By Gary Cohn

Last November unions won a resounding victory when voters defeated Proposition 32, a ballot measure that would have crippled labor’s political influence in California, partly by barring public-employee unions from using payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. The initiative, which enjoyed a huge lead in early opinion polls, was heavily funded by wealthy conservatives and far-right groups.

Union leaders were overjoyed by its defeat.

“You can’t buy California,” Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association (CTA), told an election-night victory party in Sacramento. “We’re not for sale.”

The celebration hasn’t been long lived. In a little-noticed move in April, a conservative legal organization that has pushed to overturn the 1964 Voting Rights Act filed a lawsuit in federal court in Santa Ana that could accomplish in the courts what Prop. 32 couldn’t at the ballot box. The players behind the suit may not be household names but the millionaires and private foundations covering their legal fees represent a familiar klatch of extreme libertarians who, since the 1980s, have been attempting to move the country in a hard-right direction.

The main plaintiff, the Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), firmly opposes reproductive rights and marriage equality – two of the same movements opposed by Prop. 32′s various backers. CEAI also supports school voucher programs and the teaching of Creationism – also causes championed by some of Prop. 32′s supporters, who saw unions as an obstacle to imposing their political will on California when it came to these and other issues.

The lawsuit, known as Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, challenges the constitutionality of laws that allow teachers’ unions to collect fees from teachers who don’t want to be members. The lawsuit also seeks to outlaw an automatic payroll deduction process, under which teachers who don’t want a portion of their fees to go for political activities must “opt out” of funding those activities. It claims that California’s “agency shop” law violates the First Amendment by compelling public school teachers to pay fees to teachers unions involved in political activities.

Comments made by the lawsuit’s supporters suggest that they are hoping for an ultimate victory before the U.S. Supreme Court that would be applied to all public-sector unions. Could this happen?

“It’s a little unclear from the papers the plaintiffs have filed,” says Jacob Rukeyser, a CTA staff attorney working on the case. “The novel legal theory they are using would directly affect public educators. Read broadly, it seems like a possibility that other unions could be affected.”

Nevertheless, at the very minimum the lawsuit would require teachers wishing to support their unions’ political activities to now “opt in” to fund them – a change whose largest practical effect would be to greatly reduce the unions’ money for political activities and to erode their influence.

“It would be a national Prop. 32,” says J. Felix De La Torre, chief counsel of the Service Employees International Union Local 1000, California’s largest state employee union.

Says Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition: “For public employee unions, it’s the biggest thing to come down the pike in 20 years.”

The lawsuit’s supporters agree.

“If this lawsuit is successful, it conceivably could make California into a right to work state,” says Larry Sand, a retired middle school history teacher and president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. “It goes beyond California – this case could be a huge deal. It would affect workers, union political spending and ultimately children because unions are the number-one impediment to education reform. This definitely could go further than Proposition 32.”

The lawsuit was filed by the Washington D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights (CIR) on behalf of CEAI and 10 California teachers. Besides the California Teachers Association, the suit names the National Education Association, 10 affiliated union locals and 10 local school officials as defendants.

“There is no Constitutional right to have mandatory public-sector bargaining,” says Patrick J. Wright, a senior legal analyst for the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “We think voluntarism is a better public policy because it enhances peoples’ freedom of choice.”

The plaintiff-teachers include case namesake Rebecca Friedrichs, who has been a public school teacher in Anaheim’s Savanna School District for 25 years. She resigned her union membership in 2012 and opted out of paying the portion of her fees that were earmarked for political-type activities, paying only the required base fee.

“But for California’s ‘agency shop’ arrangement, Ms. Friedrichs would not pay fees to or otherwise subsidize the teachers’ union,” the lawsuit states.

Michael Carvin, a partner at the Washington, D.C. firm of Jones Day and lead counsel for CIR in the lawsuit, said that the issue involves free speech rights. “Forcing educators to financially support causes that run contrary to their political and policy beliefs violates their First Amendment rights to free expression and cannot withstand First Amendment scrutiny,” Carvin said, according to a CIR press release.

However, John Logan, director of the San Francisco State University’s labor studies program, says that given the current ease with which employees can opt out, “The purpose of the legal challenge is not to protect the rights of individual employees. The real purpose is to diminish the political voice of public-sector unions.”

On this point Patrick Wright agrees with Logan.

“Obviously, the public policy impact is [that] people would be more free,” Wright says. “The practical effect of it would be a detrimental impact on public-sector unions’ abilities to influence political campaigns. Public-sector unions are some of the strongest supporters of the Democratic Party.”

Over the years the U.S. Supreme Court has generally upheld union practices that require public-sector employees to first pay dues and then opt out if they don’t support a union’s political activities. The practice was upheld in a two-decade old case known as Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. But in an unrelated 2012 case, the Supreme Court suggested that the high court’s earlier Abood decision may have been a mistake.

“Justice [Samuel Alito], writing for five justices, went out of his way to raise doubts about the Abood decision and, in effect, to invite a test case to overturn it,” wrote Peter Scheer in the Huffington Post. “The Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association lawsuit is an RSVP to that invitation.”

The Center for Individual Rights, Friedrichs’ legal sponsor, is backed by numerous right-wing foundations, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Randolph Foundation and the Carthage and Sarah Scaife foundations (both controlled by ALEC-bankrolling billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife). If CIR’s lawsuit is successful, the relatively modest investment in backing the suit could accomplish what the $60.5 million effort to pass Prop. 32 could not – the erosion of public-sector unions as a political force. (Prop. 32′s opponents were forced to spend about $75 million to defeat that measure.)

Throughout its 20-plus years of existence, CIR has been best known for aggressively pursuing court nullification of affirmative action programs on campuses, most notably through 1996’s Hopwood v. Texas case, in which CIR successfully represented a white woman denied admission to the University of Texas Law School. More recently, it played a key role in 2003’s Grutter v. Bollinger case, in which the Supreme Court eventually upheld the student-diversity goals of University of Michigan Law School’s admission policies.

