Pricey initiative process may prompt reforms

By Mike Swift

Mercury News

Article Launched: 11/03/2008 06:22:05 PM PST

In the hours before America was poised to elect a new president, California's weekend airwaves were clogged with debates about gay marriage, farm animals, renewable energy, bullet trains and political redistricting.

The wall-to-wall campaign ads about Proposition 8's proposed ban on same-sex marriage — at $75 million and counting, it's currently the most expensive campaign in America after the presidential race and the most expensive cultural ballot measure in California history — are partly due to intense feelings about the issue, and California's pivotal place in the nation's evolving battle over gay rights.

But the complexity and weight of the dozen ballot measures Californians will decide today, and the vast amount of money they have attracted, may also lead to renewed calls to reform the system, experts say. One expert calls California ballot initiatives the second-most expensive democratic process in the Free World.

"The ballot initiative process dates to a time when Californians were concerned that their elected representatives wouldn't represent them," said Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., which tracks campaign spending. "But over time it seems the opposite has happened, and the issues get decided based on who has the most money to throw at them. In these issues campaigns, the merits of the issue are often drowned out by the money."

Critics say the initiative process is giving special interests too much say in the state's laws and spending. Making it tougher for ballot measures to qualify for the budget, or requiring initiatives to pass by a super-majority, would be two possible reforms. But experts say limiting the flow of money that helps shape the debate through television advertising, would be much tougher.

Ritsch said there have been only two U.S. Senate races where political donations are on par with Prop. 8: The 2000 U.S. Senate race in New York won by Hillary Clinton, and the 2006 Senate campaign in Illinois, in which Barack Obama beat a group of GOP candidates. This year, the richest U.S. Senate race this year is Minnesota, where the candidates had raised about $33 million through Oct. 27, according to the center's totals.

One reason why television advertising for Prop. 8 and for other ballot measures have overwhelmed the presidential campaign in California is Obama's big lead here, which meant the national campaigns have not bothered to spend as much on media ads, said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Sacramento State University.

But she said the amount of money being poured into initiative campaigns, the sheer number of ballot measures and the degree to which initiatives drive public spending in California, will likely renew calls for reform by party leaders, academics and good-government groups after Election Day.

"I think everybody is looking at it once they take a big breath," she said. "We keep escalating the stakes in these (initiatives). It's really a full employment act for political consultants."

David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University who tracks fundraising in state ballot measures, thinks Prop. 8 will attract as much as $83 million by the time by the time the Secretary of State records all donations.

While gay marriage is the 800-pound gorilla of initiative fundraising this year, Proposition 7, on renewable energy, has attracted more than $37 million, while Proposition 2, which would set standards for the confinement of farm animals, has raised more than $16 million.

Prop. 8 won't be the richest ballot measure in the state's history. In 2006, a ballot measure that would have taxed oil produced in the state to fund alternative energy topped $120 million in donations. And 1998's Prop. 5 on Indian gaming reached about $120 million in 2008 dollars.

About 18,000 same-sex couples have married in California since mid-June, according to estimates released Monday by the Williams Institute at the UCLA law school. "It's unusual that a culture-war ballot measure has the deep pockets that we usually see when a special interest battles a special interest," McCuan said. "Usually its doctors and lawyers and insurance companies doing battle with one another." McCuan estimates that political donations to local and statewide ballot initiatives in California will total 10 percent of the estimated $5.3 billion in total political contributions for all federal races this year.

"There are always calls for reform, especially when you see the amount of money that's kicked around," he said. "They are usually dead after Thanksgiving."

Why? Two reasons:

"Greater regulation of the initiative process is going to require a ballot measure," McCuan said. "And voters are overwhelmingly in favor of protecting the status quo about ballot measures."

Contact Mike Swift at (408) 271-3648 or at mswift@mercurynews.com.