Democracy wins when Gavin Newsom loses
Dear John,
Gov. Gavin Newsom has abandoned his plan to put a competing crime measure on California’s November ballot that he launched — and withdrew— this week in an attempt to neuter a district attorney-backed initiative to reform Prop 47.
Proposition 47, passed by voters in 2014, weakened penalties for drug and theft crimes and notoriously reduced the theft of goods valued at less than $950 to a misdemeanor. The result was a massive spike in brazen retail theft across California.
After years of attempted reforms squashed by soft-on-crime advocates, frustrated district attorneys, retailers and citizens finally qualified their initiative to reform Prop 47 — the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act — for this year’s ballot after submitting more than 900,000 signatures, well above the 600,000 valid signatures required to qualify.
That’s when Newsom and legislators sprang into action to derail the crime reform initiative. First, they tried to pressure the district attorneys to withdraw their measure by offering a package of retail theft bills to address some of their concerns without going to the ballot. But that strategy imploded after lawmakers added “poison pill” amendments to the package that would kill the bills if voters passed the DA’s initiative.
When the district attorneys said “no dice,” Newsom and lawmakers rushed this week to introduce Senate Bill 1381, which would have put a competing crime measure on the ballot to confuse voters and weaken Prop 47 reforms. Blowback against the move was immediate.
“Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders really, really don’t want California voters to approve a November ballot measure to roll back parts of Proposition 47, the controversial 2014 initiative that reduced some theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors,” wrote San Francisco Chronicle columnist Emily Hoeven.
“In fact, they’re so desperate to prevent the measure from succeeding that they’re willing to subvert and twist the very process they claim to revere more than anything else — democracy — to achieve their aims.”
Public scrutiny and political maneuvering intensified ahead of the legislators’ scheduled vote on Newsom’s proposal set for Wednesday. But the governor abruptly ended his fight Tuesday night.
In a statement, Newsom said proponents of his alternative measure would not be able to meet the deadline for it to be added to the 2024 ballot. However, KCRA Capitol Correspondent Ashley Zavala reports that “sources close to the negotiations” said the real reason behind the surrender was that the “governor was not fully focused on getting the proposal on the ballot and failed to build a coalition of law enforcement groups to back the measure.”
Nearly two dozen law enforcement unions sent a letter opposing SB 1381 to Assembly Public Safety Committee Chair Kevin McCarty earlier in the week.
“Our law enforcement organizations are strongly opposed to the on-going political games involved in this latest attempt to improperly influence and defeat a citizens’ initiative, “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act,” wrote Ryan Sherman, a representative for the group.
You may be asking yourself, why on Earth would Newsom and Democrat legislators oppose effectively reforming Prop 47 after all the chaos it has unleashed in California? They are blinded by their ideological opposition to punishment for drug crimes and incarceration. Newsom’s press release in support of his competing initiative boasts that it includes “Targeted reforms to Prop 47 — Without restarting the failed War on Drugs.”
“Over the last decade, the majority party lost the plot and forgot who they were elected to represent — law-abiding citizens,” said Lance Christensen, CPC’s Vice President of Government Affairs. “As such, public safety policy in California has been nothing short of a heavily politicized game of criminal advocacy at the expense of the safety and security of lives and property.”
The spectacle once again shined a glaring light on Newsom’s two-faced campaign rhetoric that has made “defending democracy” one of the pillars of his ongoing campaign against Republicans. Yet, this year alone, Newsom’s administration successfully fought in court to remove the duly-qualified Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability initiative from the November ballot, and sued to block parental notification policies passed by multiple local school boards.
AB 1955, designed to neutralize the notification policies, passed out of the legislature last week and is on the governor’s desk.
Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Gallagher implored legislators early in the week to reject Newsom’s latest effort to subvert the rights of California voters.
"Stop letting the governor do this to us. Stop letting him push things through this legislature. Stand up for yourselves," Gallagher said. "Stand up for this institution and say no. This is not the right way to do it."
When news broke that Newsom’s countermeasure was DOA, California Congressman Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) pulled no punches.
“Newsom’s final scheme to sabotage the End Prop. 47 initiative just failed,” Kiley wrote on social media. “This is the most embarrassing episode for a governor in modern California history. More importantly, it is a historic win for Californians.”
Still, CPC attorney Julie Hamill predicted that the motive behind Newsom’s sudden change of heart was as obvious as it is ominous:
“Good news: No more competition with the citizen initiative to repeal Prop 47.
Bad news: He's angling for that Presidential ticket.”
Watch Julie Hamill discuss Prop 47 on I’m Right with Jesse Kelly here.
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