On Tuesday, SEIU-UHW’s
Dave Regan suffered a severe drubbing at the polling place despite having spent
upwards of $30 million on ballot initiatives this year.
Regan’s
biggest measure -- California’s Proposition
8 targeting dialysis companies -- was defeated by a tally of 61.5% (“No”)
to 38.5% (“Yes”), according to the California Secretary of
State.
Ouch.
Regan dumped
more than $20 million of SEIU-UHW’s budget into that campaign.
Why did Regan
lose so badly?
He was
vastly outspent by his opponents. Plus, Regan ran a sloppy and poorly designed campaign, say analysts.
The proposition also was poorly written and difficult for voters to understand, said Erin Trish, associate director of health policy at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.
(Ana B.
Ibarra and Anna Gorman, “Measure
To Cap Dialysis Profits Pummeled,” California Healthline, November 8,
2018.)
Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the
UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, said Regan’s campaign, unlike his
opponents’ effort, failed to deliver a clear message to voters about why they
should support it.
In case losing
wasn’t bad enough, Regan also helped deliver a giant payday to his
multi-billion dollar opponents. The day after the election, the stock price of
both DaVita and Fresenius soared. In fact, DaVita’s share price jumped by 9.9%, according
to CNBC.
Way to go,
Dave!
Regan’s loss
on Proposition 8 wasn’t his only defeat.
In Northern
California, voters delivered an even bigger thumping.
Two city-wide ballot
initiatives lost by a landslide. In Palo
Alto, Regan’s Measure F lost by
a margin of 77% (“No”) to 23% (“Yes”). Meanwhile, in Livermore, Measure U
lost by a margin of 82% (“No”) to 17% (“Yes”).
Both initiatives
targeted
Stanford Health Care in an effort to
pressure the healthcare system into giving Regan a special unionization deal.
If the measures had been approved, they would have capped healthcare providers’
revenues.
 |
| SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan |
Duane Dauner – the former CEO of the
California Hospital Association and Regan’s one-time paramour -- led the campaigns to defeat the two initiatives. Meanwhile, Regan’s former pals at Kaiser Permanente contributed money to defeat Regan’s initiatives.
Will Regan
finally hang up the towel on ballot initiatives?
This year,
he doubled down on his so-called “innovative” strategy of using ballot
initiatives to “rebuild” the US labor movement. And he circulated more
initiatives than
during the past six years combined. At the end of the day, however, not a
single measure was successful.
As a result,
Dave successfully flushed upwards of $30 million of SEIU-UHW members’ dues
money down the toilet.
Has Regan
finally learned his lesson?
It doesn’t
look like it. Late on election day, Regan issued a press release announcing his
plans to refile the same dialysis ballot initiative in 2020. WTF.
Will
SEIU-UHW’s members allow Dave to flush millions more dollars down the toilet?
