| | | | |  | | By Will McCarthy and Emily Schultheis | Presented by The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing | | 
The campaign to defeat Prop 36 does not expect that to be a prelude to the gusher of progressive cash that emerged to pass criminal-justice reform at the ballot a decade ago. | Ryan Sun/AP Photo | HERE COMES THE CAVALRY? — The No on Prop 36 committee has finally opened its doors, and in recent weeks has taken in its first major contributions — six-figure gifts each from leading criminal-justice reform donors Patty Quillin and Quinn Delaney. But the campaign to defeat Prop 36 does not expect that to be a prelude to the gusher of progressive cash that emerged to pass criminal-justice reform at the ballot a decade ago. “From our position, we have to assume the worst,” said committee spokesperson Anthony York. “It’s a little late in the game, but here we are.” The 2014 campaign to pass Proposition 47, which relaxed sentences for nonviolent crimes, raised $11 million from a mix of interests committed to unwinding decades of policies that cemented aggressive policing. The coalition included interest groups like the ACLU, which provided $3.5 million; wealthy individuals, like heirs B. Wayne Hughes, Jr., Molly Munger and Nick Pritzker; and institutions associated with George Soros’ philanthropic network. Opponents of the measure, largely from law enforcement groups, spent barely $550,000. With Prop 36 now seeking to undo a range of the 2014 changes, many of those names have yet to appear on No on 36’s fundraising reports. The ACLU’s gifts this time around represent a small fraction of what it spent to pass Prop 47, and the Soros-affiliated groups seem to have vanished from the cause altogether. There is one exception: Quillin’s $500,000 contribution this year exceeds what she and her husband, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, gave in 2014. That has left those who want to roll back the decade-old changes and raise penalties for theft and drug offenses with a major financial advantage, even as donations to the Yes on 36 committee have slowed. That group brought in seven-figure sums from several big box retailers to help qualify the initiative for the ballot, raising nearly $8 million in the first half of the year before corporate backers began to pull back this summer. Meanwhile, a separate committee aimed at winning Democratic support for Prop 36 has begun to raise its own funds. Anne Irwin, founder of the Smart Justice California donor alliance in which Quillin and Delaney are involved, said the group’s members have not changed their stance on Prop 36, which she called a “regressive prison spending initiative that will make California less safe.” "Funders are committed to getting that truth out to voters and ensuring that they see this is a ploy to drag California back to the costly, failed era of mass incarceration,” Irwin said in a statement to Playbook. But the money is trickling in slowly. York said No on 36’s paid-media plan will likely be limited to targeted digital ads, a far cry from the campaign that blanketed airwaves to sell Californians on Prop 47. A separate committee led by the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center is developing a parallel campaign aimed at turning out lower propensity voters with resources from civil rights and labor groups. “The Prop 36 committee has gotten major support from major corporations, police unions. There's no way we're going to be able to compete with that,” said Jose Bernal, the political director of the Ella Baker Center’s campaign arm. “What we do have, that Walmart doesn’t have, the district attorney doesn’t have, is those deep relationships.” York insists that the big dollars from progressive philanthropies which helped pass Prop 47 remain available, as long as his side can undermine the widely-held perception that Prop 36 is an unstoppable force. “The first thing we have to do is show that this is winnable, that there is a path,” York said. “We have the messaging, but we need to get it out, and we need to be a little scrappy.” NEWS BREAK: Gov. Gavin Newsom sends California National Guard to help fight Southern California’s Line Fire … President Joe Biden taps Republican Lanhee Chen for the Amtrak Board of Directors … Biden administration launches antitrust attack on Google. 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.
