Price Soars for Dave Regan’s Ballot Initiatives

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.

Dave Regan’s Ballot Initiatives Are Routed despite Millions in SEIU-UHW Funding

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?

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Launches “Spin” Offensive on Ballot Initiative

This week, Dave Regan trotted out an interesting “spin” on his ballot initiative gamble.

Regan’s mathematically-challenged spin goes something like this: 

Regan has spent $20 million of SEIU-UHW members’ money on a statewide ballot initiative targeting the dialysis industry. Meanwhile, two multinational dialysis companies have spent a combined $105 million to oppose the initiative. Even if Regan’s initiative loses at the ballot box, Dave says he’s still a winner because the other side was forced to spend more money.

A recent article entitled “Healthcare Workers’ Union Counts Dialysis Victory in Dollars Spent against It” (CalMatters, October 21, 2018) begins this way:

Win or lose, Dave Regan, the healthcare worker union leader who is pushing an initiative to regulate dialysis clinic profits, is getting some satisfaction at the huge sums being spent by the dialysis industry, $105 million and counting.

“In a weird kind of way, we must be doing something right,” Regan said, referring to the spending.

So why is Dave’s spin “mathematically challenged”?

Dave forgot to mention some important details.

For example, $105 million is barely a drop in the bucket for these mammoth companies. Their combined annual revenues are $51 billion, with annual combined profits totaling $4 billion. $105 million represents less than 0.2% of the companies’ annual revenues. It’s like a few pennies to them.

Meanwhile, Dave spent $20 million of SEIU-UHW members’ money, which represents about 20% of the union’s annual budget. Ouch!

Imagine if you gambled 20% of your organization’s annual budget… and you lost.

No wonder Dave is test-driving some spin… especially now that the election is less than two weeks away. Publicly, Regan says his union’s own polling indicates the initiative will win, according to a press release issued by SEIU-UHW this week.

Meanwhile, Regan’s $20 million gamble appears to have come at the expense of the union’s basic day-to-day work – such as bargaining good contracts and representing workers on the job. In recent months, two separate groups of SEIU-UHW members formally requested elections to decertify SEIU-UHW and go non-union, according to NLRB records. 

The two groups are USC Verdugo Hills Hospital (a 158-bed hospital in Glendale, Calif.) and Santa Rosa Community Health (an outpatient clinic system with 12 campuses and 500 staff in the San Francisco Bay Area). Regan has instructed his attorneys to stall the elections as long as possible.

Like Dave said: “In a weird kind of way, we must be doing something right.”

$125 Million Price-Tag on Dave Regan’s California Ballot Initiative

Here’s an update on Dave Regan’s 2018 ballot initiative bonanza:

The ballot initiative campaign with the highest price-tag in California's 2018 midterm elections isn’t about rent control or the gas tax, it’s about kidney dialysis, and specifically, how much profit providers can make from the procedure.

Supporters and opponents of Proposition 8, the “Fair Pricing for Dialysis Act,” have contributed almost $120 million during the 2018 campaign season.

(Samuel Metz, “California's most expensive proposition battle pits kidney dialysis providers against unions,” Palm Springs Desert Sun, Oct. 16, 2018)

In fact, these numbers have grown even higher since the article was published three days ago. According to the California Secretary of State, Regan has pumped $20.4 million into the campaign while opponents have poured $105.6 million into their effort.

Regan launched this statewide ballot initiative after SEIU-UHW was unsuccessful in organizing kidney dialysis workers a couple of years ago. Regan hoped his punitive measure would serve as leverage to force the industry into a backroom unionization deal -- just like Regan tried to do with the California Hospital Association.

Apparently, Regan’s threats weren’t enough.

According to one source, the two sides met in Sacramento to discuss a possible deal just days before the deadline for withdrawing initiatives from the ballot. After 30 minutes, however, the meeting reportedly ended when Regan stormed out of the room.

That’s what led to the full-on fight we’re now witnessing at the ballot box… with Regan’s billionaire opponents pouring five times as much money into their campaign as Regan.

At this point, it’s impossible for SEIU-UHW to finagle any sort of deal from the industry as Regan no longer has the ability to remove his initiative from the ballot.

So, SEIU-UHW is left in a no-win position… even as it spends tens of millions of its members’ dollars on a no-win proposition.

Meanwhile, SEIU-UHW’s public image is taking a beating in the press. All of the state’s major newspapers have editorialized against Regan’s initiative including the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, San Diego Union-Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Fresno Bee, La Opinión, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Modesto Bee and Bakersfield Californian.

Many of the newspapers are angry at Regan’s repeated attempts to use the initiative process as a bargaining chip rather than a tool to create better public policy. For example, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat writes:

Proposition 8 is nothing short of an abuse of California’s initiative process, which allows anyone with enough money to put a proposed law on the ballot.

