| | | | |  | | By Will McCarthy and Emily Schultheis | | Presented by |  | | | |  Newly minted Assemblymember Carl DeMaio plans to use the state's system of direct democracy to push his policy priorities. | Gregory Bull/AP | THE LAWMAKER WHO WANTS VOTERS TO DO HIS JOB — Newly elected San Diego Republican Carl DeMaio has begun his tenure in the Assembly preaching fire, brimstone and ballot measures. Even before being sworn in to his new position, DeMaio publicly announced a wishlist of initiatives for the 2026 ballot. He argues that an impotent minority in the Legislature can only emerge as a bona-fide opposition via the ballot, and the wide margin for tough-on-crime Proposition 36 is proof that the electorate will be receptive to conservative causes if framed correctly. “While we can present our ideas within the legislative process, those ideas are not going to go anywhere without extraordinary public pressure,” DeMaio told Playbook. “We need to put the most widely supported ideas on the ballot — that’s how we're going to deliver change for Californians.” The Taxpayer Protection Act, which the California Supreme Court struck from the 2024 ballot? DeMaio wants to bring it back, and thinks he can outfox the courts next time. Voter I.D. laws? If the legislature doesn’t step up, he believes voters will. Border security? It’s a losing issue for Democrats, even if the party’s leaders are afraid to admit it. The ballot, DeMaio says, allows conservatives to “bypass politicians in a broken political system.” The former San Diego city councilmember comes to Sacramento with a well-defined playbook of using ballot initiatives to recruit small donors and volunteers. He converted his group Reform San Diego, initially begun as an effort to hold San Diego’s feet to the fire for financial mismanagement, into Reform California. The group’s biggest statewide push, the Prop 6 gas-tax repeal initiative, came up 10 points short at the ballot in 2018 after DeMaio had successfully used the issue to recall Democratic State Sen. Josh Newman. But there were plenty of attention-getting bluffs along the way. DeMaio repeatedly announced plans to pursue a voter-ID initiative and at one point filed papers for five consecutive ballot measures without ever submitting a single signature for any of them. Voice of San Diego concluded that DeMaio was failing on purpose, with a strategy “clearly about data collection,” in the words of former adviser Jason Roe. But DeMaio says he now has a 50,000-person donor army, which he argues represents one of the right’s few true recent organizing successes in California. “This year we raised $4 million, more than the entire Republican Assembly and state leadership combined,” DeMaio said. “That’s how we can get out of the minority. We can be a very powerful opposition party.” Most elected representatives look askance at ballot initiatives as a threat to the legislative branch’s primacy and their own relevance. In DeMaio’s view, there are few other options for a party in the super-minority. If the alternative is being steamrolled by Democratic lawmakers, why not embrace an approach to democracy that bypasses his own political office? “The politicians have an opportunity to compromise and make progress,” DeMaio said. “But if they refuse to even listen or compromise, we’ll take it to the voters.” NEWS BREAK: Orange County politician dies at 67 … Los Angeles new district attorney to sack police shootings prosecutor … Nathan Barankin replaces Dana Williamson as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff. Welcome to Ballot Measure Weekly, a special edition of Playbook PM 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 open questions about 2024 ballot successes that we’ll be following in 2025: 1. PROP 34: Upon Prop 34’s certification last Friday, Michael Weinstein and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s nightmare scenario became reality. Whether they can soon emerge from that bad dream depends on a successful lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a measure drafted to target one man’s political participation. Opening briefs were due before the third court of appeals last week. 2. PROP 2: The $10 billion school bond issue is specially designed to correct a first-come-first-serve process that critics say has traditionally benefited large and high-income districts best-positioned to quickly produce building plans. Ten percent of the money is being put aside for small districts, and the remainder will be issued on a sliding scale that will have wealthy districts contributing a larger share towards their projects. Will the new rules encourage less wealthy districts to apply more frequently than they have in the past? 3. MEASURE G: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors got voters’ signoff to expand for the first time in its history. But a new task force for implementation takes shape this year and will have to handle some of the thornier issues, like checks and balances for the new elected county executive role. 4. PROP 36: Opponents tried without much success to draw voter attention to the fiscal costs of increasing criminal penalties, which will likely increase prisoner populations and force drug treatment facilities to surge with new patients facing mandated treatment under the law. How long until the crime fight becomes a budgetary one? 5. MEASURE Z (Santa Cruz): The measure instituting a sugar-drinks tax in defiance of California’s ban is widely expected to trigger a lawsuit, although it may have to wait until the new charge hits transactions in May. Beverage-industry lawyers may hold out hope that the state will take the lead, setting up a government-on-government conflict rather than one in which big business is challenging the will of local voters. “Truthfully the state of California has an interest in having their laws enforced, too,” said Chris Skinnell, a partner at Nielsen Merksamer, the law firm that represented soda interests in a previous lawsuit challenging the ban. 6. PROP 35: Lawmakers saw their budgetary control of Medi-Cal funds yanked away when voters approved an extension of a tax on health insurers. The Legislature could try to reclassify some of the definitions within the initiative’s funding formulas, but courts have looked skeptically at past efforts to redirect funds in ways at odds with voters’ intent. 7. PROP 3: The freedom-to-marry amendment did not only strike dormant one-man-one-woman language but added a new constitutional guarantee that social conservatives warned could open the door well beyond same-sex unions. Will polyamorous families — granted legal recognition under city laws in Oakland and Berkeley this year — test how far state courts are ready to take an interpretation of the right to marry?
