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Five Lessons: Things Learned From Tuesday’s Statewide Primary Election Results

June 10th, 2010

Editorial, THE DAILY NEWS OF LOS ANGELES

Tuesday’s statewide primary election concluded with few surprises. When it came to the measures, for the most part voters wisely supported the good initiatives and ignored the stinky ones. Party front-runners and big money spenders won – as expected – in their particular races.

But the election results did have a few important lessons to which both the electorate and those running a race or campaign ought to pay heed:

1. There is a limit to the generosity of voters.

Officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District found that out Wednesday morning when they learned voters rejected the $100-a-year parcel tax even though it was sneakily sold as an “emergency teacher retention measure.”

The passage of five school-building bond measures, including one less than two years ago for $7 billion, must have convinced officials that there were no limits to Los Angeles voters’ willingness to give to public education. What other reason could induce otherwise intelligent people to put a tax on the ballot in the middle of a deep recession with a half-baked justification for its necessity and little campaigning?

Hopefully, the failure of Measure E, which needed two-thirds voter approval, will teach school officials some restraint.

2. Voters are tired of the status quo.

Proposition 14, the open primary measure, was subject to all manner of fearmongering by established political parties. They warned that under the so-called top-two primaries only party hacks would be elected, shutting out third parties altogether. They warned that this would make elections more partisan than they are now. Voters recognized that it is hardly possible to make local elections worse and the inherent logic of open primaries bodes well for electing better politicians.

On a side note, it’s interesting to note that the only two counties in California that did not support Prop. 14 were the two most partisan in the state – San Francisco and Orange County.

3. Money can buy you a shot at an elected position.

Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, has no public service record to speak of, but she does have a personal fortune. She spent $71 million of her own money to campaign successfully to be the GOP candidate for the November governor’s race. That was enough to convince Republican primary voters that she would make a good opponent to a professional pol like Jerry Brown.

4. But money can’t necessarily buy you a measure.

Both Mercury Insurance and Pacific Gas & Electric found that out. The two companies each put up millions of their own dollars to fund statewide initiatives – Proposition 17 and Proposition 16, respectively – that would improve their money-making ability. That naked self-service doesn’t fly with voters who understand that no company is going to spend millions of its hard-earned revenue on a campaign that only helps customers. Voters might be naive at times, but they aren’t stupid.

5. Women are the new ol’ boys in the grand ol’ party.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has some competition as the sweetheart of the GOP in both Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the effervescent Silicon Valley businesswoman who won the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer’s re-election in November.

Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is as charismatic as Palin, but superintelligent to boot. She might not be a grizzly mom, but she fought off cancer and looks like she might be able to fight off any mud slung her way during the general election.

The overall takeaway from this week’s election, however, is that old assumptions about politics and campaigns no longer hold. What Californians want – particularly those who vote – is for government to work for the people and not the special interests. And that’s a lesson that everyone in politics ought take to heart.

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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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2 Industry-Sponsored Initiatives Fail, Despite Millions Spent On Advertising

June 9th, 2010

By Timm Herdt, THE VENTURA COUNTY STAR

Joe Mathews, a New America Foundation senior fellow who studies and writes about direct democracy around the globe, believes this has been a history-making week in the world of ballot propositions.

“Proposition 16,” he said Wednesday, “belongs in the Hall of Fame Of all-time bad initiatives.”

Despite a $46.5 million campaign in support of an initiative written, sponsored by and almost entirely funded by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., California voters rejected Proposition 16 on Tuesday, 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent. It was turned down in 33 of the state’s 58 counties, most strongly in the heart of the Northern California utility company’s service area.

All this despite the fact that PG&E outspent the opposition by a ratio of 465-to-1.

It was one of two single-company-sponsored initiatives to go down. Proposition 17, sponsored by Mercury General Insurance Co. to the tune of $16 million, was defeated 52.1 percent to 47.9 percent.

Mathews said the results could have been foretold. “There’s not a long history of voters carving out specific protections for specific industries,” he said.

