| | | | |  | | By Emily Schultheis and Will McCarthy | Presented by Californians for Energy Independence | | 
Newspaper endorsements have traditionally been important in ballot-measure campaigns, but are losing their influence. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | MUTED ENDORSEMENTS — For many years, ballot-measure campaigns eagerly awaited endorsement decisions from local newspapers. But when they began to trickle out last week — like the San Jose Mercury News urging voters to back Proposition 36 for its “thoughtful and tempered response” to crime or the Sacramento Bee endorsing Prop 3 as "more than just a value statement" on same-sex marriage — they hardly made a ripple. Newspaper endorsements are losing their punch. Where ballot-measure strategists would have previously worked to secure the backing of small- and medium-sized papers across the state to reach different segments of the electorate, they now focus on just a few big players. Even then, it’s more to generate fodder for TV ads than out of any expectation voters will read the papers themselves. “I don’t think editorial board endorsements carry the weight that they once did,” Gil Duran, a former editorial page editor for the Sacramento Bee, told Playbook. In “Democracy Derailed,” his 2000 book on ballot initiatives, the longtime Washington Post journalist David Broder described how strategists involved in the No on Prop 226 campaign in 1998 carefully planned which surrogates — top union reps, firefighters and the president of the California Teachers Association — to send to which newspaper to best convince them. In the end, wrote Broder, editorial boards’ rejection of the measure “sapped the vigor of the drive to pass the initiative.” Only a handful of newspapers get much attention from the strategists running campaigns for this year’s slate of 1o state measures. There’s the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union-Tribune, Bay Area News Group (which includes the Mercury News) and the McClatchy papers, primarily. A dwindling number of newspapers still invite campaigns to make their pitch directly — sometimes with just one or two people hearing it, and often by phone or over Zoom. “The process has changed dramatically,” veteran ballot-measure strategist Brandon Castillo, who is running the Yes on 35 campaign, told Playbook. “It used to be months out of the campaign schedule to deal with editorial boards when I first started doing ballot measures 20 years ago.” Newspaper endorsements remain “an added layer of credibility for voters looking for virtue signals,” Castillo said. “They’re certainly not make-or-break for any campaign, but where they can be helpful is when you put them in paid media and target it toward certain voters.” Duran — who has also worked as a spokesperson for top California Democrats, including the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Gov. Jerry Brown — described the endorsements as “another important arrow to have in your quiver” for campaigns looking to convince voters and push back against the other side. “It’s an important part of the psychological warfare against the opposition,” he said. As major papers like the Times and the Chronicle prepare to issue endorsements of their own, expect to see them pop up on the airwaves and in digital ads across the state — even though, as Duran put it, “the editorial board is a dinosaur heading for extinction.” NEWS BREAK: Feds charge North Carolina man after the latest suspected assassination attempt on Donald Trump … Gov. Gavin Newsom warns city of Norwalk to end its “unlawful” ban on new homeless shelters and supportive housing … California resident released by Chinese government after 18 years in prison. 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 Californians for Energy Independence: As California transitions to a lower carbon energy economy, we should continue to produce the oil and gas we still need in-state, where it meets world-class environmental standards and our communities can benefit from the revenues. But instead, California energy policies are shutting down in-state oil production faster than we can build adequate replacement energy - increasing our dependence on more costly imported oil. Get the facts on California energy policies. | | | |  | TOP OF THE TICKET | | A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures getting our attention this week. 1. PROP 36: As Will reports, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the No on 36 campaign appear to have locked in on their message, hoping voters see the initiative less as an anti-theft vehicle and more as a return to Richard Nixon’s drug war. 2. PROP 4: Groups coming face to face with some of the most destructive, fiery symptoms of global warming have begun to endorse the $10 billion climate bond. Last week, the CAL FIRE Firefighters, California Professional Firefighters and California Fire Chiefs Association all announced their support for the measure, which they say would fund a shift from wildfire response to wildfire prevention. 3. MEASURE N (South Lake Tahoe): Fewer than 10,000 people are likely to vote on an initiative to tax empty second homes in the small waterfront vacation town, but real-estate interests are breaking spending records trying to convince them to vote “No.” Groups including the National Association of Realtors have already raised nearly $1 million to defeat the tax measure. 4. PROP 6: Major progressive donor Patty Quillin is expanding her involvement in this year’s slate of ballot questions: She gave $125,000 to the constitutional amendment to ban involuntary servitude, on top of half a million dollars for the No on 36 campaign. 5. SCA 1 (2026): Amid its flurry of end-of-session votes, the Legislature added a measure to the 2026 ballot: a constitutional amendment that would change the recall election process. It joins ACA 13, the constitutional amendment on voter thresholds, which was originally slated for a vote this year before lawmakers approved a delay to 2026. 6. MEASURE J (Sonoma County): Opposition to what would be the country’s first county-level factory-farming ban is growing: The Sonoma City Council became the latest local government to reject the measure, following councils in Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg and Cloverdale. 7. PROP 33: The Yes on 33 campaign has returned to messaging that casts its nemesis the California Apartment Association as a bully, re-airing an ad last shown during June’s Biden-Trump presidential debate. The $2 million broadcast buy will run for the next two weeks.
