Yesterday’s announcement from the California Chamber of Commerce that their Board of Directors voted to place their organization in opposition to Proposition 93, the naked power grab being orchestrated by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez to extend his own political career, is a major setback for the measure. But I can’t say that the Chamber’s position was unexpected — Nunez has to have been expecting it — because, frankly, he caused it.
You see, the leadership of the California Chamber was involved in an intense period of negotiations with legislative leaders to broker a compromise where some form of term-limits reform would be coupled with redistricting reform. Nunez abruptly ended these negotiations, turning his back not only on the Chamber, but also on the Governor and fellow legislative leaders, and filed his own ballot initiative. The Nunez measure, now Proposition 93, of course has no redistricting reform in it at all. And it also is written around what we call "the big lie" — because the measure purports to reduce legislative tenure when in reality, it will mean a huge increase in the average time in office served by legislators. It also has a grotesque "loop hole" that allows many current legislators to serve well beyond even the new terms in the measure.
I wrote extensively on the political landscape for the Chamber and Proposition 93 two weeks ago.
It would have been shocking for the Chamber to do anything but oppose this power grab by Nunez, if not only policy grounds, than for political reasons. It’s pretty simple. If the Chamber, as a major political player, were to let someone like Nunez play them for chumps, walk away from negotiations, run his own inferior measure, and then the Chamber did not oppose it — the political respect/cache/reputation of the Chamber would have suffered greatly. Clearly the Chamber leadership realized this.
Making it clear that the Chamber’s position was due to the unwillingness of Nunez to negotiate a fair deal, CalChamber President and CEO Alan Zaremberg had this to say:
"It is unfortunate that the February ballot does not offer voters the opportunity to consider redistricting reform that would provide for fair elections in conjunction with Proposition 93. The CalChamber Board of Directors believes that term limits reform without redistricting reform is not the comprehensive political reform California needs."This announcement from the Chamber is an important first step. But the value of a Chamber taking a position is that this is a group with a reputation of putting action behind words. So over the next seven weeks, we’ll all be watching to see if the Chamber engages with its considerable financial potential, adding their resources to the millions infused into the No on 93 campaign by State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and U.S. Term Limits.
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