A November 9 Los Angeles Times article noted that Proposition 87’s defeat was largely due to voter unease about the cost and the mechanics of the measure’s implementation. Foremost in voters’ minds were worries about the cost of gasoline going up and the nature of the bureaucracy necessary to implement the measure. Even Proposition 87 backers admitted that opponents of the measure were able to “plant seeds of doubt,” as one pro-initiative spokesperson put it, “on the issues of cost and accountability.”

Other theories about Proposition 87’s defeat popped up in news analysis articles and in the political blogs. One widely disseminated conclusion was that Proposition 87’s advertisements (many of which in the final days of the campaign featured Bill Clinton) and high-profile celebrity endorsements left voters either cold or indifferent, especially in the state’s non-coastal regions. This conclusion appears to be supported by Secretary of State voting pattern maps, which show that inland counties opposed Proposition 87 by anywhere from 56% (Imperial County) to 78% (Glenn County). The Bay Area, in fact, was the only part of the state where some counties voted for the measure with numbers exceeding 60%.

Even in the Bay Area, Contra Costa County voters opposed the measure 51-49%. Coastal support for the measure was by no means solid, with the region from Paso Robles to Ventura opposing the measure by margins in the 53-58% range.

Despite the measure’s loss, the funding pool for alternative energy itself isn’t going anywhere but up. According to an article in the November 9 San Francisco Chronicle, $843 million was invested in alternative energy during the second quarter of 2006 alone, more than double the amount from the same period in 2005.

The biggest news about the slate of propositions on he California ballot this year was that there were quite a number of expectations defied.

None of the big infrastructure measures fell. In fact, most passed with comfortable margins. The conventional wisdom was that voters were going to be too wary of big-ticket spending to give the measures their okay. The other conventional wisdom was that there was just too much information to absorb about all of the infrastructure measures. The thinking seemed to be that all of the measures would cancel each other out.
On the other hand, none of the other measures on the ballot did well — except for Proposition 83, which never had any significant opposition. The two biggest-ticket measures, Propositions 86 and 87, failed at the polls by significant margins. The parental notification and eminent domain measures, Propositions 85 and 90, which were both expected to pass, failed as well.

Dan Morain of the Los Angeles Times, who covered the money side of the ballot measure campaigns, pointed out in a November 9 article that in almost all of the campaigns, the side with the most money to spend won. In the case of Proposition 87 alone, both sides spent more than $150 million, making the alternative energy initiative by far the most expensive ballot measure in US history.

Proposition 90 has been going back and forth all evening. As of now, with 38% of all precincts reporting, the noes have the slight edge: 51-49%.

Both of the big-money measures appear on their way down to defeat. Proposition 86 is at 54-46%. Proposition 87 is at 57-43%, which if it holds will be a truly humiliating margin for the measure’s backers.

A new public opinion survey by KTVU-TV and the Field Poll shows continued deteriorating support for three of the major propositions:

• Proposition 85: 46-43% yes

• Proposition 86: 45-45% yes

• Proposition 87: 44-40% no

If Proposition 87 loses in spite of all of the money and political capital that have spent to promote it, including months of TV ads and numerous public appearances by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and assorted celebrities (everyone from Julia Roberts to Robert Redford to Eva Longoria), it will be one of the big stories of the election year.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article today about Stephen Bing, the primary backer of Proposition 87. Bing has now given $49.5 million in support of the alternative energy initiative, the largest amount ever donated by a single individual to a campaign in US history.

Total spending on the Yes and No on 87 campaigns has now reached an astronomical $142 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. Most of the No on 87 cash has come from oil companies like Chevron, Aera Energy (a coalition of ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell), and Occidental Oil.

Forget about California — the Washington Post reports in Friday’s edition that the fight over Proposition 87 may turn out to be the costliest in United States history. The article quotes John Matsusaka, the director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, as saying that the $107 million-plus that’s been spent on the yes and no campaigns thus far is only a little less than half the money ($250 million) spent by both major presidential candidates in the 2004 election.

Meanwhile, the San José Mercury News reports that, according to Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, corporations have shoveled over $255 million into this year’s ballot (mostly to defeat Propositions 86 and 87) — a figure that represents 61% of all expenditures in the election.

The BBC writes up the expensive Proposition 87 campaign on its website today. The article has an interesting take on the potential aftermath of the battle over the ballot measure:

A vote either way will have ramifications far outside of the state.

A No vote will dent California’s image as the most environmentally conscious US state, much of it earned by Governor Schwarzenegger, who recently pushed through a bill enforcing a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

A Yes vote will cement California’s position and send out a precedent for greater taxations on US energy giants.

An interesting San Francisco Chronicle article today takes note of the phenomenon of the star power behind Proposition 87 (actress Julia Roberts put on some granny glasses and posed in front of a Yes on 87 sign in an appearance yesterday, doing her best “Erin Brockovich” reprise) and goes into a little more depth than usual about the Yes campaign’s primary source of juice, Stephen Bing, the man who, before financing the Yes on 87 campaign, was better known for losing a paternity dispute with “Austin Powers” actress Elizabeth Hurley in 2002.

Here’s another profile of Bing, from the September 22 Sacramento Bee (the link will probably prompt you to register; there’s an authentication-prompted Access World News link here).

Bill Clinton spoke at a pro-Proposition 87 event today at UCLA. He said, “To save the planet, improve our national security and create the next generation of good jobs for the American people — that’s what Prop 87 represents to me.”

The No on 87 folks definitely have the cash factor working in their favor, but the Yes on 87 crowd seems to have the star power factor locked down pretty tightly. You aren’t likely to see any Hollywood types appearing in any No on 87 TV ads anytime soon.

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.