This initiative is designed to punish dialysis clinic operators who have resisted union efforts to organize their employees. Voters shouldn’t play along.

We don’t have a position on whether clinic employees should unionize. However, we’re absolutely certain that voters shouldn’t be asked to judge a regulatory scheme for a specialty medical procedure that literally is a matter of life and death for tens of thousands of California residents suffering from serious kidney disease. That’s a job for the Legislature and the state Department of Public Health Services.

Proposition 8, sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, supposedly is about improving conditions at the 588 licensed dialysis clinics around the state. Yet there is nothing in this initiative about standards of patient care…

This isn’t the first time these unions have used ballot initiatives to try to gain leverage at the bargaining table. But this fight doesn’t belong on the ballot, as voters are in no position to write accounting rules for dialysis clinics.

To date, Regan has gambled tens of millions of dollars of his members’ money on ballot initiatives… without success. This year, he introduced no fewer than 10 initiatives. 

Imagine if he had instead spent $20 million on training rank-and-file organizers, mounting aggressive contract fights, winning improved standards for workers and patients, and launching grass-roots organizing campaigns.

Unfortunately, Regan has little interest in developing rank-and-file leaders and building bottom-up power among his union's members. Why?

It means fewer challenges to his personal power atop the union.

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Drops Ballot Initiative in Arizona

Dave Regan has dropped his effort to place an initiative targeting the kidney dialysis industry on Arizona’s statewide ballot, according to a press outlet. (Howard Fischer, “Union Gives up on Dialysis Initiative,” The Daily Courier, July 4, 2018)

Here’s the background.

After Regan first filed an initiative against the kidney dialysis industry in California, he then filed copycat initiatives in both Arizona and Ohio in an apparent attempt to "up the ante" on industry leaders. Regan apparently hoped the pressure would prompt industry leaders to sign a special unionization deal with him in exchange for his commitment to withdraw the initiatives from the ballots, as he did in a secret deal with executives at the California Hospital Association (CHA).

The secret deal with the CHA, which later came to light through litigation, sold out the workers that Regan claimed to be advocating for – including banning them from striking and even criticizing their employers’ multi-million dollar salaries.

To date, Regan has spent upwards of $6 million of SEIU-UHW’s funds on his California kidney-dialysis initiative. Nonetheless, dialysis industry officials have failed to bite on Regan’s bait. So… Regan and SEIU-UHW are now heading towards a multi-million dollar election battle in November.

Regan has plowed millions of dollars of the union’s resources into his high-stakes (and high-cost) game of chicken with dialysis industry officials. Regan once touted his ballot initiative strategy as an “audacious new proposal to save the labor movement,” even though it has drained tens of millions of dollars from SEIU-UHW’s coffers without leading to the unionization of a single healthcare worker.

Here are some excerpts from the article about Regan’s initiative in Arizona:

A California union has given up on its plan to ask Arizona voters to impose new service and cost restrictions on companies that perform dialysis.

Sean Wherley, spokesman for Service Employees International Union, said on Monday his organization has decided to focus its efforts elsewhere.

Wherley conceded the measure was aimed specifically at two firms: Fresenius Kidney Care and DaVita Kidney care. He said the two control more than 80 percent of the licensed dialysis centers in the state. Potentially more significant, Wherley acknowledged that both operate here without SEIU employees.

This isn’t the first time SEIU had started petition drives in its fights with employers.

Two years ago it crafted an initiative drive to cap the pay of hospital executives at no more than what the president of the United States is paid, or $450,000 a year. But after gathering what it said was more than 281,000 signatures — far more than needed — the union decided to scrap the effort in the face of challenges to the validity of many of those signatures.

But Wherley sidestepped questions Monday about whether the SEIU was simply using the Arizona initiative process for political purposes in the union’s ongoing battles with hospitals and health care employers.

“There’s only so many states that have ballot initiatives,’’ he said.

“So we look at them, where does SEIU have a presence, where can health care workers be benefited, where can patients be benefited,’’ Wherley said. “That’s kind of the calculus that decides where we introduce an initiative and where we submit signatures to qualify.’’

In the end, Wherley said, the union decided to not even try to collect signatures on the Arizona proposal.

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Comes Up Empty on Multi-Million Dollar Ballot Initiative Gamble

 The odds on Dave Regan’s ballot-initiative gamble just got a bit longer.

Regan, who has already spent upwards of $6 million of SEIU-UHW’s funds on a California initiative targeting kidney dialysis clinics, was hoping the dialysis industry would agree to a special unionization deal in exchange for Regan dropping his initiative off the ballot.

That didn’t happen.

Yesterday was the last chance for Regan and other initiative sponsors to withdraw their ballot initiatives in advance of California’s statewide elections in November.

What does this mean?

