Prop 4: Your Money, Their Campaigns

By James Fenkner, CFA

Proposition 4 Wants You to Pay for Politicians’ Campaigns

That’s the whole pitch, dressed up as “fair elections.”

Fair for whom, exactly?

For over five decades California has banned using public money to bankroll candidates. Voters put that rule in place for a very good reason: Nobody should be forced to fund the campaigns of the people who tax them.

Prop 4 would erase that ban.

That ban isn’t some dusty technicality. It came out of the Political Reform Act of 1974 and the sleaze around the CREEP payments during Watergate. The principle was simple: your tax dollars are for roads, schools, cops, and hospitals—not for paying consultants to tell you how wonderful their candidate is or how terrible his opponent looks.

Or to fund dirty political tricks.

Think about what Prop 4 means in practice. A small-business owner already struggling with high taxes and fees would now be required to help bankroll the very politician who just voted to raise them again. A parent frustrated with failing schools, such as I, would be forced to subsidize the campaign of a CTA-sponsored board member running to keep the status quo intact.

You don’t get a refund if you hate the candidate’s platform. Taxpayers on the Right will be forced to fund Leftist politicians. Taxpayers on the Left will be forced to fund Right wing politicians. You don’t get to check a box that says, “Not with my money.”

The state simply takes it and hands it over.

What’s worse is that the funding amounts, administration, and details are not even spelled out. Should it pass, the state and local governments would set up those undefined rules later. Those rules will be written, of course, by those already in charge of the place.

Prop 4 is Literally a Blank Check

Supporters say this levels the playing field. It doesn’t. It does, however, coerce you into picking up the tab for what may well be your least favorite politician.

Incumbents still get the money. Challengers still need to qualify. And every taxpayer—left, right, or checked out—ends up bankrolling attack ads and mailers for candidates they may actively despise. You don’t get to opt out. That’s not democracy.

Passage of Prop 4 would be compulsory speech enforced by taxation.

Look at the coalition pushing this thing. Common Cause. League of Women Voters. ACLU. The usual suspects who treat government expansion like a moral duty. If money buys political support, what are these groups really saying?

They’re saying private money is dirty when the other side has it, but perfectly fine when the public is forced to foot the bill. They don’t want less money in politics. They want your money redirected through the state.

Our elections already have serious problems and imbalances, and Prop 4 does nothing to fix them. California politics has the feel of a closed shop. One party owns Sacramento, most of the big cities, and the institutional machinery, thanks to powerful state sector unions that keep the whole thing running.

Competitive races are rare.

Turnout in many local contests is pathetic. When the same team holds almost every lever of power for decades, the system stops checking itself.

Meanwhile, California still acts as if requiring ID at the polls is some kind of mortal threat to democracy itself. Somehow most other democracies manage to confirm who’s voting without the sky falling. Here in the U.S., our overlords treat the absence of basic Voter ID as not only noble but also sacrosanct.

Prop 4 Doesn’t Touch Any of This

It doesn’t open up safe districts, call for voter identification, loosen the one-party hold, increase ballot integrity, or rein in ballot harvesting. It doesn’t make the process cleaner or more credible in any way.

What it does is open a new funding door: letting politicians dip into taxpayer money to pay for their own campaigns.

That’s not reform.

That’s adding another layer of self-interest to the system.

Once the public check book gets involved, the pressure to expand will never go away. The real problems stay right where they are, while a fresh set of conflicts and costs get locked in.

Vote NO on Prop 4

Every statist organization loves Prop 4. It lowers the cost of electing people who promise more programs, more rules, and more spending.

Prop 4, if passed, would be catnip for the “government is the answer to everything” crowd.

Clean money?

Please.

It’s just more tax money recycled through the untouchable political class’s hands.

Vote NO on Prop 4

California already can’t keep the lights on, house its people, or educate its kids without constant crisis, followed by requests for even more money and power. Now we’re supposed to believe the urgent priority is subsidizing political careers?

Prop 4 sells itself as “reform.”

It is anything but.

It takes a clear line—that taxpayers should not be required to fund political campaigns—and replaces it with a permanent invitation for politicians to help themselves to the public trough. Should Prop 4 pass, the same people who already run the farm will write the rules.

George Orwell saw it coming: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Don’t buy the farm, California.

Vote NO on Prop 4.