Skelton: California voters are fed up with crime and, apparently, Democratic response

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders vehemently oppose an anti-retail theft measure on the November ballot. But they’re being ignored by California voters who support the proposal overwhelmingly.

Maybe voters don’t know about the governor’s and lawmakers’ strong opposition. Or maybe they do and don’t care. They’re following their own instincts and thinking that California — again — is too easy on bad guys.

The pendulum apparently is swinging back from left to center on crime and incarceration. Three decades ago California was over on the right with the war on drugs and tough three-strikes sentencing for repeat felons. Then we gradually moved left by dramatically reducing punishment. Opinions continue to sway.

The support numbers are stunning for Proposition 36, sponsored by the California District Attorneys Association. It would increase punishment for theft and hard drug offenses and impose required treatment for repetitive criminal addicts.

The initiative is ahead by an astonishing 45 percentage points, according to a new poll of likely voters by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California: 71% to 26%, with only 3% undecided.

That’s unprecedented for a controversial ballot measure.

Well, controversial among politicians anyway. But seemingly not among voters.

“I was surprised by the level of support,” says Mark Baldassare, a pollster with the Public Policy Institute of California.

But he adds this caution: “Propositions aren’t like candidate races. The bottom can fall out of them. And the campaign for and against 36 really hasn’t started yet. It’s easy for people to say ‘no’ on a proposition rather than ‘yes.’ Especially if someone comes along and points out a fatal flaw.”

‘Kind of outrageous’

Sure. But don’t bet on it. Opponents have a very steep hill to climb to conquer Proposition 36.

It’s ahead among every demographic group, including Democrats by a landslide margin: 63% to 33%. Self-described liberals support it by 56% to 41%.

Baldassare notes that of the 10 state ballot measures, voters consider Proposition 36 the most important by far, his poll found.

Another independent survey last month by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies also showed the measure holding a huge lead: 56% to 23%, with 21% undecided.

IGS pollster Mark DiCamillo cited the “great visibility” of retail theft — caught on camera or witnessed personally by voters — as a reason for heavy support of Proposition 36.

“It’s kind of outrageous to voters, what they’re seeing,” DiCamillo told Times reporter Mackenzie Mays. “And they’re linking it to the approval of Proposition 47.”

That proposition swung California to the left on crime punishment 10 years ago. Federal court pressure had mounted to reduce prison and jail overcrowding. The measure passed lopsidedly, reducing some felony crimes to low-punishment misdemeanors — including shoplifting when the stolen goods were worth less than $950.

Misdemeanor arrests are harder to make because a cop must witness a crime or possess a judge’s warrant. Anyway, judges began freeing petty thieves. So, cops stopped responding to shoplifting complaints. Merchants ceased bothering to report the crimes. And smash-and-grab thefts increased.

PPIC researchers recently reported on a yearlong study of Proposition 47’s impact.

“Under Prop 47, prison and jail populations plummeted as did arrests for drug and property crimes after certain offenses were reclassified from felonies to misdemeanors,” the report stated.

But it said the pandemic also contributed to fewer apprehensions. As people stayed home to prevent the spread of COVID, there were “fewer encounters with police, resulting in fewer arrests,” the researchers contended.

A ‘poison pill’

At any rate, public pressure increased on Sacramento Democrats to do something — and they didn’t for several years. They probably thought the growing anti-47 pushback would just fade. It didn’t.

Newsom was one of Proposition 47’s most vocal original advocates and has been a staunch defender.

“We don’t need to go back to the broken policies of the last century,” he insisted. “Mass incarceration has been proven ineffective and is not the answer.”

Newsom’s initial answer included trying to strong-arm Proposition 36 off the ballot. It failed awkwardly, leaving legislative leaders perturbed at the governor.

Proposition 36 would roll back parts of Proposition 47. The governor backed a legislative package aimed at curtailing retail theft without significantly altering Proposition 47. But he concocted a nutty “poison pill” that would have automatically killed the Democrats’ own anti-crime legislation if Proposition 36 was approved by voters.

The aim was to coerce Proposition 36’s sponsors into tossing in the towel and accepting the Legislature’s offering. But Democrats rebelled at the governor’s bizarre scheme and refused to insert the deadly pill into their package.

The Legislature ultimately passed 13 bills that Newsom and Democratic lawmakers hope will satisfy voters’ demands that California do more to combat smash-and-grabs and shoplifting.

“The bills they passed do some good things, but by and large they’re half measures,” asserts Gregory Totten, chief executive of the California District Attorneys Association. “Our law (36) says consequences of stealing have to be ratcheted up.”

The initiative also would impose tougher penalties for sales of deadly fentanyl and treat it similar to other hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. Some people possessing hard drugs could be sentenced merely to treatment.

But Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a former state Senate leader who has spent his career trying to generate treatment for the drug-addicted homeless and mentally ill, opposes Proposition 36.

He contends that 36 offers a “false promise” of treatment. It’ll fall short because the emphasis will be on law enforcement, not treatment of addicts, Steinberg predicts.

But so far, Newsom and Sacramento Democrats haven’t been leading anyone away from Proposition 36. Voters are headed in the opposite direction.

George Skelton is a Los Angeles Times columnist. ©2024 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.