive groups worked to get the vote out in effective ways. His own organization produced a Progressive Voter Guide that was passed around by like-minded groups such as CREDO and MoveOn.org, and was downloaded by at least 100,000 people. (For perspective, Prop. 16 trailed by 185,000 votes; Prop. 17 by 156,000.)

“People actually shared information with each other, and tuned out the expensive ads, and said, ‘We’re going to trust each other,’” Jacobs says. This shows that “with targeted communication to people who actually vote, you can defeat these things.”

But this is only the first fight this year. In November, more moneyed interests will once again attempt to make a mockery of the democratic process in California and trample on progressives’ goals.

The Courage Campaign is already gearing up its fight against a still-unnamed measure that would indefinitely suspend California’s beacon Clean Energy law. To date, at least 15 oil companies have contributed $1.6 million to the effort. The three largest funders — Valero, Occidental Petroleum and Tesoro — all rank in the Political Economy Research Institute’s list of the top 100 corporate polluters in the country.

There aren’t any other major corporate-backed measures on the November ballot yet, but the budget process isn’t yet over in Sacramento, and this makes it likely that a slew of unpleasant initiatives may be added later on.

Activists are looking forward to the Tax Cannabis initiative being on the November ballot. There is hope that it will bring out a whole slew of younger, more progressive-minded voters. In fact, many precincts on Tuesday reported disappointed voters who had turned out to vote for the marijuana legalization measure.

The general election on Nov. 2 is now just five months away.

Daniela Perdomo is a staff writer and editor at AlterNet. Follow Daniela on Twitter. Write her at danielaalternet [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Despite Prop. 17’s Defeat, Auto Insurers’ Battle May Not Be Over

June 10th, 2010

By Carol J. Williams, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

A $16-million effort by auto insurers to ease regulations may not be over despite state voters’ decision to reject Proposition 17, which would have allowed drivers to take their continuous-coverage discount with them if they switched carriers.

By the time all votes were counted early Wednesday, voters defeated the initiative 52% to 48%, despite lopsided campaign funding that allowed insurance industry supporters to outspend opponents 12 to 1.

The hard-fought battle was waged between consumer advocates, who said the measure would increase premiums, and insurers, led by Mercury Group, which contended in an advertising blitz that the proposition would cut rates.

Consumer Watchdog of Santa Monica hailed the measure’s defeat as a sign that voters are wary of letting big business intrude into the citizen initiative process that allowed the proponents to get the issue on the ballot.

But spokesmen for Californians for Fair Auto Insurance Rates, the Yes on 17 campaign, said they were disappointed and signaled that they might carry on the fight for regulation revisions they expect to bring more business their way.

Mercury Chairman George Joseph, who for years has been struggling to get the changes through the Legislature and survive court challenges, says he’s not sure what his next step might be.

“We have to convince people … that this is a good thing for consumers. I don’t think we made this clear enough,” Joseph said, repeating the campaign’s message that more than 80% of insured motorists would benefit from being allowed to take their loyalty discounts with them to a new insurer.

Mercury provided the vast majority of the Yes on 17 funding, used to bombard drivers with the message that passage would correct “a flaw in the law” and spur more competition among insurers.

Proponents failed in their attempt “to scam California drivers by authorizing surcharges that voters made illegal in 1988 when they passed Proposition 103,” said Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog and author of the ballot measure that has regulated car insurance rates for 22 years.

“This is a victory not just for motorists in California, but a broader victory for California voters, who have made it clear they don’t intend to let insurance companies or utility companies or other big corporations subvert the people’s initiative process,” Rosenfield said.

The Campaign for Consumer Rights spent about $1.3 million to urge voters to reject the Mercury-backed measure.

The campaign warned voters that passage would eventually raise rates for new drivers, military personnel serving out of state and anyone who quit driving for a while to save money or take public transpiration.

Opponents also contended the threat of higher rates for those already paying top dollar for car insurance could lead to more uninsured drivers on the state’s roads.

Coupled with defeat of Proposition 16, a measure backed by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which would have required voter approval before cities could get into the electricity business, voters sent a strong message that their voice in the political process cannot be bought, Rosenfield said.

The insurance industry backers stood their ground despite Proposition 17’s failure.

