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One doesn’t need a degree in ophiology to know that some boas achieve their goals not by venom but instead by slowly constricting their prey’s circulatory system until vital organs shut down.
At least, that’s one way to explain how one political party has dominated the California landscape this century: for the better part of the last two decades, a slow but steady constriction of the loyal opposition’s ability to affect political and policy outcomes.
Case in point: this year’s Proposition 5, one of fourteen measures on California’s November slate of ballot initiatives.
At first glance, Proposition 5 seems innocent enough, or so its official summary assures us: “Under current law, voters elect replacement candidates at the same time as the recall election. This measure instead fills recall vacancies by subsequent special election or appointment.”
And how exactly would that work?
Again, the summary’s words:
- “If the Governor is recalled, the Lieutenant Governor becomes Governor for the remainder of the term or until a successor is elected”;
- “for all other recalled officers, the office will remain vacant until filled by a subsequent special election or appointment as specified in existing law”;
- “a recalled officer may be a candidate in a special election to fill the office.”
So how does this constitute yet another slow-but-certain “constriction”? Simple. Republicans have failed spectacularly at winning California statewide offices. (In this century, excluding the 2003 recall special election, only two GOP wins occurred in fifty-one runs for state constitutional and US Senate offices.) But there’s always been a back door to the governor’s office: the recall process.
Or so California learned when Arnold Schwarzenegger became the Golden State’s thirty-eighth governor by virtue of a recall election—twenty-three years ago this week—that ousted the incumbent Democrat, Gray Davis. For Arnold, it was a two-month “fun run”—assuming the candidate enjoyed dropping wrecking balls on junkers to underscore his opposition to a “car tax”—that allowed the Republican contender to avoid a contentious GOP primary and prolonged questions about his conservative bona fides.
But if voters approve Prop 5, that “back door” for a non-Democratic governor vanishes. As such, it’s just one more way in which a party that controls every statewide office, as well as supermajorities in both legislative chambers, maintains its dominance.
How else has the constrictor gone about its business in California?
Here are five examples, in reverse chronological order.
Proposition 50. Yes, California Gov. Gavin Newsom will tell you that the ballot measure redrawing California’s congressional districts and approved by voters last November was in response to the Republican congressional gerrymander in Texas. And he’ll assure you it’s but a temporary step as it applies to congressional elections through 2030.
What Proposition 50 did, in the near term, was target five incumbent congressional Republicans. (One of them, Rep. Kevin Kiley, is now running as an independent in California’s less GOP-friendly 6th Congressional District, which stretches from the foothills of Placer County to Sacramento.)
But in the longer term, Proposition 50 “constricts” in this regard: By taking redistricting authority away from a nonpartisan, independent commission and instead allowing the Democratic-controlled Legislature to do the political cartography, it sets the precedent for future attempts to whittle away at the California GOP’s numbers in the US House of Representatives.
Universal Vote-By-Mail. Six years ago, California election officials rightly worried that voters going to polls amid a pandemic could trigger a superspreader event. The solution: Send a mail-in ballot to every registered regular voter, whether they asked for it or not.
A year later, Newsom signed 2021’s Assembly Bill 37 making California a permanent voter-by-mail state, tweeting in Trumpian fashion: “BREAKING: California is now PERMANENTLY a vote-by-mail state. Because we believe in making voting EASIER and for every voice to be heard.”
What California’s governor conveniently omitted: voter-registration mathematics. Democrats in the Golden State outnumber Republicans by nearly a two-to-one margin (it’s a twenty-point gap, as opposed to the eight-point divide between Republicans and Democrats that Schwarzenegger faced when running for reelection twenty years ago). In addition to the advanced degree in snake-handling, one doesn’t need a math doctorate to know that more ballots handed to registered Democrats means fewer chances of non-Democratic candidates or policies prevailing.
Primary Initiatives Banned. In every election cycle, California’s secretary of state publishes a thoughtful Voter Information Guide that’s mailed to all registered voters. In this election, the guide includes sixty-five pages of insight and arguments (both pro and con) devoted to fourteen ballot measures.
If you consider that information overload and would like to file a complaint, former Gov. Jerry Brown would be a good place to start.
In 2011, his first year back at the same job he held three decades earlier, Brown signed SB 202, which banned voter-driven initiatives from future Golden State primary ballots. At the time, Brown tried to sell the measure as an act of good government—and good faith. “There are dramatically more voters at a general rather than a primary election," the governor’s signing statement read. “The idea of direct democracy is to involve as many voters as possible. This bill accomplishes that objective."
What Brown could have added: Moving all voter initiatives to the general election improved the odds of killing off right-leading ideas, as conservatives tend to have a larger presence in lower-turnout primaries.
Indeed, in the following year’s election, Brown’s move may have prevented “paycheck protection” (banning the use of union dues as political contributions to state and local candidates) from becoming the law of the land.
How so?
In 2012, paycheck protection was offered in the form of Proposition 32. Given the opportunity, the backers of that measure likely would have placed it on the ballot believing that it would benefit from the Republican primary calendar (Mitt Romney clinched the GOP nomination less than a week before California voted). Rare for California, the state witnessed a Republican enthusiasm gap. (Despite 2.1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans, the Democratic presidential candidates competing in California’s primary received only 150,000 more votes than the GOP). Instead, Proposition 32 was relegated to the November ballot, where it received only 43.4 percent.
Despite this constricting move, right-of-center and free-market ideas can still prevail in the form of ballot initiatives—but maybe not that many initiatives if the going rate for victory is at least $200 million.
Majority Budgets. In the same 2010 election that returned Jerry Brown to the governor’s office, California voters sent a message to a legislature fresh off a three-month budgetary stalemate with Schwarzenegger: The next time the budget is delayed, you won’t get paid until you do your job.
Also a part of Proposition 25, which made that salary-docking threat: lowering the vote requirement for each house of the legislature to pass a budget bill from two-thirds to a simple majority. (California, at the time, was one of only three states with the two-thirds requirement.)
The constriction was none too subtle. With Democrats firmly in control of the legislature when voters approved Proposition 25, but lacking supermajorities in either chamber, the constitutional tweak immediately made legislative Republicans irrelevant when charting California’s fiscal course—an irrelevancy that continues to this day.
Open Primaries. Proposition 14 wasn't California's only experiment in making democracy work to one party's advantage. Also on the ballot in November 2010 was Proposition 14, which offered a new “top two” primary system that advanced the lead two vote getters to the general election regardless of political affiliation.
Proponents of the ballot measure also talked about future primaries producing a new California politician (at the time, the political prognosticator Nate Silver predicted a future wave of New England-style moderates in the Golden State).
But what went overlooked at the time: Proposition 14 didn’t allow third parties access to the November ballot unless they finished first or second in the primary.
The constriction: keeping third-party candidates off the November ballot also keeps disgruntled Democrats and independents (currently breaking Democratic at a two-to-one rate in this year’s governor’s race) from leaving the flock.
A crippling blow it’s not. Third-party contenders accounted for only 5.3 percent of the vote the last time California didn’t limit the gubernatorial choices to two candidates—Republican Meg Whitman still losing by nearly 13 points. But in 2002, four third-party candidates received a collective 10.3 percent of the November vote—one of the reasons Republican Bill Simon lost by only five points.
About that 2002 election in California: For the first time ever, Democrats won every statewide constitutional office, maintained their legislature dominance, and picked up a congressional seat. And 2026 likely offers more of the same—maybe more congressional pickups if the Proposition 50 gerrymander pans out.
California political outcomes seem little different nearly a quarter of a century later: talk about a long squeeze.
