(I'd actually been planning to post a diary today on a completely different topic, but in the interest of timeliness, I'll leave that for later in the week, I suppose. In the meantime, with much of California consumed by the firestorms, this news seems to have slipped through somewhat unnoticed.)
Less than a month ago, it appeared that Initiative 07-0032 was dead. The initiative, as everyone hopefully should recall, would have change the allocation of California's 55 presidential electors from a winner-take-all system to one in which electors would be assigned to the winner of each Congressional District (plus two for the overall state winner). Given the voter composition of the districts, this would enable the Republican candidate to come away with 20 or more electoral votes, whereas they would otherwise get zero.
On September 27th, unable to secure the necessary financing to obtain the 433,971 signatures required to get the Initiative onto the ballot, California attorney Thomas Hiltachk, who had proposed the measure, and campaign spokesman Kevin Eckery stopped their involvement. Many rejoiced, here and elsewhere, though there were a handful of us who were concerned that there was still a chance for an encore performance. Until all the deadlines had passed, there would still be some reason to keep a watchful eye on things.
Now there are two reports, in the Los Angeles Times and KQED's Capital Notes, that make it clear that the signature drive has finally found its deep-pockets providers. As described by Capital Notes:
[I]t's now been revived by a group of conservatives that includes anti-tax crusader Lew Uhler and former 2003 recall campaigner Tony Andrade. Andrade submitted a similar initiative for circulation a few weeks before Hiltachk, but says he's put his own version "on ice," and is now focused on Hiltachk's version.
In a phone interview this afternoon [Monday], Andrade said that the campaign has amassed close to $3 million to get the roughly 434,000 valid signatures needed to qualify for the June statewide ballot. He said that while volunteer signature gatherers are getting a buck per signature, paid gatherers could end up getting as much as $4 per signature by the time the dust has settled.
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So who's put up the cash? Andrade says that $2 million has come from what he calls a "national group," but declined to elaborate on their identity. The rest of the money, he says, comes from various social conservatives... including some who helped bankrolled the signature gathering for the 2003 recall of Governor Gray Davis.
And according to the Times,
Political strategist David Gilliard said he was taking over the ballot initiative campaign, along with strategist Ed Rollins and fundraiser Anne Dunsmore. Consultant Mike Arno will oversee the signature-gathering effort.
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Until recently, Dunsmore oversaw fundraising for Rudolph W. Giuliani's presidential campaign -- prompting Democrats to charge that the former New York mayor was behind the initiative drive. A major Giuliani benefactor, Wall Street mogul Paul E. Singer, donated $175,000 to fund the original effort.
Giuliani's campaign has denied any involvement. Gilliard said he was not associated with any of the presidential campaigns and predicted that donors to all of the major Republicans would chip in for the initiative drive.
To me that almost sounds like an extortionate statement: help fund our drive, or you might not fare too well in the February primary.
According to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, the deadline for submitting signatures to get the measure on the low-turnout June primary for state offices is November 13, a scant three weeks away, though with sufficient money, anything may be possible. Even if the new backers fail to meet that date, however, we may not be out of the woods, as the Initiative could still potentially wind up on the November ballot right alongside the presidential vote. And with the actual Electoral College vote not occurring until December, it could theoretically take effect before then.
Yes, there are all sorts of Constitutional issues to be resolved (principally that electors are to be appointed in a manner directed by the state legislature, so a ballot initiative may not qualify in this regard), and there will also doubtless be court challenges that would attempt to enjoin the enforcement of the measure if it were somehow to succeed, but for now, the best bet would still be to keep the Initiative from getting the needed signatures. If we can manage that, everything else becomes moot.
[h/t after the fact to Juls, who diaried this over at Calitics last night.]
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