But CIR has also been at the center of the legal battle to overturn key provisions of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1964. In LaRoque v. Holder, the firm targeted the same pre-clearance requirements governed by Section 5 of the law that were effectively gutted last month when the Supreme Court issued its decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Here in California, CIR went to bat on behalf of Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot initiative that effectively ended affirmative action in the Golden State and has defended Tea Party video provocateur James O’Keefe in an effort to strike down California’s anti-tape recording statute. And CIR has also represented right-wing columnist and ACORN apostate Anita MonCrief, in her countersuit against a civil suit for damages brought by the community-organizing group.

CIR’s primary client in Friedrichs, the Christian Educators Association International, is run by its executive director, former public school teacher Finn Laursen, from his home in Amherst, Ohio. Positioning itself as a professional teachers association and an alternative to membership in the National Education Association, the CEAI provides some union-like benefits for its members, such as professional liability insurance.

But CEAI also apparently offers its public school teacher members training in how to proselytize their evangelical beliefs to their students. In a video on the website for CEAI’s 40-day seminar in Minnesota called the Daniel Leadership Institute, Laursen says part of the group’s mission is to “change the public education system from within.” Elsewhere on the promotional clip, various California public school teachers are seen praising the retreat for teaching them “how we can share God’s love and truth with our students,” how “to bring them to truth,” and “how to express [the teachers’] Christian lifestyles and biblical values in the classroom.”

In response to a request for an interview, Laursen replied by email, “would love to accommodate, but I am at 40 day teacher training in the wilderness of MN with no phone access…just came out of woods for brief internet access.” He forwarded a copy of CEAI’s press release issued at the time the lawsuit was filed.

Although marbled with phrases about Constitutional rights and personal choice, the CIR lawsuit is clearly about more than the First Amendment. Friedrichs v. CTA comes at a time when California’s Republican Party is shrinking into electoral irrelevance, while at the same time many corporations are pushing Congress to nullify the state’s pioneering laws regulating workplace safety, consumer protection and the environment.

“What this litigation is trying to do by judicial decree is what Prop. 32 and many other ballot initiatives have failed to do,” says Catherine Fisk, a professor at the University of California at Irvine School of Law and an expert in labor relations. “It’s essentially an end-run around legislative or ballot initiatives by trying to get courts to decide what the California legislature and people of California, through their initiative process, have refused to do.”

(Gary Cohn writes for Frying Pan News.)

This is an article written by Matt Fleischer for Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

California’s Proposition 32 proposes outlawing the use of automatic payroll deductions from union members and corporations for political purposes. Backed by such labor-hating billionaires as the Koch Brothers, Charles Munger Jr., and by anti-marriage equality crusaders like Howard Ahmanson and Larry T. Smith, the measure will decimate unions’ ability to participate in the political process-stripping them of their considerable clout in the state. But that doesn’t mean Prop. 32 is purely about union-busting. Instead, the measure provides its wealthy backers with a means to an end – to eliminate organized labor as the most significant obstacle to imposing a corporate and fundamentalist religious agenda on an otherwise stalwart progressive state.

Prop. 32 isn’t an end game. It’s the beginning of a much larger conservative agenda for California. The only way to truly understand the potential impact of Prop. 32’s passage is to analyze the agenda of its backers.

Here are the 10 most dire issues California can look forward to if Prop. 32 is to pass this week.

1. Toxic Sludge – The Koch Brothers’ $4 million donation to support Prop. 32 is often portrayed as purely ideological. But the Kochs are not disinterested players in the state of California. They own the pulp paper processing company Georgia-Pacific, which has 11 facilities in California and has spent much of the past few years lobbying to gut provisions of California’s Green Chemistry Initiative-a 2008 law protecting California citizens from exposure to toxic industrial chemicals.

2. Global Warming, Here We Come – Prop. 32 backers despise California’s landmark climate change prevention statute, AB 32. The Koch brothers’ most conspicuous foray into California politics – prior to their Prop. 32 support – came in 2010, when the Koch Industries subsidiary, Flint Hills Resources, donated $1 million to support Proposition 23. Had voters ratified it, Prop. 23 would have overturned AB 32. Flint Hills didn’t chip in out of climate-change denial. The company has a substantial investment in Canadian tar sands oil, whose extraction and consumption creates a Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint. Robust clean emissions standards, Koch Industries complained on its website, “would cripple refiners that rely on heavy crude feedstocks.”

3. Offshore Drilling – With lessons of the BP spill two years in hindsight, the idea of offshore drilling in California has resurfaced. Koch Industries recently donated $5,000 to the Congressional campaign of Santa Barbara Republican Tony Strickland-who, in various campaigns over the years, has routinely advocated opening up waters off the coast of California to drilling.

Though they don’t yet appear to have their feet in the door financially, there’s no reason to doubt that, with their army of lobbyists at the ready and history of campaign contributions in the state, the Kochs wouldn’t maneuver to profit off of California’s offshore oil.

4. Bye-Bye Minimum Wage – Not only have Prop. 32 backers been deeply involved in efforts to obliterate living wage efforts in California, they even want to roll back the state’s modest minimum wage requirements. In 2006, Prop. 32 author Thomas Hiltachk and his law firm authored and pushed for the Fair Pay Workplace Flexibility Act. This progressive-sounding bit of legislation would have increased California’s minimum wage by a pittance – while eliminating overtime pay for many workers and freezing all future minimum wage raises without the consent of two-thirds of both houses of the California legislature.

5. School Vouchers – If there’s a unifying issue animating Prop. 32’s backers, it’s that nearly all want to shift public school money to private educational entities. By far the most radical is third-generation venture capitalist and “viral marketing” guru Timothy C. Draper-who thus far has given $100,000 to push Prop. 32. In 2000 Draper was the brains and the piggy bank behind Proposition 38-arguably the most extreme school voucher effort in recent American history.

