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Will McCarthy and Melanie Mason | |
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks at an event supporting Measure A. | Emily Schultheis/POLITICO | A FOR AMBIVALENT? —
Los Angeles residents say homelessness is the issue that worries them most, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ready to spend more to address the problem. In the balance is Los Angeles County’s Measure A, which would extend and increase a county-level tax to fund local leaders’ approach toward homelessness, including affordable housing development, rent relief and resources to prevent evictions. The initiative’s backers, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass
, are discovering more government spending to be a difficult sell at a time when penny-pinching voters are skeptical that money is being used effectively. Recent polling shows the county’s voters split on the measure just seven years after they overwhelmingly supported Measure H, a 10-year, quarter-cent sales tax to address homelessness.
“We have very little concern or pushback on any of the affordable housing components of this,” said United Way of Greater Los Angeles Vice President Tommy Newman, whose group is involved in the Yes on A campaign and serves as its top funder. “Where you run into a lot of questions and some concern is around homelessness, specifically. Voters continue to see those two things very distinctly.”
Backers of Measure A say letting the previous tax expire in 2027 without putting something new in place would be existential in a region where homelessness is particularly acute, with 75,000 unhoused people in the county as of the most recent annual count.
“We need everyone in Los Angeles County to understand that if Measure A does not pass, critical funding for homeless shelter services and housing will be lost,” Bass said at a press conference this morning. “We cannot afford to go backward.” The measure faces no organized opposition — instead, its biggest hurdle is a skeptical electorate’s ambivalence about spending on homelessness issues. To address voters’ concerns, Measure A’s backers have focused heavily on the accountability requirements built into the proposal.
The campaign placed a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month to drive home that point: “Greater LA’s approach to homelessness needs to change,” it says, asserting Measure A would “apply lessons learned” to “get real results.” It’s tough to tell whether that messaging will be enough in what appears to be a close race. A late September survey
from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies found support at 49 percent, compared with 33 percent who would vote “no” and 17 percent who remained undecided. (Still, IGS found an upward trend from August, when 47 percent of voters supported the measure and 36 percent opposed it.) Newman said the Yes side’s polling shows similar numbers, but that after explaining the proposal’s benefits and the drawbacks of not passing it, they’ve seen support rising enough to get it above 50 percent.
“I think that there's a lot of frustration out there, and that's going to show up in the vote totals,” he said. “But when folks learn what's at stake, the risk of a 28 percent increase [in homelessness] if the funding expires, how this is different [from previous measures] with increases in prevention and housing, it moves a lot of those undecideds to yes.” NEWS BREAK: New poll shows
Daniel Lurie surging in S.F. mayoral race … Nearly 2,400 Kaiser mental health workers in Southern California go on strike … Kern County supervisor leaves public meeting and accuses authorities of searching her office.
Welcome to Ballot Measure Weekly, a special edition of Playbook PM every Monday focused on California’s lively realm of ballot measure campaigns. Drop us a line at eschultheis@politico.com and wmccarthy@politico.com, or find us on X — @emilyrs and @wrmccart.
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TOP OF THE TICKET | | A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures getting our attention this week.
1. PROP 2: The campaign to pass Prop 2 is trying to tie its $10 billion education bond to climate change — even while a more popular climate bond sits on the same ballot. Yes on 2’s second round of digital advertising launches today with a 15-second spot arguing that school upgrades are necessary to handle increasingly severe heat waves.
2. MEASURE Z (Santa Cruz): A California surfing idyll may determine whether soda is poised to go the way of Big Tobacco: banished to the outskirts of modern consumption habits. As Will reports, a ballot measure in Santa Cruz could force the beverage industry to start fighting soda tax battles before voters in every other city in the state. 3. PROP 32:
The Yes on 32 campaign launched a six-figure digital ad buy aimed at Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley and the Inland Empire. The ads, targeting working-class voters, trumpet endorsements from The Sacramento Bee and The Los Angeles Times to make the case that Prop 32 will help workers make rent and beat inflation. The campaign also received a better-late-than-never $31,000 boost from its founding father Joe Sanberg.
