Russ Steele
Margot Rossevelt writing at the LA Times has the story here.
Wealthy Californians and conservation groups united in a bipartisan campaign to defeat the oil industry-sponsored initiative to suspend the state's greenhouse gas law.
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Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn, were outspent 3 to 1 as $31 million poured in from venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, Intel's Gordon Moore, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Google's Sergey Brin, along with other wealthy California philanthropists and national conservation groups.
That campaign chest paid for TV spots that framed the debate as Texas vs. California, even though Valero and Tesoro operate refineries in Wilmington and Benicia.
Equally important were the 3,200 volunteers, 2.8 million phone calls, 3.4 million pieces of mail, 379,676 on-campus contacts with college students, and a computerized outreach program that identified and contacted 481,000 voters and showered voters with get-out-the vote calls and text messages in the last three days. Political observers say it was the broadest and most sophisticated field operation ever mounted over an environmental issue.
Well-defined constituencies were targeted. Latinos were wooed by actor Edward James Olmos, union leader Dolores Huerta and Spanish-speaking activists at their door. CREDO Mobile, a San Francisco phone company known for endorsing liberal causes, recruited its subscribers to work phone banks and picket Valero gas stations. Robo-calls from Sally Bingham, a San Francisco Episcopal minister, went out to Protestant women older than 55.
The California League of Conservation Voters identified green-leaning but infrequent voters. The Sierra Club got 84,000 onto conference calls. The American Lung Assn. rallied 60 hospitals and health groups to contact their employees and members. And a score of unions worked on the ground.
Unlike the national arena, where the GOP is closely allied with the oil and coal industry in fighting greenhouse-gas regulation, California environmentalists benefited from bipartisan support. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who sees the 2006 climate law as his signature achievement attacked "the dirty oil hearts" of Proposition 23 backers. George P. Shultz, secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, served as co-chair of the No on 26 campaign.
Shultz made the case to fellow Republicans and business leaders that dependence on oil is a national security issue because of terrorism and the economic risks from price spikes. "What do we do with this victory?" he asked rhetorically in a news conference Wednesday. "We need to wake up our fellow Republicans."
Read the whole article here. It is clear that the Pro Prop 23 forces were out gunned by wealthy elites. Elites who will grow richer and richer as the county class pays their carbon tax tributes to a scientific hoax. The general public has been bamboozled and will suffer under the boots of the elites worshiping at the altar of AGW. How sad for California!