6. Gay Conversion Therapy – Religious-right Prop. 32 billionaire backers Howard Ahmanson and Larry T. Smith are among the fiercest advocates in the country for gay conversion therapy for minors. Smith’s Family Action PAC helped lobby against SB 1172-the California legislative effort to ban gay-to-straight conversion therapy for minors – which passed in September. Smith fundamentally rejects the notion that parents forcing their underage children to endure conversion therapy could be psychologically harmful. On the contrary, he feels it’s a “parental right.”

Gut labor support for progressive candidates, and the Smiths of the world may have the resources they need to reverse SB 1172.

7. Will Make Prop 8 Will Look Like A Tea Party – California unions have been reliable supporters of marriage equality and LGBT rights. Unions donated nearly $3 million to fight Prop. 8 back in 2008. Should Prop. 32 pass, that support will be lost, and Prop. 8 backers Larry Smith, Howard Ahmanson and their compatriots will undoubtedly continue pushing their conservative religious, anti-gay agenda on the state of California and beyond.

“This is not just about California,” Courage Campaign founder Rick Jacobs told Frying Pan News. “Labor communities have been very supportive of LGBT rights in the workplace and in the political space. They are reliable allies. If 32 passes, California’s 2.5 million unionized workers won’t be able to contribute their money for political purposes out of state either. The next time there’s a fight in Washington over the Defense of Marriage Act, for instance, labor has less capacity to join us. California is a donor state. The whole chain is interrupted.”

8. Friends of the Minutemen – Prop. 32 backers have plenty of money to go around. This election cycle they’ve been funneling cash to the State Assembly campaign of Orange County Republican Allan Mansoor. Well before Arizona passed its anti-immigrant law SB 1070, then-mayor Mansoor authorized Costa Mesa police to run immigration checks on individuals suspected of crimes, as well as on unlicensed drivers. He even proposed authorizing local police to investigate federal immigration crimes. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, Mansoor has close ties to the xenophobic Minutemen.

Mansoor isn’t the only California politician with Minutemen connections receiving support from Prop. 32 backers. San Bernardino Republican State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly is the founder of his town’s Minutemen chapter. He also is leading the charge to repeal the Dream Act, which would allow high-achieving undocumented immigrants to access state scholarships for college.

9. The Poison Pill – Prop. 32 claims it will restrict union and corporate donations to individual candidates. But this provision of the bill seems to conflict with the recent Supreme Court Citizens United ruling. The Republican operative who authored the bill, Thomas Hiltachk, is no sloppy legal mind. One has to assume this conspicuous hole is intentional. Could it be that Prop. 32 was designed so that only a part of it could stand up to a constitutional challenge? Say, for instance, the one thing backers of Prop. 32 have historically been interested in-the end of union workers’ automatic payroll deductions?

“Prop. 32 has a separability clause,” says Alan Crowley, a labor lawyer with the legal firm Weinberg, Roger and Rosenfeld. “In theory, if a law is challenged, the parts that aren’t ruled illegal could go forward. Hypothetically that might be enforced.”

10. A Trojan Horse Onslaught – Prop. 32 is simply not what it says it is. It is a union-busting “paycheck protection” measure masquerading as campaign finance reform. This deception is intentional. In fact, it is the calling card of the political consulting outfit behind Prop. 32, the Dolphin Group. The firm has a history of launching “Trojan Horse” political campaigns in favor of Republicans and corporate interests, including starting Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions while working for Big Tobacco, and Coalition for a Sustainable Delta while working for farming interests trying to drain the Sacramento Delta dry. These Trojan Horse measures don’t have a very high success rate, as voters eventually catch on to the subterfuge. Should Prop. 32 pass, however, it will only embolden political consultants like the Dolphin Group to continue with their attempts to fool voters into voting against their interests.

(Hear Matthew Fleischer discuss Prop. 32 on the L.A. Redux podcast.)

This is an article written by Matt Fleischer for Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for regular in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13 – a ballot initiative that rolled back property taxes to 1975 levels and capped future increases at two percent. More destructively, it mandated that all future tax raises in the state be approved by the legislature by a two-thirds margin. The law presaged a wave of anti-taxation measures across the country that continues to define the political landscape we inhabit to this day. Ironically, while Prop. 13 was an effective carrier of the anti-taxation message, the rest of America soundly rejected the draconian policies Prop. 13 put into place to block the raising of tax revenues.

“The specifics of Prop. 13 were largely not adopted in other states,” explains Lenny Goldberg, Executive Director of the California Tax Reform Association. “Hardly any states enacted the two-thirds majority rule. And very few states treat taxes on commercial properties like Prop. 13 does. But in a broader sense, the anti-tax movement certainly took off from that point. There’s no question Prop. 13 made a huge contribution to where we are now.”

More than 30 years later, another California ballot initiative stands poised to fundamentally alter national politics. It will do so even if the details of its language are ignored elsewhere. Even, in fact, if it loses November 6. Proposition 32 proposes limiting “special interest” political donations to elections by eliminating mandatory union and corporate payroll deductions from being used for political purposes.

Unlike Prop. 13, however, which built grassroots support from the ground up in California, Prop. 32 is virtually identical to multiple “paycheck protection” initiatives that have been floated by national conservative groups since the early ’90s. Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Ohio, Michigan and Washington are currently the only states in America where paycheck protection measures have become law. A study conducted by the conservative Heritage Foundation shows that union donations to political campaigns in these states dropped 50 percent after the measures were imposed. Alabama, Arizona and North Carolina passed paycheck measures in 2011, but those measures are currently being held back by legal challenges.

According to John Logan, Director of Labor Studies at San Francisco State University, the first paycheck protection measure originated in the state of Washington in 1992. It passed, severely weakening that state’s unions. The measure’s admirers in other states were buoyed by this success. “By the late ’90s,” says Logan, “paycheck protection had become part of the national conservative movement.”

