As the campaign manager for Proposition 10 and an early and active member of the McCain for President finance team Tuesday night, for me, could be viewed as a personal and professional disaster. After 30 plus years knocking around California politics, I’ve experienced worse.
In 1992 I was the California campaign manager for President George Bush and that was an equally disastrous year for we Republicans. I remember the press availability the morning after the election that I participated in with some of my colleagues from the Pete Wilson organization. At the merciful conclusion of the media event I looked pretty shell-shocked and the sage Dan Walters said to me, “Don’t worry kid, it’s our job to bayonet the wounded.”
So wounded I am again some 16 years later and I feel compelled to answer this question, “Marty, how the Hell did you lose the Proposition 10 campaign when you were funded and your opposition had no money?”
To which I answer, “It was harder than you think.”
Shortly I will give you a better answer but I want to first clear up one misperception: The defeat of Proposition 10 does not in any way, shape or form signal the demise of the Pickens Plan for Energy Independence. Boone Pickens is a true American hero. A business icon who is putting his money where his heart is by trying to save our country by reducing our dependence on foreign oil and promoting the development of clean domestic energy solutions. His Pickens Plan has shaped the national debate on energy policy and continues to do so as we transition to a new administration.
What is forgotten in this season of the campaign post mortems is that Proposition 10 had qualified for the California ballot long before the Pickens Plan was conceived or ever rolled out. Mr. Pickens didn’t develop our campaign strategy, draft our survey questionnaires or write our ad copy. A team of professional campaign consultants lead by me performed those functions. The hindsight of punditry is always galling to those of us who climb in the ring every two years, but in this case I do have the benefit of reams of polling data that paint a very clear picture of why we lost.
When we asked voters why they opposed Proposition 10, 40-45 percent cited cost as the number one reason. The second reason why voters opposed Proposition 10 was the size of the state’s budget deficit. Only three percent said they were going to vote no because of the perceived involvement of Mr. Pickens. In fact, Boone’s name ID in California is better than 60 percent and he is viewed favorably by a three-to-one margin.
Okay, so why did we lose so badly? We never could overcome the cost argument, which became even more compelling after the financial meltdown on Wall Street. That was compounded by the Governor’s announcement that the state was another $10 billion in the hole and he was going to propose tax increases and cuts to education. A second contributing factor is the unfortunate fact that we never were able to garner support from organizations that represent environmentalist and the business community. Most groups gave us a fair hearing and we fought hard for their endorsements and, speaking for all of us involved in competing for those endorsements, we are most appreciative to them for giving us the opportunity to make our case. It was apparent in the feedback we received that these groups were never comfortable with using bond funding for energy-related projects.
A final question is why did the other bonds on the ballot pass and ours did not? The other bond measures on the ballot were for more tangible and traditional items such as children’s hospitals, housing for veterans and the construction of high-speed rail. This was the first time that a bond measure was proposed for an energy/environmental program. And the voters, in challenging economic times, were skeptical.
No more excuses. I think that clicking sound I hear is the sound of bayonets being affixed. All that I ask, is they be pointed in the right direction.