Ballot Bullies Photo by Pandora Young Ballot Bullies: Why Are Big Tobacco, Pharma and Plastic Doubling Down in California’s Election? By Capital & Main Staff uch will be written about this tumultuous election year industry, exercised this year over Proposition 56, which seeks Mbut when the dust settles after November 8, voters in an additional $2 tax on each pack of cigarettes. Contents some states may discover that candidate personalities will • Judith Lewis Mernit writes about the deceptive setup have mattered less than the laws they themselves passed (or that might cause California voters to veto a state law to ban 03 Ballot Bullies: Why Are Big Tobacco, 12 Plastics Lobby Hopes Voters rejected) in public referendums. No more so than in California, single-use plastic bags even though 60 percent of those polled Pharma and Plastic Doubling Down Will Unban Its Bags whose 17 ballot measures address everything from taxation and support it. in California’s Election? public health to crime and punishment. • Jim Crogan tallies up the enormous contributions Big 15 Big Pharma Breaks the Bank This week Capital & Main writers will examine several of those Pharma has made to oppose Proposition 61, an initiative to How Corporations Learned to Kill Proposition 61 measures in order to take a hard look at corporate influence 04 control state agencies’ prescription drug costs. to Love Direct Democracy over California’s ballot-box legislation: Plus illustrations by Lalo Alcaraz, videos and infographics. • Judith Lewis Mernit traces the progressive origins of 07 Big Tobacco Goes All Out California’s long experiment in direct democracy and how To date tobacco, pharmaceutical and plastics interests alone to Kill Proposition 56 corporate interests have learned to love it. have spent nearly $200 million trying to have their way with California. In two weeks voters will decide what they got for • Dean Kuipers looks at the perennial muscle of the tobacco their money. 2 3 solely to the people.” Among its early Witness Los Angeles real estate victories was the abolition of the poll “A single indi- developer Steve Bing’s 2006 bid tax—certainly a win for the common to establish a tax on oil-and-gas man. Less than a century later the vidual with deep extractors. Bing bankrolled his $61 ballot initiative and referendum million Proposition 87 campaign process had become, in the words pockets and a pet with $50 million of his own money, of journalist David Broder, “not but the oil and gas industry spent only a radical departure from the project can almost more— $94 million—and prevailed. Constitution’s system of checks and It was, at the time, the most money balances, it is also big business,” single-handedly ever spent on an initiative campaign. a playground for millionaires and Money, however, isn’t everything. “Just corporations that view initiative get an initiative as it’s not possible to get an initiative campaigns as a far less cumbersome on the ballot without money, it’s also means of achieving their various on the ballot.” not possible to win a campaign with agendas than lobbying legislators to only money,” Alexander says. Pacific pass their bills. – Kim Alexander, Gas & Electric, for instance, in 2010 All of the measures we will explore Founder, California Voter Foundation spent $46 million to effectively outlaw have brought in big money: community power companies; the Pharmaceutical companies have opposition spent less than $100,000, How Corporations Learned ponied up $109 million to oppose and won. Prop. 61; the tobacco industry has doubled down with $66 million to quash the first cigarette tax in 18 years. And four out-of-state In fact, most propositions, no matter how generously supported, to Love Direct Democracy corporations banded together to sink $6 million to overturn a fail in California, says Shaun Bowler, a political science state law passed in 2014 that would ban single-use plastic bags. professor at the University of California, Riverside, and author of Demanding Choices: Opinion Voting and Direct Democracy. By Judith Lewis Mernit Part of the reason wealth concentrates in ballot-box lawmaking is And plenty of high-stakes opposition campaigns go down, too, that unlike candidate races, there are no limits on contributions which might make the investment in California’s ballot-box made to initiative campaigns; the U.S. Supreme Court ruled governing look dubious to the casual observer. in 1981 that any such restrictions would violate the First t’s been 105 years since California voters were granted, by a and two referenda this year cost donors a total of $67 million, a Amendment’s guarantee of free association. Another part is the Anyone, however, who wants to have an influence in national progressive governor and his forward-thinking allies, the right “high-water mark” according to the Colorado Independent. I price of admission—simply gathering sufficient signatures to get politics, be it industrial