| | | | |  | | By Will McCarthy and Emily Schultheis | Presented by California Resources Corporation | |  Minimum wage laws for specific industries, like health care workers, has made the fight for an $18 minimum wage on this November's ballot feel almost obsolete. | AP | WAGING A NEW BATTLE? — Business groups have entered the fray over an $18 minimum wage. How long can labor sit on the sidelines? The California Retailers Association and Western Growers have come aboard the No on Proposition 32 campaign, joining the California Restaurant Association and Chamber of Commerce. The combined $45,000 that the groups contributed last week is a pittance, but represents the first engagement from establishment business and labor groups that spent millions clashing over Proposition 210 in 1996 (which set a $5 wage floor) and in two dozen other state-level initiatives nationwide. Until now, they all largely shrugged at California’s statewide minimum as a policy artifact, rendered obsolete by a patchwork of exceptions. Business, however, is showing a new interest in the minimum wage issue after other priorities, notably the Taxpayer Protection Act, disappeared from a once-crowded ballot. The No on Proposition 32 committee took in its first contributions in mid-July, with $5,000 each from the Chamber of Commerce and California Restaurant Association. Those groups both doubled their commitment in August and were joined by the Retailers, Western Growers PAC and California Grocers Association. “Candidly, with all the noise around other ballot measures, after all of those things collapsed, you had this one just sitting there,” the grocers association’s Daniel Conway told Playbook. “For those of us in the business community, it was like, we can't just sit on our hands and let this one go, even if the proponent has stepped away from it.” The initiative has been without a champion since Joe Sanberg — who spent $10 million to help qualify the measure for the ballot in 2022 — effectively abandoned the project, asserting its success to be a foregone conclusion. But public and private polls now tell a different story: a UC Berkeley IGS/Los Angeles Times survey released last week shows just 52 percent of voters support the $18 initiative, with fourteen percent undecided. California Working Families Party state director Jane Kim, whose organization has pledged volunteer support to the minimum-wage campaign but has little to offer in the way of financial resources, expects that the involvement of business groups will motivate her allies on the labor left to take the threat seriously. “There is no world under which labor and progressives would accept a defeat of the raise of the minimum wage even if it's not as high as people want it to be,” Kim told Playbook. “The question mark is now, with actual opposition to the ballot measure, what additional resources are we going to need.” Conway said it’s likely the grocers will continue to support the No effort through November. Even if labor doesn’t rally around Prop 32, he said business groups saw the measure as a way to push back more broadly on local and sector-based minimum wage increases around the state. “It depends if there is a Yes campaign, but there's an important conversation to be had about this,” Conway said. “We see this campaign as an opportunity to have this conversation with California voters.” | | | | A message from California Resources Corporation: California Resources Corporation (CRC) is a different kind of energy company, committed to helping California achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 while powering our busy lives. CRC's Carbon TerraVault will provide innovative services to capture, transport and permanently store carbon dioxide deep underground - helping to reduce emissions and advance energy transition while bringing rewarding jobs to our local California communities. CRC's Carbon TerraVault | | |
NEWS BREAK: Today’s California DNC speaker lineup: LA Mayor Karen Bass, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Rep. Robert Garcia … Gov. Gavin Newsom to speak Tuesday … DCCC reserves $5 million in airtime in key California media markets, including $1.5 million in Spanish-language ads.