The most recent previous example, he noted, was voters’ rejection in 2008 of a T. Boone Pickens-sponsored initiative that would have authorized California to sell $5 billion in bonds to buy specific clean-fuel vehicles that would have been powered by a fuel sold chiefly by Pickens’ company.

Opponents of the measures celebrated Wednesday and praised California voters for their ability to evaluate the initiatives independently and not be swayed by the one-sided barrage of advertising funded by PG&E and Mercury.

“Voters are a lot smarter than self-serving corporations think or hope, or the political consultants who sell their services to these corporations claim,” said Doug Heller of Consumer Watchdog, the group that led the campaign to defeat Proposition 17.

Proposition 16 was sold to voters in relentless television and radio advertisements as the “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act,” and would have required local governments to first get approval from two-thirds of their voters before spending any public money to form a public power authority or create an electricity-buying cooperative for local residents.

But in remarks to investors this spring, CEO Peter Darbee said the objective was to dissuade local governments from even considering the idea. By diminishing the number of elections on such questions, he said, PG&E would save money over time by not having to wage repeated local campaigns to defeat such proposals.

The company could not persuade the two other in-state utility companies to go along with the campaign. Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric did not support Proposition 16.

PG&E officials laid out the costs of what they intended to spend on Proposition 16, and explained to shareholders that it would be a good investment of their money.

Richard Stapler, spokesman for the campaign to defeat Proposition 16, said it’s likely that Darbee spent much of Wednesday “reading and re-reading the golden parachute clause in his contract.”

For its $46.5 million, Stapler said, “PG&E bought half a generation of bad corporate image for itself.”

In a terse statement issued early Wednesday, the Proposition 16 campaign acknowledged defeat. “Though we believe people should still have a voice in their communities about whether local governments should spend taxpayer dollars to go into the retail electricity business, it’s clear that these issues will need to be addressed community by community,” the statement said.

Critics said one of the primary motivations of Proposition 16 was to prevent communities from taking advantage of a 2001 law that permits local governments to take advantage of a process called “community choice aggregation,” allowing them to form electricity-buying cooperatives to provide residents a choice in selecting electricity providers.

Marin County and seven of its cities have formed the first such entity in the state, San Francisco is poised to follow suit, and other jurisdictions are studying the idea.

Environmental groups say these cooperatives will stimulate green-energy production. Bill Magavern, director of Sierra Club California, hailed the defeat of Proposition 16 “because it would have thrown a huge obstacle into the path of affordable clean energy.”

Stapler, whose No on 16 group raised less than $100,000, said the only advertising it was able to afford was an e-mail blast to 300,000 high-propensity voters last week. It provided links to editorials from some of California’s major newspapers, all except two of which editorialized against the measure.

“It’s a huge testament to the fact that people were reading the newspaper and they were paying attention,” Stapler said.

therdt@VCStar.com

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Election: Some Good, Some Bad, Some Ugly

June 9th, 2010

Editorial, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

While one of Santa Clara County’s most important races, district attorney, remains too close to call, there were some stunningly clear winners in Tuesday’s state and local primaries, and some squeakers that were nonetheless heartening. Here’s our take so far:

California

With few surprises in the nominees for statewide office, the most exciting results were from the propositions, particularly the defeat of two entirely self-interested, dishonest, corporate-backed initiatives: PG&E’s Proposition 16, a bid to prevent competition, and Mercury Insurance’s Proposition 17, an auto insurance rate scam. Despite multimillion-dollar campaigns, a slim majority of voters saw through them both — a triumph of common sense. What a relief.

We’re also celebrating the strong support for Proposition 14. A significant government reform, it establishes an open primary, which will allow voters to pick a candidate from any party and send the top two vote-getters to a fall runoff. This should lead to more moderates winning office and, we hope, more willingness to compromise.

Unfortunately, in the U.S. Senate primary, Tom Campbell — our favorite GOP pragmatist — lost in a rout to Carly Fiorina, who will challenge Democrat Barbara Boxer in the fall. Campbell, a fiscal conservative but social moderate, has a history of bipartisanship that might find more supporters in an open primary. Polls show he’d have given Boxer a better race in the fall.

