California state propositions latest election results

Welcome back. California voters weren't just choosing candidates. They were also making some big decisions on what issues could have a lasting impact on the state from voter ID to a billionaire tax and funding affordable housing. Let's break down some of the propositions that passed, what didn't and what it all means for Californians. Back with us, former L.A. City Council member Mike Bonin. He's also the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Cal State L.A. Thank you for sticking around so we can discuss some of this. Glad to be here. We talked about it was a long night for you and an early morning for you. It's going to be a long day for you. So there's obviously a lot to unpack here, and some of these measures are particularly interesting because they kind of intersect with one another, right? So let's go through some of the big ones. Let's begin with Prop 40. The one-time billionaire tax will not pass. It was a levy of a 5% tax on certain taxpayers with assets over a billion dollars to fund state health programs, food assistance, public education. What was interesting was Prop 40 got a lot of attention. It was one of the most expensive, closely watched fights, right? What does the apparent opposition tell us about the attitude of Californians toward taxing the wealthy? Well, this was a fascinating one because this looked like the odds-on favorite to win for a very, very long time. It had the backing of one of the more powerful unions in the state, the Service Employees International Union's United Healthcare Workers. But this one sort of blew up You had the health care workers and Bernie Sanders on one side saying yes on this. You had Gavin Newsom and billionaires and Republicans all saying no on it. So it scrambled traditional alliances. And if anything, I think it shows you the power of Of billionaires, because they put a huge ton of money into defeating this. This really got outspent, even though it sort of made initially intuitive sense to voters. The sort of messaging was, this is too dangerous, it'll risk too many things. And voters had other opportunities to do. I think that was the perfect word for it, by the way, scrambled. Yes. It really was scrambled. It did. Yeah. Prop 41 audits a new tax program, and it looks to be failing. It would require government entities and departments receiving new revenues to cut lower-performing programs and to reinvest in higher-performing programs. We move on to Prop 42, personal property tax, which appears to be, yes, it prohibits new taxes on property. Yes. How important is that relationship and what happens if voters approve one of these measures? This is also an example of how sort of screwy our referendum process is here in California to have sort of three different measures all sort of talking about the same thing. These were both 41 and 42 were both put on by the same people who were opposed to 40. And the way it works is if all three of them passed and 42 looks like it's the only one that will pass. But if all three of them wound up passing, the one that got the greatest number of votes would prevail. So even if 40 passed, 42 is passing right now, and 42, if it had more votes, that would cancel out 40. And so right now, under any scenario, the billionaire tax is not approving. All right. Prop 3, higher income taxes is passing. This provides permanent funding for schools and health care by extending existing tax on higher income. So it allocates tax revenues to education, early childhood programs. Now, Prop 3 appears to be getting a very different response from what we just discussed, which is Prop 40, both, though, involving taxing wealthy Californians. So why, then, might voters support, one, And reject the other difference between a new tax and extending the existing tax, I think, is a big deal. Right. This tax is one that already exists, was set to expire in twenty thirty one. So this is voters just saying we'll we'll stay the course on this. And voters have seen this one in effect. And there wasn't a huge campaign against it. There was a huge campaign against 40, and on 40 they were saying, oh my God, if they go this way, they're going to come after your pension. They made people think it was going to somehow affect them. This one folks are sort of used to, and there was no real opposition. Okay, interesting. All right, that makes sense, though. Prop 1, affordable housing passes. This allows Californians to borrow $11.25 billion to build and to improve. Affordable housing, including housing for veterans, that's that. Then we move on to Prop 37, homebuyer assistance projected to pass. This one creates a loan program to help middle income Californians to afford down payments on newly qualifying, newly built homes. Now, Prop 1 and Prop 37 present meaningful progress when it comes to housing, of course. So are these relatively small steps, would you say, toward a much bigger problem that we're facing? They are relatively small steps towards a much bigger problem. I would say that the biggest problem facing California right now is housing affordability. Whether it's for renters or for homeowners, the market is wacky. There's not enough housing. It's what's driving the affordability crisis here in California. Both of these things are small steps that will help. But I think the new governor and the legislature are are both going to have to focus really heavily on housing as part of their agenda. Absolutely. You hear about that all the time. Everywhere you go. Everywhere you go. That's the topic of conversation. All right, so Prop 39, this is the voter ID. Will not pass. This would have prohibited citizens from voting unless they present government-issued ID. We heard a lot about this one, too. Those political ads were everywhere, getting a lot of attention and some being very creative. So this would have changed how Californians vote. Why do you think voters rejected the voter ID requirements? Two words. Donald Trump. Thank you very much. Generally, a voter ID thing like this. Polls very, very well, even among Democrats. It makes intuitive sense to people. Well, yeah, if you have to have a driver's license, why wouldn't you have to have an ID to vote? But despite the fact that it polls intuitively well with people, the Democrats did a very good job messaging that this is sort of part of Donald Trump's agenda to subvert democracy. And that was a very successful strategy. And that's why it went down by like a huge margin. It's one of those personal emotional props. It immediately just gets people fired up without even knowing what exactly it's saying. People just immediately responded to this. They really did. And you know, Trump has made such an issue of election integrity and trying to make sure certain people can't vote. You know, saying over the past couple weeks about threatening election officials with prosecution, about trying to take 20,000 ballots out of being counted in California, I think those actually hurt his cause and hurt the voter ID initiative. Backfired. Proposition 44, we just want to mention this one here. Community health clinics is failing, it looks like. The prop requires health care facilities to spend 90% of annual revenue on mission-related purposes. These were the big ones we wanted to highlight. But before we let you go, if you could pick one result from last night that tells us the most where Californians are headed. Politically, financially, mentally where their head lies, what would you say? That's a tough one. I would say, even though they're not the biggest items on the list, the two housing-related measures, I think for Californians, so much of what the next legislature and governor have to do has to be addressing the housing crisis. And I think those are just two little small indications of how important that is. Interesting. Okay. Well, yesterday when I went to vote, because I like to vote in person, it was... Fascinating because you had several grandparents or parents taking their kids to show them the process, but them trying to explain the propositions was quite comical because you kept hearing them saying, okay, well this is, this is how it's written to make you think this way. It's actually supposed to mean this way. It's why all those voter guides have become so popular. People use them to interpret. Yes. Well, thank you so much. We appreciate you being here with us this morning. Good morning. All right.