As petition requirements increased, the number of initiatives qualifying for the ballot decreased, particularly in the s, s, and s. One of the highest stakes initiative campaigns in terms of campaign spending was in , over a struggle over changes in the state regulation and taxation of oil and gas production. Proposition 4 that year was sponsored by a group of oil companies that sought to make their business more profitable, and opposed by another group of oil firms that preferred the existing system.
Proposition 4 lost: California voters, inundated with conflicting claims about a complex measure, took the cautious route and voted "no. Almost as expensive was the gargantuan labor-capital conflict over a "Right to Work" open shop initiative sponsored by employers. This battle ended in a double defeat for employers: not only did voters decisively reject the initiative, but the opposition campaign mobilized Democrats and union members to vote in droves, resulting in the election of Governor Edmund G.
Brown, Sr. In the s, California liberals soured on the initiative process as a result of two measures passed by voters in The second, Proposition 15 , banned cable television. That measure was sponsored by theater owners who, fearing competition, advertised the initiative as guaranteeing "free television" and eliminating the specter of "pay television.
The California initiative process gave rise to a new breed of campaign professional: the paid petition circulator.
With signature requirements doubling nearly every decade, citizen groups were unable to rely solely on volunteer effort. As early as World War I, Joseph Robinson was offering his organizing services to initiative proponents. His firm, which paid its employees a fee for each signature brought in, had a virtual monopoly on the petition business from to - a period during which, Robinson estimated, his firm was involved in 98 percent of the successful statewide initiative petition drives.
Robinson stayed in business into the late s, when he offered his services to Ed and Joyce Koupal, but by then he had competitors. One of California 's most famous initiatives was Prop Prior to Proposition 13 property taxes were out of control. People were losing their homes because they could not pay their property taxes.
Yet, government did nothing to help them. In the finest tradition of the Boston Tea Party, California taxpayers stood up and said no more to excessive taxes. The Proposition 13 Revolution swept the country and made headlines around the world. It began a change of thinking about the tax burden taxpayers had to bear. Proposition 13 also started a revolution in the people turning to the initiative process to gain a greater control over their lives.
In the last decade, Californians have led the nation in numerous reform efforts utilizing the initiative process including term limits , ending bilingual education, adopting animal protection laws, ending racial preferences, and adopting one of the most comprehensive drug reform measures in the country. They are concerned that the reforms adopted in California would come to their states — even though these are the reforms wanted by the people. However, Californians still overwhelmingly support the initiative process and have no desire for it to be abolished.
It would overturn a state law that limits the ability of localities to impose extreme forms of rent control. Proposition 11 specifies work rules for ambulance employees. And Proposition 12 [13] pits two groups of animal-welfare advocates against each other over cage specifications for chickens and other farm animals.
Despite this critique, I tend to defend our initiative system because, practically speaking, it provides the only check we have against a Legislature that has gone far to the Left. I still agree with my past argument [14] that it might be our last hope here given all the awful alternatives.
However, the same system that gave us Proposition 13 has also given us a Soviet-like insurance market and the property-rights-destroying California Coastal Commission. Oct 25, , The American Spectator. Nov 4, By relying on such campaign consultants, large corporations with ample funds — money that once might have been spent on lobbying and campaign contributions — can bypass the politicians in the legislature and translate their economic clout directly into political outcomes.
Investing in direct democracy does not always pay off, but apparently wealthy interests with ample funds are always willing to give it a try. It was the first million-dollar direct democracy campaign, funded by big national corporations, and it struck a blow against small local retailers, whom legislators had tried to protect with the chain store tax.
This was an early sign that heavy spending in direct democracy elections is most effective on the negative side. It appears that now well-financed interest-groups initiate measures more frequently than do.
However, this dispiriting trend slowed down in the next few decades, as the overall use of direct democracy declined. Californians voted on thirty-two initiatives in the s, but only twenty in the s, twelve in the s, and just nine in the s. Not a single referendum qualified for the ballot for thirty years after There were also new restrictions on the gathering of signatures: direct democracy petitions originally could circulate for unlimited periods of time, but this was reduced to two years in , and then to just days in Initiatives can only be used to amend, not revise, the constitution — and only courts can tell the difference.
Also since , any initiative must restrict itself to a single subject; no initiative is allowed to lump together a bundle of omnibus reforms in a single package. This rule, too, is subject to judicial interpretation and frequently requires litigation. The measure was denounced as clearly racist by liberals and civil rights groups, but they never stood a chance against the real estate industry juggernaut that outspent them nearly ten to one.
Business groups were divided on these measures because they seemed to invite fiscal chaos; apparently, this was not yet seen as a desirable condition to inflict on California state government. For example, in , anti-nuclear activists placed an initiative on the ballot that would have banned nuclear power plants in California.
In response, the nuclear power industry spent millions to convince California voters that nuclear power was perfectly safe. The anti-nuclear initiative went down to defeat — but less than two years later, after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, some Californians may have wished to change their votes. This measure was packaged and sold to California voters as tax relief for average homeowners, when it fact it mostly benefited big landlords and investors in commercial real estate who put up the money behind it.
