No, the title does not refer to the impending nominations of Meg "Term Arnold the Third" Whitman and Carly "Demon Sheep" Fiorina to run for Governor and U.S. Senator. One never knows, with Citizen United doing to politics what Deepwater Horizon has done to the Gulf of Mexico's waters, but I don't expect either of them to win in November. That's what most of the polling has been about in the run-up to the election, but it's not what matters most to progressives.
Nor do I expect other great successes for statewide Republican nominees in November. The disaster that has a good chance of hitting California -- largely unnoticed by the rest of the country -- on Tuesday will come in the form of results on four propositions, each of which will likely come out the wrong way.
Given the lack of published polling on the proposition -- completely incommensurate to the lack of mailers that at least we non-Republicans have been receiving -- it's hard to predict the outcome. I've only seen one report with hard numbers on one of the propositions, and even those were somewhat stale. I've gotten plenty of mailers, though, from the corporate interests out to leverage fooling the public into padding the bottom line.
I'm going to take the four controversial propositions -- 14 through 17 -- in reverse order, because I want to start with garden-variety venality and end with an unexpected bang.
Prop 17 would allow insurance companies to give drivers a break for having had continuous coverage. Companies can already do this for their own drivers, but not for drivers who have had coverage from other companies. This is a paid-for, astroturf, initiative sponsored by Mercury Insurance, which would like to poach other company's customers. What's the problem? Currently, if they want to poach other companies' customers, they have to offer the same insurance rates for new applicants whether they have had continuous coverage or not. Now, they would be able to give preferred rates to customers they wanted to poach, and would be able to charge higher rates to anyone who hasn't had insurance for the past five years. As we all know, there are good (as well as bad) reasons not to have had insurance; I myself didn't have insurance when I was living in New York City until 2006 because I didn't have a car. Mercury wants to be able to separate the "chaff" of those who may not have been able to afford insurance (or a car) over the past five years from the "wheat" of other companies' customers, leading to higher rates on the former. They have been advertising heavily, asking why car companies should be barred from offering to insure you for less money. The answer -- that this is another way to make the rich richer and poor poorer -- had had little money behind it, though I've finally seen ads today from this group. A good article from Calitics some coverage from Calitics suggesting that voters may be getting hep to Mercury's scam, but especially in an election where Republicans have had more reason to vote (due to more competitive primaries) than Democrats, I doubt it will be enough.
Prop 16 makes Prop 17 look like a bantamweight bout. Here, PG&E just wants to make sure that citizens get a chance to vote before their local officials spend their money. What's wrong with that? As the ads say, this is just democracy? Well, what they want people to have to vote on -- with a 2/3 majority required to pass -- is whether they would like to build municipal energy systems that could compete against companies like PG&E. Here in Orange County, Anaheim did this a while ago and did very well by its citizens; a good example like that is intolerable, and requiring a supermajority will almost surely stymie any such notions. I've gotten as much mail and seen as many ads on this as I can remember outside of a Presidential election. PG&E's plan to defile the beleaguered California constitution has irked many newspaper editorial boards, according to this Calitics story, but the sheer disparity in money here, including a plausible cover story for the unwary, has a good chance of protecting the company's fat balance sheet.
Prop 15 is something that has long been championed by the good-government friends of mine who also favor non-partisan redistricting and such. They are right on this one: we should have public financing of elections, and starting with a pilot program for the Secretary of State's office makes sense. Unfortunately, this storyline seems to be difficult for the public to follow, from what I can tell, and based only on anecdotal evidence the "why should we give any money to our politicians?" argument looks likely to defeat even this very well-constructed plan.
Prop 14 is a wolf in sheep's clothing -- and, Dear Reader, it's the one that will have the most effect on the rest of the country, by the way. Put simply: you will have less money donated to your campaigns by California Democrats, because we'll be using more money here all the way through November. This initiative, which a recent LA Times poll (Warning PDF -- see question 48 here) said led last month by 52-28 with 20% undecided, would ensure that the top two vote-getters would have a runoff in November, if neither got 50%+ in the primary -- regardless of their party. This will eviscerate third parties, of course, but that's not the worst part for Democrats. In the many places where Democrats are predominant, this means that those nasty intraparty fights and all of the fundraising they require will continue for five more months, even in races that (if it were one Democrat versus one Republican, as now) that race might not be competitive and may suck up a large amount of the limited amount of money contributed to campaigns -- including out of state campaigns. In addition, you may have a race like this year's Attorney General race, where six credible Democrats are facing off against three Republicans. Put them all into one "jungle primary," and you may well see two Republicans make it into the general election because the Democrats dilute the vote too much.
Each of these propositions would be a minor disaster for progressives. Combine them with Prop 8, and they give many reasons -- corporations taking over the initiative process, good initiatives being too complicated for voters while bad ones bolstered by simplistic arguments appeal to them -- that the popular plebiscite process in California needs substantial reform.
Until then, there's nothing to be done except: vote the right way!