Selling Prop 30

Original Reporting | By Meade Klingensmith |

Glass said that the California Federation of Teachers tested a number of different tax measures before negotiating with Governor Brown to create Prop 30. Its original idea, a “1 percent on the 1 percent” income tax on the wealthiest Californians, achieved 73 percent approval in test polling, though the Federation decided to discard it after determining that it did not raise enough revenue. A sales tax with no progressive element only garnered 44 percent approval in test polling. From these results, Glass and his colleagues concluded that progressive income taxes have much more public support than regressive taxes, and therefore that Brown’s Prop 30 messaging needed to focus on the fact that the measure was primarily a tax on the wealthy. “Once people understand that, they’re much more likely to vote for it.”

According to Glass, Brown resisted this message at first, perhaps out of a concern about alienating business-oriented supporters, but embraced it in the final three weeks of the campaign in which he held a statewide blitz of rallies at colleges, community centers, and union halls. (For an example of the messaging in a typical speech from this period, see “Brown on the stump”). Glass credits this reversal with turning the tide in Prop 30’s favor — before those final three weeks, polls had shown that approval for the measure had dropped to 48 percent.

The sales tax component of Proposition 30 called for a different approach. Brown’s campaign tried to make the sales tax less frightening, Dan Newman said, by showing that, in context, “it’s not very much.”  Throughout the campaign, Newman continued, Brown repeated that the tax amounted to “an extra penny on a four-dollar sandwich.”

 

Technique 3: Prove accountability

“We knew voters wanted to support schools…they understood the dire fiscal straits our schools were in. So then the main threshold question that they had was, ‘Will this really help our schools?’” said Newman. “They can’t feel as if their taxes are just going down a black hole.”

The California Federation of Teachers saw the need to focus on the fact that the measure was primarily a tax on the wealthy. “Once people understand that,” said Fred Glass, CFT’s communications director, “they’re much more likely to vote for it.”

To reassure voters, Newman said, his team employed two approaches. First, it used advertising to inform voters that the revenue from Prop 30 “went into a special account for schools and that there would be regular audits that would be posted online.”

Second, it relied on Brown’s personal status as what Newman called a “trusted messenger” with a long-term reputation for having a frugal lifestyle. Brown burnished that reputation for frugality upon returning to office in 2011 by taking 48,000 cell phones and 7,500 “non-essential” cars away from state employees in all state agencies and departments; by vetoing a budget for the first time in California history “because it relied on the old duct tape and gimmicks”; and by pushing for draconian budget cuts.

Willie Pelote, a senior political and legislative director of the California branch of AFSCME International, a major union for public sector workers that supported Prop 30, agreed that the cuts made by Brown played an important role in earning the trust of voters. “A lot of people wanted Jerry [Brown] to come in here and talk about how he was going to restore funding…But he came in here and made hard choices that hurt a lot people,” he said. Pelote argued that by cutting spending before asking for more revenue, Brown demonstrated that “there’s no fat here” and made voters more likely to support higher taxes.

 

Technique 4: Timing

Two elements of timing appear to have played an important role in the success of Prop 30: the decision to put the measure on the ballot during a presidential election year, and the decision to run a relatively reserved campaign until the blitz of the final three weeks.

Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California noted that “putting [Prop 30] on the general election ballot in a presidential year was huge…The electorate that will turn out for a presidential election is much different from the electorate in an off-year election.” Specifically, voter turnout among three groups who tend to have greater-than-average liberal leanings ­— young people, minorities, and poor people — is higher in presidential as opposed to off-year elections.

Willie Pelote believes that the timing of the campaign’s statewide promotional blitz in the final three weeks before the election was also important, since that was the period when “voters are paying the most attention…This was a great campaign. I think I got my first piece of mail three weeks out.” Pelote contrasted this approach with the more traditional campaigns run by his union, which he said usually start between six and nine months in advance.

Did Prop 30 need to have a sunset?

Fred Glass, communications director for the California Federation of Teachers, along with his union, said the CFT fought for the tax to be permanent when it negotiated the measure with Governor Brown, but, as Glass told Remapping Debate, “the governor was insistent upon [a temporary increase]. I think that he thought it was necessary, and I’m not sure whether it was for the public or for his more conservative partners in the initiative, such as the business community.” While CFT and its partners successfully negotiated with Gov. Brown for a longer sunset for the income tax provision than the governor had originally supported (as well as a smaller sales tax with a quicker sunset), Glass remains worried that California will be faced with another crisis when Prop 30 expires in seven years.

When asked why Brown insisted on the sunset provision, campaign strategist Dan Newman replied, “It’s both politics and policy. It’s always easier to stomach a temporary tax, but it’s also the right thing to do policy-wise…it’s widely considered good public policy not to be overly reliant on just the highest income taxpayers, because then you can get the boom and bust cycles that we’ve suffered through where the California budget can be overly tied to the stock market.”

Would the measure have passed without a sunset? Glass, who acknowledged that his union never tested the question, was nevertheless confident that it would have.  Mark Baldassare, the president and chief executive officer of the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California, by contrast, was uncertain because a proposition without a sunset “may have generated a different opposition campaign.” Newman was more in Glass’ camp. Although not having a sunset would “shave off a couple points of support,” he said, given Prop 30’s wide margin of victory, a permanent version of the measure might feasibly have passed anyway.

Newman said Brown’s campaign made a point of informing voters that Prop 30 was only a stopgap measure, the first step in what must be an ongoing process. “[Brown] was always clear that Prop 30 is not a panacea, it’s not some magic solution that’s going to make it rain money for the rest of time in California…It’s something that puts us back on stable footing and allows us the foundation to move forward again.”

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