Indeed, the powerful conservative lobbying group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) drafted and endorsed paycheck protection model legislation on May 30, 1998. Months later, a virtually identical version wound up on the California ballot in the form of Proposition 226. It failed by a six percent margin.

“The defeat of 226 in California robbed the paycheck protection movement of momentum,” says Logan. Though conservatives continued pushing similar bills in the decade that followed, the measures were unequivocally defeated across the country.

That all changed, however, in 2010, when the financial crisis and accompanying nationwide budget deficits provided conservatives with the pretext they needed for an assault on unions – especially those representing public-sector employees.

“Six hundred and seventy new Republican legislators came into office after the 2010 election,” says Mary Bottari of the Center for Media and Democracy, which has done extensive research into ALEC and its political influence in Wisconsin and throughout the nation. “They took control of 26 states. But before they did they all went flocking to ALEC.”

According to Bottari, on December 3, 2010, incoming Republican freshman legislators attended a large ALEC gathering to coordinate strategies. “The primary issue,” she says “was these union-busting measures like right-to-work and paycheck protection. They got their marching orders and modified ALEC model legislation to local circumstances.”

However, Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of California’s Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute for Public Affairs, points out that, like Prop. 13, the idea of Prop. 32’s actual language being replicated across the country is unlikely.

“The notion that Prop. 32 will disadvantage corporations is so ridiculous it’s hard for me to imagine this strategy will catch on,” he says. “People aren’t buying it.”

Instead, argues Sonenshein, Prop. 32’s legacy-win or lose-will be the massive amounts of money spent by shady, anonymous political action committees to pass similar legislation. In the post-Citizens United world, where unlimited and untraceable donations from corporations and wealthy individuals have become a reality, conservatives and activist billionaires have shown they have the will and the resources to launch non-stop attacks on unions and progressive causes.

“Private entities are forcing labor to defend itself from a volume of money that is overwhelming,” he says. “Measures like 32 weaken labor for future elections and divert attention from other more proactive races unions consider important.”

Bottari agrees: “Part of the strategy nationally is to engage unions in a whack-a-mole game. Unions have a difficult time mobilizing support for other issues when they’re facing fights in all these states at the same time.”

In California, for instance, labor has not been able to provide the kind of support for Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30, which proposes increasing taxes on the wealthy to raise money for public schools, that it would have, had the dire threat of Prop. 32 not been present.

Prop. 32, therefore, is a win-win for its backers. With the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling laying the legal framework, and a nearly unlimited supply of funding available from willing arch-conservatives like the Koch brothers, expect to see this trend repeated across the country. In liberal states like California, such efforts will handcuff progressive legislation from going forward. In less union-friendly states, these measures could win out over time.

“A bad argument repeated can ultimately be effective,” says Sonenshein. “The backers of Prop. 32 have the mindset that you just have to win once. If you keep putting it on the ballot, you may eventually find an election where labor simply isn’t as well organized to defeat it.”

In other words, even if Prop. 32 fails in California in 2012, the constant threat-and likely reality-of similar initiatives being repeatedly put on the ballot will tie down union resources and influence across the country. Win or lose, its impact will be felt around America for years to come.

From the Courage Campaign, here’s a short nature documentary explaining the difference between regular working members of our species and the idle rich trying to steal our democracy.

Produced by Dog Park Media (disclosure: I’m a founding partner there).

This is an article written by Matt Fleischer for Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for regular in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

“We’re Up to $60 Million”

It’s an unreasonably warm October day, and I’m milling about awkwardly with a handful of suits at a mixer in a small banquet hall at Newport Beach’s Pacific Club-which, according to its website, is the gathering place of choice for the “distinctive life-style of Orange County’s business and professional leaders.”

An incredible thirst suddenly overwhelms me, as I look down and see I’ve practically sweated through my cheap suit. I try my best to keep control of my decorum, but when a busser passes by with a lone Arnold Palmer on his tray, I snatch it greedily from the outstretched hands of another guest and suck the saccharine concoction down in one gulp.

The hot weather may be playing a small role in my odd behavior, but my discomfort is mainly due to the fact this is no ordinary mixer. I’ve successfully infiltrated one of the most powerful and secretive Republican organizations in the country: The Lincoln Club of Orange County. Back in September, I discovered a chink in its otherwise iron-clad armor with this note on the group’s website:

This election year is the most pivotal in recent memory. Will we continue on the path toward expanding government or will we change course and choose liberty? In California, will we stand by while special interests bankrupt our state or will we finally return Sacramento to the voters?

Whether it’s supporting conservative candidates and issues locally or at the national level, Lincoln Club membership gives you an opportunity to put your beliefs into action and to stay informed about crucial happenings in local, statewide, and national politics.

Learn more about how you can make a difference this election year.

Join us! Members are encouraged to attend with their prospective member guests.

The organizational brains and bucks behind Citizens United and Proposition 32 was looking for new members. Who was I to say no?

Easier said than done.

The club only has a few hundred members-none of whom, certainly, would be willing to drag a strange journalist to an event unless the writer were on the Koch brothers’ payroll.

So I RSVP’d independently, hoping that anyone coherent enough to string together a few sentences would be welcome. The contemporary Republican Party isn’t exactly loaded with William F. Buckley-types. If James O’Keefe can occupy an elite niche in the GOP pantheon, surely I could squeeze my way in.

And here I am, in the teeth of the Conservative movement, surrounded by power suits and blonde bouffants, trying to be the best Republican I can be. In preparation, I shaved my sideburns up above my ears, and slicked my hair to the side-a Chappelle’s Show parody of a white guy. I must look the part, as I spy the blondest, most-intimidating bouffant of them all making its way toward me. It belongs to Teresa Hernandez, a onetime Republican congressional candidate who tried to take Hilda Solis’ seat after Obama appointed her Secretary of Labor. Almost as soon as I sign myself in, Hernandez introduces herself.

