| | | | |  | | By Will McCarthy and Emily Schultheis | | Presented by |  | | | |  With Prop 33's demise and Prop 34's passage, AIDS Healthcare Foundation Michael Weinstein's future in California politics is unclear. | Jenna Schoenefeld/AP Content Services for AIDS Healthcare Foundation | POLITICAL SENTENCING — The nightmare scenario for Michael Weinstein’s ballot measure dreams has arrived. His half-decade obsession — to expand rent control via the ballot box — was rejected this month by voters for the third time when Prop 33 fell by 22 points. Last week it became clear Weinstein’s longtime antagonists at the California Apartment Association had successfully turned the ballot-measure system against him, convincing enough bewildered voters to cut off his political funding via Prop 34. Taken together, the questions served as the trial of one man and his place in California politics. Now the verdict is in. But the timetable for his sentencing leaves open the question of whether an initiative written to handcuff Weinstein will keep him off the 2026 ballot. That fate now rests in the hands of state entities charged with implementing Prop 34, which is written to ensure that Weinstein’s AIDS Healthcare Foundation can’t use funding from a federal drug discount program to finance its political campaigns. “They have a ministerial duty to go forward and write the thing into law,” said Mary-Beth Moylan, a McGeorge School of Law professor who specializes in statewide ballot measures. “The question is what is their deadline to do that.” Next month, the machinery of government will begin formally determining whether AHF is spending at least 98 percent of revenues from the drug discount program on “direct patient care.” Much of the process is written into Prop 34 itself, starting when the initiative’s victory is officially certified on Dec. 13. The first steps come in the offices of the attorney general, the Board of Pharmacy, and the Department of Public Health, which will set deadlines for organizations that make money from a federal drug discount program to provide accounting information detailing how those funds are spent. Prop 34 says the latest that deadline can be set is Dec. 31, 2025. All three entities will each have two months to determine whether organizations are in compliance with Prop 34’s requirements. It’s a test that AHF is certain to fail. The determination is backward-looking, with a review of how Weinstein’s organization spent its money over the past 10 years. Typically, according to Moylan, the organization spends only about 70 percent of those earnings on direct patient care — far below the required threshold. The attorney general’s office, along with the Department of Public Health, the Board of Pharmacy and the Department of Managed Healthcare, will then each issue determinations by March 1, 2026. If any one finds AHF is not in compliance with those requirements, which is highly likely, authorities will send written notification to the health care organization. That outcome would be equivalent to AHF’s death warrant. All of the organization’s pharmacy, health care service plan and clinic licenses will be “permanently revoked,” and it would not be allowed to apply for a new license or tax-exempt status for a full decade. Weinstein can challenge the determination before the penalties kick in — he has 30 days once notified of the determination to request an administrative hearing — but is unlikely to accomplish more than a slight delay by pursuing that route. “As for next steps, if and when we know how the law will be applied, we’ll decide what legal action to take,” declared AHF vice president Jacki Schechner. Weinstein stands a better chance of fending off Prop 34 through constitutional litigation, which is already well underway and likely to be resolved by the time state authorities reach the end of their administrative process. Next month, opening briefs are due in an AHF-initiated lawsuit currently before a state appeals court, which alleges the initiative amounts to a form of targeted punishment. The California Supreme Court decided not to take the issue away from voters, but invited AHF to pursue the case if the measure won their approval. Prop 34 is written to insulate itself from such assaults, including a severability clause that states that if any aspect of the initiative is found to be invalid, the rest of the measure would still stand. There does not appear to be anything, however, that can stop Weinstein from using 2025 to also place a fourth rent-control initiative (or anything else) before California voters even as the wheels of justice determine his organization’s fate. As for AHF’s plans, Schechner said only that the organization has been “fighting for what’s right for 38 years” and will continue to do so. NEWS BREAK: Democratic incumbent Josh Newman concedes to Republican Steven Choi in swing state Senate race … California legislators decamp to Asia on special interest-funded junkets … LA judge delays resentencing for the Menendez brothers. 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 Food & Water Action: Will Gov. Newsom side with the oil and gas industry or Californians after the “worst gas leak in US history?" In 2015, the Aliso Canyon Gas Storage Facility released 100,000 tons of methane and toxic chemicals, endangering public health. Governor Newsom vowed to shut down Aliso Canyon, but his Public Utilities Commission appointees voted to expand it. The PUC will decide Aliso Canyon’s future on December 19th. Learn more. | | | |  | TOP OF THE TICKET | | Seven players who left their mark on the ballot-measure scene this year. 1. Dana Williamson: The chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom played a central role in negotiations that slimmed an unwieldy November ballot down to 10 issue questions, successfully persuading several proponents to strike their measures. Her one glaring failure on Newsom’s behalf, a desultory effort to get Prop 36 dropped, put her in the middle of the year’s juiciest bit of ballot-measure drama, a highly personal email spat with one of the co-chairs of the Yes on 36 committee that helped spell the end of those negotiations. 