Dave Regan’s famously unsuccessful
“ballot initiative” strategy just got a lot more expensive in California.
If you’re a
member of SEIU-UHW, heads up.
Diamond Dave will now be able to waste your dues dollars much faster than
before.
Regan’s unquenchable
thirst for ballot-initiative failure isn’t mere speculation.
Several months
ago, Regan pledged to re-file his unsuccessful dialysis ballot measure in 2020. He made this pledge just days after voters rejected Dave’s dialysis measure by a blow-out
margin: 61.5% (“No”) to 38.5% (“Yes”).
Why is the
price tag jumping for California ballot initiatives?
Every four
years, California readjusts the number of valid voter signatures that must be
collected in order to place an initiative on the statewide ballot.
Specifically, it takes 5 percent of the total votes cast for governor during
the most recent election.
That
threshold was re-set during last November’s gubernatorial election when large
numbers of voters turned out to boot Republican congressmembers from office. The
threshold jumped from 365,879 valid signatures to 623,212 valid signatures.
That’s gonna
make it much more expensive to put measures on the ballot. SEIU-UHW hires companies to collect signatures from voters, typically paying them between
$2 to $3 per signature. Campaigns must collect far more signatures than the
threshold because a certain percentage of signatures turn out to be invalid.
So that’s
why the costs associated with statewide initiatives are going to “skyrocket,” according
to the San Francisco Chronicle. (John
Wildermuth, “Qualifying
a California ballot measure to become a ‘playground of billionaires,’”
San Francisco Chronicle, January 2, 2019.)
According to
the newspaper:
It already costs at least $2 million to qualify a measure for the ballot, and that’s before a single dollar is spent on a campaign to actually win the election. The new signature numbers are likely to boost that amount dramatically.
How much
will the costs jump?
At least to
$3.4 million, according to analysts.
So, unless
Regan finally owns up to his record of uninterrupted failure, SEIU-UHW members
can expect Dave to blindly pour more and more of their dues dollars into ballot
initiatives… rather than using these precious resources to fund aggressive contract campaigns, organizing drives,
and representational work to support the union’s members.