“Hi, I’m Teresa. I’m a member.” She lets that settle in. “So… ‘Allen,'” she says, staring skeptically at my pseudonymous name tag. “Where are you from?”

“Glendale,” I tell her, which is true, even though it’s an hour’s drive north in L.A. County – which has its own Lincoln Club.

“Glendale, huh? That must have been quite a . . . schlep.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. She doesn’t suspect me of being a journalist. I must have merely set off her Jewdar.

“Oy,” I say, laying it on thick, “a schlep indeed. No traffic, thank heavens.”

“So what brings you all the way down here, Allen?”

“Well,” I tell Hernandez, “if you want to become active in the conservative movement in California, this is the place.

The Lincoln Club of Orange County is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.”

This too, is true. Since the days of Richard Nixon, the Lincoln Club has been the Matrix-like ideological birthing chamber of California Republicanism, whose grandees and arbiters once guided Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, George Deukmejian and Arnold Schwarzenegger when their political careers were in their larval stages. That same Lincoln Club gave us the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court victory-which paved the way for Super PACs and unlimited, anonymous corporate donations-and, over the past year, had been instrumental in pushing Proposition 32 onto the California ballot. (The measure would permanently gut the clout of California’s unions by prohibiting automatic payroll deductions from being used for political purposes.)

“Well…that’s good,” Hernandez replies, suddenly uninterested and looking for an exit strategy. I wasn’t ready to let her go.

“So, how are the Prop. 32 efforts looking?” I ask, opening my eyes as wide as possible in my best simulacrum of Republican excitement. “Does it still have a shot?”

Her face immediately brightens: “We’re up to $60 million. We’re outspending them now! I think we’re going to do it.”

With that, more attendees filter in and Hernandez excuses herself to greet them. Many, quite honestly, seem like wealthy retirees with little else to do, although there are some GOP farm league players too, including Garden Grove city council candidate Phat Bui.

But make no mistake: The Lincoln Club is the real deal. And if they have their way, Citizens United is just the beginning of their political ambitions for the country.

Kingmaker of Southland Republicans

When Richard Nixon famously declared, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” after losing the 1962 California Governor’s race to Pat Brown, he may also have been predicting the future of his state’s Republican Party. The social revolution of the ’60s would eventually render the party a shrinking minority in an increasingly liberal state. But a group of Orange County businessmen, spurred on by Nixon’s defeat, vowed to never let a champion of conservative values suffer such an embarrassing defeat in California again. Lead by Walter Knott, the founder of Knott’s Berry Farm, and Si Fluor of the Fluor Corporation, they formed the Lincoln Club of Orange County to advocate for the interests of the business community-and the club has been playing kingmaker of Southland Republicans with grand ambitions ever since.

In 1978, the Lincoln Club helped launch the landmark California anti-tax initiative Proposition 13-which capped property taxes at an absurdly low rate and demanded all future tax raises in the state be approved by the legislature by a two-thirds margin. The initiative portended the anti-tax revolution that hangs over the country to this day.

Through the 1990s and early aughts, the Lincoln Club made several attempts to pass “paycheck protection” measures in California-which would have banned unions from taking automatic dues from members. These failed miserably, as voters were sophisticated enough to realize they spelled the political death of California’s 2.5 million union members

In 2007, with union power still too strong for any massive statewide overhauls, the Lincoln Club set their sites on the national election fray, by providing seed money for Hillary: The Movie-an anti-Hillary Clinton political documentary/screed they hoped would ultimately lead to a John McCain presidential victory in 2008. They were even given an executive producer credit on the film.

Hillary was scheduled to air on cable TV in the run-up to the election-but never did, after the Federal Election Commission declared it to be political propaganda and blocked it from being advertised or paid to be shown on television 30 days before the 2008 Democratic primary. The group that produced the film, Citizens United, sued and won its case before the Supreme Court-paving the way for Super PACs and unlimited, anonymous corporate donations to the political process. Where the money came from to support such a massive legal endeavor remains largely unknown, but many suspect the Lincoln Club dug fairly deep into its members’ pockets for the cause.

This year, the Lincoln Club was instrumental in qualifying and pushing onto the California ballot Proposition 32, which proposes limiting “special interest” political donations to elections by eliminating mandatory union and corporate payroll deductions from being used for political purposes – although there don’t seem to be many, if any, state businesses that politically tithe their employees.

Yes, the group that opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate donations to political campaigns, now purports to be interested in “stopping special interest” money from entering politics. Even more cynically, they’ve done so by appropriating Occupy Wall Street-inspired anti-corporate messaging into the political campaign. If passed, the law will likely be used as a model to quash unions in other states.

“A Small Group of People With Just a Little Bit of Money”

Back at the club, the banquet room has slowly filled, and 20 or so attendees sit at three small tables to feast on fried-chicken salad. A skeleton crew of stealthy Latino bussers ferries Arnold Palmers to the tables-one of which revolves around Teresa Hernandez, the other around Lincoln Club chairman and RKW Development president Richard Wagner. Then there’s the third, which revolves around, well, me I guess. It’s nearly empty, as the two other people sitting with me are together and largely engaged in their own conversation.

I’m clearly the reject of the room.

My fortunes, however, change instantly when Lincoln Club president Richard Loewen arrives, sits directly next to me, and begins attacking his fried chicken.

“Sorry I’m late everyone,” he announces to the room after a few bites. “Why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves?”

My palms are so sweaty that by the time my turn comes around I can barely hold on to my silverware.

“Hi, uh, I’m Allen Fleischer. I’m here because I have these, uh…conservative principles buried…uh…deep inside me. And I want to…let them out…”

This is going badly. I need to channel my inner Sean Hannity.

“Liberty and freedom are obviously under assault in America, and they won’t fight for themselves. Myself and other conservatives like to rant about the state of America’s political affairs in casual conversation or to our televisions, but we don’t do anything about it. So I’m here to get involved. And I can’t think of a better place to do that than the Lincoln Club of Orange County…”

Holy shit, that was smooth. Time for the big finish.

