Proposition 87 & Ballot measures & Advertising 11 Oct 2006 09:52 pm
It’s official: most expensive ballot measure in state history
Al Gore is the star of a new ad that started appearing on TV on Monday in support of Proposition 87. It’s a 30-second ad, in which Gore, much in the same way that he did in his hit summer documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” intones the following script with a surpising lack of condescension in his voice:
Here is the truth the oil companies won’t tell you: half the foreign oil they import to California is from the Middle East. As a result, California is dangerously dependent on foreign oil. Prop 87 means more alternative fuels and wind and solar power, and that means less oil dependence. Prop 87 is the one thing Californians can do now to clean up the air, help stop the climate crisis, and free us from foreign oil. The sooner we do it, the safer we’ll be.
Meanwhile, expenditures on the campaigns for and against the alternative energy measure officially passed the $104 million mark in spending this past week. That makes the fight over Proposition 87 the most expensive ballot measure campaign in state history, surpassing the cash dumped into the campaigns around Proposition 78 (the measure calling for a discount prescription program for impoverished Californians) last year and Proposition 5 in 1998 (the Indian gaming compact initiative).
Kind of makes you wonder what Hiram Johnson, the father of the California initiative process, would have thought.