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. |  | TOP OF THE TICKET | | A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures getting our attention this week. 1. CHEVRON TAX (Richmond): After Richmond City Council agreed to a half-billion dollar deal with Chevron in exchange for pulling its initiative to impose a per-barrel tax on the oil-and-gas giant, environmental justice groups behind the spiked measure say they are disappointed the council folded at “the first whiff of litigation.” 2. PROP 36: The No on 36 campaign previewed its message at a kickoff rally in Sacramento this afternoon, focusing on the harmful impacts of mass incarceration and the high cost that the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates would accompany the initiative’s implementation. Assemblymember Mia Bonta referred to Prop 36 as "fool's gold,” promising to curtail crime without actually delivering. 3. PROP 34: The campaign to defund the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is unveiling the endorsement of the California Professional Firefighters as it goes up with its first ad this week, POLITICO has learned exclusively. The ad claims Prop 34 will help slow rising health care costs and target the “greediest health care corporations.” 4. OIL WELL SETBACKS: It’s been nearly two months since the California Independent Petroleum Association pulled its oil-well setback referendum at the end of the legislative session — and we’re just starting to learn why. One possible answer emerged last week when Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced legislation to further delay aspects of the law which drillers had planned to challenge at the ballot. The Department of Finance and CIPA both deny the delays were part of a quid pro quo. 5. HOUSING BOND (Bay Area): A half-decade-long effort to pass a $20 billion housing bond in the Bay Area was pulled from the ballot in a last-minute move. Now, the coalition of nonprofits and housing organizations will turn their efforts to the campaign to pass Prop 5, to which any bond’s future success would be tied. (More on that below). 6. PROP 5: A court challenge from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association may be done, but boosters of the amendment to make it easier for local governments to issue housing bonds still face ballot-label hurdles, including a Legislative Analyst’s Office analysis stating the bonds would require higher property taxes. 7. PROP 33: The Democratic Socialists of America made an unusual foray into California ballot politics with a $5,000 donation to Yes on 33. It’s one of the few deposits in the rent-control campaign’s account from somewhere other than the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which put in another $1 million last week. — With help from Lindsey Holden | | | | A message from California Resources Corporation:   | | | | | DOWN BALLOT | | ON OTHER BALLOTS — Election officials in Arizona and Missouri formally certified abortion rights constitutional amendments for their respective November ballots … Legal arguments are underway over an anti-discrimination constitutional amendment in New York, over the question of whether the proposal will include the word “abortion” (the measure protects the right to an abortion, among other provisions) … The opponents of Maryland’s abortion rights constitutional amendment formally launched their campaign, arguing that it could open the door for minors to receive gender-affirming care ... Voters in Wisconsin rejected two initiatives placed on last week’s primary ballot by the Republican-led state legislature, both intended to limit the governor’s ability to allocate federal funding … And Idaho’s attorney general refiled his lawsuit against an initiative that would implement ranked-choice voting after the state Supreme Court dismissed his initial legal challenge.
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| | … SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY — The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors has planted its flag in the public-safety debate circling Prop 36. In a seemingly savvy assessment of the political environment, the county’s political leaders have rejected “Defund the Police” in favor of “Fund the Police Forever.” The bipartisan five-member board is sending voters a proposed charter amendment to “protect the community from potential defunding of law enforcement services” and establish a minimum level of funding for officers in the sprawling unincorporated areas of the county. The measure, Proposition L, will appear on the Inland Empire county’s November ballot. “We don’t ever want future boards of supervisors to be able to take public safety away in our very rural and remote areas of the county,” said Supervisor Dawn Rowe, a nonpartisan with Republican ties who represents the most unincorporated regions in the county. In an interview with Playbook, Rowe tied the measure to statewide policy debates and specifically mentioned Prop 47, currently facing a high-profile repeal effort, as a burden on the county. Unlike other areas whose local leaders have criticized the 2014 criminal-justice initiative, San Bernardino’s unincorporated areas are unlikely to face any large-scale retail-theft problem. The remote stretches of desert and mountain are usually so far-flung that they lack any consumer products to steal. (Violent crime and property crime have both fallen in unincorporated areas according to the most recent publicly available data, although rates vary significantly across the county.) But the county does face real geographic and economic challenges in policing. For years, San Bernardino County lost officers to higher paying jobs in Los Angeles and Orange County and has often been understaffed. Meanwhile, the sheer size of the county means officers are responsible for patrolling vast stretches of land. (One station, in Needles on the Arizona border, covers 5,131 square miles — roughly the size of Connecticut.) More recently, the county has upped officer salaries and, although there are still vacancies, come to something of a staffing equilibrium. Rowe acknowledges there is little debate within San Bernardino about maintaining the current police presence. There have been no recent calls to cut funding for law enforcement, but Rowe said past calls for such action across the state is proof enough of the threat. “We’ve had a lot of conversations in the municipalities around us about defunding the police,” Rowe said. “That’s not something we’re interested in. We want to say we favor public safety.” | | | | A message from California Resources Corporation: California Resources Corporation (CRC) is committed to our net zero future and empowering California to achieve its ambitious climate goals. CRC is developing pathways that will offer both immediate decarbonization benefits and long-term solutions to reduce emissions and curb rising global temperatures. CRC has an unwavering dedication to environmental stewardship while safely providing local, responsibly sourced energy.
