By HOWARD FINE
Democratic leaders and their union allies are in a furious effort to get voters to the polls after months of pooh-poohing the special election.
They’ve opened a record 44 field offices statewide, mounted huge phone bank operations, lined up 10,000 people to walk precincts and plan a workplace mobilization,all in an effort to defeat the four initiatives backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarz-
enegger.
Problem is the get-out-the-vote effort comes after many Democrats had initially argued that the Nov. 8 election was unnecessary.
A September survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 53% of likely voters said the special election was a “bad idea.”
To defeat the four Schwarzenegger-backed initiatives, Democrats need to get more voters to the polls than usual for special elections.
“Most voters don’t see the stakes as that high,” said longtime Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “The issues are not ones that galvanize voters. But the Democrats and the unions must show that they can decisively defeat the Schwarzenegger-backed propositions. And to do that, they need a higher-than-normal turnout.”
The Schwarzenegger-supported measures:
Proposition 74, which lengthens the time for teachers to get tenure.
Proposition 75, which requires unions to get the consent of their members before using dues for political purposes.
Proposition 76, which gives the governor more power to enact spending cuts.
Proposition 77, which overhauls the redistricting process.
Republicans face their own turnout issues, with polls showing three of the governor’s four initiatives trailing.
That, in turn, has made it harder to raise funds.
Schwarzenegger’s allies have raised nearly $60 million, compared with $100 million for Democrats and their public employee union allies.
“With no candidates on the ballot and voter fatigue after statewide elections in each of the past three years, it’s definitely harder to get people’s attention in this election,” said Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the California Republican Party.
The party is targeting Republican voters in areas with high GOP registrations, according to Hanretty.
“We’re putting a much greater emphasis on person-to-person voter contact in this election than in previous elections,” she said.
Absentee Voters
Both parties are mounting intense
campaigns to get voters to cast absentee ballots.
About 400,000 absentee ballots have been sent out in Orange County, according to the Registrar of Voters.
That’s nearly double the absentee ballots cast in the March 2004 primary election and about 60% more than the October 2003 recall vote.
Gauging turnout in a special election is tricky.
There have been only two statewide issue-oriented special elections in the past 80 years.
The last one, in 1993, drew 36% of registered voters.
“Turnout is very much an unknown right now,” Sragow said.
Another unknown: where voters in the political middle will gravitate.
Schwarzenegger carried independent voters by a huge margin in the recall election two years ago.
But in this year’s polls, these moderate swing voters have deserted him.
To recapture these voters, Schwarzenegger “has to explain more that this is a continuation of the recall, that it’s finishing the job that voters elected him to do,” said Joel Fox, president of the Small Business Action Committee and a close Schwarzenegger
ally.
Schwarzenegger and the Republicans have an advantage.
In low-turnout elections, conservative Republicans are the ones most likely to cast ballots.
That’s why they pushed so hard for a
special election rather than having these measures go on the June 2006 primary
ballot.
But Republicans now are on the defensive with polls showing a majority of voters think things are moving in the wrong direction with Republicans at the helm.
The Democrats’ get-out-the-vote effort features 10,000 precinct walkers statewide, direct mail drops and phone banks.
Fine is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Business Journal. The Orange County Business Journal’s Purnima Mudnal contributed to this story.
