Your first look inside Newsom's campaign-in-waiting

Politico

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WHO'S ON THE YES SIDE — Gov. Gavin Newsom still has to get the Legislature's stamp of approval on his plan for a mid-decade gerrymander of the state's U.S. House map, but the campaign to sell it to voters is already taking shape.
Newsom has begun to telegraph the messaging, informed by research from his longtime pollster and focus-group conductor David Binder, at the heart of the pitch for what they're hoping to nationalize as Proposition 50. A vote for the measure is a vote against President Donald Trump, argues a digital video released this weekend, and the California electorate will have a say via the ballot how the state (and the country) runs its democracy.
'On November 4, you have the power to stand up to Trump,' Newsom says in a clip from a speech at a launch event in Los Angeles last week. 'We can't stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district.'
The strategy to amplify that message is being developed by operatives whose experience stretches from across Newsom's past statewide campaigns. Gubernatorial chief-of-staff Jim DeBoo and his one-time deputy Lindsey Cobia, both now consultants specializing in ballot-measure work, will help corral a coalition that includes top progressive interest groups, including Planned Parenthood, SEIU, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Labor.
Juan Rodriguez and his San Francisco-based firm Bearstar Strategies, whose Ace Smith and Sean Clegg have guided strategy for Newsom's statewide campaigns, will likely produce the campaign's advertising. Strategists Courtni Pugh and Addisu Demissie bring expertise from Newsom's success fending off a 2021 recall — a race where he also faced tough polling at the outset but upended it by villainizing the opposition and nationalizing the stakes.
The campaign's online fundraising operation will be directed by Aisle 518 Strategies' Tim Tagaris, who played a central role on Bernie Sanders' digital team and has helped build out Newsom's small-dollar donor network. Newsom fundraiser Kristin Bertolina Faust will focus on high-dollar donors, running paperwork through campaign-finance specialists Judy Zamore and Josh Myles of the firm Capitol Compliance.
Newsom has taken the legal vehicle behind his past efforts to codify abortion rights and overhaul the state's mental-health system and renamed it The Election Rigging Response Act, Governor Newsom's Ballot Measure Committee. Its accounts have already processed deposits from House Majority PAC, which works to elect Democrats to Congress and is likely to be a major source of out-of-state funds for the campaign.
Already the campaign has demonstrated its ability to pull in money from both inside and outside California. Hours after Newsom's launch event, the Democratic super PAC 314 Action Fund pledged $1 million toward the effort, the first of what's expected to be a significant flow of national cash into the race. Los Angeles-based Democratic donor Bill Bloomfield told Playbook he has already given his own 'seven-figure' sum to the effort and is prepared to come up with more if needed.
'It's a terrible path for the country to go down,' Bloomfield said. 'But if in fact it happens in Texas, I don't think California should ... sit back and let President Trump and MAGA try to steal the House of Representatives.'
— With help from Melanie Mason and Jeremy B. White
NEWS BREAK: LA can't back out of 2028 Olympics … Heat wave heads for California … San Jose to clear largest homeless camp.
Welcome to Ballot Measure Weekly, a special edition of Playbook PM focused on California's lively realm of ballot measure campaigns. Drop us a line at [e-mail] and [e-mail], or find us on X — @emilyrs and @wrmccart.
TOP OF THE TICKET
A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures — past and future, certain and possible — getting our attention this week.
1. Redistricting (2025): Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has emerged to rally Republican forces against Newsom's gerrymander, as our colleague Blake Jones scooped last week, while a No committee is counting on upwards of $30 million from Charles Munger Jr. and the active involvement of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
2. Minimum wage referendum (Los Angeles, 2026): A coalition of LA-area unions and community organizations are threatening protests and strikes if its demands for a 'New Deal' ahead of the 2028 Olympics isn't met. At the heart of the campaign Unite Here Local 11 will launch on Thursday with United Farm Workers, United Teachers Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy is a $30 minimum wage whose future at the ballot is now being determined by the city clerk's office.