“The Lincoln Club is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.”

Bingo!

Like Loewen, most of the guests are buried in their chicken, though I can’t help but notice the approving nods of several cougars. (Still got it!)

After introductions, a brief history video of the club is shown. The topic of Citizens United gets a particularly lengthy discussion.

Richard Wagner, who was club president during the initiative, gets off a good line: “We backed Citizens United to bring down Hillary Clinton, which we did…and we got Barack Obama instead.”

Remorseless laughter fills the room. There’s a very obvious understanding that the sweep of Citizens United goes well beyond Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

After the video, Loewen takes the stage to talk up the current pride of the organization: Proposition 32.

“This measure is really a game-changer,” he says, smiling. “Over the past 20 years, we here at the Lincoln Club have tried getting paycheck protection passed in California three different times with no luck. The measures have just gotten killed by the public unions. Whenever the unions put their full support behind something, no one can beat them.

“But a couple of years ago, we figured, hey, let’s give it another shot. People said we were crazy. And they were probably right. But we started off slow, just to see what would happen. So we gave [conservative journalist] Steve Greenhut $75,000 to write his book Plunder, about how public employee unions are bankrupting the state. It did pretty well.

“Okay, we thought. How about qualifying this thing for the 2012 ballot? Once again, people said we were crazy. But the Tea Party suddenly became interested. With absolutely zero money, they got about 30,000 signatures. A long way off, but we figured it showed some serious interest. Our testing showed the key [to success], unlike our last paycheck protection measures, was including corporations in the measure.

“So we put a little money behind it-about $100,000-and, what do you know, we qualified for the ballot. The unions went ballistic. At first, we were getting killed on spending. But then, out of the blue a massive $4 million donation showed up and the money has been rolling in ever since. People are calling Prop. 32 the second most important vote in the country in this election cycle, after the president.

“So there you have it. A small group of people, with just a little bit of money and the right connections, can have a huge impact.”

We’re Not Racist

After Loewen’s ode to 32, Hernandez stands up to discuss the club’s next big political endeavor-luring Latino voters to the Republican cause.

“Latinos are 39 percent of the population in California and growing,” she says. “And they almost all vote Democrat. We’re never going to win unless we reach this demographic.”

Of course, with state Republicans historically allied with groups like the Minutemen and 1994’s Proposition 187-which, among other things, sought to prevent undocumented immigrants from having access to health care in California-it’s little wonder Latinos are skeptical.

“Even though they agree with us on many social issues, when Latinos think about the Republican Party, they’re thinking about us deporting their grandma or their cousin,” says Hernandez. “When Democrats call us racist-which we’re not-we have no response, no plan we can point to that Latinos can rally behind.”

That is where the Lincoln Club stands poised to jump in with a three-point plan: Securing the border, workplace enforcement and a guest worker program. Of course, Hernandez’s guest worker program doesn’t include a path to citizenship. It’s simply about using immigrants to drive labor prices down and then sending them on their way back home. Unions too, will reject the idea of guest workers, and fight against the plan at all cost. However, should Prop. 32 pass and cripple its ability to fund-raise for political purposes, there will be little labor can do.

Gloria Romero: “Isn’t She Great!”

With the event ending, I flag down Loewen.

“Mr. Loewen, I have to ask: How did you get a liberal like Gloria Romero to front for Prop. 32? That was really a stroke of genius.”

Indeed, nothing in this election season has been more surprising than the decision of Romero, an East L.A. Latina progressive and former California State Senate Democratic majority leader, to join with the Lincoln Club on 32. Romero won a hotly contested run for the California Assembly in 1998, largely by fighting the Lincoln Club on Prop. 32′s progenitor, Proposition 226-the first ‘paycheck protection’ initiative. Now, suddenly, not only is she in favor of 32, she’s become its primary spokesperson.

“Isn’t she great!” Loewen tells me. “We don’t even have to coordinate with her. She just goes for it.”

“Really?”

“She and Teresa are friends. Teresa and her husband own a restaurant in El Monte and a lot of political players tend to eat there-including Democrats. We approached her about 32 way back-maybe a year and a half ago. She told us she’d think about it. We didn’t hear from her for a while. Then, six months ago, she finally called Teresa and said ‘I’m in.’ She’s been 100 percent committed ever since

“We tried to get Common Cause to jump on board too. Their president, Bob Edgar, was actually for it. He’s a friend of mine. But the board ultimately came out against it.”

With that, Loewen flashes me a toothy “oh well” smile, and excuses himself to head outside into the endless Orange County summer.

“You Get a Lot of Wackos on Our Side”

Loewen’s response was typical of the mood at the meeting-a warm, good-humored affair, not tainted by the shrill chest-thumping of Fox News or the life-or-death rhetoric of the Tea Party. Most of those present were absolutely delighted just to be able to speak about these issues strategically, without getting ridiculed by their liberal Southern California colleagues, or having the conversation descend into uneducated birtherism.

“You get a lot of wackos on our side,” one prospective member admitted to me.

That said, of course they’re all good-humored. They’re rich, they’re powerful and they’re pretty much all white.

Their only stake in the larger political battle is holding on to a few extra tax dollars. But the fact is that being rich, white and sophisticated just isn’t enough to stay in control in the 21st Century. With America’s changing demographics, you need to be mercenary. So you plug away, peeling off your opponents’ key allies and hoping voters are foolish enough to vote for your Trojan Horse measures, or apathetic enough to ignore them.

If you lose, there’s no real worry. You finish your chicken salad with a smile, and go home to your wealthy suburban home to fight another day. Two weeks after the election, the Lincoln Club has a sleepover field trip planned at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, where they’ll peruse the new and bizarrely random “Treasures of Walt Disney” exhibit before enjoying a power dinner with Wisconsin’s union-busting Governor Scott Walker.

“Yes on 32, Huh?”

