BID TO LEGALIZE POT IS MISSING DONORS

Proposition 19 Has Fewer Big-Money Supporters Than Past Initiatives

Two years ago, when Californians were voting on an initiative that
would have trimmed prison time for nonviolent drug offenders, Bob
Wilson, a wealthy New York City investor, spent $$2.8 million on the
ultimately unsuccessful campaign to get it passed.

Wilson would seem a likely sugar daddy for Proposition 19, the
marijuana legalization initiative on the November ballot. He has been
giving away much of his fortune, more than $$500 million so far, and
he believes that pot, which he tried but didn't much like, ought to be legal.

"There's no intellectual argument whatever for not legalizing it,"
Wilson said. "People who get stoned do much less damage to themselves
and others than people who get drunk."

Wilson has kept an eye on the initiative, but he doesn't plan to send
a check. The polls, he said, don't look good. He thinks Richard Lee,
the sponsor, should have waited until 2012. And, after Proposition 5
was trounced in 2008, he no longer trusts the state's voters to be
progressive trendsetters.

"I'm going to let Californians stew in their own juice," he said.

Wilson is not alone in holding back. Despite the measure's potential
to inspire copycat initiatives, it has attracted few big-money
supporters. This contrasts sharply with previous drug-related
initiatives, which began the election year with major contributions.
Notably missing is George Soros, the hedge-fund multibillionaire who
has invested about $$3 million to liberalize California's drug laws.

"I think they are just waiting," said Lee, who acknowledged that the
poll numbers may have made them wary. "I've got to do a better job of
showing them this is different."

Lee remains by far the campaign's biggest donor. He gave $$1.5
million of the $$1.9 million raised through June, according to the
most recent finance reports. Lee, who has joked that he's no longer a
millionaire, donated $$45,000 in the three months ending in June.
Fundraising from other sources is picking up, but not at the pace Lee
needs to reach the $$10 million needed for a significant television campaign.

Lee and his allies remain hopeful that six-figure checks will roll
in, but they also have plans to run a less expensive grassroots
campaign. They believe they can win by persuading the narrow slice of
undecided voters, primarily mothers with school-aged children, and
turning out pro-legalization young voters. Lee also notes the
initiative is getting extensive free nationwide media coverage.

But when Proposition 215, the pathbreaking medical marijuana
initiative, was on the ballot in 1996, wealthy supporters, mostly
from out of state, gave early and often. Midway through the election
year, Soros; Peter Lewis, head of an Ohio-based insurance company;
John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix; and George
Zimmer, founder and chief executive officer of Men's Wearhouse, had
already donated and loaned a total of almost $$1 million.

Four years later, Soros, Lewis and Sperling split a $$1 million
contribution to kick off Proposition 36, which replaced prison time
with drug treatment for some nonviolent crimes.

The campaign for Proposition 5, a drug-sentencing reform measure, had
raised $$3.4 million by June 2008 from Soros; Sperling; Wilson; Jacob
Goldfield, a New York investor; and Irwin Mark Jacobs, a founder of
Qualcomm, the San Diego-based telecommuncations giant.

Only Zimmer has donated to Proposition 19. A spokesman said he would
not discuss his $$20,500 contribution. Soros, Lewis and Sperling
could not be reached. Goldfield declined to comment.

Jacobs, who said he has never used illegal drugs, said he has been
too busy to look at Proposition 19 but believes marijuana should be
decriminalized. "I have certainly not opted out," he said. "We've
taken one approach for years and years, and it just hasn't worked."

The initiative's opponents are not yet a financial threat, but "no"
campaigns typically start slowly. By June, the campaign had raised
$$41,100 from five donors. "We just started," said Andrew Acosta, a
spokesman, "so I would assume that the more groups we talk to, things
are going to start looking up for us."

Opposition campaigns have attracted few big donors - except
Proposition 5, which drew $$1 million from the prison guards' union
and $$250,000 each from A. Jerrold Perenchio, the former head of
Univision, and Meg Whitman, the former Ebay executive who is now
bankrolling a multimillion-dollar race for governor.

Soros and most other major donors to the California initiatives are
supporters of the Drug Policy Alliance, a prominent advocacy group
and a force behind the previous measures. Like the other
pro-legalization groups, the alliance wanted to aim an initiative for
2012, when the presidential election would draw more liberal voters.
That would also have given its donors four years to recover from a
dispiriting loss.

"They didn't give money in 2008 with the understanding that they
would be funding another statewide campaign two years later," said
Stephen Gutwillig, the alliance's California director.

Lee, however, brushed aside the pressure to wait. Doug Linney, Lee's
top political consultant, acknowledged these donors were not involved
in the key decisions.

"Richard felt like the time was right and wanted to go out with this,
and so we put it together a different way," he said.

Wilson said that he admired Lee's passion, but that he was on his own.

"I think the people who got this going this year ahead of when the
drug people wanted to do it, it's their ball and they've got to run
it," he said.

Linney and Lee think the deep-pocket donors, faced with a historic
initiative, will not watch from the sidelines. "We've got one of the
more juicier kind of things in town these days," Linney said.

Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and the executive director of the
decade-old Drug Policy Alliance, has cultivated Soros and other
donors for years and is the main conduit to them. His role could be decisive.

"A victory for Prop. 19 would be a major breakthrough," Nadelmann
said, "so I am doing everything I can to help it, including trying to
raise significant funds, but it's difficult when the polling is 50-50."

The biggest donor to Proposition 19 besides Lee is Philip D. Harvey,
another Drug Policy Alliance backer. Harvey, who started one of the
largest retailers of sex toys and pornography, gave $$100,000 to the
alliance's committee, which will run an independent campaign for the
initiative.

"The war on drugs is one of the most destructive, foolish and
wasteful government efforts that we have ever come up with," said
Harvey, who now runs a foundation that promotes birth control in
impoverished countries. "We put hundreds of thousands of perfectly
peaceful people behind bars. I think it's obscene."

Harvey, who said he was almost sorry to say he didn't get much out of
smoking marijuana, said he was thrilled to see a legalization
initiative on the ballot and was not dissuaded by the polls.

"It's going to be close," he said. "I understand that."