| | | | A message from The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing: Brand name drug companies are responsible for setting and hiking prescription drug list prices — and game the system to extend market exclusivity on their products, undermine competition from more affordable alternatives in the market and keep prescription drug prices high. Meanwhile, Big Pharma continues to point the finger at others through a debunked blame game meant to deflect attention. Reject Big Pharma’s blame game. Hold Big Pharma accountable. | | | |  | TOP OF THE TICKET | | A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures getting our attention this week. 1. PROP 4: The $10 billion bond to fund climate projects is doing well among one key voter demographic: Latino voters. New BSP Research polling released by the Latino Community Foundation found that more than 60 percent of Latinos support Prop 4. The poll also found majorities backing marriage-equality Prop 3 and rent-control Prop 33. 2. PROP 32: The thus-far wrong-footed campaign to raise the minimum wage pulled in unexpected star power last Thursday with a Los Angeles fundraiser featuring television personality Chrissy Teigen and other celebrities. Although the West Hollywood event didn’t focus exclusively on the initiative, it could trigger voter interest in the otherwise languid campaign. 3. PROP 33/34: The rent-control initiative wars continue to revolve around Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. As POLITICO’s Lara Korte reports, the proponents of Prop 33 last week urged their voters to “stand with [Vice President] Kamala Harris” by backing their proposal. The only problem? Harris hasn’t actually endorsed it. 4. PROP 3: The California Family Council, an official proponent of the successful 2008 campaign to ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution, is wading gingerly into the fight to protect the now-dormant language. In a webinar last week, the group previewed the type of slippery-slope message it will use amid widespread acceptance of same-sex couples: “This could open the door up for child marriage, polygamy and incestuous marriage.” 5. PROP L (San Francisco County): Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin has thrown his support behind an initiative to fund public transit via a tax on rideshare companies and autonomous vehicle companies, which could make the measure an issue in the city’s mayoral race where Peskin is a candidate. 6. PROP 35: Now that the measure to make permanent a tax on certain health care plans has some declared opposition from the Children’s Partnership, California Alliance for Retired Americans, Courage California, and League of Women Voters of California, the big question is whether any of them will pony up to fund a real campaign — or if the Yes on 35 campaign will have the airwaves largely to itself. 7. MEASURE A (LA County): The measure, which would replace an expiring quarter-cent sales tax with a permanent half-cent sales tax to fund the city’s efforts to combat homelessness, formally kicked off its campaign last week with a North Hollywood launch event. Its supporters are billing it as an accountability-focused measure backed by citizens rather than politicians.
| | DOWN BALLOT | | ON OTHER BALLOTS — The Missouri Supreme Court will hold a hearing Tuesday morning about whether to allow a constitutional amendment guaranteeing certain abortion rights to appear on the ballot — the same day the state is supposed to start printing absentee ballots … Meanwhile, a constitutional amendment on abortion rights in Nebraska went before the state Supreme Court today after two lawsuits argued the measure — one of two dueling abortion amendments appearing before the state’s voters this fall — violated the single-subject rule for ballot measures … A judge in Idaho dismissed the state attorney general’s challenge to an initiative that would establish open primaries and ranked-choice voting … And former President Donald Trump said Sunday he will vote for a Florida constitutional amendment that would legalize marijuana.
| | | | A message from The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing:   | | | | | POSTCARD FROM ... | | |  | … DUBLIN — A-list celebrities rarely ask for their property to be annexed by small towns. But a land-use initiative coming before voters in California’s fastest-growing city has the posthumous blessing of one of the 20th century’s biggest names in entertainment: Bing Crosby. The controversy surrounds an 80-acre parcel of land in Dublin, a city testing the limits of its own prodigious development in the geographic center of the Bay Area megaregion between San Francisco and Sacramento. Dublin’s location, in combination with abundant open space and development-friendly policies, has in a matter of decades transformed the city from a ranching crossroads to an urban center studded with new townhouses. This summer, the Dublin City Council approved Measure II, which asks voters to amend a decade-old open-space initiative that established an urban-growth boundary so the city can extend Dublin Boulevard, a major thoroughfare, into neighboring Livermore with the goal of eventually building warehouses and potentially Amazon-style distribution centers alongside it. The 80-acre parcel being eyed for warehouses and distribution centers sits on rolling pastures owned by Crosby’s trust. The singer and actor was a resident of Hillsborough, just south of San Francisco, and a man about town in the Bay Area. Since Crosby’s death in 1977, his trust has invested widely in land across California. In 2014, as the green hills that surrounded Dublin grew increasingly dotted with tan apartment complexes, public sentiment shifted against continued growth. Environmental activists qualified an initiative to draw a line on Dublin’s east side that walled off the Crosby property from future development. The city council, with some members facing their own reelections, unanimously chose to enact the initiative before it came to voters. Now, 10 years later, the city is asking for control over that land back. The city council was split on the proposal, voting 3-2 to place the measure on the November ballot. Groups that helped enact the open-space law quickly lept into action to protect their hard-fought boundary, including Friends of Livermore and Save Mt. Diablo, which led the effort to collect signatures for the 2014 campaign. “Dublin has never seen a piece of land that they didn’t want to develop,” said Friends of Livermore board member David Rounds. (Staff with the City of Dublin did not reply to requests for comment about the initiative.) Save Mt. Diablo is taking the threat seriously, said Land Conservation Director Seth Adams, by courting major donors and hiring professional campaign staff. In Adams' view, this is no minor land-use battle but rather the beginning of a coordinated campaign to develop the remaining open space around Dublin. Although there is a group that has emerged to pass Measure II, it has yet to launch a website and the campaign has not identified its funders. Crosby once sang that “the best things in life are free,” but given the level of resources gearing up against the measure, any campaign will not be.
