| | | |  | | By Will McCarthy and Emily Schultheis | | 
The shifting Trump-era coalitions for Democrats and Republicans are forcing strategists to rethink their assumptions about which year’s electorate will be more friendly to their causes. | AP | SHOULD I STAY (UNTIL ‘28) OR SHOULD I GO NOW (IN ‘26)? — Ballot-measure proponents get to choose their electorate, and for decades a simple rule of thumb has underlay many of their considerations about the calendar: presidential years swell with liberal voters, while those who vote in off-year elections are more conservative. That may be changing. The parties’ shifting Trump-era coalitions are forcing strategists to rethink their assumptions about which year’s electorate will be more friendly to their causes — with progressives starting to wonder if they’re better off pulling the trigger in 2026 instead of waiting for 2028. “We used to be able to predict the electorate,” said Assemblymember Corey Jackson, who is eyeing several legislatively referred measures he wants to put before voters. “But then we had people like [Barack] Obama, people like [President Donald] Trump, who skewed traditional turnout patterns.” In 2023, the Southern California Democrat moved a constitutional amendment through the Assembly that would restore some affirmative-action programs banned by 1996’s Prop 209. His goal had been to place it before voters in the presidential year, when historically a younger, more racially diverse set of voters was likely to turn out. That was the calculus that led those seeking to legalize recreational marijuana to hold back until 2016, and those looking to write marriage equality into the state constitution to aim for the 2024 ballot. “A presidential election generally has more turnout of all the demographics that support LGBTQ rights, like Democratic voters, young people, people of color,” said Tony Hoang, the executive director for Equality California, one of the groups involved in the Prop 3 marriage amendment. But that seems to no longer be quite as true in the Trump era, with the parties’ coalitions increasingly split by education level. It is now more often Republicans who rely on the less-educated voters who cast ballots infrequently, creating a more right-leaning presidential-year electorate. Jackson said he is relieved that he agreed to drop a similar affirmative-action amendment last summer before pushing for a Senate vote that would have sent it to the November 2024 ballot. “I'm so glad I didn’t, because the electorate changed from what I thought it might be,” said Jackson. Promoting policies to advance racial and gender parity, he told Playbook, “requires a more progressive and a different electorate than we ended up seeing.” Now, as their coalition skews older, wealthier and more highly educated, it is Democrats who stand to perform better in off-year elections, including the 2026 midterms. For those running ballot-measure campaigns that fall along traditional left-right lines, that means it may no longer make sense to hold back until a presidential contest to put left-leaning questions before voters. The math may weigh most heavily on the labor unions’ intent on asking Californians to extend a temporary high-earner’s tax instituted via constitutional amendment in 2016. (It was first passed in 2012, as Prop 30, and then extended four years later, as Prop 55.) The tax is scheduled to expire at the end of 2030, which leaves unions now plotting which of the remaining election cycles is likely to deliver the friendliest electorate. “When Trump has been on the ballot, we're seeing voters that are not high propensity-voters but are Trump voters,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant who has worked with both candidate and ballot-measure campaigns. “So I don't think anyone's in a position to really assess what happens to those voters and how they affect turnout in ‘28 when Trump's not on the ballot.” NEWS BREAK: State Assembly votes this afternoon on Trump-proofing legislation … Los Angeles billionaire wades into wildfire recovery … Santa Clara County sues companies over “forever chemical” contamination. 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.
| | | | We’ve re-imagined and expanded our Inside Congress newsletter to give you unmatched reporting on Capitol Hill politics and policy -- and we'll get it to your inbox even earlier. Subscribe today. | | | | | |  | TOP OF THE TICKET | | A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures — past and future, certain and possible — getting our attention this week. 1. Cal-Exit (2026): Secretary of State Shirley Weber took the unusual step of distancing herself from the only initiative in circulation, declaring that her office’s administrative role in the ballot-measure process should not be interpreted as support for the California secession movement. “Such misinformation — whether intentional or not – is unacceptable, as it erodes trust in our democratic institutions,” Weber said in a statement that may foreshadow the type of charges and countercharges that surround a secessionist cause that has received both public and private Kremlin backing. 2. Sales tax increase (Oakland, 2025): Oakland’s April 15 special election will be closely watched around the state for an indication of whether the Los Angeles wildfires have changed voters’ attitudes toward firefighting budgets. A half-cent increase would tie Oakland for the state’s highest sales tax, and city officials are selling it as necessary to prevent catastrophe. “This is an issue that has united Oaklanders more than anything else I’ve seen,” councilmember Janani Ramachandran told Will McCarthy for a story this weekend about local governments hunting for money to fight fires. 3. UC staff down-payment loans (2026): Assemblymember Matt Haney has introduced a measure that would force the University of California to offer support staff the type of low-interest down payment loans available to executives and faculty for decades. Because the university system is autonomous from the legislature, Haney has drafted it as a constitutional amendment although he says “it would be great if the UC just went ahead and did it themselves.” 4. Prop 21 (2020): The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the nonprofit giant targeted in last fall’s Prop 34, was fined $40,000 by the Fair Political Practices Commission for failing to list lobbyist employers in the campaign filings for its failed 2020 initiative to strengthen rent control. It was the largest fine of any of the 15 enforcement actions announced at the commission’s first meeting of the year. 5. Housing (Sausalito, 2026): The wealthy bayside enclave at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge is considering an initiative to exempt locations from development restrictions in an effort to meet the city’s 2031 housing requirements, including to authorize large apartment buildings along the waterfront. The planning commission will present its recommendations to the city council on Feb. 19, according to local reports, which could lead to a special election in June. 6. California Forever (Solano County, 2026): Suisun City, the small Solano town that could soon grow much larger, has launched a website for residents to “stay informed” about its expansion process. Although it appears to be an open secret where the city would grow — and how that might give the ambitious start-up city a path off the local ballot — city manager Bret Prebula has still made no mention of California Forever in its “transparent” exploration of annexation. 7. Proposition K (San Francisco, 2024): Supporters and opponents of an effort to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio launched dueling campaigns this weekend. Organizers of the recall effort say he betrayed their district by supporting last year’s initiative to create a new park on the city’s Pacific Coast, which a majority of voters in San Francisco’s Sunset neighborhood opposed. A “Stand with Joel” campaign has also emerged to support the embattled supervisor, whose political future will have little bearing on the creation of a park which nonetheless won a citywide majority.