Meg Whitman’s decisive victory over Steve Poizner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination was no surprise, given the $71 million of her own money she spent on the campaign, but she also was the better candidate. Having honed her attack strategies on the politically hapless Poizner, she will present a lively challenge to Democrat Jerry Brown   himself a formidable campaigner. We just hope the issues don’t get lost in the crossfire.

Schools

Speaking of big winners, the overwhelming support for bond and tax measures in local school districts was stunning in this economy, great news for kids and a shot across the bow for lawmakers working on the state budget: Voters do care about education.

Santa Clara kickoff

The big victory in the South Bay was Santa Clara’s overwhelming approval of a football stadium deal with the 49ers, a game changer for the region, much like the Sharks were when they brought the first major league team to San Jose in the early 1990s. While the 49ers still have financial hurdles to clear before groundbreaking, the public vote was a big one, and the strength of that support will make it easier to overcome remaining challenges.

San Jose

Pressure for greater fiscal responsibility in San Jose’s budgeting went up a few notches Tuesday, with distinctly conservative candidates making the runoff in two districts. And in the third seriously contested race, District 5, the promising moderate Magdalena Carrasco got nearly as many votes as labor-supported Xavier Campos   once thought to be a shoo-in to succeed his sister, Nora Campos, who is now bound for the state Assembly. We’re happy to see Carrasco in excellent position for the runoff.

Incumbent Madison Nguyen finished first in District 7 as did former council aide Don Rocha in District 9. But each faces a serious conservative in the fall, Minh Duong and Larry Pegram, respectively. Rocha and Nguyen would both be wise to better clarify their positions on city spending and stake out the moderate ground.

Santa Clara County

We’re disappointed that Teresa Alvarado didn’t make the runoff for the District 1 supervisor seat. She has tremendous leadership potential. The front-runner, Los Gatos Councilman Mike Wasserman, will face labor-backed Forrest Williams in the fall. Wasserman’s business background could be beneficial, but he has a huge learning curve on county issues, which are substantially different from Los Gatos’.

As to that lingering district attorney’s race, we’ve got our fingers crossed for Jeff Rosen, who is leading incumbent Dolores Carr. We’re confident he’ll be an excellent and ethical DA.

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The Lesson of June 2010: Corporate Power Can Be Beaten

June 9th, 2010

By Robert Cruickshank

In looking at the disparate results of the June 2010 election, there are two themes that stand out to me:

1. Republicans will do what they are told by their corporate masters. Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina won their primaries because they spent an enormous amount of money to tell Republicans that they should vote for CEOs because they’re smarter than everyone else and more likely to beat the Democrat this fall. That’s it.

Joe Mathews has a good take on Whitman’s victory, but it really does come down to her money. Same for Fiorina. Both dominated the messaging and TV airwaves with their ads, and did so early and often.

But it’s not only the money – it’s who they are. The Republican Party is the party of big corporations, with a voter base that believes big business can do no wrong. Look at the maps: Props 16 and 17 did very well in the Republican-friendly counties of Southern California. Prop 16 went down in the Central Valley partly because of voter anger at PG&E over the smart meters, but in SoCal where PG&E is unknown, Republicans said “sure, let’s give corporations whatever they ask.”

2. Corporations can be beaten. For the rest of California, however, unlimited corporate power is not seen as a positive thing. Letting them dominate and distort our elections with their money is rightly seen as a huge problem, whereas to Republicans it’s business as usual.

The defeat of both Propositions 16 and 17 is a major victory for progressives whose importance cannot possibly be underestimated. PG&E spent $40 million to pass it. The opposition? They spent $100,000. But with groups like the Courage Campaign (where I work as Public Policy Director) pitching in to help educate and organize voters, we were able to mobilize progressive activists to get the word out about this bad proposition, turn out to the polls, and make sure Prop 16 went down. Prop 17’s story was very similar, with opponents being outspent 10 to 1.

