Gap Inc. founder Donald Fisher may well be “a major political force who has powerful ties inside (San Francisco) City Hall” as the Chronicle once reported, and he and his family may well have been among the “most reliable – and, if dollar amounts are any indication, enthusiastic” donors to Gavin Newsom’s 2003 mayoral campaign as the Bay Guardian once reported, but Fischer gave $7,000 to Jerry Brown’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign on June 26. Other notable donations to Brown’s campaign that same day included $6,500 from fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg of New Milford, Conn. and $5,000 from Playboy magazine founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner of Los Angeles.

Gavin Newsom is raising funds too, although not at such a rate as Brown. Among his recent contributions was $5,000 on June 26 from political consultant Peter Ragone, who works for – Newsom. Call it enlightened self-interest.

On the other side of the aisle, 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary candidate, former Los Angeles Mayor and former state Education Secretary Richard Riordan threw $5,000 to Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner on June 30.

Engineering, construction and investment mogul Stephen Bechtel Jr. of San Francisco - #261 on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, at a net worth of about $2.5 billion – anted up $10,000 for Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Campbell on June 27.

And eHarmony Inc. CEO Gregory Waldorf of Santa Monica feels the stirrings of political love for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, to whom he gave $5,000 on June 26.

In the ballot measure department, Los Angeles-based Mercury General Corp. on June 26 put $500,000 into a “Californians For Fair Auto Insurance Rates” campaign committee, supporting a prospective ballot measure called the “The Continuous Coverage Auto Insurance Discount Act.” The language submitted June 12 to the state Attorney General’s office says the measure would correct an inconsistency in California insurance law that lets insurers provide a discount rewarding long periods of continuous coverage to drivers who change insurers rather than only those who stick with the same insurer.

It’s gonna be a long, hot summer.

Macerich, backers of a new Neiman Marcus in Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek, filed an initiative petition today with city officials that seeks to ask voters to approve once and for all the controversial high-end retailer in downtown.

The move comes as the opponents, funded by mall company competitor Taubman Co., are pursuing a referendum of the City Council’s recent approval of the project. Taubman interests have also said they will file some type of growth-related initiative petition although no details of its contents have been made public.

Residents are already receiving robocalls and mailers. Signature-gatherers are knocking on doors and lining up outside stores.

In the case of dueling initiatives, if all pass, the measure with the most votes typically prevails.

In addition to Macerich, sponsors of the pro-Neiman Marcus petition include former Walnut Creek Mayor Gwen Regalia, Rossmoor leader David Smith and former Walnut Creek Arts Cmmissioner Carole Wynstra.

Here’s the press release that Macerich sent out a few minutes ago, after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »

Make a note on your calendars: This was the day on which the Green Party of California and the California Republican Party were on the same page. Well, sort of.

The Green Party, which said it polled its members and county councils before coming to a decision, y today urged state voters to vote against on all propositions on the May 19 special ballot.

“We oppose the cuts in transportation, education, social services and other humane services, and we oppose this deal even though we were told that great hardship would result if (this) rotten deal failed to pass,” said Michael Rubin, who analyzed the measures for the Green Party of Alameda County. “Even more we oppose the process which offers us a ‘choice’ of being shot in the leg or shot in the arm, but did not offer us the choice of using our collective wealth to meet human needs.”

Proposition 1A, the spending cap/rainy-day fund measure, would create more problems and require billions more in cuts to needed social services, the Greens say; Proposition 1B, providing money previously promised to school districts, and Proposition 1C, to borrow money against future lottery revenue, are merely there to sweeten the bitter pill of 1A, they say. The Greens rejected 1D and 1E because they say the measures steal money from taxes created to benefit children and the mentally ill, and they said 1F — preventing pay raises for state elected officials when the budget is in deficit — is ineffectual.

State GOP leaders last month voted to oppose all the measures too — but they’re doing it because they oppose any and all tax increases, and believe the state budget should be slashed far beyond the cuts already made.

Strange bedfellows, indeed.

