{"id":425887,"date":"2010-03-14T15:30:06","date_gmt":"2010-03-14T19:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/2010\/03\/14\/2603796\/dan-morain-lacking-big-bucks-ted.html#mi_rss=Opinion"},"modified":"2010-03-14T15:30:06","modified_gmt":"2010-03-14T19:30:06","slug":"dan-morain-lacking-big-bucks-ted-costa-keeps-getting-dissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/425887","title":{"rendered":"Dan Morain: Lacking big bucks, Ted Costa keeps getting dissed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tTed Costa, here announcing a 2003 ballot measure, has initiated a number of initiatives only to see them taken over by larger political organizations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ted Costa is getting Bigfooted. Again.<\/p>\n

Costa is sitting at the desk of his musty office in a strip mall sandwiched among other strip malls on Arden Way. <\/p>\n

Papers are spread about his desk and floor. Old pizza crust sits in a trash can. His black wingtips are muddy from his morning chores at his Citrus Heights home, which includes feeding his wife’s pet donkeys. <\/p>\n

Original campaign signs for Proposition 13 hang on the walls, as does a black and white photo of a trimmer and younger Costa with his mentor, Paul Gann. <\/p>\n

Costa was not pleased on the day I visited him. <\/p>\n

“Politics. That’s the way it is,” Costa said, disgusted that moneyed interests, including Texas oil companies, were elbowing him out of the coming initiative war over California’s law requiring reductions to greenhouse gases. <\/p>\n

Costa, 68, runs People’s Advocate Inc., a legacy of the 1978 anti-tax revolt that brought us Proposition 13. Costa has spent decades in the world of direct mail and ballot-box politics, usually on the edges, always on the conservative side. <\/p>\n

The business of politics is dominated by huge money and high stakes. There isn’t much room for a guy like Costa. Big money guys who use initiatives to buy laws and shape state policy simply don’t want to fund a measure if he is in control. Costa is not poll-tested or focus-grouped. He says what he thinks, and that is dicey, given the multimillion-dollar stakes involved in initiatives. <\/p>\n

But Costa does have an eye for issues that resonate, particularly among conservatives, the tea party sorts, though he is dismissive of the California version of the movement. Has it placed an initiative on any ballot? he asks, knowing it hasn’t. <\/p>\n

Costa initiated the 2003 recall drive against Gov. Gray Davis and later pushed to alter how legislative boundaries are drawn. More sophisticated political operations, using Arnold Schwarzenegger as the front man, seized control of both issues. <\/p>\n

This year, Costa grabbed hold of what he was convinced was another winner: an initiative to roll back AB 32, the landmark 2006 law championed by Schwarzenegger that seeks to force California corporations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. <\/p>\n

Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law back before the economy crashed. Now voters are scared, what with unemployment far above 12 percent and the recession dragging on. Voters might decide to put the law on hold, given dire warnings by business leaders that AB 32’s implementation would cost more jobs. <\/p>\n

Costa wrote a direct one-page initiative to accomplish that end, and got Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, and Assemblyman Dan Logue, a Linda Republican, to sign on as official proponents. <\/p>\n

But as Costa was preparing to gather signatures and send mailers soliciting money from his list of past donors, Texas oil companies stepped in, putting their money behind a nearly identical proposed initiative written by Sacramento attorney Thomas Hiltachk. Hiltachk is one of the state’s most prolific initiative authors; his firm represents the California Republican Party. <\/p>\n

It’s all part of the professionalization of the initiative industry. If there ever was room for citizen activists, that time passed long ago. <\/p>\n

High-end consulting firms Goddard Claussen and Woodward & McDowell were enlisted to run the campaign to derail AB 32, along with lobbyist Michael Carpenter, whose clients include Valero Energy, one of the Texas funders. The three firms have eight offices among them from Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Not a one is in a strip mall. <\/p>\n

Goddard Claussen and Woodward & McDowell have handled California ballot measure campaigns on behalf of oil, gambling, agriculture, alcohol, builders, real estate interests, health care, auto insurance carriers and many more. <\/p>\n

