The longer he’s been out of office, the more tempting it is to look back on former California governor Jerry Brown through a nostalgic lens.
There is, for example, the warm and fuzzy narrative of Brown, the only California governor to serve for two nonconsecutive eight-year stretches, as a Golden State version of the Roman general Cincinnatus—an elder statesman who left his farm to save his nation. (It’s not a perfect parallel, as Brown was a sitting state attorney general when he mounted his third gubernatorial campaign back in 2010.)
There’s also the sentimental notion of the septuagenarian Brown (he was only in his mid-30s the first time he was elected California’s governor, in 1974, and 72 when he took office the second time) as Sacramento’s answer to Rome’s “all-knowing” Marcus Aurelius (ok, I stole that descriptor from the movie Gladiator)—an image Brown liked to embellish by reciting Latin phrases to puzzled reporters (one such favorite when explaining fiscal sensibility: nemo dat quod non habet, or “no man gives what he does not have”).
But there’s another side to Brown worth noting: a governor who wasn’t above partisan politics.
Case in point: Brown’s decision, at the beginning of the aforementioned third term, to sign SB 202, banning citizen-initiated ballot measures from appearing in statewide June primaries.
Why was it a “political” decision? Because in the short term, Brown was facing heat from legislative Democrats to postpone a June 2012 ballot measure creating a “rainy-day fund”—money set aside in times of fiscal surplus.
As for long-term considerations: Brown understood that future conservative ballot measures stood less of a chance of earning majority support if all were relegated to November elections and their higher Democratic turnout.
A decade after Brown’s decision, right-of-center ballot initiatives in California are not unlike turtle hatchlings trying to scurry across the sand toward the safety of the sea. Only, the predators aren’t birds and ghost crabs. Instead, they’re activist justices and scheming lawmakers.
Let’s look at two such “hatchlings” trying to run the gauntlet in 2024, the first being a ballot measure that would alter California tax policy. If approved, the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act would alter the state constitution by redefining all state and local levies and fees as “taxes.” New state taxes proposed by the state legislature would require two-thirds approval by lawmakers and a simple majority of voters; new local taxes would require two-thirds approval by voters.
But that measure now finds itself at the mercy of California’s Supreme Court, which is considering a challenge by Democratic state leaders (including Governor Gavin Newsom) to kill the measure on the grounds that’s a revision of the state constitution and as such can only appear on the ballot via supermajority approval by the legislature or a constitutional convention.
Maybe a majority of the seven justices ultimately side with the initiative’s proponents (including the California Business Roundtable and other business and taxpayer advocacy groups). Then again, one senses which way one justice is leaning. That would be Goodwin Liu, at one point a nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and also at one time married to a future chief of staff for Newsom. In the hearing, Liu asked if the initiative constituted a “major reworking of government” and suggested that its implementation would impact “every decision, down to library fines.”
If the justices were to strike down that tax change, it wouldn’t be the first time the state’s high court has intervened in the initiative process. In July 2018, the California Supreme Court invalidated a ballot measure that would have divided California into three smaller and (in theory) more efficient states (in that instance, the opposition came from an environmental group, not Democratic leaders). The court’s en banc ruling included this line of reasoning: “The potential harm in permitting the measure to remain on the ballot outweighs the potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election.” Which prompted this response from the initiative’s godfather, venture capitalist Tim Draper: “Apparently, the insiders are in cahoots and the establishment doesn’t want to find out how many people don’t like the way California is being governed. They are afraid to know the answer as to whether we need a fresh start here in California.”
As for our other “turtle” struggling to make it to sea, the measure in question would reform 2014’s Proposition 47. Officially known as the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, it would elevate penalties for certain drug and theft crimes while also requiring some drug offenders to enter rehab if they’re arrested three or more times—the opposite approach to Prop 47, which sought to downplay incarceration and reduce prison populations.
What Newsom and Democratics hope to achieve: kill the measure by opting instead for a series of crime reform measures authored by the legislature—the trick being that the reform bills would include “poison pills” (i.e., inoperability clauses) that would prevent them from going into law if voters approve the Prop 47 reform measure. Translated from Sacramento-speak: as California’s secretary of state has until June 27 to certify all initiatives for the November ballot, that gives the Democratic power establishment the next two weeks to coax the organizers of the anti–Prop 47 initiative into dropping their effort by going along with the legislative package rather than risking what the Democratic-heavy electorate might decide in November.
Why this strategy? Because of another ace up the Democratic establishment’s sleeve: the state attorney general’s authority to write the title and summary for ballot initiatives, sometimes with a partisan slant (an example of this abuse: a 2000 ballot initiative proposing universal school choice that had the words “state-funded private and religious education” added to its title).
Not surprisingly, some Republican lawmakers are crying foul. “This whole scheme is to just allow Attorney General Rob Bonta to write on the ballot summary title that this would ‘impede attempts to curb retail theft,’ that’s what this is really about,” claimed Assembly GOP leader James Gallagher. “What they’re trying to do is deprive voters of their ability to vote on this, he’s trying to strong-arm the coalition that’s pushing this initiative.”
Which maybe is one more reason to miss the “tell it like it is” days of Jerry Brown’s rule, no both Latin and English — that is, if the former governor is willing to admit that the powers that be in Sacramento will do what it takes to stifle conservative reform measures.
Occasionally, ad absurdum.