| | BLAST FROM THE PAST | | This year, Proposition 4 is a $10 billion bond to fund climate-related projects. In the past, that number has been used for measures to: Guarantee women’s suffrage in the state constitution (1911, passed) … Allow absentee voting for military personnel (1918, failed) … Issue a $6 million bond to acquire land for state parks (1928, passed) … Prohibit the state attorney general from having a private legal practice (1934, passed) … Permit the state to lend money to veterans to buy a business, land, buildings, supplies, equipment, machinery or tools (1946, passed) … Require a 60-percent supermajority to pass bond measures funding schools and libraries (1966, failed) … Empower courts to deny bail to a person charged with a felony who may pose bodily harm to others (1982, passed) … Prohibit the trapping of fur-bearing animals (1998, passed) … And require parental notification before a minor could receive an abortion (2008, failed).
| | | | A message from The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing: Millions of dollars in advertising from Big Pharma attempts to point the finger at others through a debunked blame game meant to deflect attention and evade accountability for the pharmaceutical industry’s own egregious pricing practices.
Meanwhile, drug manufacturers are responsible for setting and hiking prescription drug list prices — and game the system to extend market exclusivity on their products, undermine competition from more affordable alternatives in the market and keep prescription drug prices high.
Reject Big Pharma’s blame game. Hold Big Pharma accountable. | | | | | WHO'S STEERING... | | … YES ON 35 — 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: Jodi Hicks, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, and California Medical Association CEO Dustin Corcoran co-chair the Yes on 35 campaign that brings together a wide range of health-care interests to redirect revenue from the tax on managed-care organizations. RIDING SHOTGUN: Veteran ballot-measure operatives Brandon Castillo and Colleen Spitz of BCFS are running the Yes on 35 campaign, along with Experta Strategies’ Alma Hernandez. BCFS directed strategy related to two initiatives negotiated off this fall’s ballot, working to repeal the Private Attorneys General Act and to beat back a minimum-wage boost for fast food workers. UNDER THE HOOD: Molly Weedn, who handled press for the effort to pass this spring’s Prop 1, is playing the same role for Yes on 35. San Diego’s BASK Digital oversees the digital campaign, and Josh Heller of JSQ Group works on coalition outreach alongside BCSF’s team. IN THE GARAGE: Focus-group maestro David Binder handles polling as part of a busy fall in which he is overseeing opinion research for both Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and the Prop 5 housing-finance amendment. RIDING ALONG: The California Primary Care Association, led by Francisco Silva, and the California Hospital Association are taking an active role in a coalition that also includes doctors’ professional organizations and community clinics. FUEL SOURCE: Among a slew of six- and seven-figure donations from across the medical and hospital world, three big donors to Yes on 35 stand out for dropping more than $10 million each into the campaign: the California Hospital Association, the California Medical Association and Colorado-based ambulance company Global Medical Response. DECALS: The initiative boasts endorsements from both the state’s Democratic and Republican parties. HOOD ORNAMENT: Politically active San Francisco pediatrician Yasuko Fukuda signed the voter-guide argument on behalf of Prop 35.
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