Dear Readers:
Over the course of the past two months The Democracy Center has been closely following two behind-the-scenes developments in the 1998 California election. The first has been the rising and falling fortunes of Governor Pete Wilson?s effort to put a harsh anti-juvenile crime initiative on the ballot. The second is the continuing effort by the California PTA and League of Women Voters to get the four main candidates for Governor to agree to a debate. Both offer interesting looks behind the scenes of how California politics "really works" in 1998. We thought we?d give our readers an inside view.
A special note to my regular e-mail writers. I will be in Nicaragua working on a project all of this week, so if you don?t hear back from me right away that is why.
Happy reading!
Jim Shultz The Democracy Center
In every fall election since he was first elected Governor, Pete Wilson has been the king of California initiative politics. Four three elections in a row Wilson initiatives have dominated the initiative scene, soaking up media and public attention away from almost all other measures and framing the candidate campaigns to his liking. In 1992 the Governor tried and failed with his own anti-welfare initiative, Proposition 165. In 1994 and 1996 he adopted conservative measures developed by others, Proposition 187 on immigration and Proposition 209 on affirmative action, pumping money into paid signature gathering for measures that would otherwise have failed to qualify for the ballot.
This year, as his swan song in the Governor?s office, Wilson hoped to be on the November ballot with two measures - a harsh juvenile crime law and an initiative on class size reduction and other popular educational issues. You can see the political appeal of Wilson?s November dream. "For the good kids better schools, for the bad kids tougher sentences." Perhaps the Governor had planned bumper stickers proclaiming - "20 kids to a class, 20 kids to a cell."
The Democracy Center has been tracking the progress of Wilson?s effort, at the request of friends in the Legislature who wanted to know how seriously they needed to negotiate with Wilson on his parallel juvenile crime bills in the Capitol. The Governor hoped to use the initiative threat as a way to force legislative action, identical to what he did with the Three Strikes law in 1994. Up until about ten days ago the Governor showed all the signs of a serious effort. In early March he upped his paid signature bounty from 45 cents per name to 65 cents, the sign on the street of a campaign racing to beat the May 1 deadline for turning in the approximately 650,000 signatures it takes.
Then ten days ago we hard from two different sources in the odd culture of initiative petitioning that the Governor had pulled the plug. Just as all the other fall initiative drives were boosting their signature bounties to a dollar and higher, the Wilson folks lowered their rate. By the end of last week the news became public that Wilson?s measure - to try more juveniles as adults, to increase penalties, and to create a state data base of gang members - was dead for November.
Publicly the Wilson camp claims that they were done in by El Niño (which did make signature gathering tough this year), by the high price of signature gathering and have even claimed intimidation by gang members (who of course spend a lot of time hanging out in front of suburban Target and K-Mart stores). I think there is more to the story.
When the Governor of the state of California and a potential candidate for President can?t qualify his own initiative he either screwed up, was bluffing all along, or has some other strategy in mind. In this case it may be a mix of all three. On the screwing up front, Wilson repeated the mistake he made with his failed 1994 anti-welfare initiative - he overreached. In 1994 Wilson added onto his anti-welfare initiative some dramatic new powers for himself in the state budget process. What he thought would be some little noticed language became the centerpiece of the campaign and Wilson lost. In 1998 Wilson overreached again, this time by trying to qualify two initiatives when he will be lucky if he ends up qualifying one (his education measure).
There is also an element of Wilson bluffing here, trying
to look tough as he pushes lawmakers to adopt his juvenile
crime agenda legislatively. More interesting is this.
Wilson hasn?t actually dropped his initiative. May
1 is the deadline for putting it on the ballot in November.
But the Governor actually has until July to get his signatures,
which if he does would place the measure on the March 2000
ballot where, coincidentally, Wilson will likely be a local
boy candidate in the GOP Presidential primary. Faced
with the choice last week of submitting for November 1998
and failing, versus submitting for March 2000 and creating
a red meat issue for conservatives, it is easy to see what
went on behind the scenes.
Unless something changes in the next few weeks 1998 will be the first primary election in 16 years in which the main candidates for Governor have failed to debate one another face to face on the issues. Taking the lead to make sure that doesn?t happen are two old friends of The Democracy Center - the California State PTA and the California League of Women Voters.
Every year in California the state PTA hosts an all-volunteer-run
convention with an attendance 5,000 PTA leaders from all
over the state. This year?s convention is the first week
in May in San Diego. Last year we proposed to the
PTA and League an idea. Where better to have a debate
among the candidates for Governor than before the largest
PTA meeting in the U.S.?
All four of the leading candidates - Dan Lungren, Gray Davis,
Jane Harman and Al Checchi have proclaimed kids and schools
to be issue #1. Why not come out from behind their
TV ads and debate in front of a real PTA meeting.
Months ago the PTA and League sent out official notice of the debate date and time (Wednesday May 6) to the candidates, following up with formal invitations and telephone calls starting in March. So where are the candidates? To date they all seem to have excuses about why they can?t show. Thanks to media attention from the Sacramento Bee and others the "dodging the debate" issue has finally brought the three Democratic candidates to the table. On Tuesday the candidates? campaign managers will meet with the PTA and League at the PTA office in Los Angeles to try to work out details of a joint forum. Dan Lungren, so far, isn?t planning on joining the talks.
If you want to see the candidates debate you can help keep the pressure on. Two of the candidates have e-mail, two you?ll have to call:
Gray Davis:
gdavis@gray-davis.com
Al Checchi: committee@alchecchi.com
Jane Harman:
(310) 216-1500
Dan Lungren:
(916) 441-2115
Let them know you think they ought to debate and that the
PTA convention in San Diego is the place. You can
also write letters to the editor of the state?s major newspapers
directly via e-mail by going to the "Write Right Now" button
on The Democracy Center Web site at: http://www.democracyctr.org
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