Spending on California ballot measures nears the half-billion mark

Billionaires, corporations, labor unions and interest groups have poured nearly half a billion dollars into campaigns for and against ballot initiatives in California that deal with issues like legal marijuana and tax increases. 

Call it the best direct democracy money can buy.

{mosads}In total, the 17 propositions facing voters this November have generated $463 million in campaign contributions. That amount is about two-thirds of what campaigns and outside groups have spent on television ads in the battle for control of the United States Senate, and more than the total television spending on the race for the White House.

Two measures in particular — Proposition 61, which would limit the prices California pays for prescription drug purchases, and Proposition 56, which would raise taxes on packs of cigarettes — have attracted more than $100 million in spending each. 

Supporters of Proposition 61, led by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, have raised nearly $15 million. The initiative would limit the amount of money any California agency could pay for prescription drugs to the amount paid by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Backers have paid for advertisements that show Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) castigating drug companies for generating big profits. 

Opponents of the drug initiative have pulled in $109 million since the beginning of the race, almost entirely from pharmaceutical companies. In October alone, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, AbbVie, Allergan, Amgen, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have all written checks of at least $1 million to the opposition campaign. 

Backers of Proposition 56, which would raise cigarette taxes by $2 per pack, have been funded in large part by the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. 

Billionaire investor Tom Steyer, who is widely seen as using the Proposition 56 to position himself for a potential run for governor in 2018, is the single largest contributor to the cigarette tax hike. He has contributed more than $11 million to the committee favoring the ballot measure, about a third of the $35 million that supporters have raised.

Cigarette companies have weighed in with more than $71 million to oppose the tax increase, campaign finance filings with the secretary of State’s office show. On Oct. 6, Philip Morris contributed $5.1 million to the opposition campaign; R.J. Reynolds wrote a $3.6 million check the same day. Two weeks later, the tobacco giants gave another $4.4 million.

Business groups anxious about the impact California ballot measures will have on their bottom lines often see the state as a harbinger of broader political trends. Squelching a measure in California can sometimes constrain similar initiatives or referenda in other states down the line.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has already qualified a measure similar to Proposition 61 on the Ohio ballot in 2017. Colorado, North Dakota and Missouri voters will decide on cigarette tax hikes this year, and other states could follow suit.

While those two measures are contentious, other initiatives in California are raising big bucks even without much opposition.  

Supporters of Proposition 52, which would guarantee funding for California’s Medicare system, have pulled in $60 million, thanks to contributions from the California Hospital Association and SEIU. Labor unions have raised $55 million for Proposition 55, which would extend temporary tax increases approved in 2012 for another 12 years. Opponents of both measures have raised little money. 

The fight over whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use has been similarly one-sided. Sean Parker, the Napster founder and former Facebook executive, has given more than $7 million to the campaign in favor of legal pot. 

The campaign against Proposition 64 has raised just over $1.1 million, all of it from Julie Schauer, a Pennsylvania millionaire who has contributed to Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a D.C.-based group that opposes legalization. The billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who has spent $5 million against marijuana liberalization proposals this year, has not contributed to the California campaign.

The total spending on California ballot measures accounts for nearly two-thirds of the $789 million raised for and against initiatives across the country this year, according to a tally maintained by the nonpartisan website Ballotpedia. 

As political costs have risen in recent years, so too have the costs for gaining access to the ballot in the first place. Initiative campaigns spent an average of $6.20 per signature to qualify for the ballot in California this year, part of a growing trend of higher spending even before a general election sprint begins. Nationally, cost-per-signature rates have grown from $3.29 per signature in 2010 to $5.51 this year.

Josh Altic, a ballot initiative expert at Ballotpedia, said only seven of the 71 citizen-led measures on the ballot in 35 states qualified without paying for signature gathering services. All seven of those measures are in North Dakota or South Dakota, states with some of the lowest signature thresholds in the nation.