| | | | |  | | By Emily Schultheis and Will McCarthy | | Presented by |  | | | |  Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is among the highest-profile politicians in California who hasn't weighed in on Proposition 36. | AP | KEEPING A LOW PROFILE — How long can Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass stay out of the debate over Proposition 36? Mayors in four of the five biggest cities in California have endorsed the tough-on-crime initiative, with San Francisco’s London Breed, San Jose’s Matt Mahan and San Diego’s Todd Gloria making it a key part of their political work this year. Mahan even launched his own Yes on 36 committee last month, reaching out to local elected officials in an effort to bring moderate Democrats on board for the proposal. But the leader of the state’s biggest city — and the head of its largest law enforcement apparatus — has managed to stay conspicuously on the sidelines. Bass has said little on the topic beyond a brief remark to the Los Angeles Times in June that Prop 47, the criminal justice law Prop 36 would roll back, “has its strengths and weaknesses and it should be evaluated in the same way that the impacts of any policy should be examined” — a comment that doesn’t really clear up where she stands on this year’s initiative, or much of anything else for that matter. (A spokesperson for Bass didn’t respond to a request from Playbook to clarify her position on Prop 36.) Bass actively campaigned for Prop 47 while in Congress and has criticized mass incarceration in the U.S. But she’s also acknowledged the toll that retail theft has taken on her city, launching a task force to tackle the issue last summer. “Our number one job is to keep Angelenos safe and to feel safe,” she said then. Bass’ lack of a public position on Prop 36 suits her own current priorities: to project a single-minded fixation on homelessness. “Since she took office, she has been laser-focused on addressing homelessness and affordable housing in the city,” Minh Nguyen, an L.A.-based Democratic political consultant, told Playbook. “So it’s no surprise that’s where she’s put her attention this year.” That has meant little time for much overt politicking this election season. Bass has boosted Kamala Harris on social media, endorsed in a handful of City Council races and is backing Measure A, a county-wide sales tax that would pay for affordable housing and homelessness programs. She also held a low-key launch earlier this summer for her own 2026 reelection bid. Given the attention and public support Prop 36 is winning statewide — and the fact that Mahan and others have billed the measure as connected to and crucial for tackling the state’s homelessness crisis — it would be a feat for Bass to maintain her strategic silence much longer. But it’s understandable that she would want to try. As the longtime Democratic strategist Bob Shrum put it: “Elected officials don’t want to get in front of a freight train.” — With help from Melanie Mason NEWS BREAK: Journalists from Southern California News Group vote to authorize strike … San Francisco appoints new “tourism official” … California sues Exxon-Mobil over recycling deception. 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 PhRMA: Over half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen, like PBMs and insurers, along with others. They control what medicines you can get and what you pay at the pharmacy. Middlemen are driving medicine costs in California, and you don’t know the half of it. | | | |  | TOP OF THE TICKET | | A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures getting our attention this week. 1. PROP 36: The California Republican Party is getting ready to take a more active role to pass the tough-on-crime initiative. The party received a $500,000 transfer from the Yes on 36 committee, presumably to launch its own communications effort on the measure’s behalf. 2. PROP 33: The AIDS Healthcare Foundation filed a complaint with the FPPC last Friday alleging their nemesis and proposition opponent, the California Apartment Association, is improperly reporting its campaign contributions. 3. PROP 34: As the Yes on 34 campaign began touting its GOP support on Fox News last week, the California Apartment Association dropped $9 million into its effort to defeat the Prop 33 rent control measure and an additional $3 million to pass Prop 34, which targets AHF’s political spending. As Will writes, the contributions follow a pattern of big spending by the influential landlord lobby. 4. PROP 35: The Yes on 35 campaign hit the airwaves today, Emily reported in this morning’s Playbook: The first two ads tout its endorsement from Planned Parenthood and pitch the managed-care tax initiative as crucial to protecting and improving Medi-Cal. 5. PROP 6: The constitutional amendment to end forced prison labor formally kicked off its campaign in Los Angeles last week, but it’s struggling to get attention and adequately explain the measure to voters — a challenge reflected in last week’s PPIC poll, which found it had just 46 percent support. 6. PROP 2: Some serious money is starting to flow into the effort to pass a $10 billion school-construction bond — including $1.5 million from the California Teachers Association, $250,000 from the State Building and Construction Trades Council, $200,000 from the Community College Facility Coalition and $100,000 from the California School Employees Association. 7. MEASURE J (Sonoma County): The debate over factory farms in Sonoma County will not go missing. Dairy company Clover Farms, one of the county’s largest employers and an opponent of the animal-rights initiative, is now running No on J milk carton ads asking voters to “keep dairy local.” (h/t Jeremy B. White)
| | | | A message from PhRMA:   | | | |  | | | DOWN BALLOT | | ON OTHER BALLOTS — Florida’s constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana — which at more than $100 million raised on both sides has become the most expensive cannabis-related ballot measure ever — is pitting Donald Trump against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis … Fifty-eight percent of likely voters in Arizona support the state’s proposed amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll … Voters in Denver, Colorado, will weigh in on whether to ban fur sales in the Mile High City … And in its third round of votes on initiatives and referendums this year, Switzerland’s electorate rejected a proposal to set aside more land and money for biodiversity protection.
