State Voters Reject School Vouchers : Election: Initiative to provide tax funds for private education is defeated by a 2-1 margin. Proponents say they’ll be back, perhaps next year.

An initiative that would have brought radical change to California’s schools was defeated by a large margin Tuesday, as voters soundly rejected a plan to let parents use tax-funded vouchers to pay their children’s tuition at private schools.

With a broad coalition of political, union and business interests allied against it, Proposition 174, the Education Vouchers Initiative, lost by a margin of more than 2 to 1.

The loss was a setback for the fledgling national movement to privatize education, whose backers had hoped that a win in the nation’s most populous state would fuel efforts to expand “school choice” to include private and parochial schools. Similar voucher initiatives are slated for the 1994 ballot in at least three other states, and legislative efforts to introduce vouchers are under way in several more.

In California, Proposition 174 supporters say they will be back--maybe as soon as next year--with a new initiative, building on lessons they learned in this campaign, which was crippled from the start by lack of money and never really got on track.

“We’re going to come back 10 times as well-financed and meaner than ever, and that’s a warning to the other side,” said Joseph Alibrandi, chairman of the Yes on 174 campaign. “The other side may be celebrating, but tomorrow they will wake up and realize that they cannot maintain the status quo. . . . This is spreading across the nation and it is only a matter of time before there is choice in the schools.”

Initiative opponents, led by the powerful California Teachers Assn., tempered their victory speeches with promises to heed the message of the voters who, by supporting the initiative, delivered a no-confidence vote to the state’s beleaguered public schools.

“Even though this was intended as a wake-up call, the voting public was not suicidal about its own future and they want us to position ourselves in areas where we can improve,” said CTA President Del Weber.

Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin (D-Fremont), who heads the Assembly Education Committee, said the grueling battle over vouchers has convinced the education Establishment that changes must be made.

“It’s the way you feel when you’ve just had an operation and you discover the tumor wasn’t malignant. The operation was tough--and it’s definitely time to stop smoking. I think people still believe in the ability of the state to reform its schools. Now we must show them some results and we must do it immediately.”

The results reflected the lopsided money war: Voucher proponents were outspent by more than 4 to 1. Opponents raked in more than $17 million to defeat Proposition 174. Proponents raised $4.1 million, much of it in 1991 and early 1992 to get the measure on the ballot. That left them with about $2.5 million to mount their campaign.

Supporters hoped to tap into anger over declining public school performance, high dropout rates and campus crime.

In the end, however, voters across the state concluded that Proposition 174 was simply too great a gamble--both with the state’s pocketbook and with California’s 5.2 million public school children.

Proposition 174 was backed by the California Republican Party and financed largely by conservative Christians, wealthy libertarians and the state GOP. But suburban parents feared it would hurt their local public schools, and many fiscal conservatives and business leaders worried that it would cost too much.

The state’s legislative analyst predicted that the initiative would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars to provide vouchers--worth about $2,600 annually--to 540,000 students already in private school. Gov. Pete Wilson’s Finance Department placed the cost at $1.3 billion over three years, with the money coming from public school budgets.

To win, the Proposition 174 backers had to draw support from more than just disillusioned parents. Parents of public school children account for only about 20% of the voting population. They had to score big among “white people over 50--a group with a very high voter turnout,” said Stanford University professor Mike Kirst, a director of Policy Analysis for California Education, an education think tank.

But older voters were against the initiative--primarily because of concern over its fiscal consequences. Many also had fond memories of public schools. The campaign never did anything to woo them, Kirst said.

The No on 174 forces built a bandwagon that few politicians could ignore. Two-thirds of the Legislature, Gov. Wilson, President Clinton and scores of local officials, along with the League of Women Voters, the American Assn. of Retired Persons and the state Parent Teacher Assn., joined the opposition.

Many supporters lauded the concept of education vouchers but were troubled by the specifics of Proposition 174. The initiative would have amended the state Constitution to provide parents with tax-funded vouchers to pay private and parochial school tuition, but allowed virtually no new regulation of private schools.

Political consultants point out that voters are inclined to vote against initiatives. The opposition’s job is to reinforce that predisposition by planting doubts about a measure, which the No on 174 campaign did in a big way.

With three months of television and radio attacks, and a slogan, “It’s a risk we can’t afford,” opponents focused on the lack of private school regulation, the high cost of vouchers and the potential that private schools would discriminate in selecting students.

Initiative proponents must give voters good reasons to support their measure, analysts say. But the pro-Proposition 174 campaign was based largely on attacks on the public school system and the unions representing school employees.

“They never articulated a reason to vote yes,” said Bob Nelson of Nelson & Lucas Communications, the No on 174 campaign firm. “They were so caught up in their philosophy that they weren’t paying attention to where the people are.”

The Yes on 174 campaign was managed by professionals--veteran Republican campaign consultant Ken Khachigian and Sean Walsh, who had been a spokesman for George Bush during his presidency.

But much of the financial and volunteer support came from outsiders--libertarians who oppose government involvement in education and conservative Christians, including Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition in Anaheim and television evangelist Pat Robertson.

The initiative ended up capturing neither the imagination nor the money of mainstream politicos or big business donors. The chambers of commerce in several cities, including Los Angeles and San Diego, opposed the measure. Only one statewide elected official--Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren--endorsed it.

“Their attempt to get the large businesses and the prestige businesses to support the initiative failed totally,” said Stanford’s Kirst. “The business community just took a walk on this initiative and that obviously hurt them fiscally.”

Proposition 174 had been scheduled to appear on the June, 1994, ballot. But when Gov. Wilson convened Tuesday’s special election to decide the fate of his half-cent sales tax surcharge, the voucher initiative automatically went onto the November ballot, catching proponents by surprise. They had almost no money or organization.

“We were planning our fund-raising and political organization for 1994, not 1993,” said Sam Hardage, a San Diego hotel operator and fund-raiser for Proposition 174. “We had to create an entire campaign in just a few weeks.”

The opponents, by contrast, had a war chest filled by assessments from the paychecks of nearly every public school teacher and employee, plus an organization of more than 1,000 union field representatives across the state. Public employee unions provided $16 million--$12.5 million of which came from the California Teachers Assn.

The CTA emerged from the campaign as perhaps the most powerful special interest in California, proving it can quickly raise millions of dollars and mobilize thousands of savvy union representatives and teachers for a grass-roots campaign.

Although the initiative failed, officials, academics and educators say they are taking note of public opinion polls showing that almost no one believes public schools are doing an adequate job educating the state’s children.

“I have to take to heart the many comments I heard throughout this campaign that say we must turn the L.A. public schools around and people have to see the evidence,” said Leticia Quezada, Los Angeles school board president. “That is our challenge now.”

Any attempt to overhaul the state’s public schools will be driven by the knowledge that proponents of Proposition 174 intend to return with a new voucher initiative, perhaps as early as next year.