The number of ballot initiatives has risen sharply since the late s — and so has the amount of money spent on campaigns. Wealthy special interests ranging from casino owners and lottery consultants to the insurance and tobacco industries have willingly invested millions in initiatives that promise to deliver billions in profits.
The gamble does not always pay off: studies of direct democracy show that the side spending the most money in the election does not always win — but it usually does. Heavy spending is especially effective on the negative side which can neutralize those rare few progressive-style measures on behalf of workers, consumers, small business, minorities, or the environment that do occasionally make it onto the ballot.
Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo which equated campaign spending with free speech. Money raised and spent in California to support or oppose ballot propositions has to be reported, but it has no limits, and in any case the final report of campaign expenditures does not appear until a month after the election, which deprives voters of access to this information until it is too late to matter.
Spending on direct democracy campaigns in recent years has sometimes topped tens of millions of dollars per proposition and is rising fast. This is how direct democracy enables those with enough money to exert a strong and grossly disproportionate effect on public policy in California. A substantial investment in gathering signatures and buying airtime can usually persuade — or deceive — enough voters into going along with whatever legislation those who foot the bill want passed.
The point is not that money controls direct democracy, because it does not: spending millions on a proposition is no guarantee of success. It does, however, cost over two million dollars just to gather enough signatures within the allotted time in order to place a proposition on the ballot in the first place. Anyone without that kind of cash is priced out of direct democracy, while anyone with that much cash lying around can force a vote on anything — and spend any amount of money to get it passed.
Rather than purge the influence of organized wealth from California politics, direct democracy seems instead to have rendered it more sophisticated, more respectable, more insidious, and perfectly legal.
Sadly, if Hiram Johnson were alive today to see what has become of his beloved direct democracy, it would probably kill him.
Norton, Appleton-Century, , Ramirez, ed. Ironically it was a revolt within the Republican Party that broke this logjam. In preparation for the gubernatorial elections a breakaway section of the state Republicans calling themselves the Lincoln-Roosevelt Republicans promoted a slate of anti-SP reform candidates lead by gubernatorial nominee Hiram Johnson. Haynes attended some of their meetings and cemented agreements that they would support his direct legislation proposals, although he did not join the Republican Party or participate further in their organization.
He accepted an appointment to the Republican State Committee on Direct Legislation and helped to draft the amendments on those issues. Hiram Johnson and the Lincoln-Roosevelt Republicans were elected in a landslide. In the session of the California legislature their draft constitutional amendments passed by the legislature and were put on the ballot for an October vote.
They would establish initiative, referendum, and recall, as well as women's suffrage, workmen's compensation, and regulation of the railroads and public utilities. John Haynes, through the Direct Legislation League which he headed, heavily financed the campaign to win support for the pending constitutional amendments.
Haynes made a personal thirty-day speaking tour of the state. The amendments were approved by the voters in October. From on John Haynes, already 58, withdrew further and further from the practice of medicine to devote his time to public service.
He campaigned for improved working conditions in mines on the national level, and was one of the very few of the upper-class reformers who championed unions and workers' rights.
Governor Hiram Johnson appointed Haynes a special commissioner to investigate mine safety in the U. He also worked to establish the minimum wage in California and shorten the work day. He served for years on a state commission to reform prisons and mental institutions, and in Los Angeles worked to increase affordable housing.
In he and Dora built a large house on the east side of Figueroa just north of Adams Blvd. The architect was Robert D. Farquhar, who designed a two and a half story French-Norman chateau. Haynes' biographer describes the house as "one of the city's most stately residences of the time," with "a richly appointed interior of fine woods, silk damask panels, and exquisite furnishings" Sitton, p. Visitors included novelist Upton Sinclair, a long-time friend of Haynes. Back in Haynes had helped subsidize Sinclair's novel "The Jungle," the famous expose of the Chicago meatpacking industry.
In this period he broke with the Hearst press because of its antiwar and somewhat pro-German editorial policies.
He several times during the war served as a local, state, or federal mediator in strikes or threatened strikes, where he generally took the side of labor rather than management. By the end of the war Haynes had shifted his priorities from direct legislation to public ownership of industries.
In the Red Scare of Dr. Haynes was subpoenaed by a local grand jury to testify about his support of socialist causes. He feigned illness and refused to appear. The Los Angeles Times denounced him repeatedly as a "parlor Bolsheviki. Haynes in an open letter challenged Chandler to explain how he could "enter into a business deal with Lenin, a man you had been daily denouncing as a blood thirsty fiend. Despite the hostility of the L. Times, Haynes returned to prominence in the post-World War I period.
He headed the gubernatorial campaign committee of William D. Stephens in , a Republican Party progressive on some issues. After Stephens was elected Haynes was appointed to the State Committee on Efficiency and Economy, where he spearheaded a major simplification of California government, finally consolidating some 70 agencies into 5 departments.
Stephens also appointed Haynes as a Regent of the University of California, an appointment unsuccessfully challenged by Stephens' successor as governor, right-wing Republican Friend Richardson. John R. Haynes, probably the city's leading advocate of public ownership of water, gas, and electric utilities, was appointed to the Los Angeles Public Service Commission in and served for sixteen years.
In the early s Haynes, working both as a commissioner and through private lobbying organizations, was instrumental in getting the Edison Company and the Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company to sell their distribution facilities to the city.
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