| | | | |  | | By Will McCarthy and Emily Schultheis | |  Proposition 34, which would limit the political spending of AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein, is one of two statewide measures that has yet to be called. | Mark Von Holden/AP Content Services for AIDS Healthcare Foundation | AND THEN THERE WERE TWO — There are about 5 million votes left to be tallied in California. Backers of Proposition 32 and opponents of Proposition 34 are counting on them being some of the most liberal in the state. Prop 32, an initiative to raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour, and Prop 34 , an attempt by the California Apartment Association to hamstring their rivals' political spending, both hang in the balance. The two measures remain too close to call, the sides separated by about 2 percentage points in each, with about 70 percent of the expected vote counted. The outstanding votes appear to be concentrated in a handful of populous counties including Alameda, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Los Angeles, which progressive campaigners hope will stick to a pendulum-like pattern in California’s overtime vote-counting rhythms. Since 2020, left-of-center candidates and initiatives typically lead in the early votes cast, then same-day voting swings the count toward more conservative priorities, until a trickle of mail-in votes gradually pushes the election back to progressives. “Statewide the total is going to shift left,” predicted Paul Mitchell, the vice president of nonpartisan political data firm Political Data, Inc. Campaigners for the Prop 32 minimum wage, which is currently under 50 percent, are counting on the state’s most populous counties to bring it over the threshold. "We're encouraged by what we’re seeing so far and remain optimistic as more ballots are counted," said Joe Sanberg, entrepreneur and lead proponent of Prop 32. Opponents of Prop 34, which is currently leading with about 51 percent of the vote, are banking on similar patterns in their race. No on 34 policy director Susie Shannon said last week at a Capitol Weekly event that the outstanding votes in Los Angeles alone — where voters are breaking 53 percent to 47 percent against the measure targeting the LA-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation — could flip the result. But clear outcomes on both questions could still take a while. This March, there were two weeks of uncertainty before a formal call on Prop 1. The mental-health initiative ended up requiring Alameda County’s last dump of ballots to open up an eventual 26,000-vote margin before the Associated Press would call it a winner. NEWS BREAK: Republicans inch closer to formally locking up a House majority … Donald Trump's victory sends Gov. Gavin Newsom to D.C. to lobby for California … San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston concedes his reelection race to tech entrepreneur Bilal Mahmood. 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 | | We told you in last week’s newsletter to expect some ballot-measure surprises on Election Day. Here are seven things that blindsided us: 1. A symbolic stamp of approval for same-sex unions did not get the landslide margins LGBTQ+ groups hoped to see when putting PROP 3 on the ballot. Some backers were hoping the amendment would clear the 70-percent mark, but it is currently tallying about 62 percent statewide and losing in some sizable counties, including San Bernardino and Stanislaus. 2. The tough-on-crime PROP 36 carried some of the state’s most progressive counties on its way to a 58-county sweep. The latest results show it up by 10 points in Santa Cruz County, more than 20 points in Marin County and nearly 30 points in San Francisco County. All three had voted overwhelmingly to pass 2014’s Prop 47, which won by more than 50 points in each of those counties. 3. Polls may have pointed toward divergent fates for PROP 2 and PROP 4 , but results suggest that voters who pulled the ballot for one $10 billion bond did so for the other, too. As of this afternoon, just 180,000 out of 11.5 million processed votes separate the education and climate packages, which are both likely to finish with just under 60 percent support. That may be no accident: the Yes on Prop 2 campaign made a concerted effort to tie its education bond to climate issues in the weeks leading up to the election. (Four Central Valley counties went “yes” on the school bond but “no” on climate, while Nevada County was the only one in the state to approve Prop 4 and reject Prop 2.) 4. Californians may be losing their taste for soda taxes, which regularly cleared 60 percent in Bay Area cities a decade ago. Now Santa Cruz’s MEASURE Z, drafted to provoke a legal challenge over a statewide soda-tax ban, leads by only 700 votes and is still too close to call. 5. Rent control is losing support even as voter worries focus on high costs. The margin of defeat for Michael Weinstein’s and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s PROP 33, currently around 22 points, looks to be even worse this time around than it was for similar initiatives in 2018 and 2020. 6. The campaign to pass San Francisco’s PROP L, which would tax rideshare companies like Waymo, Uber and Lyft to fund public transit, was for naught. A majority of voters is backing the measure, but the separate business tax initiative PROP M, which included a provision that would supersede the transit tax if it received more votes, leads the race between the two. 7. Is Imperial County becoming California’s most politically unpredictable county? The rural area on the Arizona border voted against marriage equality but for a minimum-wage increase. PROP 32 is notably winning the county by a larger margin there than Kamala Harris is in the presidential race.
| | DOWN BALLOT | | ON OTHER BALLOTS — The largest medical marijuana company in Florida sued the state Republican Party for defamation, claiming the party ran an “intentionally deceptive campaign” against Amendment 3, the constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana that failed last week … Activists in Idaho are already planning to put a recreational marijuana measure on the ballot in 2026 … Arizona’s Proposition 314, which allows local law enforcement to arrest people suspected of illegally crossing into the U.S., passed by a 25-point margin. But enforcing it might be a challenge: similar laws in Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma have been halted by federal courts … And voters may have rejected California’s Prop 6 to end involuntary servitude, but a similar measure in Nevada, Question 4, passed by a margin of more than 20 points.
| | POSTCARD FROM ... | | | | 
| … AROUND THE STATE — Throughout the year, we’ve used our postcard feature to provide a ground-level look at interesting measures on California’s city and county ballots. Here’s how 10 of them fared with voters (more on the rest next week):
- Berkeley residents’ attempt to tax natural gas use in larger buildings failed. Measure GG lost by a wide margin, a second blow to climate advocates’ effort to phase out natural gas after a city ban was struck down in court last year.