4. PROP 35: Yes on 35 now has more than 400 endorsements, the campaign tells Playbook, pointing to a handful of groups — Black Women for Wellness Action Project, Community Coalition and the Alpha Project for the Homeless — now on board. The well-funded campaign is taking pains to demonstrate it’s not just health-care heavyweights like the California Hospital Association and Planned Parenthood stumping to make permanent the tax on certain health care plans.
5. PROP 34: $12 million flowed last week alone into the fight over the so-called revenge initiative targeting Michael Weinstein’s political ambitions. The California Apartment Association gave more than $4 million to the Yes campaign, while Weinstein’s AIDS Healthcare Foundation put $8 million into its effort to defeat the measure. 6. PROP 3:
Supporters of the effort to remove dormant marriage language from California’s constitution are using the campaign to help heal wounds within the LGBTQ+ movement left by the 2008 campaign against Prop 8, which often overlooked people of color and transgender people, POLITICO’s Dustin Gardiner reports. 7. PROP 6: The campaign to ban forced prison labor
got a six-figure boost from the Heising-Simons Action Fund, the charitable arm of a Bay Area family foundation, which has already put more than half a million dollars toward defeating the tough-on-crime Prop 36.
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| IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION | |
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We’re pleased to introduce POLITICO’s contribution to the robust literary genre of California ballot-measure voter guides. Our goal has been to produce something less boring and less homework-y than what we’re used to seeing, pitched at the savvy voter who actually likes and cares about politics rather than one who sees it as a citizen’s dutiful slog.
If you’re reading this, we probably don’t have to convince you this is important stuff. In addition to a guide to each of the 10 statewide measures (as well as five notable city and county ones), we have two things we’re especially proud of:
- A cool interactive that visualizes the shifting coalitions of the ballot measure landscape, showing how initiatives often produce strange bedfellows.
- Our roundup of what’s on local ballots across California, drawn from having relentlessly tracked every county and local measure. You’ll find statewide trends like cities reckoning with a new era of fire risk and townies taking it to tourists, along with idiosyncratic one-offs like a strident debate about pickleball.
We hope you find this guide to be original, surprising and maybe even funny. Please share the
politico.com/caballot link with your friends and family.
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DOWN BALLOT | |
ON OTHER BALLOTS — A federal judge in Florida sided with supporters’ right to air ads on a proposed amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The ruling bars leaders at the state’s health department from threatening TV stations that are running ads in favor of the measure …
Polling finds several of this year’s abortion-rights measures in a strong position to pass: A Mason-Dixon poll has Florida’s Amendment 4 at 61 percent, a UMBC Institute of Politics poll found support for Maryland’s Question 1 at 69 percent and an AZFamily/HighGround poll
found Arizona’s Prop 139 at 59 percent support … A group campaigning against an initiative in Alaska that would repeal the state’s ranked-choice voting system has outraised its supporters by a hundredfold: $12 million to $120,000 … A similar dynamic is underway in Oregon
, where supporters of a measure to introduce ranked-choice voting have raised $4.1 million to the opposition’s $1,000 … And labor unions in Massachusetts are divided over a ballot measure supported by Uber and Lyft that would allow rideshare drivers to unionize as independent contractors.
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POSTCARD FROM ... | | | |
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… YREKA — When a fire alarm sounds across much of a sprawling region of Northern California, stretching from the Pacific coast range to the dry grasslands, the call comes into a dilapidated 90-year-old firehouse in Yreka, to be answered by a volunteer-run department whose chief is currently the only full-time paid employee.
That pro-bono paradigm, seemingly of a bygone era, has led to serious burnout. In recent years, the number of people in a city of 8,000 willing or able to work for free fell as low as 17. In 2022, one volunteer responded to over 1,000 calls. For weeks, a banner hung outside the fire department in the center of town, asking for more volunteers. Now voters in Yreka, the seat and largest population center of remote Siskiyou County, are being asked to weigh in on Measure V
, a 1 percent sales tax increase that would hire paid firefighters and potentially fund a new fire station in downtown Yreka. City officials say it may be the only way to forestall catastrophe for the rural region. “We see on the horizon, in the future, complete failure,” said City Manager Jason Ledbetter. “At some point, there's going to be a phone call for an emergency and people aren't going to show up.”