“Voters missed an opportunity to extend an auto insurance discount that could have lowered auto insurance rates for millions of drivers,” said Mike D’Arelli, executive director of the Alliance of Insurance Agents & Brokers that backed the initiative.

“There is no doubt that extending the continuous coverage discount would have improved current auto law for consumers,” he said.

Kathy Fairbanks of the Yes on 17 campaign described its defeat as “a Pyrrhic victory” for opponents because they are being investigated by the Fair Political Practices Commission for what she said was an attempt to hide the source of $590,000 in contributions to the StopProp17 campaign.

Rosenfield dismissed the failed sponsors’ report of campaign finance irregularities as sour grapes and said his campaign would welcome the commission’s review because they have scrupulously complied with campaign laws.

carol.williams@latimes.com

Marc Lifsher in Sacramento contributed to this report.

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Foes Say California Voters Saw Through Props. 16 and 17

June 10th, 2010

By Mark Glover and Dale Kasler, THE SACRAMENTO BEE

Opponents of Propositions 16 and 17 said Wednesday that the defeat of the two measures was all about money.

Or to be more precise: voter dissatisfaction that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Mercury Insurance spent a whopping $60 million combined on the respective measures.

Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, said the lesson is that “if you’re going to win a special-interest initiative, you need a better disguise. The link was too obvious, and the voters smelled a rat.”

Pitney cited the primary victories by Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina as proof that voters don’t inherently object to business people entering politics.

“People like the idea of free enterprise, but in (Propositions 16 and 17) people sensed that one specific corporation was seeking a benefit for (itself),” he said.

With all precincts statewide reporting, 52.5 percent of voters were giving Proposition 16 a thumbs down. “No” votes on Proposition 17 accounted for 52.1 percent of the total.

While the California secretary of state’s office said “tens of thousands” of absentee ballots are still being counted, political analysts said it’s highly unlikely the results will change.

Out of about 3.85 million votes cast, Proposition 16 trailed by about 185,000 votes. Proposition 17 was failing by about 156,000 votes.

Proposition 16 – formally known as the Taxpayers Right to Vote Act – was put on the California ballot as a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote before a public utility could extend service to new customers or new territories.

From the beginning, it was spearheaded virtually single-handedly by San Francisco-based PG&E, which spent $46 million to persuade voters to approve it.

Proposition 17 was put on the ballot by Los Angeles-based Mercury Insurance. It would have overturned state law prohibiting insurance companies from considering a driver’s insurance history to set rates. It would have allowed customers to take their “loyalty discounts” with them even if they switched insurance providers.

Mercury spent about $16 million to back the measure.

PG&E insisted that it was simply good policy for voters to have a say when millions of electric customers and taxpayer dollars are on the line. Mercury claimed that Proposition 17 worked to the benefit of millions of Golden State motorists.

Opponents said otherwise. They said the businesses were just trying to shanghai the initiative process to make more money and grab more power.

Proposition 103 author Harvey Rosenfield warned Wednesday that “the initiative process is in danger of being co-opted by big corporations. You had two big corporations trying to enact their business plan as law.”

Gale Kaufman, a campaign consultant for No on 16, said opponents only had about $100,000 to spend, with about $30,000 going into an early poll. She said that poll indicated that Proposition 16 was “losing very convincingly” from the start.

Kaufman said voters didn’t see Proposition 16 as a citizen-empowerment measure, but as a cleverly worded ploy of a single for-profit utility.

“(PG&E’s) biggest miscalculation, besides spending all that money, was that they really thought they could trick people by the phrasing they used on that initiative,” she said.

Kaufman credited an aggressive viral campaign “and a lot of people who did their own thing” for rallying voters against Proposition 16.

Greg Pruett, senior vice president of corporate affairs for PG&E, issued a statement that said, in part: “While the election outcome hasn’t diminished our steadfast belief that citizens should have a vote in local government efforts to enter the electric utility business, we respect the decision voters made on this initiative.”

Mercury Insurance portrayed the defeat of Proposition 17 as a blow to consumers. “Proposition 17 was a pro-consumer initiative that would have lowered auto insurance rates for millions of California drivers,” the company said in a statement.

