Feinstein Bids for Backing on Education Initiative

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday brought her campaign to Los Angeles--no, not the rumored campaign for governor. The day’s campaign event highlighted a ballot initiative to reform the state’s elementary education system that she is pushing for the November ballot.

With Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a congresswoman and a supervisor in tow at the Los Angeles Children’s Museum, Feinstein earnestly touted her proposal and just as earnestly declined to comment about the governor’s race. (Riordan, however, took pity on the state’s crazed political rumor mill and uttered an enthusiastic “no!” when asked if he was running).

The speculation about the governor’s race will certainly end soon, since Feinstein has only until the state’s deadline of Feb. 4 to decide. The educational reform issue, however, could keep her in the minds of California voters until November and beyond even if she does not place her name on the ballot.

Her most difficult chore may be getting the measure on the ballot.

The proposal, a constitutional amendment that covers a range of educational issues, would be funded by a $1-a-pack hike in tobacco taxes. Among other things, it would outlaw “social promotion” of students, require major exams before students can leave fourth, eighth and 12th grade, limit fourth-grade classes to 20 students, add seven days to the school year and lower voter approval of local school bonds from two-thirds to a simple majority.

Normally, the secretary of state’s office said, such an ambitious initiative takes 16 months to make the ballot. If the Feinstein measure is to be part of the November election, she will have far less time.

“It’s doable, but they are definitely starting late in the process,” said Beth Miller, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bill Jones.

According to state officials, the initiative’s proponents will be able to start collecting signatures within a day or two after Feb. 20, when the attorney general expects to conclude his required examination of the measure’s legal and fiscal elements.

After an initiative reaches that point, the law gives petitioners 150 days to collect the necessary signatures. But since the deadline for submitting signatures for November ballot measures is this spring, Feinstein’s campaign will have only two months, at most, to circulate petitions. And an estimated 1 million signatures will have to be collected to ensure that the required 693,230 valid ones are among them, election officials say.

“Everything has to fall into place,” said Fred Kimball, president of Kimball Petition Management in Westlake Village, which gathers signatures for voter initiatives and is discussing whether to circulate the Feinstein initiative petitions.

“They’ve got to hit it hard and hit it fast.”

The logistics of Feinstein’s initiative have raised eyebrows in California political circles. The measure was hastily filed with the attorney general’s office on Christmas Eve, without the usual drumbeat of publicity attendant to such moves. “It was amateur night,” said one California Democrat who has long watched Feinstein’s political operation.

The decision to run an initiative campaign potentially at the same time as a governor’s campaign drew curious reactions as well.

If Feinstein runs for governor, she will be trying to finance and staff both campaigns at virtually the same time, since signatures have to be turned in only weeks before the June primary. And there is the possibility of embarrassment if, after resources have been committed, the measure fails to qualify.

Feinstein received an up-close view of the difficulties of simultaneous campaigns in 1990, when her Democratic primary opponent in the governor’s race, then-Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, smothered under the weight of three initiatives he had floated to aid his campaign.

If Feinstein does not run, however, the initiative would let her maintain a high profile in the state on an issue that opinion polls show consistently ranks first in the hearts of voters.

“It’s clearly a way to become a player in this whole ongoing debate over education reform,” said Garry South, who is running the campaign of Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, whom Feinstein would face in a gubernatorial race.

Bill Carrick, Feinstein’s campaign manager in past electoral efforts, said that little political strategizing went into the decision to author an initiative.

“Dianne was very insistent that she wanted to put this on the ballot,” Carrick said. “Whatever the gubernatorial decision will be, she didn’t want that to define this initiative.”

Feinstein herself indicated Thursday that she sees the initiative effort--which began after state businesses complained to her about the illiteracy of California’s high school graduates--as something of a legacy.

When planning for the initiative began, she said, “I determined that if I do nothing else in my political career I’d like to put together a proposal which really could make a difference in two ways--one is excellence and the other is accountability.”