We weren’t able to beat Prop 14 or pass Prop 15. The voters really do want major political change, and don’t yet understand the benefits of public funding. But Prop 15 did much better than Prop 89, which suggests victory for clean money is near.

As we go into the fall campaign season, the arc of this election is now clear: it is a battle between corporate wealth and populist democracy. Our victory in Prop 16 and Prop 17 show how we can win that battle. Time to build and organize to win again in November.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robert Cruickshank is a historian, activist, and teacher living in Monterey. He is a contributing editor at Calitics.com and works for the Courage Campaign, in addition to teaching political science at Monterey Peninsula College. Currently he is completing his Ph.D. dissertation in US history, on progressive politics in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Our View: They’re Off To The Races

June 9th, 2010

Editorial, THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY TRIBUNE

Credit California’s voters with at least one thing – creating the prospect of a wild ride from here to November with the dueling Brown-Whitman drag race.

Well, credit them with two things: On the five propositions voters offered for voters’ consideration this week, they came out spot on.

Californians voted for Proposition 13, allowing seismic upgrades to our homes to be exempt from new property taxes. They voted for more ballot choices by approving the open-primary rules of Proposition 14, though smaller parties will challenge that in court, and the bigger parties don’t like it, either. They took a look at the interesting experiment in public financing offered by Proposition 15, but rejected the odd social-studies class project version presented to us that would have just incorporated secretary of state elections instead of all races. They made a mockery of the selfish $46 million in expenditures – paid for by the ratepayers – doled out by PG&E in the giant private utility’s effort to lock in monopolies rather than allowing municipalities to vote for their own public utilities. They properly rejected another private company, Mercury Insurance, in its efforts to improve its business model to the detriment of those of us who have to buy auto insurance. So maybe California’s proposition system is not broken after all – not when the electorate can make such good choices even when presented with a confusing ballot and big-bucks propaganda campaigns.

But with Republican nominee Meg Whitman, a political novice, and former Governor Jerry Brown, trying to make a comeback 36 years after first being elected governor, California is presented with an incredibly clear choice. There is nothing similar whatsoever about their backgrounds, and is likely to be nothing similar about the way they will campaign to turn around the troubled Golden State.

In their acceptance speeches Tuesday night, they got their engines roaring at the starting line.

“Jerry Brown has spent a lifetime in politics and the results have not been good,” Whitman said. “Failure seems to follow Jerry Brown everywhere.” Well – he has been elected to governor, to secretary of state, to mayor of Oakland, to attorney general. True, he failed miserably in his quixotic efforts to become president. But since then, he’s been sticking to his crafty California knitting.

“It’s not enough for someone rich and restless to look in the mirror one morning and decide, `Hey, it’s time to be governor of California,”‘ Brown said, clearly referring not only to billionaire Whitman but to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “We tried that. It didn’t work. Puffery, platitudes and promises won’t balance our budget, won’t fix our schools and won’t create any new jobs.” True. But Brown, son of another governor, has worked in the public sector for almost his entire life, and Whitman, the former boss of hugely successful Internet site eBay, has created quite a few jobs in her time.

It’s going to be quite a race, as is the all-woman – rare in American politics – duel for the Senate seat that another former Silicon Valley executive, GOP nominee Carly Fiorina, will battle incumbent, establishment Democrat Barbara Boxer for.

We can only hope against hope that the tone set in these races will not be the same as in the primaries. No matter what their campaign advisors say, Californians are looking for a contest of real ideas to fix our state’s economy, not for a summer and fall of duking it out over who is more against illegal immigration than the other candidate. We know where you stand on immigration, folks. That’s not the issue here. The issue is restoring California’s once-robust economic climate so that we can continue to thrive in one of the greatest places on Earth in which to live and to work. That’s what we came here for. That’s what has kept us strong. With moderate, sensible, jobs-oriented, environmentally sensitive leadership from a governor and a senator for all of California, that’s what will keep us strong in the future.

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