So the term limits reform passed and the tobacco tax narrowly failed. The Secretary of State has the county-by-county results which are interesting.
My prediction that it would win after the initial absentee counts gave it a small lead turned out to be dead wrong. Traditionally, in statewide races, the conservative causes tend to come out early with big leads as absentees and rural district returns come in first. The leads tend to erode once the urban votes start coming in, and generally speaking I think a lib candidate or cause is in pretty good shape if it’s within 10 pointsby the time 10 to 15 percent of the vote is counted.
But last night, the prop 29 lead actually eroded as the night went on. Note that it lost by a slim margin in Los Angeles County (by almost exactly the same margin as statewide), which is fairly “blue.” I started to talk about this last night in theory, and it came true even though I didn’t believe it would. Basically, I’m willing to bet that as a regressive tax is was less popular in working class African American and Latino communities, who are probably tired of footing bills as the upper classes are taxed less and less.
Meanwhile, it passed handily in San Francisco (which is almost entirely gentrified), and barely in Humboldt County (where progressives have a libertarian streak that probably played into the mix as well).
So maybe middle class progressives were on the wrong side of the class issue in this one.
What surprised me was that the term limits reform measure passed handily everywhere, blue counties and red. I think maybe the rural counties have caught on that term limits, at least in prior form, weren’t helping them out. We’ll see in a decade or so whether this measure makes a difference.
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June 6, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Fred Mangels
I think maybe the rural counties have caught on that term limits, at least in prior form, weren’t helping them out.
Term limits weren’t hurting them, either. That proposition was six one way, half dozen the other. I don’t see it having any significant effect on anything.
June 6, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Eric Kirk
Yes they were Fred. It’s the reason why we have much lower spending per capita in rural areas proportionate to urban areas than we did in the 1990s. Somebody posted something about it here. In the old days, rural legislators could get themselves onto committees and ensure that a fair share of the money made it out our way. But with everyone having to think about running for higher office, or lateral office, within a few years, it’s all about the bang for the buck, which means you want to make the concentrations of voters happy. It’s why school buses were on the chopping block. It’s why even conservative Arizona is seriously considering nixing term limits.
June 6, 2012 at 2:05 pm
grackle
I asked this over at Heraldo’s place but got no answer- wouldn’t prop 29 require a super-majority to pass as a new tax/tax increase? If so it wasn’t even close.
June 6, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Fred Mangels
wouldn’t prop 29 require a super-majority to pass as a new tax/tax increase?.
Good point. I hope you’re right, but I doubt it. I haven’t heard anyone talking about a super- majority requirement to pass the Governor’s tax increase proposal.
June 6, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Fred Mangels
I’m not sure but I think that just applies to taxes passed by the state legislature.
June 6, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Eric Kirk
I don’t know that it applies to sales taxes at all.
June 7, 2012 at 9:20 pm
Jim
That is why Gov. Brown had to go the initiative route, couldn’t get 2/3rds in the legislature, so get 50%+1 in a vote.
I wish it didn’t take weeks for them to count the mail-in ballots dropped off on election day. It is going to become problematic in a few years.