3. Judicial elections (2026): Assemblymember Gail Pellerin's effort to allow California Supreme Court judges to extend their terms without an election will have to wait at least another year after being gutted and amended to serve as a vehicle for Newsom's redistricting scheme.
4. Insurance reform (2026): Elizabeth Hammack, the proponent of an initiative to reimagine California's insurance regime, is offering more context for her out-of-nowhere attempt to repeal and replace Prop 103, explaining that she filed the initiative after growing frustrated listening to an educational seminar about California's insurance 'death spiral.' A public LinkedIn post late last week offered no details about how she would fund or run a campaign (and she hasn't yet spoken to us).
5. Israel boycotts (2026): Pro-Palestinian activists Hatem al-Bazian and Malak Afaneh have filed an initiative to protect Californians' right to boycott or divest from Israel. They will set out to collect signatures just as the Trump administration seeks a $1 billion settlement from UCLA for what it claims were antisemitic practices related in part to the university's handling of anti-Israel protests.
6. Proposition K (San Francisco, 2024): Ballots have gone out in the September 16 recall of Supervisor Joel Engardio, currently facing a voter revolt inspired by his support for an initiative to close the Great Highway for a new coastal park in his district.
7. Home-buyer loans (2026): Former Assembly speaker Bob Hertzberg filed an initiative on Friday to establish a loan fund up to $25 billion to finance mortgage-secured 'homeownership loans' for middle-class families as part of a broader effort to 'expedite and encourage' single-family home construction.
IN MEMORIAM
CALEXIT: Backers of a California secession have given up on making the 2026 ballot after failing to meet a signature-gathering deadline late last month. This is the third time the group has failed to reach the ballot.
Since filing the measure in January, Calexit's boosters have been plagued by a series of scandals. Longtime independence advocate Marcus Evans, the initiative's official proponent, claimed to have gathered 200,000 signatures before being forced to admit the actual haul was just one-tenth of that. Xavier Mitchell, a campaign CEO whose financial contacts and expertise were pitched by Evans as a key to the initiative's future success, was revealed this month by POLITICO Magazine to have a criminal history of fraud and deceit.
Although the measure is dead for 2026, Evans has already filed another secession measure with the secretary of state listing the 2028 general election as its target date.
I'M JUST A BILL
HOUSING BOND (AB 736 and SB 417): Environmentalists are intensifying their lobbying efforts behind an affordable-housing bond in an effort to budge a bill lingering unloved in the Senate.
The proposed $10 billion borrowing package passed the Assembly this spring but has yet to be heard by a Senate committee. Any potential movement for the bill sponsored by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon appears now stalled behind other priorities, including the redistricting package legislators are working to push through this week.
In a letter to the two chambers' appropriations chairs, a coalition including Audubon California, the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, the California Coastal Protection Network and the Endangered Habitats League argue the state's housing crisis amounts to a climate problem, too.
'California's severe lack of affordable housing represents both social and environmental crises,' representatives from 17 different environmental groups write in the letter dated Friday and shared first with Playbook. 'We are eager to support responsible solutions to California's housing crisis, such as SB 417 and AB 736, and we respectfully urge you and your committees to advance this legislation as written.'
Affordable-housing advocates, too, are pressing senators to take action before the session ends in mid-September. Representatives from Housing California and the California Housing Consortium last week asked supporters to call legislators with a message 'that the state is prepared to do what's needed to take on the housing crisis.'
ON OTHER BALLOTS
Lawyers for Medicaid- and marijuana-related measures on the 2026 ballot in Florida are urging a federal judge to halt enforcement of the state's new law restricting the citizens' initiative process, after the same judge issued a mixed ruling on the law earlier this year ... A coalition of Montana unions and progressive groups launched a committee and two versions of ballot language for an amendment that would enshrine nonpartisan judicial elections in the state constitution, following a separate group that launched a similar effort in June ...