As I head to my car with a fistful of Prop. 32 bumper stickers, I catch one of the parking attendants, an elderly Asian man, dismissively eyeing my political propaganda. I turn to face him, expecting he’ll look away, but he doesn’t.

“Yes on 32, huh?” he asks.

“Oh, you betcha,” I say, channeling my whitest, inner white guy. “We’re going to take the state back from those special interests.”

He pauses for a moment, scanning me up and down. “I’ll be voting no,” he finally says, before walking away.

“What’ll it take to change your mind?” I shout after him.

He doesn’t even turn around.

I smile, hop in my car, and drive as fast as I can back to Los Angeles.

This is an article written by Bill Raden for Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for regular in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

The most recent gusher of Super PAC cash to flow into California’s 2012 election cycle came last Tuesday in the form of an $11 million contribution that has prompted speculation about possible involvement of the Koch brothers. The recipient of the massive donation was the Sacramento-based Small Business Action Committee PAC and its No on Proposition 30/Yes on Proposition 32 efforts. The infusion made headlines, not only because of its generosity but because of its source – an obscure group called Americans for Responsible Leadership, based in Phoenix, Arizona.

The idea of a previously bush-league, locally-focused Arizona PAC writing an $11 million check to out-of-state political campaigns raised an odor that could be smelled all the way to Sacramento. That’s where, it was reported Wednesday, that Ann Ravel, the California Fair Political Practices Commission chairwoman, ordered FPPC attorneys to demand that Americans for Responsible Leadership disclose the contribution’s original donors.

The FPPC sent the demand, with a Wednesday deadline, to the group’s Warrenton, Virginia lawyers – the up-and-coming Republican Super PAC specialists, Holtzman Vogel Josefiak PLLC. It is not yet known at the time of this writing whether the firm had complied.

Ravel’s action comes in response to a complaint filed October 19 by California Common Cause and its Vice President for State Operations, Derek Cressman.

The request that the FPPC act on what Common Cause believes may be the largest “secret political donation in California history” came about when Cressman noticed the uncanny coincidence that Americans for Responsible Leadership shared Holtzman Vogel Josefiak as the same attorneys as the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity PAC and Karl Rove’s Crossroads PAC.

“What we found is there is a Virginia law firm that seems to be ground zero for dark money all across the country,” Cressman says. “They’re tied to the Koch brothers, they’re tied to Karl Rove’s operation, and they’re also behind this Americans for Responsible Leadership group.” That common denominator, he explains, “gives a strong indication of where this money is coming from.”

The implications of those relationships are hardly news to veteran Arizona political operatives. Ever since ARL dropped its $11 million bombshell onto Sacramento, Phoenix has been humming with speculation that the money originated with the Koch brothers.

According to one scenario discussed by longtime observers of Arizona politics, who spoke on condition of anonymity based on the available facts, the Kochs may have wanted to anonymously dump another massive payload on the Yes on 32 campaign. To do so they would need an out-of-state entity in order to get around California’s reporting requirements. These observers conjecture that Americans for Responsible Leadership accommodated by passing the contribution onto SBAC PAC. The price for doing that-according to these observers-may have been to let ARL skim $350,000 off the top in order to fight one of ARL’s in-state bête noires, Arizona’s single open primary initiative, Proposition 121, a ballot measure that ARL fears would bump Tea Party candidates off the general election ballot.

Though Phoenix media consultant Joe Yuhas says he can’t personally confirm such speculation, he is quick to point out that two days after SBAC reported the $11 million contribution, the anti-Prop 121 Stop Top Two Committee revealed it accepted a single $350,000 contribution from ARL.

For his part, Cressman believes that such a scenario sounds “sort of right: It’s like, ‘Sure, you can run some money through us, but let us shave some stuff across the top to work on issues we care about in Arizona.'” It is, he says, “exactly how these deals go down.”

Yuhas, who works for the Phoenix-based media company Riester, is a consultant for both the Prop. 121 campaign and for Arizona’s Proposition 204; the initiatives would create a one-cent-per-dollar sales tax to benefit education. He is no stranger to ARL or its colorful chairman, Robert Graham.

Graham, who ran against Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary and is currently making his second bid to become the state’s GOP chairman, is positively phobic when it comes to labor unions. Besides writing a book proclaiming the world would be better off without them, he made a promotional video in which he compares unions to parasites.

According to Yuhas, Graham was a prominent “supporter of Tea Party candidates in the most recent Phoenix municipal election in 2011.” In fact, he points out, “this is where Americans for Responsible Leadership first emerged. … They funded campaigns against mainstream candidates in support of Tea Party candidates.”

Sam Wercinski works with the Phoenix-based Arizona Advocacy Network to, as he puts it, “promote clean elections and accountability to the voters, not donors. He is well acquainted with Graham, ARL and the SBAC contribution rumors. “What I’ve heard,” Wercinski says, “is that Americans for Responsible Leadership has used Arizona sort of as a laundering site for money to then pour into California. … And Arizona got a slice of that, to then work against citizens’ initiatives.

What has struck Wercinski most about the stories is not that they exist, but their pervasiveness and consistency. “When you start hearing rumors from so many different sources,” he says, “you just have to wonder if this is true or not.”

Establishing the truth of such tales is now in the hands of Ravel and the FPPC. (Frying Pan News calls to Graham and his ARL co-founders, Eric Wnuck and Steven Nickolas requesting comment went unanswered at press time.) To Cressman, however, there’s a victory in the mere fact that the FPPC is taking an active interest.

“They’re acting on our complaint,” he exults, “which is huge.

This is an article written by Matthew Fleischer for Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for regular in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

In October of 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the California Dream Act-which allows undocumented but high-achieving immigrant students to receive state funds to help pay for college. It was a monumental victory for tolerance and the culmination of a long fight-Arnold Schwarzenegger repeatedly vetoed similar measures during his tenure in the California governor’s office.

