California

Good politicians have the ability to appear to be on both sides of an issue, but Jerry Brown -- the former governor and presidential candidate, and the current attorney general of California -- is breaking new ground in this realm. Try to follow this: Brown, a likely candidate for governor in 2010, is supportive of same-sex marriage politically. But before the state supreme court, he's defending Prop 8, the just-approved initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California. At the same time, he's defending the marriages of approximately 18,000 gay couples who took the plunge in the past five months, while such unions were legal.

The results of Prop 11, the redistricting reform initiative in California, still remain too close for most media outlets to call. At Fox & Hounds Daily, I try to find a pattern in the scattershod map of the votes tallied so far.

Your blogger is spending election day in Colorado, following results of the 18 measures on the state ballot here. I've also been showing around 10 foreign visitors -- academics, journalists, activists -- who study, write about or are involved in the initiative and referendum process in other countries.

Colorado is a crucial swing state in the presidential campaign. John McCain is even campaigning on election day here, holding a rally in Grand Junction, on the western side of the state. But it's also been the site of a bitter business vs. labor battle, with both groups qualifying multiple measures for the ballot. Four weeks ago, however, some business groups and labor unions negotiated a limited peace. Business groups agreed to abandon support for thier measures and even campaign against three of the business-backed measures--most notably Measure 47, an initiative to make Colorado a "Right to Work" state. In return, labor agreed to "withdraw" four measures. But here's the interesting wrinkle.

The Sacramento Bee's Shane Goldmacher surveyed all the potential candidates for California governor in 2010 on their positions on the 12 statewide ballot measures. The full list is here, and the story is here. The frontrunners on both sides -- Jerry Brown and Dianne Feinstein for the Dems, Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman for the Reps -- ducked the survey.

The fear is that a big turnout among African-American and Latino voters for Obama might give Prop 8, the same-sex marriage ban, a crucial boost. Some polling shows broader support for Prop 8 among such voters than in the electorate as a whole. The dynamic also might boost Prop 4, the California initiative to require parental notification before an abortion is performed on a minor.

Californians are being asked to approve more than $15 billion in additional bonds on the November ballot. But the state hasn't sold many of the bonds approved in the 2006 election. According to the Sacramento Bee, less than $4 billion of the $42 billion approved in 2006 (as part of Gov. Schwarzenegger's infrastructure package) has gone out the door. This is a political problem for the bond measures on the ballot. From children's hospitals to the Los Angeles Unified School District, varoius entities are asking for more bond money long before they've spend the money from previously approved bond measures. I suspect that Californians are about to vote down a number of bond measures around the state.

Particularly vulnerabile is L.A. Unified's Measure Q. It's the most financially irresponsible bond measure in recent memory. And in California, that's saying something. It's a $7 billion bond -- more than twice as much as any school district spending plan can justify -- and is being sought by a district that has flat enrollment and that has just had a huge, multibillion dollar building plan. What's more, as the LA Times recently reported, the district is skirting laws preventing taxpayer money from being spent on political campaigns in spending big money to promote its own bond measure.

The San Francisco Chronicle politics blog reports that the latest campaign finance report for the yes side of Proposition 8, the California initiative to ban same-sex marriage, was so long that it couldn't be uploaded onto the state's web site. The report ran to more than 5,000 pages.

The Yes on 8 campaign appears to have some momentum. But it still has yet to reach a majority of voters i nthe polls.

Here's a tongue-in-cheek effort at constitutional reform by your blogger in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

The Sacramento Bee did an interesting analysis of the total expected cost, over time, if all 12 measures on the state ballot next month were to pass. The story is here. Much of the expense is in the four bond measures: Prop 1A (high speed rail), Prop 3 (children's hospitals), Prop 10 (energy) and Prop 12 (veterans' housing). A good rule of thumb for bonds: double the amount that's being borrowed, and you have the real cost.

Bob Stern of CGS is quoted as saying he believes that, at this economic moment, voters are likely to vote no on almost everything. I tend to agree.

The LA Times reports: In a letter to the Treasury Secretary, Gov. Schwarzenegger says the state may soon run out of cash without a $7 billion loan.