| | | DOWN BALLOT | | | ON OTHER BALLOTS — Our footloose correspondent Emily covered direct democracy everywhere but California this week. For POLITICO’s regular “The Fifty” feature, she surveyed the national landscape to take stock of everything on this fall’s ballots that isn’t abortion-related. Voters in 41 states will weigh in on more than 150 ballot measures covering issues like how elections are run, who gets paid sick leave, banning trophy hunting and litigating border crossings. And for POLITICO Magazine, she reports from Switzerland on how a small conservative Christian party is using the referendum process in an attempt to defund next year’s Eurovision Song Contest in the city of Basel.
| | A message from Californians for Energy Independence:   | | | | | POSTCARD FROM ... | | |  | … HAYFORK — For decades, the public pool has been the pride of tiny, unincorporated Hayfork, California. A ballot initiative will now determine whether it goes dry. A one-road, no-stop-light town nestled between creeks and a national forest, Hayfork is far-flung even in remote Trinity County, a region so rugged that locals say if you shook it out like a blanket, it would be bigger than Texas. To residents, the pool represents the best of Hayfork. It was dug out of the valley by townsfolk in the 1960s and, for decades, has served as something of a village square. Generations of Hayforkers (as they call themselves) have learned to swim at the little gleaming rectangle in the center of town. “The pool is the jewel of our town,” said Nancy Jackson, a longtime Hayfork resident. “It’s a coming-of-age place, it’s a place where kids get their first jobs.” But the 2,000-odd-person community is at risk of losing all that, thanks to a funding deficit that threatens to close the pool permanently. The region, long known for its booms and busts, is in another downspell. Trinity County faces such a shortfall that it plans to shutter three libraries and close the only animal shelter. Although the pool and a surrounding park receive only minimal county funds, the same economic realities apply to Hayfork. A 2023 pool upgrade was funded by $100,000 in federal Community Development Block grant money, but operating costs total nearly that much each year. Jackson has launched a last-ditch effort to save the pool and park through a special tax ballot initiative that would charge property owners $30 per parcel. (The current $10 tax per property owner, approved in 1989, provides about a quarter of the Hayfork Park District’s already barebones budget.) Jackson and her group Friends of the Hayfork Park chose to pursue a special tax, which requires a two-thirds supermajority to pass, because a general tax would have gone to the county’s coffers rather than the town’s park district. Measure M faces an uphill battle. Although there is no organized opposition to the parcel tax, the two-thirds threshold represents a big hurdle in a place where resistance to tax increases is endemic. Jackson’s group is using Facebook posts to cultivate nostalgia about the park, working to place letters to the editor in the weekly Trinity Journal, and planning an Oct. 5 gathering at the park. Measure M has one overriding objective: to convince Hayforkers not to take their pool for granted. According to Jackson, the county has warned that, if the measure fails, it will likely drain and fill the pool — or at least try to. (The county administrator did not respond to requests for comment by press time.) “I'm pretty sure there would be a whole bunch of people surrounding that pool not allowing it to get filled in,” Jackson said. “We dug that hole ourselves.”
| | BLAST FROM THE PAST | | This year, Proposition 33 is an initiative that would allow local governments to impose rent control restrictions. In the past, that number has been used for measures to: Authorize municipal corporations to acquire and operate any type of public utility (1914, failed) … Allow the Legislature to defer property tax payments for disabled people (1984, passed) … Allow members of the Legislature to participate in the state Public Employees Retirement System (2000, failed) … And allow car insurers to set prices based on whether the driver previously carried insurance coverage over the last five years (2012, failed).
| | A message from Californians for Energy Independence: California faces growing inflation, a rising cost of living, and has some of the highest gas prices in the country. Now, California energy policies could make matters worse.
That’s because California is shutting down in-state oil and gas production before we have adequate replacement energy. That forces our state to spend $25 billion a year importing more costly oil to meet our needs - sending billions that could be supporting California’s economy out of state instead. These energy policies threaten California’s access to reliable energy, while increasing our gas prices.
As California transitions to a lower carbon energy economy, we should continue to produce the oil and gas we still need in-state, where it meets world-class environmental standards and our communities can benefit from the revenues - rather than increase our dependence on more costly imported oil.
Get the facts on California energy policies. | | | | | WHO'S STEERING... | | … YES ON PROP 2 — 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 coalition to pass the $10 billion Prop 2 bond for school construction and repair is being led by The Coalition for Adequate School Housing, an influential 40-year-old lobbying organization representing school districts and contractors. Rebekah Kalleen, a Murdoch, Walrath & Holmes lobbyist who played a central role in 2020’s failed Prop 13 school bond, is on the campaign’s executive committee. RIDING SHOTGUN: Veteran Democratic consultant Jeff Gozzo directs strategy while campaign manager Nick Hardeman, a former chief of staff to state Sen. Toni Atkins, and his newly formed Hardeman Strategies & Consulting run the day-to-day. Both also sit on the executive committee. UNDER THE HOOD: Oakland pollster Dave Metz of FM3 Research is tracking public opinion. IN THE GARAGE: Molly Weedn, who is also working on the Yes on 35 campaign, handles communications. RIDING ALONG: The coalition is built around powerful education interests like the California Teachers Association, the Association of California School Administrators and the California School Boards Association. FUEL SOURCE: The campaign is heavily funded by those who stand to benefit from new construction contracts, including the California Building Industry Association and a slew of architects, engineers and construction firms across the state. DECALS: The campaign has won endorsements from local school boards and a range of other groups, including the League of Women Voters, the California Labor Federation and local chapters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. HOOD ORNAMENT: Sheri Coburn, executive director of the California School Nurses Organization, signed ballot arguments for the measure.
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