Political campaigns are not known for their honesty. Politicians and campaign managers spin the facts and twist the truth to make their points. State Sen. Scott Wiener once tried to trick voters into thinking the Bay Guardian had endorsed him, using that papers logo and a quote out of context.
But the big lie of this political season is the message I am getting from Mayor Daniel Lurie’s billionaire campaign donors about Proposition D.
From a recent mailer: Prop. D is about “ballot transparency” and “stops special interests from writing waste into city laws.”
That’s just untrue. There’s no other way to say it.
Prop. D does exactly the opposite: It guarantees that only big-money special interests like Lurie’s Big Tech pals will be able to put initiatives before the voters.
Prop. D quadruples, to 40,000, the number of signatures required for a ballot initiative. It eliminates the ability of four supervisors to put a measure to the voters. A grassroots campaign with volunteers can gather 10,000 signatures (actually, they need to gather about 15,000 to make sure that 10,000 are valid). Nobody can gather 60,000 (to net 40,000) without paying for signatures. At $5 a signature, the going rate, that’s about $300,000—just to get on the ballot.
Lurie’s operation has paid for signatures to get his proposals on the ballot. That’s because he controls $17 million worth of political money for this fall’s election. It’s almost all from Big Tech.
Some of the most important laws in the city’s modern history were done by citizen initiatives, including the return to district elections (1999), the increase on transfer taxes for affordable housing (2020). Proposition M, the most important land-use reform in 50 years, was placed on the ballot by a minority of the supes—four—who were willing to stand up to Mayor Dianne Feinstein and the developers. There were not five supes willing to do that.
The threat of a ballot campaign forced the mayor and the supes to agree to make City College free.
None of that could happen under Lurie’s plan. On the other hand, the mayor can put anything he wants on the ballot, because he’s got the Big Tech money to fund it.
I am too old to be shocked any more. But this lie is particularly blatant.
