Lockyer Rewrites Prop. 76 Summary
Governor said ballot language on spending control measure stressed cuts in education.
Attorney General Bill Lockyer has rewritten a controversial ballot summary for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's spending control ballot measure, giving what the governor's advisers called a big boost to his election agenda.
Schwarzenegger and his aides had accused the Democratic state attorney general of playing partisan politics by selecting ballot language that emphasized Proposition 76's impact on education funding more than its impact on overall state spending.
The new summary, which voters will see in the ballot booth, subordinates the measure's potential effect on school funding.
"This is a big win for the governor," Todd Harris, a spokesman for his special election campaign, said Wednesday.
According to Nathan Barankin, a Lockyer spokesman, politics had nothing to do with the original language or the change.
Fourteen separate budget initiatives were submitted to the attorney general's office for possible inclusion on the ballot, he said. The attorney general is required by law to craft "unique" title and summary language for each one, Barankin said.
Schwarzenegger's political advisers had said they were considering a legal challenge to the ballot language for their measure, but Lockyer's staff met with Steven Merksamer, a lawyer for the Republican governor, and agreed to the change.
"We felt he made a pretty good argument," Barankin said. "People threaten to sue all the time, and we don't make changes. We make changes when they make a good point."
According to Barankin, the Schwarzenegger forces argued that even though all the budget-related initiatives submitted to the attorney general's office dealt with similar issues, only the title and summary prepared for Proposition 76 put such a strong emphasis on cutting education funding.
Besides its inclusion on the ballot that voters see, a proposal's "title and summary" are also crucial in political polling because they are what poll respondents are typically read when asked their views on a particular measure.
A recent Field Poll showed Schwarzenegger's spending control measure trailing with voters by a 35 percent to 42 percent.