This Monday, May 4 is the last day to register or re-register to vote in the May 19 special election, wherein voters will decide on six budget-related ballot measures.

To be eligible to register to vote in this election, a person must be a U.S. citizen and California resident; at least 18 years old on Election Day; not in prison or on parole for a felony conviction; and not deemed by a court to be mentally incompetent to register and vote. Voters must re-register if they have moved, changed their names, or wish to change their political party affiliation (the latter of which makes no difference in this election).

Voter registration cards are available from county elections offices, public libraries, city halls, post offices and DMV offices, or can be downloaded from the Secretary of State’s Web site. Voter registration cards require an original signature and must be submitted in person or through the mail; a registration card postmarked on or before May 4 will be accepted as meeting the registration deadline.

Mailing of state-issued pamphlets for the May 19 statewide special election are lagging behind the schedules of Bay Area election offices, which began sending vote-by-mail ballots on Monday.

For folks who haven’t made up their minds yet, the ballot pamphlet contains overviews of the six statewide measures and the arguments for and against each of the questions.

“The Secretary of State’s office tells us that they will finish mailing out the pamphlets by April 27,” said Contra Costa Registrar of Voters Steve Weir. “But as of (Wednesday afternoon) no Bay Area voter has received a pamphlet.”

In the meantime, voters can wait for the  pamphlet to show up in their mailboxes or download it online at www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov.  Voters may also pick up a copy at the following county election offices:

n Contra Costa County Registrar of Voters: 555 Escobar St. in Martinez. Contact the office at 925-335-7800 or www.cocovote.us.

n Alameda County Registrar of Voters: 1225 Fallon Street G-1 in Oakland. Contact the office at 510 267-8683 or www.acgov.org/rov.

n Solano County Registrar of Voters: 675 Texas St. in Fairfield. Contact the office at 707-784-6675 or www.solanocounty.com.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, invited me to sit down with her for about a half-hour this afternoon between her Bay Area events.

After Bass accepted an award from Girls Inc. for her work with youth, we met in the oddly named “Bridal Room” at the new downtown Oakland Catholic cathedral. (We’re pretty sure it’s a room intended for brides and their bridesmaids to prepare for a wedding.)

As expected, Bass focused heavily on her campaign to persuade Californians to pass the six ballot measures on the May 19 special election she helped negotiate. The measures were part of the Legislature’s protracted and difficult budget settlement early this year. (Click here to link to the independent Legislative Analysts Office’ conclusions about the measures.)

“If we don’t pass these measures, when we begin to negotiate next year’s budget, we will have a $14 billion hole instead of an $8 billion hole,” Bass said.

People have become confused, she said, over critics’ statements that measures 1D and 1E will take money from children and mental health programs funded through Props. 10 and 63. Bass said the new measures will tap into the prior propositions’ reserve funds and divert the money into very same programs that the propositions were intended to serve: core children and mental health programs.

“If these measure fail, we will have to cut children and mental health programs,” Bass said. “We are not using all the reserves but some of that money, which will otherwise just sit in the reserves.”

She also defended some of the proposed corporate tax credits that critics have said will cost the state tens of millions of dollars such as the Hollywood movie tax credit.

“I can’t defend all the tax credits we negotiated,” Bass said.

But the movie industry has been slowing moving out of California, she said, and the state needs to take action or lose it in the same way it lost the the aerospace industry.

While the measures contain plenty for everyone to criticize, she compared the state’s fiscal morass to a house on fire.

“When the house is on fire, the first thing you do is put out the flames before you start trying to rebuild the house,” she said.

Bass also emphasized a need for the Legislature to tackle some of the state’s other big problems such as water, healthcare, the tax code, energy and the prison system.

She and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg issued a joint statement earlier today and vowed to work on comprehensive plan to solve the state’s water crisis, particularly the problems of the California Delta.

And Bass says she will pursue the creation of independent commissions to study and recommend reforms of the state’s parole system and its criminal laws. As an example, she wants to see reforms of laws that criminalize and label as sex offenders teen-agers who engage in so-called “sexting.”