| | POSTCARD FROM ... | | | | 
| … KELSEYVILLE — A small hill in a reclaimed marsh a mile from a NAPA Auto Parts store was, nearly 200 years ago, the site of one of the most horrific massacres of Indigenous people in California’s history. Now, one county supervisor has introduced a ballot measure in rural Lake County to test if the people of his region have changed as much as the landscape. At stake is the future name of Kelseyville, an unincorporated town near the shores of the state’s largest freshwater lake (Clear Lake, in fact, not Tahoe). The town — home to 3,000 people, a quaint main street and a handful of wineries — was named after Andrew Kelsey, an early settler of the area. The majordomo of a nineteenth-century cattle operation, Kelsey reigned over the region’s ranchland and orchards with violence. He and his business partner enslaved Eastern Pomo and Wappo people, starving them and forcing them into servitude. Historians accuse him of murder, rape and torture. In 1849, Kelsey was killed by the same Native Americans he had abused. A year later, the U.S. Army in retribution murdered hundreds of native people living on what is now known, vividly if not with topographical accuracy, as Bloody Island. It is that dark history that a loose group of Kelseyville residents called Citizens for Healing is trying to leave behind. For the past two years, the group has been working to change the name of the town to Konocti, the Pomo word for a nearby dormant volcano. The group’s initial plan was to change the town’s name using the power of the county initiative process. In 2023, it held meetings with other towns surrounding Clear Lake as members gathered signatures. Later that year, the group discovered that it was,, in fact,, an obscure federal body called the U.S. Board on Geographic Names which held the power to change town names considered “derogatory or offensive” in unincorporated areas like Kelseyville. Names considered offensive to tribes are given careful consideration. The group switched gears for its effort this year and petitioned the board for a name change, which in turn initiated the first steps of the process. It solicited input from nearby tribes, the county’s board of supervisors and a state body called the California Advisory Committee on Geographic Names. Local approval is typically required for a name change to move forward. Although area Pomo tribes expressed support, the supervisors dragged their feet. A large community-driven Save Kelseyville opposition sent hundreds of letters to the county, arguing that the name change was inflammatory, that it would be logistically challenging and that the Kelseyville name had nothing to do with the horrors of the past. (Save Kelseyville declined to comment for this story.) At the last possible moment, the Lake County Board of Supervisors placed a non-binding advisory measure on the countywide ballot asking voters whether they support a name change. According to Citizens for Healing organizer Alan Fletcher, it is very likely that Lake County will vote heavily in favor of staying Kelseyville. (Fletcher said his group would be thrilled to see 30 percent support for a name change.) Still, there’s a possibility the board could choose to support the name change even in the face of a resounding verdict. County supervisor Moke Simon, who is Pomo, said in a recent board meeting he voted to put the measure forward in part to see, as he put it, “how racist this community is.” “This is a moral decision, not a majority decision,” Fletcher said. “That’s our primary argument.”
| | | | A message from PhRMA: There’s a long line of middlemen profiting when you get your medicines, and they are often part of the same company.
Over half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen like PBMs, insurers, and others. They control what medicines you can get and what you pay at the pharmacy.
Middlemen are driving medicine costs in California, and you don’t know the half of it. Get the whole story. | | | | | BLAST FROM THE PAST | | This year, Proposition 35 is an initiative that would make permanent a tax on certain health care plans and require the revenue to go toward funding Medi-Cal. In the past, that number has been used for measures to: Issue $3 million in bonds for the building and equipment of state buildings in Sacramento (1914, passed) … Compel state legislators to pass a resolution backing a federal balanced-budget amendment (1984, removed from ballot as unconstitutional) … Allow the government to contract with private entities for engineering and architectural services (2000, passed) … And strengthen penalties on human trafficking offenses, including increasing the maximum sentencing to 15 years to life and $1.5 million in fines, as well as requiring people convicted of human trafficking to be registered as sex offenders (2012, passed).
| | WHO'S STEERING... | | … YES 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 Renters and Homeowners For Rent Control Yes on 33 campaign, which shares leadership with the primary No on 34 committee, is led by the Los Angeles nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation and its president Michael Weinstein. RIDING SHOTGUN: The campaign’s consultants include former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s Actum and a group called Pa’lante Campaigns. UNDER THE HOOD: The campaign’s polling and research, along with some tele-town halls, has all been routed to a mysterious entity called Campaign Team LLC, which appears to have been created in April and has never worked for any other campaign. IN THE GARAGE: AHF vice president Jacki Schechner, a former CNN correspondent, handles communications. Bergmann Zwerdling Direct, which has worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sends the mail. Daniel Anderson, also on the San Francisco mayoral campaign of Ahsha Safaí, developed the Yes on 33 field organization, with digital tools from Scale to Win. Two Santa Monica Democrats, rent-control board chair (and city council candidate) Ericka Lesley and Democratic Club president Jon Katz, are also involved. RIDING ALONG: The California Democratic Party, the California Nurses Association and the ACLU of Southern California have all endorsed the rent-control initiative. FUEL SOURCE: Yes on 33 is almost entirely AHF-funded, with small contributions from other supporters including Unite Here Local 11, a hospitality worker union group, and the Democratic Socialists of America. DECALS: Housing-policy organizations represent the core of the Yes on 33 coalition, including Housing is a Human Right, Tenants Together, Housing NOW and ACCE. The initiative also claims endorsements from seniors’ groups including AARP and the California Alliance for Retired Americans, veteran health advocacy group Veterans Voices and the California Democratic Party. HOOD ORNAMENT: Famed civil rights activist and labor leader Dolores Huerta has appeared in a number of campaign ads advocating for the initiative. | | | | 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 | | | | |