| | | | Billions in spending. Critical foreign aid. Immigration reform. The final weeks of 2024 could bring major policy changes. Inside Congress provides daily insights into how Congressional leaders are navigating these high-stakes issues. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | ON OTHER BALLOTS | | WHAT’S AHEAD IN THE NEW YEAR — Most ballot-measure action happens in even-numbered years, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be issue questions to watch around the country in 2025. We just don’t necessarily know when, or where, they’ll come up. In the past decade, odd-numbered years have seen between 20 to 40 state measures nationwide — far less than the approximately 150 that appeared on 2024 ballots. Among the states that have regularly put up odd-year measures in recent cycles are Maine, Texas, Washington and New York. “I think it’s fair to say that people who are seeking to put measures on the ballot, especially when it comes to the citizen initiative, are oftentimes targeting the even-numbered years because they expect more turnout or more voter engagement,” said Helen Brewer, a policy specialist who focuses on ballot measures for the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. There are a few measures that have either been confirmed for 2025 ballots or are being publicly discussed. Louisiana voters will weigh in on four constitutional amendments while voting for local offices in March, addressing taxes, court regulations and the criminal justice system. And voters in Ohio are likely to see a $2.5 billion bond for roads and bridges.
| | | | A message from Food & Water Action:   | | | | | POSTCARD FROM ... | | |  | … OJAI — Pickleball players prevailed in their quest to reopen beloved downtown courts by volleying Measure O across the net by a razor-thin margin in November, but those who lost at the polls aren’t ready to abandon the year-long rally over pickleball rights. Just days before the courts are due to reopen, the council in this famously quaint Ventura River Valley town is scheduled to hold a special meeting Tuesday night to entertain what Measure O opponents are calling “common sense pickleball mitigation measures,” including limited hours at the City Hall courts and required use of quiet equipment. “Please consider these common sense solutions to what will continue to be an ongoing noise issue on behalf of the neighbors and property owners,” four of the opponents wrote to city manager Ben Harvey earlier this month. Players launched the Ojai Pickleball Act after the council moved last year to shutter the courts in response to neighbors’ complaints about the “thack-a-ta, thack-a-ta, thack-a-ta” caused by the sport’s distinctive paddles (as one resident so evocatively described it in a city council meeting). Tim Krout, president of Ojai Valley Pickleball, described Measure O as an ideal of how direct democracy should work at the local level: When parts of the electorate are unhappy with a government decision, they have recourse to contest it. “We didn’t yell and scream at anybody — we got the initiative on the ballot,” he said. “‘Do you want a couple of neighbors to control what happens to the parks, or do you want the parks open to the public?’” The campaign against Measure O was just as impassioned. The No side stressed in a mailer that passing the measure “could cost the City MILLIONS of dollars in lawsuits” and would lead to “noise pollution for the neighbors forever.” The initiative passed by just 23 votes, as certified by city officials last week. But in the 10-day waiting period before the courts’ reopening on Dec. 20, opponents appear to have mobilized enough support to win a special meeting of the city council that will keep the fight alive. Members are expected to consider limits modeled on regulations now enforced in Denver: hours that would keep the courts closed on weekends, including Friday afternoons, and mandatory use of quieter Owl paddles and Gamma Librarian pickleballs. Pickleballers argue that the proposals “disregard the will of the voters to interpret and implement Measure O in a way that would violate its letter and spirit,” as their attorney Bradley W. Hertz wrote to Harvey this weekend. “The purpose of Measure O is unambiguous: to require that the City Hall Pickleball Courts ‘shall be and remain open to the public year-round.’” They are threatening to sue the city if new rules encroach on their access to the courts.