- Voters approved Proposition L, an initiative to guarantee a continued level of funding for police in San Bernardino County, by a 20-point margin. The measure was intended as a symbolic statement and won’t have any immediate effect on local budgets.
- Measure A, the third attempt at an initiative to preserve open space and regulate sprawl in San Benito County, is currently leading. If passed, the county would need to seek voter approval for certain land use re-designations.
- An initiative to block a battery storage plant in Morro Bay is likely to pass with nearly 60 percent support — but the result could be meaningless to the plant’s construction. Although Measure A-24’s passage freezes the land use designation for the intended construction site, the company behind the plant has already announced it plans to bypass city approval by looking to state authorities instead.
- Roundabouts could soon come to the small Sonoma County city of Cotati (although none are planned) after voters appear to have approved Measure S, which overturned a ban on the traffic calming rotaries.
- South Lake Tahoe voters rejected the Measure N tax on vacant homes in a win for the realtor-funded campaign against it, believed to be the most expensive in town history.
- San Anselmo’s Measure N, an initiative to cap rent control increases for larger apartment buildings, failed by a 30-point margin. (Prop 33, the statewide rent-control measure, lost surrounding Marin County by a similar margin.)
- Voters who weighed in on an advisory referendum in Lake County heavily supported keeping the name Kelseyville for an unincorporated town, despite its ties to an early settler who enslaved and murdered Indigenous people in the region. There are indications that county supervisors could proceed with a planned name change nevertheless.
| | | DEBRIEFING | | | … WITH LA COUNTY’S YES ON MEASURE A — Los Angeles County’s Measure A appears to have defeated the prevailing political headwinds: It persuaded voters to back a tax increase to address homelessness. Measure A is currently leading with 57 percent of the vote. Playbook caught up with three people who designed Yes on A’s campaign strategy to understand how they did it. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Playbook: Prop 1 struggled to win a statewide majority in March. How did that impact your strategy for asking voters to spend more addressing homelessness? Miguel Santana, California Community Foundation president and official proponent: From the very beginning, the language in the ballot measure itself emphasizes transparency, accountability, outcomes. It's about creating a system that is going to outlive us all, in a way that folks could trust. Playbook: How did you pitch that accountability element to voters? Yusef Robb, political consultant for Yes on A: We explicitly said in our ads, programs that do not perform will have funding taken away. That is a big change. Playbook: You had a $6.8 million budget. How did you decide to spend it? Sarah Dusseault, lead strategist for the Angeleno Project: We wanted to create a relationship with voters. If you look at our digital campaign, in companionship with our social media campaign, we really had storytelling … that was very targeted. Playbook: Who were you looking to reach? Robb: There was a gender divide. We needed to shore up support with men. The measure also started out underperforming, in our opinion, with Democrats. And Latinos were a key target as well. Playbook: How did you convince them of the accountability provisions? Robb: The faces of our campaign were emergency room doctors, nurses who work with unhoused patients, people who lead women and children's crisis centers. They were emotional, they were powerful, they reminded voters that the crisis on our streets is a humanitarian one. But they also connected the voters with their own interests. Our emergency room doctors talked about how if we ease the burden in our ERs, that gets unhoused people the help they need and it allows doctors to treat all of their patients with the care they deserve. With a lot of pretty sophisticated polling going into it, and real-time adjustment along the way, I think we were able to form a real connection with voters that overcame the economic pressures that we're all feeling to not pull more money out of their pocket right now. Playbook: Do you have advice for other campaigns asking voters to approve new spending in this environment? Santana: Because we were creating an ongoing revenue stream, it was important that we created a structure that evolved. We’ve seen in the past how revenues are created that are responsive to the moment, but then 25 years later don't make sense — and because they're baked in, they can't be changed. We were very, I would say, revolutionary in creating an accountability structure that would outlive us all. That is a model for others as they consider revenue in this environment where people may be frustrated with government or have a huge amount of skepticism.
| | LETTER OF THE DAY | | Last week, Measure B was used on ballots around the state to describe proposals that would: Approve a $390 million bond in San Francisco for hospitals and homeless shelters (status based on current vote counts: likely to pass) … Impose a 1-percent sales tax in Mount Shasta, Siskiyou County, to fund police and fire protection (likely to fail ) … Approve a $24.5 million school bond in Durham, Butte County (too close to call) … Allow a winery in St. Helena, Napa County, to build a 56-room resort and bypass the normal city approval process (too close to call) … Approve a $41 million traffic-relief bond in Lincoln , Rocklin and Roseville within Placer County (likely to pass) … Extend the term of the mayor in Morgan Hill, Santa Clara County, to four years instead of two (likely to pass ) … Approve a $110 million school bond in Atascadero, San Luis Obispo County, to fund vocational training and STEM education (too close to call) … Increase the transient occupancy tax in Carpinteria, Santa Barbara County, from 12 percent to 15 percent (likely to pass) … And impose a vacancy tax in Avenal, Kings County (likely to fail). | | | | 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 | | | | |