Alaska natural-medicine activists seeking to decriminalize psychedelics have been cleared to begin gathering signatures for an initiative that would appear on the 2026 ballot ... And in Colorado, two high school seniors have filed a proposed initiative to automatically admit the top 10 percent of graduates from every Colorado high school to state colleges and universities based on their grade point averages.
POSTCARD FROM ...
ORANGE: Swim classes are cancelled, summer day camp has disappeared, and the upcoming Halloween fair is now entirely volunteer-run — all the result of a budget crunch that could lead this Southern California city to declare bankruptcy.
To claw its way out, Orange's leadership is thinking about putting a sales-tax increase of at least half a percent on the 2026 ballot. The only problem? Orange voters just rejected one less than a year ago.
'If we go back and ask, given the current environment in this country, people are going to be very wary of saying yes,' said Councilmember Arianna Barrios. 'No matter how much its needed, or how many cuts there are at the local level.'
According to Barrios, who joined the council in 2020, the city ran into its budget nightmare in large part because of a Covid-era decision to fund 15 permanent police officer positions using one-time relief money. She said in an interview that the council was not fully aware of the decision's downstream fiscal impacts.
'That was the bomb that basically blew our budgets out of the water,' Barrios said.
The first effort to permanently fund police positions, along with emergency and fire services, reached the November 2024 ballot as Measure Z. But the proposal to raise the sales tax by 0.5 percent for 10 years fell short by about 400 votes after an opposition campaign led by the Orange County Republican Party.
Many of those police officer positions remain unfilled, but because the budget operates on the assumption that they will be soon, the city has had to cut essentially all its events. (Volunteers and local organizations have stepped in to keep some of them going.) There are also currently 80 staff vacancies going unfilled. City leadership is also looking to more aggressive code enforcement to raise funds.
But financial consultants are recommending another ballot measure as the best permanent solution. The political class will have to sell a new sales-tax increase to a tightwad electorate, while also convincing them the same leaders that got Orange into hot water can bail it out.
'Going back out to the voters means asking one more time who are we as a city, who do we want to be, and do you trust us to get you there,' Barrios said. 'I hope they do.'
RETIRE THIS NUMBER
Democratic efforts to pull off a mid-decade gerrymander will require gutting California's Proposition 11, a 2008 constitutional amendment referred to the ballot by lawmakers to establish an independent redistricting process. In other years, the same digit has been used for statewide measures that would:
Remove the four-year term limit for civil-service positions created under a local charter (1911, passed) ... Allow the University of California to take out up to $1.8 million in bonds to fund construction of its Berkeley campus (1914, passed) ... Exempt cemetery property and income from taxation (1918, failed) ... Impose an annual tax of at least $4 on every non-citizen man between the ages of 21 and 60 residing in California, except those the state classifies as 'paupers, idiots and insane persons' (1920, passed) ... Create the Fish and Game Commission (1930, failed) ...
Empower lawmakers to regulate wrestling and boxing matches, with all money generated by license fees to fund homes for war veterans (1942, passed) ... Prohibit hiring discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin or ancestry and create a commission to handle enforcement (1946, failed) ... Allow city charters and amendments to be voted on at a special election or as part of the next general or municipal election, and allow charter amendments to be filed at any time (1948, failed) ... Amend the state constitution to guarantee a right to privacy (1972, passed) ... Replace masculine words with gender-neutral words (like 'person') throughout the state constitution (1974, passed) ...
Reassign excess land originally purchased with state gas-tax revenue for road construction to be used instead as public parks (1976, passed) ... Impose a 10 percent surtax on energy-related businesses operating in California, along with a tax credit for those which reduce fossil-fuel use (1980, failed) ... Uphold the state Senate district map drawn by the state Legislature in 1981 and keep it in place until 1991 (1982, failed) ... Authorize local governments to enter into sales tax revenue-sharing agreements with one another (1998, passed) ... And allow ambulance providers to require workers to remain on-call during their meal and rest breaks (2018, passed).