When Tom McClintock was trying to get his eminent domain initiative qualified for the ballot, he had quite a bit of problems.  You see, nobody really cared enough about the issue to give any money to support a signature drive.  And certainly nobody cared about this enough to volunteer time to get signatures.  From Tom’s mouth:

“They were able to raise the money to qualify their initiative. I was not,” says McClintock, who has endorsed Proposition 90. “I learned during the  car-tax initiative that if you don’t have the money lined up before the  signature gathering, you shouldn’t start.” (CapWeekly 7/13/06)

So you see, nobody was really willing to pile in the money for an eminent domain initiative.  And McClintock’s eminent domain init didn’t even carry all the baggage that Prop 90 carries.  You see, Howie Rich goes for the gusto.  When he plops down his millions, he makes sure that we really put it to the government.  A little water-boarding for the Capitol and all.

But that’s not all the shady back-room dealings on Prop 90.  You see, not all that money that Howard Rich is donating to the cause of Prop 90 is his own money.  He funnels money through a vast array of shady tax havens, 527s and other organizations.

The man at the center of this national effort is Howie Rich, a wealthy libertarian who believes in limited government and has long used tax-exempt groups to promote his favored candidates and political beliefs — property rights, term limits, tax cuts and school vouchers, among others.

The practice of using tax-exempt groups to fund campaigns has been criticized by some political-finance experts as opaque and deceptive. Unlike other political organizations, advocacy groups don’t have to disclose their donors.

In interviews and e-mails to The Chronicle, Rich said the groups help protect people who think like him, people who want to cut government powers but fear retribution if their names are published in public campaign-finance disclosure reports.(SF Chronicle 10/05/06)

Retribution? Um, yeah, Howie Rich is really terrified of retribution.  What they are terrified about is people discovering just who is paying to manipulate our governance.  The fact is that this proposition is funded almost exclusively by people who don’t live in the state.  The people of California do not want this taxpayer trap, but these “libretarians” insist on foisting this wretched proposition upon us.

No way, not here.  We’ve seen what’s happened elsewhere.  This is a bad, bad law.

The inevitable slide towards status quo is visible already.  All the negative ads against the propositions are doing their work to muddy the waters, and the people of California are getting a little skittish about these two props. The Field Poll (PDF) was released today on these two.

Cigarette taxes are usually pretty easy to pass, but I’m not so sure in the current climate.  The tobacco companies are spending a lot of money on this one, $40 million by the SF Chronicle’s count. And the oil companies have plunked down about $35 million.  That’s not chump change, but Stephen Bing, the entertainment mogul, has also put an incredible $40 million of his own money into the Yes on 87 campaign.  That’s more than Steve Westly put into his gubenatorial campaign this spring.

The amount of ads for these two props will likely draw attention away from where it should really be focused, the bond props. This elections is getting ridiculously expensive.  Think of all the things that the $100 million+ could have bought.  It’s why propositions have made my list of things that I would change if I were king of California for a day.  I’ll post that list sometime after the election as a discussion starter.

They are really trying to play this whole Nancy Pelosi is evil thing.  It turns out that it’s really not playing very well with the voters.  But BillO is not willing to give up his war on “secular progressives”.  MediaMatters does the dirty work and watches that vile program so we don’t have to.  Ick!  Apparently he hates San Francisco values.  Does he even have a clue what our values really are? Values like equality, caring for your fellow human being, and global responsibility.  Yup, those are Anti-American all right.  The video is edited by the good folks at Media Matters:

You know, I don’t normally gush over candidates, but I really, really dig on Debra Bowen.  She had a conference call yesterday with some bloggers.  And never before have I seen somebody who really, really just GETS it.  She talked about a few things that I found really great.

• Her bills: She had a couple of bills signed including SB 1235: Absentee votes to be included in the 1% hand sample, SB1747: Machine testing observation by anybody not just representatives of Central Committees, SB 1760: Requires paper trail last 22 months. 

  Arnold vetoed her initiative reform bill (Bad Arnold, Bad!) and the student pollworker bill. I really don’t get that last one. 

• Voting issues: What’s wrong with Inkavote: Many ballots were completely blank because they required very hard pressure, and there were no ink in some of the stylus.

  On Diebold: She discussed several issues, including programming the device lack of real security, and the hotel mini-bar key lock system.  Yikes all around!  Kinda makes you wish for good ol’ fashioned ScanTron voting.