Come November 6, however, that fight could begin all over again if California’s Proposition 32 passes. The initiative will outlaw the use of automatic payroll deductions from union members and corporations for political purposes, crippling union political activity and empowering the measure’s billionaire backers to impose their political will on the state. While state unions passionately fought for the California Dream Act’s passage, they were opposed by politicians with ties to Prop. 32′s backers. Though they might not be rabid with anti-immigrant bile, Prop. 32′s moneymen have no problem funneling money to politicians who are.

Take for instance, Allan Mansoor, currently running for the State Assembly. He is an avowed enemy of the Dream Act, calling it “A slap in the face to people who followed the rules.” Mansoor has received major donations and support from Prop. 32 backers like Larry T. Smith and his powerful political action committee Family Action and the Lincoln Club of Orange County, as well as Howard Ahmanson.

When he served as mayor of the Orange County city of Costa Mesa in the early aughts, Mansoor launched a very public crackdown on Mexican lunch trucks-or, in his words “roach-coaches” blaring “La Cucaracha”-that were supposedly despoiling the suburban tranquility of his once peaceful town.

The move was blasted by the local press. Wrote OC Weekly food critic Gustavo Arellano: “Trust me on this one: As someone who has followed [these trucks] for nearly a decade, they’re not going into Costa Mesa . . . Mansoor is a bigot.”

The lunch truck crackdown, however, paled besides Mansoor’s next foray into immigration politics. In 2005, well before Arizona ever passed its anti-immigrant law SB 1070, Mansoor authorized Costa Mesa police to run immigration checks on individuals suspected of crimes, as well as on unlicensed drivers. He even proposed authorizing local police to investigate federal immigration crimes-creating a national news story over fear the rule would result in the racial profiling of Latinos.

The situation was ultimately resolved by installing a permanent Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in the local jail. But not before the American Civil Liberties Union sued Mansoor and Costa Mesa, after an immigrant rights advocate was arrested for speaking up against the plan at a city council meeting.

Belinda Escobosa Helzer, director and senior attorney of the ACLU’s Orange County office, which filed the suit, says that during the discovery phase of the lawsuit her group uncovered close ties between Mansoor and the anti-immigrant vigilante group the Minutemen, as well as its founder, Jim Gilchrist. Mansoor was even made an honorary member of the organization at one event.

“We believe the Minutemen to be a very dangerous group,” says Helzer. “Given the history of [Mansoor’s] activities in Costa Mesa, we would be concerned with any public servant who has those kinds of connections.”

Mansoor isn’t the only anti-immigrant zealot receiving material support from Prop. 32’s backers. San Bernardino Republican State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly recently received a $3,900 contribution from Howard Ahmanson’s political asset manager, Fieldstead and Company, for his reelection bid. Donnelly is probably best known for bringing a loaded .45-caliber Colt Mark IV on board a flight to Sacramento in January of this year. His excuse? Illegal immigrants were after him!

Donnelly is one of California’s most publicly anti-immigrant politicians. He’s the founder of his town’s chapter of the Minuteman-the xenophobic group that has tasked itself with patrolling the borders for undocumented immigrants. He was also the leading opponent of the Dream Act. Not only did he vote against the bill’s passage, Donnelly began collecting signatures to have the law repealed by ballot measure shortly after it was signed into law.

Fieldstead, incidentally, donated to Donnelly’s campaign well after his airplane adventure and anti-immigrant paranoia made national news. Ahmanson, rather disingenuously, claims that he himself isn’t anti-immigrant: “Most immigrants,” he told the Sacramento Bee in 2011, “are conservative on the social issues.”

Perhaps more hypocritical than disingenuous, however, is major Prop. 32 donor Jerry Perenchio. Even though he made much of his fortune as a co-owner of the Spanish-language TV network Univision, Perenchio has channeled $2.5 million in this election cycle to Republican candidates across America who could easily be described as anti-immigrant. The money was largely routed through Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Super PAC.

In Nevada alone, American Crossroads has supported Republican Senator Dean Heller, who vowed to alter the 14th Amendment to prevent those born in this country from automatically becoming citizens-in order to eliminate immigrant “anchor babies.” Earlier, in a 2011 special election, American Crossroads helped finance the campaign of Republican Mark Amodei, who compares the effects of illegal immigration to the devastation Hurricane Katrina wreaked on New Orleans.

Even before this election cycle, Perenchio donated money to such anti-immigrant California politicians as Santa Barbara Republican Tony Strickland-who voted against both the Dream Act and the Trust Act, the latter of which would have limited California law enforcement’s cooperation with federal officials in rounding up undocumented immigrants for deportation.

Strickland is a popular choice among Prop. 32 donors, receiving a rare direct donation to a California politician from Koch Industries-to the tune of $5,000.

Admittedly, most of Prop. 32’s backers aren’t aggressively anti-immigrant. At least not openly. They’re too savvy for that-after all, 38 percent of California is Latino. On a statewide level, pushing for an Arizona-type law would ultimately mean political suicide for California Republicans.

However, while political considerations may be keeping Prop. 32’s known backers from frothing at the mouth over immigration, it’s the unknown that is cause for concern. Earlier this week, the Prop. 32 campaign netted a massive $11 million donation from a mysterious non-profit calling itself Americans for Responsible Leadership. The organization is based in Arizona.

Little is known about ARL, and even less about its financial supporters. Our efforts to contact the group by press-time were unsuccessful.

Despite the scant details over the Arizona money’s origins, however, its infusion into the political process ultimately points to the greatest cause for concern over Prop. 32-the complete unknown. Even if California Republicans are too timid to launch an Arizona-type crackdown, that doesn’t mean shadowy out-of-state money from wealthy xenophobes couldn’t push for such a measure. As Perenchio’s national donations, as well as pro-Prop. 32 donations to candidates like Mansoor and Donnelly indicate, curbing anti-Latino rhetoric and stemming the tide of xenophobic legislation is nowhere on the Prop. 32 donors’ priority list.