Goddard Claussen is famous for creating the Harry & Louise ads that helped tube President Clinton’s health care plan in 1994. The firm regularly represents the California Chamber of Commerce in initiative battles and worked on many of Schwarzenegger’s ballot measures before joining the effort to unravel the governor’s proudest achievement. <\/p>\n

The AB 32 initiative fight easily could reach into the tens of millions. Both firms are used to such numbers. Woodward & McDowell received no less than $13.4 million for its work on California ballot measures between 2000 and 2009. <\/p>\n

Goddard Claussen received $51 million during that time for its work on ballot measures, including millions it spent on behalf of clients to purchase broadcast time, California secretary of state records show. <\/p>\n

That’s simply not Costa’s world. Nor was it Paul Gann’s. <\/p>\n

Gann was the other half of the two-man juggernaut that included Howard Jarvis and created the anti-tax revolution of 1978 by promoting Proposition 13 to slash property taxes. Costa tells of a conversation related to him by Gann in which Jarvis one evening announced that he was taking his campaign national, but that Gann simply wasn’t up to such a challenge. <\/p>\n

Jarvis got his picture on the cover of Time magazine. Gann had his successes but never gained Jarvis’ fame. Today, the organization that bears Jarvis’ name, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, is allied with the Republican Party and Chamber of Commerce, and raises and spends millions of dollars a year on ballot measures, lobbying and litigation. <\/p>\n

The Jarvis organization raised $12 million in 2008. Costa’s group, People’s Advocate, raised $99,961 that year, publicly available tax returns show. Costa’s wages were $22,167 in 2008. That same year, Jon Coupal, the lawyer who heads the Jarvis organization, received $280,000. <\/p>\n

In the coming fight over AB 32, Coupal is serving as an official sponsor, aligning himself with Big Oil.<\/p>\n

Logue and McClintock have joined the new team, the one that has money. <\/p>\n

“I’m a member of a large group that is trying to get this passed,” Logue told me. Where does that leave Costa? He could join if he wanted, but “the team felt that there was a different organization that they felt comfortable with.” <\/p>\n

Costa’s view: “It is fair to say I am out of the loop.”<\/p>\n

Unlike most players in California’s politics today, Costa knew Gann and Jarvis, the men most often credited with creating the modern initiative industry. Some people admired them, others loathed them. But as Costa tells it, “They spoke from their hearts.” <\/p>\n

Not the new crop. They see “a meal ticket.” <\/p>\n

“They’re looking at a big trough – and they’re lapping it up. That is what I believe.” <\/p>\n

Costa has a few moves left. His mailing list is not nearly as large as the Jarvis group’s but it includes tens of thousands of voters. He is contemplating signing the official ballot argument against the initiative, he told The Bee’s Jim Sanders the other day. <\/p>\n

“Integrity has been breached,” Costa said. “Without basic and fundamental integrity, there is no good public policy.” <\/p>\n

There would be a certain symmetry if Costa campaigns against the initiative to stop AB 32. <\/p>\n

Costa helped ignite the recall that brought Schwarzenegger to office, though his role was overshadowed by other, slicker, consultants. Once in office, the movie star governor never gave the time of day to the guy who operates from a strip mall. <\/p>\n

Schwarzenegger will campaign fiercely to preserve AB 32, which is integral to his legacy. He will find himself battling some of the same businesses and consultants who helped put him in office and fund his various ballot measures. Now that the governor’s days in office are coming to an end, and his power is waning, Schwarzenegger once again could come to rely on a man who operates on the edges of the political world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Costa, here announcing a 2003 ballot measure, has initiated a number of initiatives only to see them taken over by larger political organizations. Ted Costa is getting Bigfooted. Again. Costa is sitting at the desk of his musty office in a strip mall sandwiched among other strip malls on Arden Way. Papers are spread […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4379,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-425887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4379"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}