Newsletter: Voters beware the special interests lurking behind ballot measures

Good morning. It is Wednesday, Oct. 9. Here’s what’s happening in Opinion.

It’s that time of year when practically every TV, streaming service, social media and video platform is filled with campaign ads. It’s also the time of year when my family gets tired of me yelling “That’s not true!” at the campaign ads. And no commercials have gotten me more riled up this year than the Yes on Proposition 34 spots.

One such ad features a friendly registered nurse saying that the Protect Patients Now Act would “stop the squeeze on taxpayers,” reduce the cost of prescriptions for Medi-Cal patients and do a bunch of other important things. At the end of the ad, the top donors to Proposition 34 are disclosed as the California Apartment Assn. and California Assn. of Realtors. What? Why are landlords and real estate agents spending more than $30 million on healthcare policy?

Because Proposition 34 is not really about healthcare — it’s a revenge ballot measure targeting the Los Angeles-based nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has backed three state rent control ballot measures including Proposition 33, also on the Nov. 5 ballot. Proposition 34 would change state law in a way that seems designed to cut off the foundation’s tenant advocacy. It’s a sleazy abuse of the ballot and it’s why The Times’ editorial board urges voters to reject Proposition 34.

This is certainly not the first time special interests have tried to use California’s system of direct democracy to their advantage. Any individual, company, industry or labor union willing to spend many millions of dollars can collect the signatures needed to put a law directly on the ballot, bypassing elected lawmakers.

Endorsements, including ours, along with news reporting and voter guides, can help shed light on what’s really behind ballot measures. Voters, to their credit, are usually pretty savvy about seeing the manipulation. In 2022, despite record campaign spending by special interests to push self-serving initiatives, voters rejected measures involving sports gambling, kidney dialysis regulations, electric vehicle funding and flavored tobacco. Let’s hope the trend continues in 2024.

Trump and Vance are angry about fact-checking at the debates. Here’s what voters think. “While other presidential candidates have stretched the truth, only one has kidnapped it, bound and gagged it, put it in a barrel and tossed it into the East River,” columnist Robin Abcarian writes. “In the age of Trump, fact-checking has become a necessary service for moderators and other journalists to provide to voters.”

Helene destroyed my hometown. I don’t want climate change stories of false hope. Anna Jane Joyner works with screenwriters to depict the climate crisis in TV and film and she watched in horror as the hurricane wiped out western North Carolina, hundreds of miles from the sea. “It is utterly unfathomable that it would be devastated first by one of the worst climate disasters in U.S. history. Helene showed us nowhere is safe.”

When will Israel be held accountable for the unjust war it is waging in Gaza? “Since Oct. 7, 2023, we’ve learned that not all lives matter and not all countries are held accountable for their actions,” writes Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist. “Washington and its allies must do more to stop the runaway aggression of the Netanyahu administration and bring back sanity and fair play in the Mideast.”

Israel is fighting to beat Iran’s doomsday clock. The war in Gaza was never about Gaza alone, writes Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. “Defeating Hamas was only the first stage of a regional conflict between Israel and the Iranian-led axis of radical Islamism.”

More from Opinion

From our columnists

• Jackie Calmes: Jack Smith’s filing shows that Trump is already starring in a Jan. 6 sequel
• LZ Granderson: Mexico’s gun crisis is our fault. Victims deserve their day in U.S. court
• Jonah Goldberg: Donald Trump seems to think he’s losing. Would the Republican Party survive his defeat?

From guest contributors

• After a year of reporting on the Israel-Hamas war, here’s what I know
• How much will the Supreme Court matter in the 2024 election?
• Jan. 6 was just a start. Vigilantes are expanding, and legalizing, their attacks

From the Editorial Board

• Scott Schmerelson for LAUSD District 3
• Yes on Measure A. The county sales tax hike is essential to ease homelessness
• Yes on Measure US. LAUSD students need safe and welcoming schools

Letters to the Editor

• No matter what causes Trump to speak gibberish, he’s unfit for office
• Take from a retired L.A. cop: We’re lucky to have Jim McDonnell as the next LAPD chief
• Do women make better, more empathetic doctors?