THE SPECIAL ELECTION
Political Ads Often Aim to Confuse
With eight complicated issues on the ballot and so much being spent on them,
the climate is especially ripe to muddy the campaign waters.
By Evan Halper and Jordan Rau | Los Angeles Times |November 6,
2005 | See also: Tactical Confusion
SACRAMENTO — The 30-second television spot is straightforward: A former teacher
of the year, who notes that she is a Democrat, tells viewers she'll be voting
for Proposition 76 because it will bring more money to schools.
Nothing confusing there.
But just about every mainstream budget analyst unaligned in the special election
campaign says she is wrong. Most agree that the state spending controls proposed
in the initiative would actually cost schools more than $4 billion a year.
"It seems like a bald-faced lie," Gary Jacobson, a professor of political
science at UC San Diego, said of the ad. "The whole point of the initiative
is to prevent the part of the budget that automatically gets spent on education
from getting spent on education…. To argue this will create more money for
schools is almost straightforwardly false."
Dubious claims are a staple of election campaigns. But with so many complicated
issues on the ballot Tuesday, and so many millions of dollars pouring into campaigns
for and against them, the climate is particularly ripe for confusion.
Californians are being asked to decide the fate of eight statewide initiatives
Tuesday. The measures address abortions for minors, teacher employment rules,
the use of public-employee union dues, controls on state spending, the drawing
of voting districts, prescription drug discounts and electricity regulation.
According to UC Riverside political science professor Shaun Bowler, political
ad makers use the smallest grain of truth to justify misleading claims.
The commercial that features the teacher saying Proposition 76 would boost school
funding is based on a long-shot possibility: that lawmakers would spend
tens of billions more on schools than funding formulas required.
The California Taxpayers Assn., promoting Proposition 76, says the measure would
encourage such spending by freeing lawmakers to add money to schools without making
the increase permanent.
Other analysts doubt that lawmakers would ever put as much back into the schools'
budget as the spending controls would cut out of it.
In contrast to the Proposition 76 ad, confusing claims in initiative battles are
usually made to steer people to vote against something, Bowler said.
"If you can muddy the waters with an ad, make an issue sound more confusing
than it is and make people have doubts, you up the 'No' vote," he said. "Adding
confusion is a way to help defeat propositions."
Consider the claims being made about Proposition 74, which would increase the
time required for teachers to earn tenure and make it easier to fire them.
Ads by unions that oppose the measure say it "allows a principal to fire
a teacher without giving a reason or even a hearing."
In fact, the measure would allow principals wide leeway to oust teachers still
on probation, but not those who have tenure.
Proposition 77 would take the power to draw voting districts away from the Legislature
and give it to retired judges. The measure's opponents are painting the proposal
as a back-room power grab by its backers, who include Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
One no-on-77 television spot shows three men in black robes who are clearly up
to no good. They furiously cut apart a map of California and then work, grimacing,
at putting the pieces back together. As they do, the announcer warns that the
measure would change the state Constitution "just for political gain."
The commercial ends with a shot of the map they finally create. It is the shape
of Texas.
The message: Schwarzenegger is trying to do in Democratic-dominated California
what former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) orchestrated in his state:
redrawing political boundaries to help the GOP gain seats.
But there is scant evidence that the redistricting initiative is a Republican
power play.
GOP legislators in Sacramento and Washington benefited as much as Democrats from
the safe seats drawn for incumbents in 2001.
And the state's Republican congressmen fear that they could lose seats under the
measure because the state is heavily Democratic.
Indeed, even as opponents charge that Proposition 77 is a GOP ploy, they have
been sending registered Republicans campaign mail warning that the measure is
"bad for the Republican Party."
The notices have arrived in voters' mailboxes disguised as jury summonses.
Inside is a newspaper quote from Rep. John Doolittle, a Republican from Northern
California, warning that the "entire Republican leadership of the House of
Representatives, and the chairman of the Republican National Committee all think
Prop. 77 is a disastrous idea!"
Steve Poizner, GOP chairman of the yes-on-77 campaign, said opponents are purposely
obfuscating the facts.
"They are trying to confuse voters and make them apprehensive about who might
be behind this," he said.
Schwarzenegger, whose approval ratings have fallen steeply this year, is promoting
the teacher tenure, union dues, spending cap and redistricting initiatives. Some
ads, seizing on his slide in popularity, focus on policies unrelated to the special
election ballot.
None of the initiatives addresses immigration issues. But some unions that oppose
the governor's initiatives are trying to prod Latinos to vote against his measures
by dredging up bitter memories of 11-year-old Proposition 187, which sought to
deny most state services to illegal immigrants.
"Remember when Pete Wilson said we were to blame for California's problems,
how he attacked immigrants and hurt our schools?" one Spanish-language TV
ad says, referring to Gov. Wilson's promotion of the 1994 measure, which passed
but was mostly blunted by court rulings. "Now Schwarzenegger is doing the
same. He praises vigilantes patrolling the Mexican border."
It's not just the governor's opponents muddying the campaign waters. With none
of his four ballot measures ahead in major public-opinion polls, Schwarzenegger's
political team is making brazen claims about what those initiatives would achieve.
On Monday, the team hit the airwaves with the message, "Say yes to 76, say
no to a tax increase next year."