| | ON OTHER BALLOTS | | The Nevada Supreme Court rejected an Uber-backed ballot initiative to cap attorneys’ fees in civil lawsuits, saying the measure that had been under consideration for the 2026 ballot was “misleading and confusing” … Utah’s state legislature is considering a constitutional amendment for the 2026 ballot that would raise the voter threshold for ballot initiatives that require additional tax revenue … The Idaho coalition hoping to send 2026 voters an abortion-rights initiative filed suit over the circulating summary and fiscal impact statement state officials assigned to the initiative, which it called biased against the proposal … Republican lawmakers in Arizona are proposing a measure that would increase teachers’ base pay and extend a 2016 amendment that provides for public school funding … And two residents of Colorado Springs are suing the city after the city council placed a measure on the April ballot that would repeal a November 2024 ballot initiative legalizing the sale of recreational marijuana.
| | IN MEMORIAM | | UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ONLINE — A constitutional amendment to establish a new, virtual-only state university system appears dead for the 2026 cycle. The proposal was generated by Boyd Roberts, a Laguna Beach real estate broker who first filed papers in 2017 requesting a title and summary for his University of California Online Amendment. The amendment would create a new, degree-granting public university system that offered only online courses, through both a paid division offering graduation credit and a free division open to the general public. Roberts argued the programs, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office said could cost in the “low billions of dollars annually,” would be an engine for economic growth and mobility. Roberts failed to turn in the necessary number of signatures to qualify for the 2018 ballot. He filed another version in late 2023, with the goal of reaching voters last November, but never actually began a signature drive. Roberts — a Democrat who has run for Congress multiple times and placed seventh in last year’s primary for the 47th District seat being vacated by Katie Porter — says he is still committed to the objective but does not foresee having the resources for another campaign soon. “As soon as I have a million-dollar year I'll fund it,” he told Playbook.
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Emily Schultheis | … ARCATA: For decades, this hippie enclave has flown three flags at a Veterans Memorial in a plaza at the center of town: one for California, one for the United States, and one for Earth. But over the past three years, a debate over the order in which they fly has improbably divided the foggy North Coast community, sparked ballot measures and lawsuits, and led to a broader reckoning over free speech, nationalism and the respect owed our home planet. The saga began in 2022, when the stars and stripes flew at the top of the flagpole. That year former city councilmember Dave Meserve, a self-described peacenik and custom home builder, drafted Measure M, an initiative requiring the city “fly the Earth flag above all other flags.” “To me, it was just plain old illogical,” said Meserve. “The earth includes the country which includes the state. What's the American flag doing on top?” The city council expressed little opinion about the issue, which was approved by voters that November by a four-point margin. A month after the election, the photo-realistic flag of the globe moved to the top of the triad, followed by the American one, with California’s bringing up the bottom. The town’s American Legion post awakened discontent in some corners of Arcata, along with questions as to whether the city had made itself vulnerable to a lawsuit. “The passing of Measure M was painful for our members,” the local chapter wrote to the city council. “Many were offended and downright angry. Their anger comes from a sense that they’re being unappreciated, forgotten, and disrespected.” Arcata officials sued to challenge the initiative, arguing it was superseded by a state statute requiring American flags have “first honor” on any city-owned flagpole. (“No other flag,” the law specifies, “shall be placed above.”) Measure M, the city argued, aimed to use a local majority to circumvent “what would otherwise require a supermajority vote of all the voters in California.” Last April, Humboldt Superior Court Judge Timothy Channing agreed and ordered the U.S. flag back to the top of the mast. Last week, Meserve's group filed briefs in an appeal, with the pro-bono help of a local lawyer. “There is authority to support the rights of voters to pass an initiative which varies from a statewide law,” the Measure M group argued. The constitutional dispute has found itself wrapped up in the heightened politics of flag-flying, which has extended from local schools to U.S. embassies, where the Trump administration has banned the flying of so-called “activist flags” symbolizing anything other than the United States. Rather than ceding ground on what some in Arcata view as an inconsequential debate, Meserve says his intent has been hardened by external events. “There's too damn much nationalism in the world today,” Meserve said. “We don’t need to glorify our country on the top.”
| | THAT TIME VOTERS ... | | … WENT TO THE RACES: Californians have seen ballot measures on a wide variety of questions related to animal races, including to: Prohibit bookmaking (1912, failed) … Permit betting at racetracks (1926, failed) … Establish a three-member board that would oversee all forms of racing, without regard to type or species involved (1932, failed) ... Create California Horse Racing Board to regulate and license racing and wagering (1933, passed) … Permit greyhound racing and wagering in counties with more than 175,000 people (1946, failed). Amend the state constitution to state that the Legislature has no power to authorize horse racing or wagering at night (1967, did not qualify) … Issue 1,000 licenses for off-track pari-mutuel betting facilities (1974, did not qualify) ... Establish the California Greyhound Racing Commission to regulate greyhound racing and betting and license participants (1976, failed) … Authorize the Legislature to regulate off-track wagering on horse races (1979, did not qualify) … Allow racetracks to offer the same forms of gambling as tribal casinos (1998, did not qualify). | | | | 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 | | | |
