By Ben Christopher. CalMatters. Bay City News.
Rejecting Proposition 30 may seem a little out of character for the California electorate.
These are the voters, after all, who showed no qualms just a decade ago about raising income taxes on top earners and also pummeled millionaires in 2004 to pay for mental health services. These are the California majorities who, in June, told pollsters they were considering or had already purchased an electric car. Most cited air pollution, wildfires, and climate change as areas of greatest personal concern.
However, the ballot measure that would have raised taxes on some 43,000 billionaires ?with incomes of more than $2 million a year? to fund electric car rebates and fight wildfires has suffered an unequivocal defeat. In the statewide vote count as of Wednesday night, 59 percent had rejected the proposal.
At first glance, the fate of Proposition 30 may be the most compelling head scratcher of the 2022 California election. But for the campaigns on both sides of the highly contested measure, and for many independent political observers, there is an obvious answer. to this electoral mystery, and his name is Governor Gavin Newsom.
"You can't get the governor out of there," said Matt Rodríguez, campaign manager for No on 30. "He's a credible messenger on the opposition side, simply because I think a lot of people and a lot of Democrats follow his lead." ».
Newsom's decision to speak out against Prop. 30 in mid-September caught many political observers by surprise. That's because his position seemed at odds with his reputation as an advocate of the climate in general and an advocate of electric cars in particular, and because his opposition was so fervent.
Of the seven measures on the statewide ballot this year, the governor lent his image and directed his own campaign resources to only two: the overwhelmingly successful Prop. 1 to codify abortion rights into the California constitution, and Prop. 30, a riskier political proposition. gambit.
That was a blow to the antiprop. 30 forces. When comparing polls conducted before and after the governor published his first "No at 30" ad, public support waned, especially among his supporters.
"The drop among those who approve of Newsom was three times greater than among those who disapprove," said Dean Bonner, associate director of polling at the California Institute of Public Policy. The No campaign found a similar change in its private polls.
Mary Creasman, executive director of California Environmental Voters and a member of the campaign supporting Prop. 30, also said Newsom's role "100 percent" contributed to the measure's demise, though she also blamed the "No" campaign. for what he said were "lies" about what the ballot measure would actually do.
Prop. 30 “had a record number of billionaires against it, had complete falsehoods thrown at it, and had the most popular Democratic leader in the state against it,” he said. "And we still got 40 percent of the vote."
Specifically, Creasman said the suggestion, made by Newsom and in many No on 30 ads, that Prop. 30 would have specifically benefited Lyft was false. In fact, while the measure might have helped the ride-sharing company meet some of the state's vehicle electrification mandates, it would have done so by subsidizing zero-emission vehicles and expanding charging infrastructure more generally, not by directly providing money. to Lyft.
Lyft, however, provided roughly 94 percent of the funding, nearly $48 million, for the Yes on Prop. 30 campaign.
Creasman said she was especially puzzled by the governor's position, given his support for a state policy to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. The governor and Legislature have committed $10 billion in zero-cost programs and subsidies. emissions over the next five years.
But Creasman argued that making the transition mandatory will require more and more reliable public funding.
The failure of Prop. 30 puts the ball in the governor's court, he added.
"Where will the money come from?" Creasman said. "If the governor has new, exciting, innovative things that he can take out of his pocket and say, 'This is how we're going to pay for it,' we're all in."
It is not a referendum on the climate
Both Creasman and Rodríguez cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions about the political preferences of California voters from the outcome of this one controversial proposal.
“Will voters continue to be progressive on tax policy? I think possibly," Rodriguez asked. “Will they still be very progressive on the climate? I absolutely believe. I don't think any of that has disappeared. I just think the voters weren't fooled."
David Vogel, author of "California Greenin': How the Golden State Became An Environmental Leader" and a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, agreed.
"I don't see it as a referendum on climate change or the environment," he said of Prop. 30. He noted the governor's opposition, the neutrality of some high-profile environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, and accusations of self Lyft bargaining as the top reasons for voter skepticism.
The Sierra Club's decision not to endorse was prompted by concerns that some of the money the measure would have spent on wildfire mitigation could have funded forest clearing.
But that was just one of many dueling endorsements and non-endorsements in the Prop. 30 campaign that may have confused voters.
In opposing the measure, Newsom joined longtime allies in the state's two largest teachers' unions, which have warned that Prop. 30 could reduce state funding for public schools. But he broke with many Democrats and was on the same side as odd political peers, including the California Republican Party, the state Chamber of Commerce and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
On the yes side, the Democratic Party, many environmentalists and unions rallied around Lyft, even though they fought the corporate giant just two years ago over its successful referendum to exempt the company's drivers from a state labor law.
The sheer strangeness of those coalitions probably also contributed to the defeat of Prop. 30, said Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc., an election analysis firm that works with Democrats.
“I don't think it was so much the governor's message, but it was confusing for voters. It was like, Wait, is this an environmental thing? Is it a Lyft thing? Does the governor not agree?", he pointed out.
Mitchell pointed to the trend in California politics that ballot measures frequently lose support as Election Day approaches. Often this is because undecided and bewildered voters are motivated by the “first do no harm” principle and, erring on the side of the status quo, vote “no”.
"Confusion is the best friend of the 'no' side," Mitchell noted. "You don't even have to win the argument, you just have to muddy the waters."
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