Unions Spending Lavishly

Led by public employee unions, organized labor has raised more than $80 million in its effort to defeat the initiatives promoted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, campaign finance reports show.

With a month left before the Nov. 8 special election, unions, particularly those representing state and local civil servants, could shatter California spending records for ballot measure battles.

The tally changes daily as reports are filed. And the overall sums are difficult to track with precision, given the volume of donations and transfers among campaign accounts.

Schwarzenegger has raised $34 million to promote his initiatives this year, plus $2.1 million for his 2006 reelection effort. Separate campaigns for initiatives he is pushing have raised about $8 million more.

Much of the unions’ fervor this year is generated by their desire to trounce Proposition 75, an initiative that would restrict public employee unions’ ability to raise campaign money by requiring that they obtain each member’s approval each year to use his or her dues for political efforts.

Aides to Schwarzenegger convened a telephone news conference Tuesday to mark what they called a milestone in the special election campaign. “Opponents of reform have crossed the $100-million” threshold, said Schwarzenegger campaign aide Todd Harris.

In California’s initiative battles, the biggest spenders generally win. The governor’s aides said Tuesday that the magnitude of labor’s assault could sour the public on the unions’ cause.

“There is a tipping point,” Harris said. “We believe the union bosses have far surpassed the tipping point.”

The Schwarzenegger campaign posted a cartoon on its website that mocks labor and says unions have raised more than $100 million.

But that sum includes more than money raised by labor. It includes $8.6 million raised largely by state legislators and California’s congressional delegation to defeat Proposition 77. That initiative would turn the power to draw legislative boundaries over to retired judges. For the most part, labor has not been involved in the redistricting measure.

The governor’s campaign also is counting $9.4 million spent by public employee unions and described in scant detail in separate reports about their lobbying activity.

“I don’t think anyone would dispute that the campaign to oppose these reforms has been led by the union bosses,” Harris said. “If anyone wants to argue that it is $96 million or $100 million, wait a few days. The unions have shown no sign of slowing down.”

Darry Sragow, an attorney and Democratic consultant, said the unions could raise even more money if they need it, although it may mean less money for other candidates and peripheral campaigns next year.

“This is really life or death for these organizations. This is a real direct attack,” Sragow said. “If there’s one thing that anyone who knows anything about the labor movement knows, it’s that unions don’t back down from a fight. They just don’t.”

Democratic consultant Gale Kaufman, who is managing the union’s campaign against the initiatives, denounced the Schwarzenegger team’s salvo as an effort to deflect attention from the governor’s fund-raising, and from the taxpayer cost of putting on the special election.

“This governor is spending $80 million of taxpayer money on an election that voters resoundingly have said is unnecessary. That is the most important figure,” Kaufman said. “The rest is campaign rhetoric.”

The California secretary of state’s office has estimated that the special election will cost taxpayers $45 million.

The tally for the campaign won’t be known until all spending reports are filed early next year. But several experts believe it will set records.

Pharmaceutical companies have matched and may exceed unions.

Drug makers have raised $88 million in their effort to persuade voters to support Proposition 78, their suggestion for capping the cost of prescription drugs, and oppose Proposition 79, a prescription drug measure pushed by organized labor.

“This is going to be most expensive ballot in California history,” said Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation, a Davis-based nonprofit that seeks to provide nonpartisan information about elections.

The most expensive fight over a single initiative was in 1998, when Indian tribes and competing casino interests spent $92 million battling over Proposition 5 to legalize casinos on Indian reservations.

Tribes spent more than $63 million of that sum.

A decade earlier, in 1988, the insurance industry spent $80 million in a fight over four initiatives.

Voters approved one of the measures, the consumer-backed Proposition 103, which regulates auto insurance in California.

In 1998, unions narrowly defeated Proposition 226, which resembled this year’s Proposition 75 but would have applied the same requirements to public and private unions.

Unions spent more than $23 million fighting that measure -- nearly four times the $6 million supporters spent.

So far, unions have raised $29.6 million specifically to defeat Proposition 75. By far the bulk of that money has come from within California. Still, the national AFL-CIO, which suffered a setback when several major unions split from it earlier this year, views the California fight as significant.

“If this passes in California, we think it will give momentum to the national right-to-work committee and other right-wing groups that basically want to defeat unions,” said Karen Ackerman, political director of the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., which gave $400,000 to oppose Proposition 75 last week.

Private employee unions have made comparatively modest contributions to defeat the governor’s measures.

The biggest donations by far have come from unions that represent California civil servants, including prison guards and psychiatrists, Caltrans engineers, government clerks and public school teachers.

The California Teachers Assn., which represents 330,000 public school teachers, is the biggest contributor, reporting $48.11 million so far.

In addition, the teachers union has spent $8.2 million to influence decisions, according to its lobbying report. The report does not detail how that money was spent.

The second-largest contributor is the Service Employees International Union and its various affiliates, including a local that represents 140,000 state workers. SEIU and its affiliates report having contributed nearly $14 million.