lobbyist or environmental activist, to make laws at the ballot box. We were not the first to gain the This was not what John Randolph Haynes had in mind at the end a state or amendment on the ballot costs at least $2 million and ignores California at their peril. “California is massive,” Bowler privilege; 11 states got there first. Today 24 states allow for direct of the 19th century, when he fought to bring citizen lawmaking as much as $6 million, depending on deadlines, timing and the says. “It’s the fifth-largest economy in the world. We’re bigger legislation, which they exercise with varying degrees of intensity to the people. A thoughtful humanist with bold progressive ideas aggressiveness of a campaign. than Canada, bigger than Italy.” Standards and regulations when the need arises. about how to preserve democracy, Haynes came to California from adopted in California become national standards; technologies That pretty much counts out any middle-class activist with But no state quite matches the high-roller financial showdown Pennsylvania’s coal county in 1887 to find the state legislature in developed to meet California rules are adopted throughout the an eye on citizen lawmaking. It also gives outsized power to that happens every election season in California. Our ability the thrall of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. Every shred nation. billionaires with big ideas. “A single individual with deep pockets to attract big spenders on the initiatives, referenda and state of legislation proposed in Sacramento had to pass muster with and a pet project can almost single-handedly get an initiative on There are also reasons for participating in California’s direct constitutional amendments that confront an increasingly the railroad oligarchs; politics were dominated by scoundrels. the ballot,” says Kim Alexander, who established the California democracy that have nothing to do with winning, Bowler says: confused electorate is unparalleled. As of mid-October, more More than 20 years later, Haynes’ solution, known back then Voter Foundation in 1994 to foster a better-informed electorate. “Individuals and interest groups spend money in California, than $400 million had been spent on the 17 measures on the as “direct democracy,” was intended, in the words of Governor And even that single individual can be outspent, in a game of basically, because they can.” It’s a place where they have an 2016 California ballot. Compare that with Colorado, which ranks Hiram Johnson, to “eliminate every private interest from the one-upmanship that ends only when one side runs out of cash. opportunity to make their presence known, to remind people second in ballot measure campaigns and whose seven initiatives government, and to make the public service of the State responsive that they matter. 4 5 “It’s a little bit like being in a bar fight,” Bowler says. “To prove denied undocumented immigrants public services. Both labor you’re the tough guy, you kick someone’s dog outside. You’re and Latinos, politically engaged, helped turn California a deeper letting people know you’re in the game.” shade of blue. Another practiced strategy is to use the initiative process to bleed John Randolph Haynes and Hiram Johnson, had they lived to opponents white, rendering them weakened or even useless see it, might be horrified at direct legislation’s descent into a for future combat. That’s what happened in 1998, when anti- special-interest cash contest. But they wouldn’t be surprised, says tax crusader Grover Norquist orchestrated a campaign to force Daniel A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of California unions to obtain annual written permission from each Florida-Gainesville, and the co-author of Educated by Initiative: and every member before spending a penny on political action. The Effect of Direct Democracy on Political Organizations in the “Paycheck Protection” measures like Proposition 226, Norquist American States. “The initiative process in California has never crowed, would “crush labor as a political entity,” and cash flowed been a purely amateur mechanism to alter public policy,” he in from across the country to support his California foray. says. “People decry the amount of money, the special interests Richard Mellon Scaife, the oil-invested billionaire in Pittsburgh, involved in ballot campaigns, but corporate interests realized Pennsylvania; Indiana insurance tycoon J. Patrick Rooney; and very quickly that they could play the game, too.” Photo by Pandora Young even Bristol-Myers Squibb, the New York City-based medical Smith says the “really strong irony” is that Johnson himself supply conglomerate, added tens of thousands of dollars to the inspired early 20th century industrialists to take up the game. half million supplied by Norquist’s anti-tax advocacy outfit, “Progressives took over the government,” he says, closing off Americans for Tax Reform, headquartered in Washington, D.C.