Hitting a note the governor has sounded repeatedly in recent months, the spot
suggests that a tax increase is imminent if voters reject the spending controls,
which also would give the governor more power over the state budget.
But the reality is that no matter how the vote goes next week, the governor and
Republican lawmakers will retain the same power to block a tax increase —
and to block spending in the state budget — that they have had, and used,
for years.
None of this surprises Bowler, who says political advertising relies on an elastic
definition of accuracy: "I like to say, 'All is fair in love, war and TV
advertising.' "
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times | Top
Tactical Confusion
Los Angeles Times | October 31, 2005 | By Ethan Rarick
(Rarick is the acting director of the Center on Politics at the UC Berkeley Institute
of Governmental Studies, is the author of "California Rising: The Life and
Times of Pat Brown" (UC Press, 2005)
OF ALL THE SLY tactics commanded by the backroom bosses of initiative campaigns
— elicit fear, evoke compassion, pander to greed — one of the simplest
is this: sow confusion. If politics is a rhetorical form of combat, few weapons
are more effective than the fog of war.
A perfect example confounds voters now — Propositions 78 and 79 on the Nov.
8 ballot appear to be quite similar but in fact have crucial differences. But
this is hardly the first time that the state's famous affinity for ballot measures
has forced the electorate to make a baffling choice.
Even in the state's fondly remembered postwar Golden Age, gamesmanship surrounded
the initiative process. In 1952, Democrats and Republicans mounted competing measures
to reform the state's system of primary voting.
Republicans wanted to preserve "cross-filing," which allowed politicians
to compete in the primaries of multiple parties, because it helped them win more
seats in the Legislature. Democrats sponsored a ballot measure to abolish the
practice, which they branded a sneaky political relic. Republicans countered with
their own ballot measure, designed to weaken but not eliminate cross-filing. On
top of that, the Republican secretary of state assigned the Democratic measure
the unlucky number 13 and gave the GOP-backed version lucky number 7. (In the
end, the GOP outsmarted itself. Voters approved the Republican measure, but the
changes still ended up benefiting Democrats.)
The clutter of competing measures has only grown more complex. In 1988, for example,
an array of initiatives dealt with the sharply rising cost of car insurance. Voters
eventually adopted Proposition 103, cutting rates sharply, but first they had
to navigate through the cacophony of electoral background noise surrounding the
issue, including the hype for Proposition 104, a no-fault insurance proposal backed
by the insurance industry and dismissed by many consumer advocates.
Then there are times when confusion is the result not of multiple initiatives
but misdirection in the way a single measure is written, so that the wording disguises
who is behind it or its likely outcome.
In 1996, the owners of mobile home parks were among the sponsors of an initiative
that was pitched as a way to increase affordable housing, although its real purpose
was to loosen up rent control in the parks. Just last year, card clubs and racetracks
sponsored a measure ostensibly designed to extract a "fair share" of
state taxes from the gambling profits of Indian tribes with casinos. In fact,
it was more about legalizing slot machines for those same clubs and racetracks.
Interestingly, voters often see through the ruse. Both the mobile home and
the "fair share" measures failed, for example. And voters shuffled through
the pack of insurance measures in 1988 and picked the one — Proposition 103
— that was publicly supported by the "guru" of consumerism, Ralph
Nader.
That doesn't mean the task of figuring out how to vote is getting easier, which
brings us back to Propositions 78 and 79. Both measures seek to address the skyrocketing
cost of prescription drugs. Both would create programs to provide poor people
with discounted drugs. Both would charge a small annual fee to those enrolled
in the program.
BUT THERE IS a crucial difference not readily apparent to the casual voter. Proposition
79 is backed by consumer groups and labor unions. Proposition 78 was put on the
ballot by the pharmaceutical industry specifically to distract voters from 79.
It claims to cut drug prices — but for fewer people and only through the
voluntary cooperation of drug companies. So far, most people can't figure out
which initiative is which. One recent poll found that only 13% of those asked
were able to correctly identify who was behind Proposition 78. Far more people
got it wrong, insisting that the pharmaceutical industry opposes its own measure.
Voters were almost as confused about the support for Proposition 79.
Such confusion helps the drug companies for two reasons.
First, if people really understood the lineage of each measure, the industry-backed
version would be more likely to fail. When voters are provided with the correct
lineup of sponsors — the pharmaceutical industry for 78 and consumer groups
and unions for 79 — a good chunk of them says it is more likely to vote against
78 and for 79.
Second, and more important, if voters are confused about which initiative is which,
they may just vote against both.** That's the
safest thing to do. Voters know that if they defeat an initiative, they will be
left with the status quo; not ideal, perhaps, but survivable.
That would hardly be a bad outcome for an industry that, under the status quo,
earned enough money to spend about $80 million on the current campaign. If you
want to know their real goal in the election, consider their TV ads. The drug
companies have spent far more on commercials trashing their opponents' measure
than on ads supporting their own.
If voters reject both initiatives, or if they approve Proposition 78 while mistakenly
believing it to be the brainchild of consumer groups, then the dark art of obfuscation
will have cast another spell in California's never-ending initiative wars.
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Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times | Top
** [N.B. In fact, that's what actually happened
in the November 8th vote.]