History
Californians rightly credit Progressive-era Governor Hiram Johnson with
leading the successful fight for direct democracy in the Golden State, but
few are familiar with the critical groundwork that had been laid by Dr.
John Randolph Haynes. A Philadelphian who held doctorates in both
medicine and philosophy, Haynes moved west to Los Angeles in 1887, at
the age of 34. He established a successful medical practice, counting
many prominent Southern Californians among his patients, invested his
profits skillfully in real estate, and eventually became a millionaire.
In 1895 Haynes helped found the California Direct Legislation League,
dedicated to winning the rights of initiative, referendum, and recall both
statewide and in every local jurisdiction. He won election in 1900 to a Los
Angeles “board of freeholders” responsible for drafting a new charter for
that city. Haynes used this strategic position to make sure that the board
included I&R in the new charter, only to see the entire charter thrown out
by the courts on a technicality. A new board, without Haynes, was
elected in 1902, but he continued to advocate I&R and brought Eltweed
Pomeroy of New Jersey, president of the National Direct Legislation
League, from the east coast specifically to address the board. After
Pomeroy’s speech, the board voted to include initiative, referendum, and
recall in the new charter. Voters ratified the charter in 1903.
Haynes then concentrated his efforts on winning statewide I&R. The
odds against him were daunting. The entire state government had for
decades been under the control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Bribery
was the accepted method of doing business in the state capitol. Realizing
the hopelessness of dealing with the current officeholders, Haynes and
other reformers began a campaign to get rid of them and remake state
government from top to bottom. In May 1907 they founded the Lincoln-
Roosevelt League of Republican Clubs, and elected several of their
candidates to the legislature. Once elected, these legislators worked for a
bill to require the nomination of party candidates through primary
election rather than the backroom deals of state party conventions. The
bill passed, and the League’s 1910 gubernatorial candidate, Hiram
Johnson, ran in the state’s first primary election. Johnson won the primary
and the general election and swept dozens of other reformers into the
legislature on his political coattails.
Johnson and the new Progressive majority in the legislature made the
most sweeping governmental changes ever seen in the history of
California. Among these were the introduction of initiative, referendum,
and recall at both the state and local levels. Voters ratified these
amendments in a special election on October 10, 1911.
Reformers in Los Angeles won voter approval, in December 1911, of a
unique local initiative to create a municipally owned, yet editorially
independent, newspaper to compete with the anti-labor, anti-reform Los
Angeles Times and provide unbiased news and an equal forum for all
political views. Each political party was given a column in every weekly
edition.
This bold experiment in free speech attracted the state’s top
newspaper talent and got off to a highly successful start. After less than a
year, however, it failed because of the harassment of vendors and an
advertiser boycott organized by the Los Angeles reformers’ arch-enemy,
Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the Times.
The first significant statewide initiative in California abolished the poll
tax in 1914, and a construction bond initiative for the University of
California also won voter approval that year. Immediately thereafter, antiinitiative
forces launched their first counterattack, in the form of a
constitutional amendment passed by the legislature to make it more
difficult to pass initiative bond proposals. Haynes mobilized his pro-initiative
forces and defeated the amendment at the polls in 1915.
Anti-initiative forces tried again in 1920; this time using the initiative
process themselves to propose a measure that would have made it
virtually impossible to put any tax-related initiatives on future ballots.
Haynes mobilized his forces again and defeated the measure at the polls;
and he won a third, similar contest in 1922. After this he changed the
name of his California Direct Legislation League to “The League to Protect
the Initiative,” and for the rest of his life kept close watch over the
legislature to make sure that it enacted no laws to restrict I&R procedures.
Haynes died on October 30, 1937, at the age of 84.
On the ballot in 1934 were four successful constitutional initiatives to
revamp the state’s law enforcement and criminal justice systems. All four
were sponsored by Alameda County District Attorney Earl Warren, who
went on to become the state’s attorney general in 1938, its governor in
1942, and the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1953. The
principal changes involved procedures for judicial selection and retention,
and increasing the woefully inadequate powers and jurisdiction of the
office of attorney general. Warren’s foresight in revamping the justice
system before running for attorney general accounted in no small
measure for his effectiveness once elected, which in turn made possible
his rise to higher office.
Each decade for the first half of this century, the number of signatures
required to put a statewide initiative on the ballot roughly doubled. It was
set at 8 percent of the number of votes cast in the previous gubernatorial
election. In 1911 this was 30,481 signatures; in 1930, it was 91,529; in 1939, it
was 212,117. The rapid change was due to California’s explosive
population growth and the increasing participation of women as voters.
As petition requirements increased, the number of initiatives qualifying for
the ballot decreased, particularly in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
One of the highest stakes initiative campaigns, in terms of campaign
spending was the 1956 struggle over changes in the state regulation and
taxation of oil and gas production. The initiative was sponsored by one
group of oil companies that sought to make their business more profitable,
and opposed by another group of oil firms that preferred the existing
system. Campaign funds spent by both sides totaled over $5 million. The
1956 initiative lost: California voters, inundated with conflicting claims
about a complex measure, took the cautious route and voted “no.”
Almost as expensive was the gargantuan 1958 labor-capital conflict
over a “Right to Work” (open shop) initiative sponsored by employers. This
battle ended in a double defeat for employers: not only did voters
decisively reject the initiative, but the opposition campaign mobilized
Democrats and union members to vote in droves, resulting in the election
of Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., the first Democrat to occupy that
office in 16 years.
In the 1960s, California liberals soured on the initiative process as a
result of two measures passed by voters in 1964. The first repealed the
Rumford Fair Housing Act, which the legislature had passed, and
Governor Brown had signed, in 1963. The second banned cable television.
That measure was sponsored by theater owners who, fearing competition,
advertised the initiative as guaranteeing “free television” and eliminating
the specter of “pay television.” Both 1964 initiatives were later overturned
by the courts as unconstitutional.
The California initiative process gave rise to a new breed of campaign
professional: the paid petition circulator. With signature requirements
doubling nearly every decade, citizen groups were unable to rely solely
on volunteer effort. As early as World War I, Joseph Robinson was offering
his organizing services to initiative proponents. His firm, which paid its
employees a fee for each signature brought in, had a virtual monopoly on
the petition business from 1920 to 1948 - a period during which, Robinson
estimated, his firm was involved in 98 percent of the successful statewide
initiative petition drives. Robinson stayed in business into the late 1960s,
when he offered his services to Ed and Joyce Koupal, but by then he had
competitors.
In the last decade, Californians lead the nation in numerous reform
efforts including term limits, ending bilingual education, adopting animal
protection laws, ending racial preferences, and adopting one of the most
comprehensive drug reform measures in the country. This has lead to
elected officials across the country vilifying the initiative process and have
used the rhetoric “we don’t want to be like California” as their rallying cry
in opposing the initiative process. They are concerned that the reforms
adopted in California would come to their states – even though these are
the reforms wanted by the people. However, Californians still
overwhelmingly support the initiative process and have no desire for it to
be abolished.
Excerpted from the Initiative & Referendum Almanac by M. Dane Waters.