CA: Early Returns Show 2 of 4 Key Initiatives Failing

Early Returns Show 2 of 4 Key Initiatives Failing

Governor's plans to limit the power of the Legislature to redistrict and to budget are losing. Union dues proposition is ahead.

By Michael Finnegan and Robert Salladay, Times Staff Writers

The centerpieces of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign to reshape the state's budget and electoral politics were losing in early returns tonight after polls closed on the costliest campaign in state history.

Two other initiatives backed by the governor — one lengthening teacher tenure and a second that would force unions to get permission of members before using dues for political purposes — were narrowly ahead.

Millions of Californians cast ballots in the special election, called by the governor and featuring eight ballot measures.

No major problems were reported in balloting across the state. Authorities expected about 42% of the state's registered voters — or 7 million people — to cast ballots. Millions of absentee ballots had streamed into registrars' offices across the state before the polls opened.

The election centered on a clash between Schwarzenegger and his rivals in organized labor. The Republican governor had cast four of the initiatives as central to his larger plan to restore fiscal discipline to California and reform the state's notoriously dysfunctional politics. Labor portrayed his agenda as an assault on nurses, teachers, firefighters and other public employees.

Schwarzenegger's ballot measures — Propositions 74, 75, 76 and 77 — sparked the most public attention. Schwarzenegger aides had privately said before the polls closed that they expected losses on the latter two — the budget and redistricting measures. But they said the first two — on tenure and union dues — were up in the air.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-election9nov09,0,3181440.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Castrating labor is the cornerstone of Arnold's "reform" plan. Working people have been tricked into silencing their own best lobby. This is a very sad day in California. :cry:

work so well, at this point...nothing's happening...

http://vote2005.ss.ca.gov/DecJava/Java_intro.html

It's damned depressing.

...some very large counties yet to report anything other than absentee ballots...