SACRAMENTO — The Proposition 11 campaign released its first statewide campaign advertisement Monday, a 60-second radio spot that promises to "clean up the mess" in Sacramento with redistricting reform.
The spot plays on the frustrations of voters after a legislative session that failed to produce health care reform, fix schools, solve the water crisis or lower energy prices.
"So, what are they doing up in Sacramento?" the ad asks. "Drawing their salaries, taking junkets, being pampered by big staffs, and dropping by their offices to meet with lobbyists."
It's part of an estimated $4 million ad purchase by the Yes on 11 campaign, including $2 million worth of television spots expected to run over the final two weeks of the campaign. The ad does not make any mention of what the measure would do: create a commission of residents who would draw legislative boundaries, taking the power of redistricting out of lawmakers' hands.
"The bottom line is there's gridlock," said Jeannine English, co-chairwoman of the Yes on 11 campaign and president of AARP. "Legislators are not responding to voters, and Proposition 11 will hold them accountable and make them more responsive to voters."
Opponents say another missing ingredient in the ad is that the Prop. 11 campaign is being financed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a deep stable of Republican donors. The Voters First campaign has taken in $6.5 million in donations for Prop. 11— Advertisementon top of a second Yes on 11 account, which has raised millions since being established in late July. The vast majority of donors have Republican ties or histories of supporting GOP causes.
"No mention of the governor and the millions poured into this flawed initiative by developers, investment tycoons and oil companies," said Paul Hefner, spokesman for the No on 11 campaign. "Only phony promises that Prop. 11 can't possibly deliver, all to fool voters into embracing their hidden agenda."
The state Democratic Party is opposed to the initiative, while the state Republican Party has remained neutral — a move critics say was done to tamp down on the appearance that Republicans are overly eager supporters of a process that could net more Republican legislative districts. Democrats currently hold 73 of 120 legislative districts — with a 48-32 majority in the Assembly and a 25-15 majority in the Senate.
Even in trying to show bipartisan support of sponsors behind the radio ad by listing Democratic donor Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, alongside Republican donor and Stanford University physicist Charles Munger Jr. — the comparison in contributions is lopsided. Hastings, by far the most prolific Democratic donor to Prop. 11, has contributed $250,000 to the Yes on 11 campaign. Munger, in contrast, contributed $1 million last month, along with another $250,000 to Republican causes since 2007.
In the ad, one of the speakers says, "we have to hold them accountable."
"That's why we need Prop. 11," replied a second speaker. "It'll help end the gridlock by forcing politicians to pay attention to voters — and if they don't, it makes it easier to vote them out of office."
Voters have yet to warm up to the measure. In a late August poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, only 39 percent of voters said they would vote for Prop. 11, though with 25 percent undecided, voters could move over to the yes column in the final 28 days of the campaign. Seven in 10 voters say that at least some change is needed in how political boundaries are drawn.
"There's so much about this that people don't know and don't understand," said Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of Public Policy Institute of California. "They especially want to know who's behind it and what's the motivation and ... whether it will result in what people are looking for — improving government."
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