Initiative

No surprise, but the California Supreme Court today agreed to consider whether Prop 8 is constitutional. Both sides had sought a quick move by the court, and it looks like they're going to get it. More details here.

Other Prop 8 news: In a very interesting interview with the Sacramento Bee, California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, who is African-American, said that the post-Prop 8 debate has been "racialized"  (because of exit polls showing widespread black support for the Prop 8 ban on same sex marriage) and described how friends of her who attended anti-Prop 8 protests had racial epithets hurled at them.

I've never cared for El Coyote, the Mexican restaurant on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, even though it's within walking distance of my apartment. The best thing on the menu is the margaritas, and your blogger remains a teetotaler so he can stay sharp and detect drafting errors in initiatives. When I'm thinking Mexican, I hit the taco trucks, or maybe stop by the original El Cholo on Western or Mijares in my hometown of Pasadena. 

But I'm heading over there tonight. Why? Because same-sex marriage supporters, full of righteous anger at the passing of Prop 8, the ban on same-sex marriage, have targeted El Coyote as part of an insane, counter-productive strategy of mindless rage at anyone or anything tangentially connected to the Prop 8 effort. The niece of the restaurant's original owners gave $100 to Yes on 8. The response? A boycott and lots of Internet rage.   

The New York Times seems to think so. In this piece, the Times says that an Arkansas initiative to ban adoption by unmarried couples (a measure clearly targeted at gays) passed because white Arkansas Democrats didn't like Obama and stayed home, thus hurting the measure. The evidence of that is hardly clear. Turnout appears to have been down among white Democrats, but it's far from clear that such Democrats who stayed at home would have opposed the ban. It's common to link the results of candidate races to the results of initiative elections, but the correlation is not strong. In California, some are blaming the victory of Prop 8 on socially conservative African Americans who turned out for Obama but also supported a ban on same-sex marriage. Maybe. But the margin in that race is such -- and the percentage of black voters is small enough -- that the gay marriage ban might well have succeeded in spite of any turnout effect. The margin in Arkansas was even wider on the adoption measure.

Marty Wilson, a leading Sacramento political consultant who is a favorite of your blogger, managed the campaign in favor of Prop 10, the T. Boone Pickens-backed $5 billion general obligation bond to fund alternative fuels. Prop 10 lost badly, despite the fact that it had overwhelming financial support and an opposition with little funding.

Wilson, a good-natured sort, asks himself the following question: at Fox & Hounds Daily: “Marty, how the Hell did you lose the Proposition 10 campaign when you were funded and your opposition had no money?” To which I answer, “It was harder than you think.” The rest of the story is here. His explanation of why the measure went down -- the cost, the size of the state's budget crisis -- matches the political problems I discussed earlier this fall in the Scientific American.

Last night on the nationally syndicated radio show Beyond the Beltway, I discussed the problems with the No on 8 campaign that led to victory for the California initiative to ban same-sex marriage.

The Prop 8 election returns are in, but the campaign isn't over. Opponents of Prop 8 -- that is, supporters of same-sex marriage -- staged protests on the west side of Los Angeles yesterday afternoon and evening., temporarily shutting down traffic on two major thoroughfares. Protestors targeted Mormons with signs and marched on the Mormon temple on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Bans on same-sex marriage appear to have won in Florida and Arizona. And Prop 8, the California ban on gay marriage, is leading early, with nearly 53 percent of the vote. That number will likely shrink as the night goes on. Early tallies are heavy with mail ballots; those voters tend to be older, and age is the best predictor of how people vote on same-sex marriage. It's possible that this race will remain so tight that we may not know the outcome for days, if not weeks.

Sunday in the Sacramento Bee, I wrote about my idea for reforming California's direct democracy. The piece is here. It's part of a weekly feature called "The Conversation." Please contribute your own thoughts on the idea. At root, the idea is to make it easier to qualify referenda -- ballot measures to block an act of the legislature -- for the ballot, and make it harder to qualify and pass initiatives. The idea is to make initiatives, which are common, rare, and to make referenda, which are rare, more common.

Be sure to read not just my piece but the three pieces the Bee solicited to respond to it. The one from Rick Hasen, a prominent election lawyer, details the most common objection from reformers. They don't like the initiative process, but they see it as the only way to enact their reforms. My view is that very little political reform takes place by initiative. In fact, reform has usually been set back by initiative (I don't consider term limits progress--it certainly didn't improve the quality of governance in my state). Please let me know what you think.

Steve Peace, a former California budget director, had recently filed an initiative to end partisan elections in the state. He has now withdrawn it, according to the Secretary of State's office. I've contacted the firm listed as the contact point for the initiative, but no response.

One wouldn't think that's not a tough assignment, but the campaign in favor of Prop 4, the California initiative to require parental notification before a minor receives an abortion, has seen fit to give its supporters specific instructions on where to find Latinos. Apparently, Latinos hang out at WalMart and at church.

Below is an actual email from the campaign -- yes, your blogger swears it's real -- urging voters to find Latino voters in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Enjoy.