• In the next weeks, she will be going back to basics on the campaigning, working on name ID and turnout efforts.  She has a debate with McPherson on Oct 18 (OOPS: I fixed this. It’s not on the 16th, but rather the 18th), I beleive.  I’ll double check that one, and promote it when it’s coming up.  It’s going to be with the SF Chronicle and will be streaming on CBS5’s website until the election.  Full details soon.

Debra Bowen really, really gets the issues in election reform.  We need her to be our Secretary of State for precisely that reason.  While our match campaign for her has concluded (very successfully I might add), you can still give money to Bowen through our ActBlue page.

(Also cross-posted at dKos and MyDD. The more people know about this race the better. jsw’s matching campaign is going towards some good causes. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

The Defenders of Wildlife, who are doing the only polling in the district, released their poll.  I’ve not been able to find a link, other than the email they sent out.  Keep in mind that the likely voter model in congressional districts is really tough.  Additionally, this is a rapidly changing district, with many commuters from the Bay Area moving into the district.  Finally, this poll has a large MoE at 4.9%. But, all those caveats aside, McNerney holds a  small lead over the long-time Congressman from Tracy:

That is great news,as Pombo still has higher name ID.  It appears that Pombo’s name is linked to oil, lobbyists, and “corportate interests”. 6 Weeks left, and the DoW has been working hard to make this a real pick-up opportunity for the Dems.  Pombo is truely one of the impediments to progressive causes, he is anti-environment and pro-corruption.  It’s a bad combination and he’s a bad Congressman for CA-11.

Full details of the poll from the Defenders of Wildlife email on the flip

UPDATE: I’ve posted the PDF of the poll here.

1. Pombo Trails McNerney in New CA-11 Tracking Poll by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund

In an election cycle where voters are looking for change and incumbent Congressmen are in trouble across the country, that trend is clearly evident in California’s 11th Congressional district.  Based on a recent survey conducted among likely voters in California’s 11th Congressional District,[i] Republican Congressman Richard Pombo remains unpopular with voters and continues to be in real jeopardy of losing his seat.  With less than six weeks left to go before Election Day and only two weeks before absentee ballots are mailed, Pombo continues to trail his Democratic opponent, Jerry McNerney, in a head-to-head vote.  Furthermore, voters dislike Pombo personally and many believe he puts corporate interests over the public interests.

Despite being heavily outspent by Pombo and getting attacked in recent weeks, Jerry McNerney has successfully maintained his lead over Pombo since the last poll we conducted in May for Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.  Currently, McNerney garners the support of nearly half the electorate (48 percent) and continues to lead Pombo, who only attracts 46 percent of the vote.  The race is essentially unchanged from our May survey, though there are now even fewer undecided voters (only 6 percent), leaving Pombo with very little room to increase his support.

11th CD Vote Over Time

May 2006

September 2006

Jerry McNerney (D)

46%

48%

Richard Pombo (R)

42%

46%

Undecided

12%

6%

The main reason voters are not supporting Pombo is because they fundamentally do not like him on a personal level.  Virtually all voters in the district now know who he is (91 percent name identification).  A plurality of all voters in the district have an unfavorable opinion of Pombo (45 percent unfavorable) whereas only a third (36 percent) have a favorable opinion of their Congressman.  In addition, there are nearly twice as many voters who strongly dislike Pombo than who like him a lot (40 percent to 22 percent).  Voters also have overwhelmingly negative opinions of Pombo on specific attributes:

·  A solid majority of voters believes Pombo “puts corporate interests over the people’s interests” (52 percent say this describes him well, with 35 percent saying it describes him very well, and 33 percent say it does not describe him well);

·  Voters also believe Pombo “is too close to lobbyists” (46 percent describes him well, 29 percent does not describe him well); and

·  Voters think Pombo “is too close to oil and gas companies” (43 percent well, 31 percent not well).

In sum, this poll shows that Pombo remains in poor standing with voters in his district.  Voters in California’s 11th Congressional district do not like their Congressman.  As a result, they continue to support the Democratic challenger over the incumbent.  With time running out, Pombo is in real jeopardy of losing his seat.

Survey Methodology:  From September 24-26, 2006, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted a survey by telephone among 413 likely voters in California Congressional District 11.  The survey’s margin of error is approximately plus or minus 4.9 percent.