| | | | Write your own chapter in the new Washington. From the Lame Duck Congress Series to New Administration insights, POLITICO Pro delivers intelligence across 22+ policy areas to help you anticipate and navigate change. Discover how a Pro subscription empowers you. Learn more today. | | | | | | | DEBRIEFING | | … WITH THE YES ON PROP 35 TEAM — The initiative to lock in a health-care tax and direct its revenue to certain Medi-Cal priorities was backed by a range of powerful health care interests that rarely find themselves all on the same side of a policy fight. We talked to two of the campaign’s strategists about how they sold the complex issue to voters. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Playbook: The governor was critical of Prop 35, but were you surprised that a “No” campaign failed to emerge? Brandon Castillo, lead political consultant for Yes on 35: We had a plan for the worst-case scenario, where we had significant funded opposition. We tried really hard to design a measure that benefited the highest number of Medi-Cal patients, that wouldn’t draw an opposition. Playbook: Even in the absence of organized opposition, how did you approach explaining a proposal as complex as the managed-care tax? Molly Weedn, communications consultant for Yes on 35: I would push back a little bit on that and say that it's actually quite straightforward. It's a tax, it has been existing for decades that is intended to fund Medi-Cal and this is simply an initiative that would help ensure that funding goes to the programs that it's intended for. We didn't need to make it more complicated than that. Castillo: What the research just came screaming back crystal clear — it's not always as simple — is that this was all about Medi-Cal patients. We were actually a little bit surprised that even conservative Republicans understand and support the importance of our Medi-Cal system. Weedn: It's not just considered a handout program anymore. It’s just another way to get health insurance — everybody knows somebody who knows somebody on Medi-Cal. You see in focus groups, people saying, “Yeah, you know, I used to be on Medi-Cal,” or, “My sister's on Medi-Cal,” and it’s just more normalized. Playbook: But you were selling a tax proposal in a year when voters had already shown themselves to be in a fiscally conservative mood. Castillo: The ballot wording read, “Makes permanent existing tax.” It was important to reinforce to the voters that this was not a new tax and not a tax on individuals, but it wasn't our primary message. Playbook: Which voters were you talking to there? Castillo: The tax portion, of course, was a little bit more partisan. Republicans generally favored the tax portion less than Democrats, but Republicans strongly support the Medi-Cal system, and we didn't need to run from it. Playbook: Some of your advertising explicitly mentioned the “unprecedented coalition” backing the initiative even before you explained the policy. Why? Weedn: It was really the first time that there was a coalition of providers like this speaking out on behalf of Medi-Cal on the ballot. We thought it was really important to make sure that the faces and the organizations really grappling with the challenges in the Medi-Cal program today were the ones talking about how important Prop 35 is. Castillo: Our polling showed these are messengers that voters trust on an issue that can be complicated. Planned Parenthood is extraordinarily trusted. The California Medical Association is extraordinarily trusted. Community health clinics are very trusted.
| | | LETTER OF THE DAY | | | Measure V was used on ballots around the state this month to describe proposals that would: Reauthorize a 1-cent sales tax in La Habra, Orange County, to fund city services (passed) … Increase the transient occupancy tax in Hollister from 8 percent to 12 percent (passed) … Change requirements to allow residents to serve on city boards and commissions in Watsonville regardless of immigration status (passed) … Amend the business license tax rates in San Mateo County’s Foster City (passed) … Approve a parcel tax to fund teacher retention and school programs in STEM, music and art in San Jose’s Union Elementary School District (passed) … Impose a 1-cent sales tax to hire paid firefighters in Yreka, Siskiyou County, which until now has had an almost entirely volunteer-run fire department (passed) … Reauthorize a 1-cent sales tax in the city of Sonoma to fund local services (passed) … And allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in municipal elections in Albany (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 | | | | |
