FRUSTRATED CONSERVATIVES TURN TO VOTERS

More Back State Ballot Questions, Particularly on Law-And-Order Issues

SACRAMENTO -- California conservatives, stifled by the Democratic
majority in the Capitol, are turning to the people in hopes of
advancing their stalled agenda in 2008.

Four conservative-backed ballot campaigns, including one to etch a
ban on gay marriage into the state constitution, have amassed $8.9
million to put measures before voters in November.

The other measures would require minors to notify a guardian before
obtaining an abortion, stiffen anti-gang statutes and expand crime
victims' rights.

Many Republican activists have resigned themselves to minority status
in the Legislature, where Democrats control at least 60 percent of
the seats in both the Senate and Assembly.

But they see hope at the ballot box.

"The reality is they do stand a chance with the voters, and they
don't stand a chance in the Legislature," said Mark Baldassare,
president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Or, as Assemblyman Todd Spitzer put it, "We weren't going to waste
our time in the Legislature."

The Orange County Republican is working on the campaign to enhance
the rights of crime victims during criminal and parole proceedings.
Billionaire Henry Nicholas donated $4.8 million to the measure, named
"Marsy's Law" after Nicholas' sister, who was murdered in 1983.

None of the four measures has qualified for the ballot, though
proponents of each have raised more than $1 million and say they are
confident of collecting enough valid signatures.

"Law now is being made by the public at large in California," said
Don Sebastiani, a Sonoma wine magnate and former GOP lawmaker who
gave $505,000 to the abortion-notification measure.

Democrats and their allies have pushed ballot measures as well,
ranging from a successful 2004 measure that raised taxes on
millionaires for mental health services to legalizing medical marijuana.

Bill Carrick, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked on
ballot campaigns, said the two parties approach the initiative
process differently. Republicans, he said, are trying "to come up
with a magic-bullet initiative to change the politics of California."

"They are stuck in a rut as a minority party," Carrick said. "They
don't have a majority in either house of the Legislature and are a
significant minority in California's congressional delegation. We
have two Democratic senators and a governor who very often sides with
the Democrats."

Incoming Senate Republican leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto said it is
"unfortunate" that Republicans "have to revert to the initiative process."

"I don't think it's the preferred choice for either the legislators
or the people they represent," Cogdill said. "They expect us to be
here to do the job and be a functional body and the reality is we're not."

Democrats have controlled the Legislature -- except the Assembly
briefly in the mid-1990s -- for nearly four decades. But, at the same
time, the state's voters have shown a penchant to side with
Republicans on social and law-and-order issues, when given the chance.

California voters have largely banned bilingual education,
implemented a "Three Strikes" sentencing law and favored cutting
services to illegal immigrants, among other measures.

Most recently, voters in 2006 approved Jessica's Law, which bans
convicted sex offenders from living near parks and schools and
requires global positioning system locators on sex offender parolees.
The measure was the brainchild of the husband-and-wife tandem of Sen.
George Runner and Assemblywoman Sharon Runner.

The Lancaster Republicans are back again this year, now pushing a
measure that would stiffen penalties for gun-crime accomplices, add
prison time for convicted felons who carry guns in public and spend
hundreds of millions more on local law enforcement programs.

The initiative includes parts of 16 bills defeated in the Legislature
in recent years, according to the campaign.

The problem for law-and-order Republicans in the Capitol, said George
Runner, is that their ideas -- even those with potential widespread
appeal -- rarely, if ever, become law.

The only question, he said, is "where the graveyard" will be for
particular legislation, as Democrats outnumber Republicans on every
legislative committee.

"We tried to go home and explain why it is the Legislature wouldn't
act on something," Runner said. "It gets frustrating."

The Runners have raised $1.2 million, including $1 million from Nicholas.

The most hot-button of the would-be November ballot measures would
place in California's constitution the words "only marriage between a
man and a woman is valid."

"It's pretty clear that the politicians in this building haven't
heeded the voters' will," said Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, a
Republican and co-author of the anti-gay marriage measure.

Like other conservatives, Hollingsworth said he was dismayed to watch
as the Legislature twice approved a law legalizing gay marriage
(which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed), despite a 2000 vote in
which more than 60 percent of Californians opposed same-sex marriage.

He and others have raised $1 million to gather signatures for the new
initiative, a constitutional amendment, which could not be overturned
by either the state courts or the Legislature.

There are downsides to using the ballot box to create state policy.
While the Legislature can work out the kinks in new laws by passing
follow-up legislation, ballot measures tend to be much harder to
amend. Courts, moreover, have intervened in some successful
initiatives. Proposition 187's ban on state services to illegal
immigrants was overturned and never took effect.

Most Republicans insist going to the ballot isn't their first choice
to advance their causes.

It is an expensive endeavor, with the cost of qualifying a measure at
least $1 million and waging a full-blown campaign millions more. But
that is a price worth paying, says Sebastiani, who has dipped into
personal funds for the third time in four years to help fund an
abortion-notification measure. The past two attempts failed with 47.2
percent and 45.8 percent of the vote, in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

"After having tried and failed, and tried and failed, and if you
finally succeed, they praise your stick-to-itness. But while you are
trying and failing, they chuckle and laugh at you," said Sebastiani,
whose donations to parental notification of teen pregnancy have
totaled $1.2 million.

Hollingsworth, author of the gay-marriage ban, hopes California is
approaching a tipping point of sorts, where voters will revolt
against the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

"The more out of touch the Legislature is with the needs and the
desires of the people of California, the more the ballot box is going
to be used to make major policy changes," he said, citing voters'
approval of Proposition 13, which severely limited property taxes in
1978, and the state's "Three Strikes" law in 1994. "I think we may be
in one of those phases right now."

Carrick, the Democratic strategist, doesn't buy that.

"This is the political equivalent of buying a lottery ticket," he
said. "They try to find these hot-button issues that are going to
change things with one big swoop. It's just not going to happen."