By Edward Ring
Even by national standards, state ballot initiative campaigns in California are big time politics. You can run a campaign for U.S. Senator in most states in America for less than it costs to qualify and successfully campaign to pass a statewide ballot initiative in California. Political insiders in Sacramento describe any controversial initiative with well funded antagonists as a “war.” And if politics is war by other means, they’re right. The latest war is over Prop. 30, the “Clean Cars and Clean Air Act.”
What’s unusual about Prop. 30, however, is how it has split California’s ruling elite. On the side in favor of Prop. 30, you have billionaire Democrats, a powerful corporation that promotes itself as both woke and green, and the firefighters union. Opposing Prop. 30 are Governor Newsom and the California Teachers Association, and to fund their opposition campaign, an assortment of individuals and organizations that defy categorization other than to say that Newsom and the CTA have picked some surprising bedfellows.
In this battle of juggernauts, and in a twist of politics that is exceedingly rare, the CTA is up against a bigger and stronger bully.
The best way to get recent information on campaign spending in California is on the Secretary of State’s Campaign Finance website under “Propositions and Ballot Measures.” Since the only money that matters in a state ballot initiative is big money, select “Proposition 30,” then for each committee listed, click on the “Late and $5,000+ Contributions Received” link. This will give you information on every major contribution up to 10 days ago.
The primary force behind Prop. 30 is Lyft, which has already dumped $25 million into the Yes on 30 campaign. This represents over 90 percent of the funding so far, and if their battle to rewrite AB 5 back in 2020 is any indication, Lyft is prepared to spend the opposition into the ground.
Joining Newsom and the CTA in opposition to Prop. 30 is the uncreatively named “No on 30” committee, with major donations so far totaling $11.4 million. The big donors include individuals whose giving history puts them all over the map: Libertarians, Never Trump Republicans, and Democrats. Motivations must vary. No new taxes? Not another subsidy? Business or ideological concern with Lyft’s agenda?
Also opposing Prop. 30 with $1 million in contributions is “Govern California,” a centrist PAC – emulating the public sector union model – that has 18 chapters spread around the state. This enables mega-donors to contribute to each chapter, then each chapter donates to an assortment of candidates targeted for support. The practical effect of this is that instead of a donor being constrained by the individual maximum donation they can make to a candidate, that maximum is magnified by the number of Govern for California chapters they support which in-turn donate to that candidate. Brilliant.
Although the firefighters union and the teachers union have not made significant contributions to the committees for or against Prop. 30, at least not yet, they are the face of the campaigns. Lyft may be paying the networks, but it’s a firefighter we see on television, in a saturation level campaign to convince us Prop. 30 will stop wildfires, clean the air, and fight climate change. Similarly, Newsom and classroom teachers are the face of the opposition campaign, which stresses the need for income taxes to prioritize “classrooms, communities,” and “transitional kindergarten, public schools, community colleges.”
Rhetoric aside, what does Prop. 30 do?
The initiative calls for a 1.75 percent additional state income tax on earnings over $2.0 million per year, and this new levy is estimated to raise up to $4.5 billion per year. Of that total, 80 percent will subsidize ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle) charging stations and ZEV rebates, and 15 percent will pay for wildfire response – mostly to hire more firefighters – and 5 percent will be spent to thin forests to prevent future wildfires.
The biggest problem with this initiative isn’t just that it raises taxes, offers subsidies, and expands the state government. Those are all problems, but at the risk of heresy, one may consider the possibility that if new taxes, subsidies, and bureaucracies were doing something productive, that might make sense. Looking back to the construction of the state water project back in the 1950s and ’60s, we see evidence that public investment has not always been a pointless waste.
That isn’t the case here.
Read the rest, here.
Originally published by the California Globe. Republished with permission.
Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. The California Policy Center is an educational non-profit focused on public policies that aim to improve California’s democracy and economy. He is also a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. Ring is the author of two books: “Fixing California – Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism” (2021), and “The Abundance Choice – Our Fight for More Water in California” (2022).
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