The number of emergency calls the small fire department has to respond to has skyrocketed in the last 30 years, according to Ledbetter, increasing from about 150 a year to nearly 2,000. Although much of that increase comes from medical calls, there are also more fires than ever, too.
The city council voted in June to refer the tax to the ballot, characterizing it as a more equitable funding approach that diverts the burden from Yreka residents to include anyone passing through town. The city’s location just off I-5 means travelers are common, and every transaction at the gas station could now help fund the city’s fire department.
Although there is no organized campaign against the measure, Ledbetter said there has been some concern in the community that the tax goes to the general fund rather than directly to the fire department, which would require a special tax and a two-thirds majority. Still, given the tenuous status of the city’s emergency response system, Yreka’s city council chose to take the safer path. “There is no other alternative, we need the money,” Ledbetter said.
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BLAST FROM THE PAST | | | |
A view of San Diego's Salk Institute for Biological Studies. | Lenny Ignelzi/AP Photo |
This year Measure E is a proposed one-cent increase to San Diego city’s sales tax. In the past, the city has used that letter for measures that would: Require competitive bids for city purchases over $1,000 (
1953, passed) ... Allow Inspections Department employees to hold teaching posts on the side (1954, passed) … Approve a property transfer of land to be used for the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1960
, passed) … Give the mayor the ability to appoint all seven members of the city planning commission (1963, passed) ... Create a seven-person Salary Setting Commission to propose pay for mayor and city council, subject to voter approval (1973
, passed) ... Elect city-council members by district rather than citywide (1981, failed) ... Elect city-council members by district rather than citywide (1988, passed) ... Alternate election cycles for odd-numbered districts and even-numbered districts (
1992, passed) … Require a supermajority vote from city council to approve tax increases (2002, passed but struck down by appeals court) ... Add procedures to remove elected officials without voter-initiated recall (
2016, passed) ... Lease the Mission Valley site for development of the SoccerCity stadium district (2018, failed) ... And remove height limits around the San Diego Sports Arena site (2020, passed).
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WHO'S STEERING... | |
… NO ON 33 — Ballot-measure committees are a vehicle for disparate interests driving toward a common goal. Here’s our look under the hood at the coalitions, consultants and cash coming together to power them. AT THE WHEEL: The California Apartment Association
is in the driver’s seat, committing $56 million to defeat the third attempt at a statewide rent-control initiative in the past six years. The campaign shares some staff with the Yes on 34 campaign, which is inextricably linked to the battle over Prop 33. SHOTGUN: The campaign is under the day-to-day operation of apartment lobbyist Tony Bui, its campaign manager, and
Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff Jim DeBoo, the general consultant. UNDER THE HOOD: Longtime opposition researcher Joe Rodota has been looking for dirt for the campaign’s nemesis, the
AIDS Healthcare Foundation, through his Forward Observer firm, while pollster Dave Metz of FM3 Research has been probing for Prop 33’s weakness. Law firm Olson Remcho is handling legal work for the campaign.
IN THE GARAGE: Bearstar Strategies, including Juan Rodriguez, Ace Smith, Sean Clegg and Alaina Haworth, is behind No on 33’s television ads. They’re working alongside other old Newsom hands: Nathan Click
deals with reporters for No on 33 while the governor’s former digital director Tonya LaMont of Los Angeles’ LaMont Digital carries the message online. RIDING ALONG:
Although the No on 33 campaign is primarily funded by trade associations dominated by large corporate property owners, independent landlords have also signed onto the campaign in large numbers as part of a coalition strategy run by Joshua Heller and Johan Rognerud’s JSQ Group. FUEL SOURCE:
While individual landlords have chipped in a notable share of small-dollar donations, the California Association of Realtors and the National Association of Realtors have helped make this the biggest-ticket measure on the ballot, with over $20 million in contributions. DECALS:
Nearly every major newspaper in California has encouraged readers to vote no on Prop 33, the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times doing so after having endorsed previous iterations of the rent control measure. HOOD ORNAMENT: Newsom has become the face of No on 33 in ads and mailers across the state. |
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