PG&E Corp. stock closed at $40, down 90 cents, on Wednesday, and Mercury General Corp., the parent of Mercury Insurance, closed at $42.18, down 24 cents. Both are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Contact the author at: mglover@sacbee.com

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Report: Auto Insurance Measure Backed by Mercury General Defeated

June 10th, 2010

By Kelly Durkin, SNL INSURANCE DAILY

California voters have defeated a measure that would have allowed insurance companies to hike rates for drivers with lapsed coverage and to give discounts to those who do not let their coverage lapse, the San Francisco Chronicle reported June 9.

Mercury General Corp. was the primary sponsor of Proposition 17, also known as the Continuous Coverage Auto Insurance Discount Act, with the company having contributed substantial funds toward the measure.

Consumer advocates had opposed the measure, arguing that it would let companies increase rates on drivers who were not previously insured or who let coverage temporarily lapse, actions prohibited by deceptive pricing and rate discrimination law.

The California Department of Insurance had accused Mercury General in February of violating that state law, Proposition 103.

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Despite Spending $46 Million, California Rejects PG&E

June 9th, 2010

By Paul Hogarth, CALITICS.COM

I’ve been a political campaign junkie for years. And the frustrating part about this job is that after going to Election Night parties, I have to go home and write about it for readers to view the next morning. So if a particular race takes the whole night to resolve, I could be up very late. But I had no problem sticking around the “No on 16″ campaign party last night until 1:00 a.m. – monitoring the results with Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, State Senator Mark Leno and our good friends at TURN. Because last night’s defeat of Prop 16 was one of the most historic victories in California history. Outspent over 1,000-to-one by a monster utility company, consumer advocates defeated by a 52-47 margin an odious measure that would have cemented PG&E’s (NYSE:PCG) monopoly. To call this a David & Goliath victory does not give it justice. As my friend Robert Cruickshank wrote at Calitics, it’s like “an ant taking down an elephant.” Oh, and Prop 17 failed too.

PG&E is desperate to stop community choice aggregation – where local governments can purchase energy to offer their constituents a “public option” to the company’s monopoly. Proposition 16 would have required a two-thirds vote of the electorate before cities can do community choice aggregation, and cynically dubbed it the Taxpayer’s Right to Vote.

Never mind that taxpayers already have the right to vote out their elected officials – if they don’t support community choice aggregation. Never mind that ratepayers were not given the chance on voting for PG&E as their energy provider. Public power is not even one of my top “issues,” but I was outraged that PG&E would try something like Prop 16.

PG&E shattered campaign spending records with $46 million to pass Prop 16 – ratepayer money that we give them every month when we pay our energy bills. The only organized opposition was TURN (the Utility Reform Network), who only raised $90,000. Bloggers by making “No on 16″ videos, and a hilarious . But the campaign often seemed like a rag-tag army tilting at the windmills.

When I arrived at the “No on 16″ party at Otis Lounge around 9:30 p.m., the results were looking bad. We were down by about three points, but the night was still young. Having watched statewide campaigns for years, I knew it would ultimately come down to Los Angeles County – so I quickly went online to check how we were doing down there.

Not good. The early absentees had Prop 16 winning L.A. County by 13 points, far worse than where we were statewide. If this kept on during the night, it was going to be painful. The public power entity in Los Angeles had just raised rates, and folks at the party said it may be why Prop 16 was doing so well. Small comfort for the largest county in the state.

Mark Toney of TURN was saying we should be proud that we held PG&E to such a close margin, after having been outspent nearly 1,000-to-one – but I cringed when I heard that. We were losing. Sure, we were doing pretty well in Northern California – where people know and hate PG&E, but we were getting creamed down south. Where the votes are.

But as the night wore on, some folks pointed out how well we were doing in counties like Fresno, Madera, and Mariposa. These are conservative places in the Central Valley, but PG&E had alienated these customers with “smart meters.” I checked how we were doing in San Benito County – which political junkies often say is the bellwether of California state politics. We were slightly ahead in San Benito County, but only by about 50 votes.

