A tale of two ballot summaries

As the array of propositions that California voters will be asked to weigh in on is being finalized, we're in the season of lawsuits. It's the job of the state Attorney General's office to write the description of a proposal's content that we see on our ballots. It's also the job of the AG to be sued by proponents and opponents of various measures who think he should have described their little darlings differently. The lawsuits usually have little impact.

If you ever wondered whether voting on obscure offices matters, the contrast between what was offered by a right wing Attorney General two decades ago and what current Democratic AG Xaxier Becerra have written on essentially the same measure makes the importance of these elections perfectly clear.

The intent of Prop. 16 appearing this November is simple: it will repeal Prop. 209 passed in 1996. Prop. 209 outlawed affirmative action by the state to assist Californians held down by entrenched racial and gender discrimination. But what does that mean?

John Myers, writing in a politics newsletter for the Los Angeles Times, summarizes:

Here’s the ballot title for the original proposition written by the office of then-Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren: PROHIBITION AGAINST DISCRIMINATION OR PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT BY STATE AND OTHER PUBLIC ENTITIES.

And here’s the one written by Becerra’s team for this fall: ALLOWS DIVERSITY AS A FACTOR IN PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION, AND CONTRACTING DECISIONS.

Becerra is a politician who came up in the generation when Californian Republicans fought their battle to keep political power solely in disgruntled white suburban constituencies by handicapping the rising tide of Latinx, Black, indigenous, and other immigrant groups. This failed. California is no racial paradise, but this generation of Democratic pols know they have to work at equity.

Will Prop. 16 succeed? It ought to in the year of Black Lives Matter and widespread racial reckoning. But nobody should kid themselves that it will be easy; fear that someone, somewhere, is getting something undeserved that ought to be yours remains a potent political motivator.

But California certainly has changed since 1996, just as Republicans feared it would.