On her personal legislative agenda, Bass has introduced a bill that would extend publicly funded services to foster youth through age 21. The current law cuts foster children off at age 18, a time when very few young people are ready support themselves.

She also plans to work on a ballot measure in 2010 that would create a special fund to fully pay for foster care services. The money would come from new taxes on candy and snack foods, which would generate an estimated $500 million a year.

Bass is running out time to finish her agenda. She terms out in 2010 and has no other publicly elected position on her radar.

“But I will be involved in public policy somehow,” she said. “I have been involved in public policy all of my life.”

George Lakoff

UC-Berkeley Professor George Lakoff, expert in cognitive linguistics and author of “Don’t Think of Elephant!” is the featured guest at a Sunday event to raise money for a ballot measure that calls for reducing the California Legislature’s budget adoption threshold from two-thirds to a simple majority.

State Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, is hosting the event in Oakland on Sunday from 4-6 p.m. Click here for the invite.

Hancock authored SCA5, a bill that would place before voters in 2010 the opportunity to alter the threshold. If she is unable to secure passage of the measure in Sacramento, proponents plan to circulate the petition and gather the requisite number of signatures to place the question on the ballot using the initiative petition process.

The folks advocating for the change hope that voters’ unhappiness with the recent, drawn-out budget fight in Sacramento will see fit to make the reform. But opponents are expected to wage all-out war against the effort.

California is one of a handful of states with a two-thirds requirement to pass a budget. Critics say it allows a few members of the minority party to hold the budget hostage while advocates say it serves as a check on out-of-control spending.

Lakoff is an expert in what he calls framing, or the way advocates and their foes describe their positions and how those choices tap into the public’s attitudes about everything from taxes to political parties.  Lakoff has said that while Republicans have mastered the art of framing, Democrats have fallen behind. But several years ago, Democratic Party leaders sought help in framing their messages from his book, “Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.”

The Center for Governmental Studies, led by the highly capable Bob Stern, has written a very interesting editorial published in the Los Angeles Times about recommended reforms of California’s initiative process.

I recommend reading this editorial. Here are the first few paragraphs:

By Robert M. Stern and Tracy Westen
November 10, 2008

Here are some things you should know about ballot initiatives in California.

In all of the 1960s, there were only nine statewide initiatives placed on the ballot. In the 1970s, that number rose to 22. In the 1980s, Californians were asked to vote on 46; then, in the 1990s, it climbed to 61. So far in this decade, there already have been 63 — and there’s still a year to go, with a possible special election in June.

That’s a record every decade — and a sevenfold increase over 50 years.

Here’s something else: Supporters and opponents of these initiatives are spending more and more money to ensure that their side wins: $9 million in 1976, $127 million in 1978 (the year of Proposition 13), $140 million in 1996, $280 million in 2004 and $330 million in 2006 — a 37-fold increase in 30 years.

This money comes from individuals, corporations and unions, but increasingly it comes in large chunks — very large chunks. In the 1990 elections, for example, one-third of all contributions for initiatives were given in amounts of $1 million or more. In 2006, it jumped from one-third to two-thirds. One person — real estate heir and Hollywood producer Stephen Bing — gave more than $46 million of his own money to support the (unsuccessful) 2006 initiative to impose oil depletion taxes.

The ACLU of Northern California is sponsoring an anti-Proposition 8 rally in Walnut Creek on Wednesday featuring local leaders including outgoing state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata.

Prop. 8 would specify in the California Constitution that marriage is between one man and one woman and reverse a recent court decision that declared same-sex marriages legal. Voters on both sides of the ballot measure are coming out in force as the Nov. 4 election draws closer.

Read more for the press release and details about the rally. Read the rest of this entry »

The Institute of Governmental Studies Library has released guides to the California propositions on the Nov. 4 ballot:

http://igs.berkeley.edu/library/hot_topics/2008/Nov2008Election/index.html

Information provided includes:

* Narrative overviews with historical background
* Links to official voter information from the California Secretary of State
* Links to campaign websites, public opinion polls, reports and studies, and news

A ballot-measure-related election news blog will start on the site today.