California voters will begin marking their mail-in ballots for the Nov. 5 election in just a few days and how they vote may reflect their somewhat sour outlooks, particularly rising concerns about crime, a pre-election poll suggests.

Dan Walters

CalMatters

Opinion

The Public Policy Institute of California survey, released Wednesday night, found that “majorities of adults and likely voters think the state is headed in the wrong direction and expect the state to have bad times financially in the next 12 months,” the San Francisco-based think tank said in its analysis.

The poll also revealed that 71% of voters support Proposition 36, which would boost penalties for some crimes, partially undoing Proposition 47, a 2014 measure that reduced sentences. At least 41% said the outcome of this vote is “very important.”

Rising Property Crime Rates Fuel Support for Proposition 36

The strong support for Prop. 36 — which is sponsored by a coalition of law enforcement and business groups and backed by many local officials — should not be a surprise.

Earlier this month, the institute released a study confirming that property crimes have been rising since Prop. 47’s passage, while the ranks of police have thinned and arrests for such crimes have declined.

“Driven by larcenies, property crime jumped after Prop 47 compared to the nation and comparison states,” the study found.

Prop. 36’s popularity marks a change of public attitudes since the heyday of what was called “criminal justice reform” a decade ago, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown, legislators and voters, under pressure from federal courts, were depopulating the state’s overcrowded prison system. The number of felons declined by nearly 50% from a peak of 173,000 in 2006.

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Newsom’s Shifting Stance on Crime and Punishment

Brown’s successor, Gavin Newsom, initially supported continuing to soften penalties for crimes — even unilaterally banning executions of murderers despite voter support for capital punishment. However, as smash-and-grab invasions of retail stores, car burglaries and other forms of property crime increased, Newsom gradually shifted to increasing some punishments.

Newsom tried, but failed, to persuade the Legislature to place a measure to rival Prop 36 on the ballot and had to settle for some fairly mild punishment upgrades.

Newsom is now publicly opposing Prop. 36, rejecting its supporters’ contention that it would improve therapy for those committing crimes to support addictions.

“It’s about mass incarceration, not mass treatment,” Newsom told reporters during a recent press conference after signing the Legislature’s alternative crime laws. “What an actual insult it is to say it’s about mass treatment when there’s not a dollar attached to it.”

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Newsom’s Waning Influence on Voters

The overwhelming support for Prop. 36 indicates that as his governorship approaches lame duck status, Newsom’s ability to sway voters is declining. In fact the same poll found that just “49% of adults and 51% of likely voters approve of the way that Governor Gavin Newsom is handling his job,” even though the vast majority of California voters are either Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents.

Nor is Prop. 36 the only ballot measure likely to pass despite Newsom’s disapproval. The poll found that more than 60% of voters support Proposition 35, which would make a tax on managed health care systems, such as Kaiser, permanent.

Doctors, hospitals and other major players in the health care industry wrote Prop. 35 because the tax would generate matching funds from the federal government, resulting in increased payments to providers of care for the 14.5 million poor Californians enrolled in the state’s Medi-Cal program.

Indirectly, passage of Prop. 35 would block Newsom’s efforts to use money from the tax to help close multi-billion-dollar deficits in the state budget, thus making it more likely that his governorship will end with the budget still leaking red ink.

About the Author

Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. He began his professional career in 1960, at age 16, at the Humboldt Times.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more columns by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.

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