Regan’s initiative is headed to the November ballot… and he’ll now have to spend millions more to battle for Californians’ votes during the next three months.

The price tag could be steep. California is a hugely expensive electoral battleground due to its massive population of 40 million residents and its high-cost media markets.

His opponent, the dialysis industry, has plenty of cash. Their campaign is bankrolled by DaVita and Fresenius, which reported a combined $3.9 billion in profits during 2016, according to SEIU-UHW.

As soon as yesterday’s deadline passed, the dialysis industry put out a press release with this headline:

Coalition of doctors, nurses, patients, caregivers vows to defeat the Dangerous Dialysis Proposition that puts dialysis patients’ lives at risk; Deeply-flawed initiative will be on the November 2018 California ballot.

What’s the takeaway from yesterday’s developments?

Regan played a multi-million-dollar game of chicken with the dialysis industry, spending $6 million to get his dialysis initiative on the ballot and to run threatening TV, radio and print ads across the US. And he lost.

At this point, it’s unclear how he could possibly squeeze a victory from this situation. Even if his initiative wins at the ballot box in November, it will reportedly impose substantial economic costs on the dialysis industry and will not move SEIU-UHW anywhere closer to a unionization deal with DaVita and Fresenius.

These developments underscore both the riskiness and costliness of Regan’s ballot-initiative strategy.

They also spell possible political problems for Regan, decided to double down on ballot initiatives in 2018. This year, he introduced no fewer than ten ballot initiatives, more than any year before. He did this despite the fact that during the past seven years, he spent more than $30 million of SEIU-UHW’s budget on 20+ ballot initiatives, all of which were unsuccessful in producing unionization victories.

If Regan’s ballot-initiative strategy crashes and burns in 2018, will the union’s members and Executive Board hold him accountable? 

And will he end his addiction to ballot initiatives and instead invest the union’s tens of millions of dollars into aggressive contract fights, contract enforcement and worker organizing campaigns?

Stay tuned.

Dave Regan: "$6 Million Dollar Man"

‘Spend it like it’s burning a hole in your pocket.’

That’s apparently Dave Regan’s philosophy when it comes to ballot initiatives.

During the first 111 days of 2018, Regan spent $6 million on just one of his more than 10 ballot initiatives, according to California campaign disclosure records.

Soon, he may be spending lots more.

His initiative -- which targets kidney dialysis companies in an effort to push them into a unionization deal with SEIU-UHW -- qualified this week for California’s November ballot.

If Regan can convince the dialysis companies to cut a special deal with him, he could withdraw his ballot initiative before a June 28 deadline. If not, the initiative is headed to an expensive statewide election campaign against deep-pocketed opponents.

The dialysis industry, which is dominated by two giant for-profit companies, has already organized a coalition of nearly 100 organizations to oppose Regan’s ballot measure, according to the coalition’s website and press releases. And it has already mounted attack ads against Regan’s initiative.

How much would SEIU-UHW have to spend to win a statewide election campaign?

Observers say it would be very expensive. California has some of the most expensive media markets in the nation with top-dollar prices for TV, print and radio advertising and a massive voter population in the state of 40 million inhabitants.

How much cash does Regan have left in SEIU-UHW’s bank account?

In recent years, he’s used a strategy of boosting dues on SEIU-UHW’s members and holding down spending on representation and member support in order to assemble big cash reserves. By the end of 2017, Regan had stockpiled $63 million in cash (vs. $14 million in debt). That’s a lot of money. Remember, however, that he burned through $6 million in cash for just one of his 10+ ballot initiatives in just the first 111 days of 2018. At this point, it’s unclear how much is left.

 

Dave loves ballot initiatives

Why is Regan spending so much of SEIU-UHW’s budget on ballot initiatives?

Good question. During the past seven years, he spent more than $30 million of SEIU-UHW’s budget on 20+ ballot initiatives, all of which were unsuccessful in producing organizing victories. Even his infamous deal with the California Hospital Association, which grew out of a threatened ballot initiative, eventually exploded in flames and left SEIU-UHW on the losing end of costly lawsuits.

Despite these failures, Regan decided to double down on his ballot-initiative strategy in 2018. According to Politico, he has filed more ballot initiatives in 2018 “than in the past six years combined.” In fact, he’s even begun plying his ballot-initiative strategy in other states. For example, Regan introduced a copycat initiative targeting the dialysis industry in Ohio, where he needs to collect more than 300,000 valid signatures from registered voters by July 4 in order to place the issue on the November ballot, according to press accounts.

Regan appears to be locked into a high-risk game of chicken with the dialysis industry… and the filing of copycat initiatives in other states is his effort to raise the stakes.

Will Regan’s multi-million-dollar ballot-initiative gamble pay off this time?

