Foes of Gov.’s Initiatives to Fight Fire With Fire

A few weeks ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hopped into an old military Humvee with the unsubtle nickname Reform 1 and headed off to gather petition signatures for his agenda for change.

But Schwarzenegger is not the only one using automobiles as props in California’s increasingly crowded lane heading toward a special election later this year.

On Wednesday, Schwarzenegger’s adversaries showcased a smushed 1997 Ford Explorer as they announced plans to begin collecting signatures on a ballot initiative targeting car dealers.

Modeled on legislation Schwarzenegger vetoed last year, the Car Buyers Bill of Rights Initiative would allow buyers to return used automobiles within three days for a refund and restrict the ways dealers can market damaged cars and sell loans.

“We’ve done polling on it and this is somewhere between sex and chocolate,” said Rosemary Shahan, president of the nonprofit Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, whose leaders wrote the measure.

Schwarzenegger has picked on some powerful adversaries in his quest to change public pensions, alter teacher tenure, redraw legislative districts and expand his budget authority. Now, they are fighting back, using the same tool: the initiative process.

Many Democrats see Schwarzenegger’s efforts this year as a great organizing tool for the party, since so many traditional Democratic groups are furious over the governor’s proposals, which have united often sparring factions. State Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres said Wednesday that the party had begun a year-round effort to register voters, led by Rick Jacobs, who ran Howard Dean’s California campaign for president in 2004.

Under a new umbrella group, the Alliance for a Better California, the governor’s opponents are collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would compel drug makers to provide discounted drugs for about 10 million low- and middle-income people. The proposal comes after Schwarzenegger vetoed prescription drug price control bills last year.

The alliance includes groups that represent the elderly and consumers as well as unions for teachers, firefighters, nurses, school administrators and government workers. They have banded together to back counter-initiatives designed to do unto Schwarzenegger -- and his political allies -- what he is trying to do to them.

The alliance is also considering endorsing initiatives that would raise the minimum wage, increase property taxes on businesses and re-regulate the electricity market.

“Almost everything we’re supporting he vetoed,” said Jim Farrell, a Democratic political consultant for the alliance. “Him calling a special election gives us an opportunity to make those vetoed measures the law.”

Supporters are preparing to underwrite a hugely expensive campaign in which they will try not only to defeat Schwarzenegger’s measures but also enact their competing ballot items. The California Teachers Assn. is considering raising its annual dues from $500 to $560 for each of the next three years to help finance its efforts. Other labor unions are also expected to contribute to the initiative campaigns.

“When the governor has said he expects to be outspent, I believe him,” said Joel Fox, co-chairman of Citizens to Save California, a business coalition that has been working to place Schwarzenegger’s initiatives on the ballot. “A lot of this is chess game strategy: what to use to threaten the donors that support our initiatives.”

Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the California Republican Party, said the counter ballot measures are diversions from the substantial problems the governor is trying to repair.

“Why don’t they respond to the actual issues?” she asked. “Why don’t they respond to counties going broke because of the pension costs?”

So far, a special election is not assured. Schwarzenegger has not formally called one, and both he and Democratic legislative leaders say they would prefer to resolve their differences in Sacramento rather than an election that could cost taxpayers $70 million.

There are 53 initiatives in circulation and 18 awaiting review by the state attorney general’s office. Getting measures on the ballot in the short time frame required to hold an election this year makes it unclear how many would end up with the necessary signatures.

Given this atmosphere, an elaborate game of tit-for-tat has developed.

Citizens to Save California, for instance, is backing an initiative that would require a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to raise any fee. In response, the anti-Schwarzenegger alliance has endorsed its own initiative that would make it harder for that measure to take effect, even if it were to pass.

The car dealer and prescription drug initiatives offer Democrats the added benefit of targeting two industries that have been some of Schwarzenegger’s big financial backers.

“Do they want to get into a giant food fight with a lot of people and try to drag us into the fight? Yes, I suppose that could happen,” said Peter Welch, president of the California Motor Car Dealers Assn. “I don’t see that [the ballot measure aimed at car dealers] helps consumers very much. It’s really written by and for trial lawyers to create more loopholes for more lawsuits for them to bring against car dealers.”

Schwarzenegger allies are threatening reprisals as well. The pharmaceutical industry has set aside $10 million to place Schwarzenegger’s more lenient prescription drug plan on the ballot to counter the one being proposed by consumer groups. Drug makers are also readying ballot initiatives that would make it more difficult for unions to underwrite political campaigns -- blunt efforts to dissuade those groups from financing the prescription drug initiative.

So far, Democratic lawmakers are not publicly embracing a full-scale special election. Today, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, a candidate in the 2006 gubernatorial election, plans to attack the idea, and Democratic legislative leaders have said the disputes should be resolved in the Capitol rather than the ballot box.

But Democratic legislators are hardly speaking against efforts to prepare a counterattack at the polls if Schwarzenegger chooses that route. Gayle Kaufman, the lead consultant for the alliance, is also the chief political strategist for the Assembly Democrats.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) has said that Schwarzenegger’s ballot measures are deeply flawed. On Wednesday, Nunez contended that the teacher merit pay initiative would unintentionally delete the existing part of state law that allows schools to fire misbehaving teachers.

Democrats previously said that the retirement initiative Schwarzenegger supports -- which would replace the traditional pensions of public employees with 401(k)-style private accounts -- inadvertently would eliminate death and disability benefits for firefighters and peace officers.

“The closer you look, the more holes you seem to find in the governor’s initiatives,” Nunez told reporters in his office.

The governor’s office denies both assertions, and spokeswoman Margita Thompson said the teacher initiative would add to the reasons employees could be fired.

Nunez’s “inflammatory rhetoric is a scare tactic that doesn’t have any merit,” she said. “Not withstanding his interpretation, the initiative actually puts more power in the hands of local school districts to fire employees who are not acting in the best interests of its schools and students.”

Schwarzenegger is demanding that Democrats offer counterproposals to his agenda, but Nunez said lawmakers were under no obligation to fix errors or offer alternatives to ideas they wholeheartedly oppose.

Still, he said, everyone should try to avoid a special election. “There might be a place, a point in the next few weeks where we really reach a point of no return, and we cannot let that happen.”

Times staff writer Marc Lifsher contributed to this report.