California needs more revenues. One obvious place to get them: Washington DC. But the feds have their own problems and aren’t eager to oblige. How to get their attention?
Ted Costa’s new initiative offers a way.
Yes, this is the initiative that would alter presidential politics in favor of Republicans by switching California from a winner-take-all state (with all electoral votes going to the statewide winner) to a state in which the winner in each Congressional district would get one electoral vote. This would break the current Democratic stranglehold on the state’s 55 electoral votes and give roughly 20 of those votes to the Republicans – a sea change in presidential elections.
This is a partisan idea that’s bad policy…
And perhaps the perfect weapon to wield against the Obama administration and the Democrats in service of getting more federal money for California.
How about this for a plan? Credible independents and Democrats with money or access to it would have to threaten to support the initiative – if the administration and Congress didn’t meet a list of demands on additional stimulus measures for the state, and California-friendly changes in a number of federal funding formulas (particularly on health care).
Washington Democrats would argue that such a threat is totally unreasonable and amounts to a sort of political hostage-taking. But Californians could counter that it’s also unreasonable to believe that the American economy can recover if California remains a basket case, forced to cut government services or raise taxes at a difficult economic time. The folks threatening Obama and Congressional Democrats would also point out that they’re only asking the administration to do the right thing for California, and thus the nation.
Would it work? President Obama has shown himself to be a person who will bend to intense political pressure. And he simply can’t risk the possibility of losing 20 electoral votes in California. Of course, Obama might see this for what it is – a bluff, and one likely to be rejected by voters if it made it that far. But if this gambit doesn’t work, so what? California wouldn’t be any worse off than before.
One note on Costa’s initiative: Its supporters claim that if passed, it would create political competition in California, with presidential candidates forced to campaign here. That’s nonsense. So few Congressional districts are competitive (a fact of life that should survive redistricting reform, unfortunately) that this change would be unlikely to draw the candidates here.
If you want real competition in California during presidential elections, there are a couple of better ways. The first would be to give California’s electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote. In such a system, candidates would spend more time here because there are more votes to win here. Another way would be to divide the state’s electoral votes proportionally—giving each candidate a number equivalent to their percentage. While Democrats would win the state, both parties would compete here to try to get their statewide tallies as high as possible.