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Get The Facts on CRC's Carbon TerraVault | | | | | BLAST FROM THE PAST | | This year, Proposition 3 is a constitutional amendment that removes dormant language defining marriage as only between a man and a woman. In the past, the same number has been used for measures that would: Make it a misdemeanor to require an employee to work more than eight hours per day (1914, failed)... Issue a $10 million bond to help war veterans buy houses and farms (1922, passed)... Introduce a special license to sell margarine products, which must be identified to consumers as non-dairy (1926, failed)... Create the California Horse Racing Board to regulate the ponies (1933, passed)... Require revenue from gas tax and vehicle-license fees to be spent on streets and highways (1938, passed)... Transfer oversight of the state penal system from an independent board to the Legislature (1940, passed)... Allow the Public Utilities Commission to regulate the number of brakemen working on trains (1948, passed)... Extend property tax exemption to schools operated by non-profit religious or charitable organizations (1952, passed)... Empower the Legislature to protect “open space lands” (1966, passed)... Eliminate the constitutional right of criminal defendants to represent themselves at trial (1972, passed)... Limit funding for purchases of historically incongruous furniture in restored areas of the Capitol (1980, passed)... End open-primary system (1998, failed)... Issue nearly $9 billion in bonds for water-related infrastructure (2018, failed).
| | WHO'S STEERING... | | … YES ON 3 — 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: LGBTQ+-rights groups Equality California, Human Rights Campaign and ACLU (through its Northern California affiliate) are leading the campaign to enshrine marriage equality in the state constitution. All were involved in the failed campaign to defeat the Prop 8 marriage ban in 2008, where a sprawling 15-member executive committee often found itself in tension with the hired hands. RIDING SHOTGUN: Democratic firm Hilltop Public Solutions, which helped lead the 2022 effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, provides the day-to-day leadership: longtime labor hand Courtni Pugh serves as campaign manager and Jacob Jauregui as her deputy. UNDER THE HOOD: Oakland’s EMC Research, which worked on the 2022 abortion-rights amendment that serves as something of a model for the marriage campaign, oversees polling. IN THE GARAGE: Former Newsom spokesman Nathan Click is handling the press as part of a Click Strategies team with digital director Maddy Buss while Roxsley Strategies’ Erica Liepmann, a one-time aide to former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, is tasked with building out Prop 3’s coalition. RIDING ALONG: The TransLatin@ Coalition and Planned Parenthood Action Fund also have seats on the executive committee. FUEL SOURCE: Sen. Toni Atkins, currently running to be the state’s first openly gay governor, seeded the committee with an early $100,000 from her ballot-measure committee. Subsequent six-figure contributions have come in from the California Federation of Teachers and the carsharing company Turo, along with $1 million from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. The committee’s money team might be distracted headed into the fall: fundraising consultant Kristin Bertolina Faust decamped to Delaware after being named a national finance co-chair for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, leaving her partners Rhiannon See-Barnato and Angie Georgoulias to tend to Yes on 3. DECALS: Yes on 3 has won endorsements from the California Democratic Party and the California Labor Federation. HOOD ORNAMENT: Assemblymember Evan Low, who moved the amendment through the Capitol and backed it with his campaign committee, serves as the committee’s honorary chairman. | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
