[Note: This column was posted on Tuesday evening, then updated this morning.]
Yesterday the Governor and legislative leaders came to terms on a budget (for the most part) — and then subsequent to that the Joint Budget Committee met and voted out the the agreed upon budget details. All of the state’s newspapers are carrying stories with some of the details today.
I took the opportunity to peruse a bunch of the articles — specifically, in the Los Angeles Times, the San Gabriel Valley News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times. I also looked at John Myers’ coverage at News10 Sacramento.
The media is happy to leave Republicans in the shadows...
All of these articles have one thing in common. They all quote at least one Democrat legislator — but not one Republican legislator is referenced or quoted in any of these stories.
[UPDATE: This morning I checked again, and found three stories — in the Los Angeles Times, the Contra Costa Times, and an AP story. The first two have no mention of Republicans. The last at least references a Republican — but it’s off message. Keep reading for my thoughts on messaging…]
I had written a column earlier in the year where I predicted that Republicans had one election cycle to pick up seats and get out of their super-minority status or else this kind of thing would happen. Apparently I was too generous in my prediction. If you go to Google and search “Hawaii State Budget” or “Massachusetts State Budget” and read the news articles, finding references to Republicans is like trying to find the proverbial needle in the hay stack. Those are states where the GOP has had super-minority status for quite some time — and Republicans are never mentioned.
Did this tree make a sound when it fell? Capitol Republicans need to make a lot of sound on this Democrat budget, and be heard.
Obviously the political path towards the kind of relevance that puts Republicans in these stories is to pick up seats and end the super-minority. But I would submit that smart, aggressive messaging also matters. Every reporter who wrote every one of these stories, and all of the others, should get a visit from GOP legislators — making the case for why the Democrat budget is bad news. This messaging should be specific, and information should be left with the reporters. But that same information should also be packaged up in press releases put out by 36 Republican legislators. It should be written up into opinion columns by those legislators to the major papers in their districts. It should be put up in member videos and radio spots, and put out in social media circles through Facebook, Twitter and such by all 36 Republicans. The leaders should split up the major dailies in areas with no GOP representation and make those calls and pen those columns.
While there are a plethora of bad elements of the Democrats’ spending plan — the most egregious two, in my mind, are it’s increases in spending on new ongoing expenses (such as pay raises for the state’s very large workforce) and a complete disregard for addressing the state’s unfunded pension liabilities, which are enormous. A huge factor in billions of the dollars available for this year’s budget are one-time sources of income. For example, the changes in federal tax policy that went into effect the first of the year would have had a great many people choosing to incur capital gains before the end of the year.
As a final cautionary note — I keep reading comments from some Republican legislators praising Governor Brown’s handling of the budget. I’ve seen phrases like “adult supervision” and “providing strong leadership” — which doesn’t help the Republican cause — at all. While relative to the legislative Democrats, Brown’s revenue assumptions are more sound, the reality is that if Republicans held the Governorship and majorities in both legislative chambers, the budget would look a heck of a lot different that the one that will come up for a vote later this month. If Republicans are wiling to tap Brown as the “check” on Steinberg and Perez, the media will let them. And it will be at the expense of the role of Republicans.
Hopefully this advice will be considered as constructive input, which is how it is intended to be received.
P.S. In the spirit of this column, if a GOP legislator would like to publish a column on this site exposing the Democrats’ budget for it’s many faults, let me know. I would run that with pleasure.