2. The California Association of Realtors: While spending nearly $20 million to tank the Prop 33 rent control effort, the realtors flexed their muscle in local races across the state. Their money helped break political fundraising records while defeating a proposed tax on vacant homes in South Lake Tahoe and tilted the scales against a series of rent control ordinance initiatives in Marin County. 3. Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California: The Jane Fonda-led coalition scared drilling interests off the ballot with a $21 million war chest to fight an oil well setback referendum, and then used some of that money to fund pro-climate and pro-labor legislative candidates. The like-minded Asian Pacific Environmental Network used the threat of ballot measure in Richmond to extract a half-billion-dollar payout from Chevron. 4. Dave Metz: The Bay Area-based pollster and his FM3 Research conducted research for five statewide ballot-measure campaigns this year — Yes on 2, Yes on 4, Yes on 34, Yes on 35 and No on 33 — and ended up on the winning side of all five. 5. The California Supreme Court: The state’s highest court in June struck what had promised to be the most expensive measure of 2024 from the ballot: the Taxpayer Protection Act, a California Business Roundtable-backed measure that would have made it harder to pass new taxes. With that ruling, an unusual pre-election intervention, the court reshaped the ballot landscape for the year — and left normally key players, like labor, largely on the sidelines this cycle. 6. Walmart: The world’s largest retailer supplied much of the funding for Prop 36, with its $4 million helping to qualify the crime-fighting initiative for the ballot this spring and fund the fall campaign. Recognizable brands like Target and Home Depot threw themselves into the potentially controversial debate with little evidence of backlash from voters. 7. Nathan Click: While serving as Newsom’s political spokesperson, Click helped direct communications strategy for the campaigns to pass Props 3 and 34, which he messaged effectively enough to persuade voters to support an inherently confusing initiative. Click’s connections likely helped pull off the cycle’s most crucial endorsement: Newsom’s late stand against Prop 33.
| | | | Want to know what's really happening with Congress's make-or-break spending fights? Get daily insider analysis of Hill negotiations, funding deadlines, and breaking developments—free in your inbox with Inside Congress. Subscribe now. | | | | | | | DOWN BALLOT | | ON OTHER BALLOTS — An effort to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting and open primary system appears to have failed by 664 votes, one of the few bright spots on this year’s ballots for supporters of those election systems … On that front, advocates in Oklahoma have filed to launch an initiative onto the 2026 ballot that would replace the state’s current partisan primary system with an open top-two primary … Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Dallas over the city’s successful ballot measure to decriminalize the possession of less than 4 ounces of marijuana, arguing it unconstitutionally conflicts with state law … And voters in Basel, Switzerland rejected a referendum to revoke the city’s planned $40 million in funding for next year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
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| … ALBANY — Nearly two-thirds of voters in Albany this month agreed to give the ballot to their 16- and 17-year-old peers, but the movement for teenage suffrage in this Bay Area city isn’t yet over. The ground campaign for the youth voting initiative was led primarily by Nirvaan Jaswal, a 17-year-old junior at Albany High School. Balancing homework and after-school activities, Jaswal devoted his weekends to canvassing the 20,000-person East Bay enclave just north of Berkeley, dragging heavy bags filled with flyers up apartment buildings to drop at voters’ doors. “It definitely wasn’t easy,” Jaswal said. “I did all my homework on time. I just did all the other things that I do less.” The campaign’s success is moderated by the lingering question of how and when the measure will be implemented. Although Measure V grants 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in city elections, that suffrage is “contingent on officials determining that's feasible for the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.” Jaswal said it is unclear exactly how that cost-feasibility will be determined, but he knows at least some elected officials have expressed skepticism of the youth-voting movement. If that skepticism metastasizes, he believes there is at least some possibility city officials or Alameda County could use the feasibility clause to subvert the entire election. The path to suffrage has already been years in the making, and by the time the next election rolls around, Jaswal will already legally be able to vote. But even if he ages out of those likely to benefit, Jaswal says he is not ready to abandon the cause. “We’re going to have to do what we did before, argue for it at school boards and council meetings,” Jaswal said. “Until a 16-year-old receives their first ballot in the mail, we’ll have to keep fighting for it.”
