Clock Is Ticking on Initiative

Less than three weeks before the deadline, backers of an initiative that would prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving many public services still need to collect more than 200,000 signatures and have picked up little support from top Republican officials.

Supporters of the ballot measure remain optimistic that they will make the April 29 deadline to place the proposition on the November ballot, even though they are relying on volunteers rather than professional firms commonly paid to gather signatures.

Organizer Ron Prince, who spurred the controversial illegal immigrant measure Proposition 187 a decade ago, said his group has already collected about 405,000 signatures. Although the law requires 598,105 signatures to get on the ballot, Prince says the group actually needs 800,000 because a good number of signatures turn out to be invalid.

So far, three propositions have qualified for the Nov. 2 ballot. One is a bond measure to finance high-speed passenger trains. The second is a constitutional amendment providing greater access to government information, and the third deals with healthcare coverage requirements. More than 40 other proposed initiatives are still pending.

Although Proposition 187 garnered significant support from Republican leaders, the GOP establishment has largely ignored the new initiative -- known as Save Our State. The most prominent politicians to publicly support it are state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) and Howard Kaloogian, a former Republican assemblyman who made an unsuccessful bid to challenge U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in March.

“We don’t have the money, and we don’t have the politicians,” said Prince, a Tustin accountant. “We’re so grass roots you can smell the Miracle-Gro.... But there’s still time, and you never know until the deadline if you’ve got enough signatures.”

Some election experts are more skeptical.

“If they only have 400,000 now, I don’t know if they could manage something like that,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political consultant. “It’s going to be difficult if not impossible.”

The state Republican Party has a policy of not taking official stances on new initiatives unless they qualify for the ballot, said Karen Hanretty, a GOP spokeswoman.

But Hoffenblum and others believe party leaders are clearly trying to distance themselves from the effort. Republican Gov. Pete Wilson made his support for Proposition 187 a centerpiece of his 1994 reelection campaign. Both Wilson and the initiative, which would bar illegal immigrants from many public services, won. But a court later ruled that Proposition 187 was unconstitutional, and Wilson’s support of it turned some Latino voters away from the GOP.

“I don’t see the party taking up this issue, mainly because they got burned so bad with 187,” said Hoffenblum. “It turned off Latino voters for a decade. And now after 10 years in the desert, doing so poorly with Latino voters, this is not a bus they want to get on.”

Instead, the party is trying hard to attract new Latino voters with registration booths at five events in Latino communities over the next four weeks.

Like Proposition 187, the new proposal would prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving subsidized housing, food stamps and nonemergency healthcare for pregnant women. The measure would also:

* Make it a misdemeanor for state and local officials -- such as police officers -- not to report illegal immigrants to federal authorities.

* Deny driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

* Disqualify as identification foreign-issued cards like Mexico’s widely used matricula consular, a fingerprinted photo card.

Prince said the proposed ballot measure was written in such a way that it would not face the legal challenges that Proposition 187 did.

Despite the lack of big-name support, he said volunteers are finding enthusiastic support from voters who sign the petitions. But some political experts question whether the public has the same interest in immigration issues today that it did in 1994.

“The momentum for something like this has dissipated,” said Rachel Moran, professor of Latino-related policy at UC Berkeley. “There’s terrorism, national security, a recovering economy, the export of jobs abroad. And we’re in the middle of a presidential election year.”

Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at UC San Diego, agreed. “You have to do this when people care about it, and right now, I don’t see a lot of excitement or momentum going into it.”