The FlashReport gets a “shout out” in today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail, read by many thousands of politicos around the country. The subject of this entry, from FR friend John Fund, is Attorney General Jerry Brown and the Protect Marriage Act…
JERRY RIGGED California Attorney General Jerry Brown is stepping outside his law enforcement role and playing politics with a November ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage in the state.
Backers of the measure collected some one million signatures this spring under a title approved by Mr. Brown’s office that made it clear the measure would “provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid.” Since the signatures were collected, the state Supreme Court has ruled same-sex marriage constitutional but also allowed the ballot measure to go before voters. Mr. Brown, a candidate for governor in 2010, has apparently decided to make a play for liberal Democratic primary voters by changing his own office’s description of the measure. It now reads that the ballot initiative seeks “to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry,” a much more negative way of describing the measure. His office says the meaning is the same. But both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage “know that to some voters — perhaps a decisive bloc in a close election — the new ballot title language could make the measure sound punitive by eliminating a ‘right,'” notes Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters. Lawyers question the validity of Mr. Brown’s move. If the meaning is the same, why is the change needed? If the meaning is different, the change contradicts the petition that placed the proposition on the ballot. Either way, the change is groundless. Mr. Brown has pulled this trick before. Back in February he obscured the title language of a ballot measure that would have watered down the state’s term limit law. Luckily, voters saw through the subterfuge and voted down the proposal, which had been sponsored by key state legislators who were about to be turned out of office. The courts will have to decide on the validity of Mr. Brown’s latest ploy, but political analysts say it’s yet more evidence of the 70-year-old Mr. Brown’s ability to further his ambitions in creative ways. “He may not have been governor for over a quarter century, but he is doing everything he can to win the office back,” says Jon Fleischman, editor of the political news service FlashReport.org.
— John Fund