| | | | A message from Food & Water Action:   | | | | | DEBRIEFING | | … WITH THE YES ON PROP 3 TEAM — Proposition 3, a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, passed by a comfortable margin. But its backers had bigger objectives than just striking dormant language placed in the state constitution through the passage of Prop 8 in 2008. We talked with those behind the campaign about how they pursued their parallel goals at the ballot. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Playbook: What were you trying to accomplish here? Courtni Pugh, general consultant for Yes on 3: We always felt that if we weren’t north of 60, that would be the headline and the talking point. Winning by 50-percent-plus-1 was going to be harmful to the broader national movement. That's not easy to do with this state, and particularly having less than a $3 million budget. It's hard to be over 60 when you're not on broadcast TV. Playbook: How much was the Prop 8 experience on your mind? Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California and member of Yes on 3 executive committee: We were being really intentional about the folks we brought to the table — organizations represented by leaders of color, trans people, people of color. The state has shifted dramatically from 2008. We thought from the outset we wanted voices that represented the full swath of California. Nathan Click, senior advisor for Yes on 3: We had 60-plus organizations on our steering committee. That was a cost effective way, but also an empowering way, for every community to see themselves in our broader mission. Pugh: We also intentionally placed ads in almost 40 ethnic newspapers, from the Los Angeles Sentinel to La Opinión to World Journal. All of those things were intentional, that was something that people involved in the Prop 8 campaign and the leadership placed upon as this consultant team, they wanted it to look like California and the movement. Playbook: What were you hoping to accomplish with your paid communications? Click: Our number one goal was awareness. We focused the targeting on channels and audiences who were least likely to be aware that Prop 3 was on the ballot. A lot of digital focus, a lot of focus on voters who skewed a little bit younger and only turn out in presidential years. Pugh: We did tweak messaging based on region and constituency. In some communities we’d go more with more of a civil rights approach, and other places we went more with a freedom approach. We were allowed to be fairly strategic [with our messaging] in Orange County and the Coachella Valley. We’re at 84 percent in San Francisco, 75 percent in Alameda County, and at 49 percent in Fresno County. But we are north of 60 percent in Orange County. Playbook: Some have suggested your statewide finish around 63 percent is a disappointment, given that more than 70 percent of Americans say same-sex couples should be able to legally marry. Pugh: We did the job that we sought out to do. It’s not always winning, it’s how you win.
| | | | Policy Change is Coming: Be prepared, be proactive, be a Pro. POLITICO Pro’s platform has 200,000+ energy regulatory documents from California, New York, and FERC. Leverage our Legislative and Regulatory trackers for comprehensive policy tracking across all industries. Learn more. | | | | | | | LETTER OF THE DAY | | Measure G was used on ballots around the state this month to describe proposals that would: Approve ½-cent sales tax increase to pay for transportation projects in San Diego (narrowly failing) … Authorize $4.4 million in bonds for Shasta County’s Bella Vista Elementary School (narrowly passed) … Amend San Francisco’s charter to require the city pay rental subsidies for affordable housing (passed) … Reauthorize a 1-cent sales tax in Marysville, Yuba County, to fund public services (passed). Raise the property transfer tax on residential and commercial properties in Silicon Valley’s Mountain View that sell for more than $6 million (passed) … Increase Alpine County’s hotel tax rate from 10 percent to 14 percent (passed) … Enact a 1-cent sales tax in Folsom, Sacramento County, to fund infrastructure improvements, police services and water quality (failed) ... And expand the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from five to nine members and create an elected county executive position (narrowly passed).
| | | | A message from Food & Water Action: Will Gov. Newsom side with the oil and gas industry or Californians after the “worst gas leak in US history?" In 2015, the Aliso Canyon Gas Storage Facility released 100,000 tons of methane and toxic chemicals. SoCalGas’ disaster forced thousands to evacuate their homes to avoid further exposure to cancer-causing benzene and other chemicals.
SoCalGas took four months to seal the gas leak. Families near Aliso are still suffering the consequences. Instead of shutting it down like Gov. Newsom promised, the PUC allowed Aliso to expand by 3,000%, perpetuating the public health threat.
Over 150 organizations have come together to call for a shutdown of Aliso by 2027, but the PUC is considering kicking the can down the road instead of protecting communities. Gov. Newsom and allies should stand with families, not SoCalGas’ profits. On December 19th, the PUC will decide the future of Aliso Canyon. Learn more. | | | | | | | 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 | | | | |
