Blue--

I'm working on the campaign to defeat the initiative.

To answer your questions:

(1) The initiative's Republican sponsors are just waiting to get the title & summary back from the Attorney General's office, which we expect will happen next week.  At that point, they'll start circulating petitions.

They'll very likely be plenty well-financed enough to collect the signatures they need to qualify the initiative for the ballot.

(2) It is an initiative, not a proposition.  It will only need a 50% majority to pass.

Early polling shows that Californians are open to "reform" and that this looks like "reform" to many people at first blush, even though it's really nothing more than a partisan power grab.  So we're going to need to get our ducks in a row to defeat it.

I spoke to Larry Sabato and Charlie Cook about this and they are certain that this will not come to pass..there will be no change in the electoral allocation.

... exactly the point I made in another post. Jerry Brown has been dead-silent. Debra Bowen has been dead-silent. The only person to speak up against the initiative is (Surprise!!) Arnold Swartzenegger; a REPUBLICAN. I am so goddam embarrassed for the Democratic party I could just Sh*t.  

The party needs to be reformed in order to become more responsive to voters' needs, and more assertive when working to address our needs. Today, there is no legal or political mechanism that voter-activists can use in order to reform their State Party.  Sadly, Jerry Brown is not part of the answer here.

Our last Attorney General (Lockyer) was not any  good, either. He quietly let Enron and other Cheney-friendly utility companies almost completely off the hook for the utility fraud they perpetrated on all of us six years ago. He made no charges. He held no press conferences. He brought nothing to trial. He quietly settled for about a tenth of a cent on the dollar for the $45 billion dollars that Utilities swindled from us -- and we ARE talking about fraud here. With Democrats like Lockyer and Brown; it's no wonder that registered independents here often vote Republican.

Real, sensible political reform gets lost in battles like this. Should we hold open-ballot primaries and have instant runoff elections? How should we nominate and elect candidates for President? Should we be able to recall Federal officials, like Diane Feinstein who is a "Bush" Democrat? Why don't we put together a new, fair, practical mechanism to control Recall, Initiative and Proposition ballot measures, that keeps Corporations from buying their way onto our Ballots? Why don't we make our OWN State redistricting proposal? Why aren't we requiring large local employers to pay some of the retraining costs for the TWO MILLION skilled workers they've laid off here in the last four years? ... And where is Sheila Kuehl's single-payer Health Care measure? Why haven't Democrats led the way on ANY of these issues?  

Christ, I'm sick of these people.

b73