Businesses Get Most Wishes Fulfilled on Election Day : Initiatives: Voters ended up adopting industry positions on three different propositions.

Whatever else happened this Election Day, it was a good one for California businesses as voters said nuts to last year’s snack tax, killed a sweeping health insurance initiative and sent an arrow through a “Robin Hood” corporate tax hike.

“We’re absolutely delighted,” said Ray Remy, president of the 2,300-member Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

Remy campaigned against Proposition 167, the “Robin Hood” measure that would have raised taxes on corporations, banks, insurance companies, oil producers and wealthy individuals while cutting the state sales tax.

Proponents called the far-reaching initiative a balanced approach to raising needed state revenue to forestall future budget shortfalls.

But opponents argued that the initiative would have increased the tax burden on business by billions of dollars during a period of recession, forcing some companies to move out of state and costing thousands of jobs.

Far from robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, Remy said the measure “would have robbed from everybody and given it to the Legislature.”

He added: “By rejecting this measure, the people of California have sent an important message that business retention and job creation is a high priority in state policy.”

Similarly, small businesses, insurance companies and others savored the defeat of Proposition 166, which would have required employers to provide health care coverage for most employees and dependents.

Proponents said the measure would have helped the state’s 6 million uninsured residents. But opponents argued that it, like Proposition 167, would have added crippling costs to businesses--especially mom-and-pop operations--in the midst of a severe economic downturn.

“It would have been like taking a patient in critical condition and have someone beat him up while he’s lying on the operating table,” said Joy Howell, a spokeswoman for a coalition of insurance companies, small businesses and others that spent more than $6 million to defeat the measure.

Howell said Californians still want changes in the health care system, but defeated Prop. 166 because they didn’t believe that it would provide true reform.

While business groups fought their biggest battles against 166 and 167, they won a smaller contest to pass Proposition 163, repealing the much-derided tax on candy, snack foods and bottled water enacted by the Legislature a year and a half ago.

“It was a sweet victory,” said Pamela Williams, a spokeswoman for the 11,000-member California Grocers Assn. in Sacramento, one of the sponsors of the initiative.

Though the measure will cost the state $210 million to $330 million in lost revenue, it faced virtually no opposition.

“We think that it is a reaffirmation of what we’ve said all along, that this tax is really a great burden on lower- and moderate-income individuals, and very discriminatory,” said Jim McCarthy, a lobbyist for the 900-member Snack Food Assn. trade group in Virginia. “The proof is in the pudding. . . . This vote proves it is bad policy to try to find certain foods to tax.”

The measure was heavily supported by makers of snack foods, such as Frito-Lay Inc. and Nabisco Brands, as well as by the grocers group, candy makers and the bottled water industry.

The passage of Prop. 163 was tasty for another reason: Because it amended the state Constitution, any new taxes on snacks will require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, not the simple majority that enacted the tax in the first place.