What happens if it doesn’t… and Regan burns through $40-$60 million of SEIU-UHW’s savings without any real victory? Will the union’s members take him to the shed?

Stay tuned.

SEIU-UHW Spends $14M on Ballot Initiatives in 14 Months

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

While tens of thousands of teachers are striking and winning in multiple states, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan is pursuing a very different approach to building the labor movement.

Since 2009 (when Regan was appointed the union’s trustee), SEIU-UHW has conducted virtually no strikes whatsoever despite being one of the largest unions in California.

Instead of organizing workers, Regan has diverted tens of millions of dollars from SEIU-UHW’s budget into ballot initiatives. In 2017, he spent approximately $10 million of SEIU-UHW’s budget on ballot initiatives -- about 10% of the union’s budget. In 2018, he’s on track to spend even more.

What’s Regan trying to do?

Basically, he’s hoping he can use the threat of ballot initiatives to pressure healthcare companies into deals with him. That’s what he tried to do (unsuccessfully) with the California Hospital Association.

This year, he’s trying to put nine initiatives on the California ballot. Two of them target DaVita, a kidney dialysis company where SEIU-UHW’s organizing efforts were unsuccessful, according to NLRB records.

Another initiative targets Watsonville Community Hospital, where SEIU-UHW has been unsuccessful in negotiating a contract for its members. Other initiatives target Stanford Health Care, where SEIU-UHW was unsuccessful in organizing workers at one of Stanford’s hospitals. And there are others.

Will Regan’s ballot initiatives be successful?

So far, none of his 20+ ballot initiatives has succeeded during the past seven years. That is… they haven’t led SEIU-UHW to organize a single worker. And that’s after Regan spent approximately $30 million on these initiatives. Not a record to write home about.

 

A DaVita dialysis clinic

How much is Regan spending on his 2018 ballot initiatives?

Beaucoup bucks.

In 2017, he spent approximately $10 million, according to SEIU-UHW’s DOL Form LM-2.

For example, he paid $1.2 million to a company to collect voters’ signatures to qualify initiatives for the ballot (Kimball Petition Management). He paid more than a half million dollars to polling firms to survey voters about his initiatives (ALG Research and Fairbanks Maslin Maullin Metz & Associates, Inc.). He spent another half million on lawyers, advertising firms, media agents, consultants and travel.

Regan gave the biggest chunk of change ($7.3 million) to a spinoff organization he created called “The Fairness Project.” The organization, which is headed by SEIU-UHW staffer Steve Trossman (he’s the organization’s “President”), not only supports ballot initiatives in California but also tries to spread their use in other states by funding various initiatives. According to the organization’s website, it has backed ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage, expand Medicaid, and establish laws around paid sick time in a dozen states.

The website, however, doesn’t say whether “The Fairness Project” is also funding Regan’s ballot initiatives against the dialysis industry in Arizona and Ohio, which Regan filed recently in an apparent effort to intensify his pressure on DaVita.

After spending roughly $10 million in 2017, Regan spent millions more during the first few of months of 2018. In February, for example, SEIU-UHW paid $3.5 million to buy TV, newspaper and online ads in California, Washington DC, Colorado and Massachusetts targeting DaVita and Fresenius (another kidney dialysis company), according to a press release issued by SEIU-UHW.

And things are about to get much more expensive.

Earlier this month, SEIU-UHW submitted 600,000 signatures to the state, and is now waiting to hear whether its kidney dialysis initiatives have qualified for the November 2018 ballot.

In response, DaVita and Fresenius have begun airing TV and online ads attacking SEIU-UHW and its ballot initiatives. They also launched a website called www.UHWinitiativeabuse.com

 

Image from dialysis industry's ad against SEIU-UHW

Of course, it’s possible the corporations will get nervous and decide to try to cut some kind of deal with Regan to get the initiatives off the ballot.

It’s also possible these deep-pocketed corporate giants will decide to go toe-to-toe with Regan at the ballot box. The companies have lots of money -- $3.9 billion in combined profits in 2016, according to SEIU-UHW. This would force Regan to spend tens of millions on a costly campaign to try to win the vote. California, the most populous state in the nation, is notoriously expensive when it comes to elections -- tens of millions of voters spread across some of the most expensive media markets in the nation.

Aside from its costliness and lack of success, a larger problem with Regan’s approach is it turns unions into a kind of Political Action Committee (PAC) run by technocrats and consultants rather than well-organized, worker-led organizations capable of exerting their power on the shop floor to get a fair share from corporations. Most observers agree we need to build the latter kind of union, not Regan’s PAC version.

For example, imagine if Regan had spent $30 million on actually organizing workers instead of funding failed ballot initiatives?

Labor leaders like Regan, when they don’t have the ability or will to lead workers to fight, often look for crutches… like ballot initiatives. In this case, Regan’s crutch appears to have become his entire strategy.