And the L.A. County numbers were trickling in – slowly, but surely. We were still losing there, but the margin was noticeably trending in our favor. By now, everyone at the party was huddled around a small number of laptops – while I double-checked the Secretary of State’s website with what individual counties were saying. Places like San Diego and Orange County were coming in where we were behind, but we were not losing ground.

Pretty soon, our three-point loss became a one-point lead – and there was a palpable sense in the air that we could win it. I wasn’t convinced yet – scouring the L.A. County numbers to see if this positive trend in our favor was not going to start reversing itself.

When 58% of L.A. County had been counted, we were ahead there. I got up, and boldly shouted that we had won. It reminded me of the scene in Milk, when Jim Rivaldo tells Harvey Milk not to worry about the Briggs Initiative. L.A. County had just come in, and we were going to win. By now, I was sure that we had slain the Prop 16 dragon.

During that whole time, Proposition 17 – Mercury Insurance’s scam to rip off consumers – had been ahead by a wider margin than Prop 16. As we were all fixated on the Prop 16 results, it became apparent that Prop 17 results were following similar trends. By the end of the evening, Prop 17 had likewise had the same fate – it also lost by about five points.

As of 4:00 this morning, Prop 16 is losing 47-53 – with 91.6% of all precincts reporting. Not only is this a stunning rebuke of PG&E, but it is a strong mandate for public power. Californians want a choice in the energy marketplace, and are ready for a “public option” that provides them with competitive rates and renewable energy sources.

And PG&E will deserve every share of anger, rebuke and humiliation coming at it.

Paul Hogarth is the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron, San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily, where this piece was first published.

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Anti-Incumbency Not At Fever Pitch

June 9th, 2010

Editorial, SAN BERNADINO COUNTY SUN

Big money and anti-incumbent fever were two main themes going into Tuesday’s primary election.

Big bucks appeared to carry the day at the top of the statewide Republican ticket, but below that the record was mixed. And if anti-incumbency had a fever, it was slight.

Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, two ultra-wealthy businesswomen who spent millions of their own dollars, swept the GOP governor and U.S. Senate nominations as expected. There was an anti-incumbency element to their victories as well: the men they defeated – Steve Poizner, Tom Campbell and Chuck DeVore – hold or have held elected office, while the nominees are new to politics.

But big money flopped when it came to state propositions, where voters rejected Pacific Gas & Electric’s well-heeled Proposition 16 and Mercury Insurance’s Proposition 17.

Voters, to their credit, passed Proposition 14, which creates an open-primary system that just might shake up the special-interests-based politics-as-usual in Sacramento. That’s the main sign of anti-incumbency in Tuesday’s results – a clear statement from the voters that they’re sick of the dysfunction in the state Capitol.

If voters were mad as heck, they didn’t demonstrate it by actually voting. The San Bernardino County turnout was an anemic 19.8 percent as of Wednesday afternoon’s figures; L.A. County was slightly worse, 19.57 percent.

The county’s Assembly, state Senate and Congress members who were challeged easily won their parties’ nominations.

There were no incumbents in the two hottest local Assembly races, the 59th and 63rd districts’ Republican contests, but there was an anti-establishment tinge to the results.

In the 59th, apparent winner Tim Donnelly held a 40-vote edge over Chris Lancaster, whose father long served in the Assembly and who outspent Donnelly a few times over. Donnelly, founder of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of California, ran against illegal immigration.

And in the 63rd, well-financed Mayor Don Kurth finished well behind two of his own Rancho Cucamonga constituents – winner Mike Morrell, who hasn’t held office but finished third in the same race six years ago, and Paul Chabot, a young Navy veteran running for the first time and without much financial backing.

San Bernardino County voters made every incumbent the top vote-getter with the exception of Judge Robert Lemkau, who was undone by a family-law decision he made.

Supervisor Paul Biane, caught up in a corruption investigation he claims is baseless, faces a runoff in November against Fontana City Councilwoman Janice Rutherford. The rest of the county incumbents won handily.

Redlands voters nixed an anti-Wal-Mart superstore measure. Rialto voters said, “Are you kidding?” to an advisory vote on whether they want to pay higher taxes to help fund sweetened retirement benefits for city employees.

Congrats to the winners, thanks for playing to those who failed to advance. And to all the candidates, please take your signs down as quickly as possible.

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