The LA Times on Friday reported that the political committee backing Prop. 36 donated $1 million to the California Republican Party.
Obviously, this signals the campaign’s confidence that the measure, seen as a partial rollback of Prop. 47, imposing stricter penalties for both retail theft and crimes involving fentanyl, will pass. Several polls have shown solid support for the measure and the measure has also received a fair amount of Democratic support—particularly from Democratic mayors.
Indeed, when the campaign rolled it out in June, supporters touted the bipartisan nature of the support.
Greg Totten, the co-chair of Californians for Safer Communities who also is director of the California District Attorneys Association said at a June press conference in front of the Attorney General’s office, “We know that Californians are demanding a response to the explosion of retail theft and the fentanyl crisis that is literally killing our children, and we’re here to tell politicians don’t play politics with public safety. That’s the wrong thing to do in the current environment.”
He added, “We all came together to draft and qualify a ballot initiative, frankly, because politicians in the Capitol have ignored our concerns and, in California, when politicians fail to act as they have done here, the people have the power to change our laws, and that is precisely what we are here to do today.”
Meanwhile, Napa County DA Allison Haley, now the President of the California District Attorneys Association, said, “I am extremely proud and extremely humbled to be here today surrounded by members of the bipartisan Californians for Safer Communities Coalition.”
But, while the proponents have gone to great lengths to reach across the aisle—recently touting the support of Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Democratic Leader in the legislature and Mayor of Los Angeles, who is likely a governor candidate in 2026—the measure has always had a stronger Republican flavor.
For example, the California GOP endorsed Prop. 36 and has spent more than $1 million in favor of the measure. On the other hand, the California Democratic Party and Governor Gavin Newsom, along with the California Legislature’s Democratic leadership, have opposed the measure.
However, prominent Democratic mayors including London Breed from San Francisco, as well as the mayors of San Jose and San Diego, “have praised it as a bipartisan effort.”
“This initiative has been categorized by a lot of bipartisan support,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego in an interview with the LA Times. “You have local support from Democratic mayors. So the fact that the campaign would give money directly to the party could be eyebrow-raising.”
The Times noted that Becky Warren, campaign spokesperson for the Yes on 36 campaign, told them “the donations are part of an outreach effort to voters across all political parties.
“Our voter contact plan allocates resources to educate Democrats, Republicans and independent voters about Proposition 36 in proportion to their representation in the electorate,” Warren told The Times.
Attempts by the Vanguard to get a response to the LA Times articles were not successful.
But the Times noted the contributions were the only donations made by the committee.
Meanwhile, State Senator Nancy Skinner, a leading Democrat in the Senate, and Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods warned in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee that, rather than addressing homelessness or addiction, Prop. 36 could exacerbate the state’s prison crisis by redirecting resources away from treatment programs and back toward punitive incarceration.
They argue that “the proposition, if enacted this November, will send people with drug problems to prison or jail rather than treatment, increasing jail and prison costs by hundreds of millions of dollars a year at a time when the state already has a significant budget deficit.”
For decades, they argue, “California and the rest of the nation tried to solve the problem of drug addiction by locking people up. But not only did the War on Drugs fail to reduce drug addiction, it led to the inhumane overcrowding of California prisons, forcing the federal government to step in.”
In the meantime, fear of a retail theft wave has been fanned by proponents of the measure, as well as media coverage that focuses more on viral videos than underlying crime rates.
When the Vanguard spoke to Senator Skinner back in June, she noted that none of the proponents for the bill have acknowledged that crime has in fact been going down after a recent peak (far below more historic highs in the 1980s and 1990s) post-COVID .
“The crime rate is definitely going down. Retail theft is down. Any number of indicators show that it’s down,” Senator Skinner stated, adding that it’s also down in Oakland, a key city in her district.
She explained, “I think what we see is… you have some people, some proponents of an initiative that they purport is going to address retail theft when it has really little in it to do with retail theft.”
The Vanguard also spoke with LA District Attorney George Gascón in June, who said, “Every Californian deserves to feel safe whether they’re at home, at work, at school, or at the store… We don’t need to roll back Prop 47 to accomplish these goals.”
But the bipartisan message from supporters was as a strong one and might be undermined by the recent revelation from the Los Angeles Times.
“There is no place for partisanship when it comes to addressing California’s trio of public safety epidemics,” said Mayor Matt Mahan of San Jose. “We can all unite around common-sense solutions to address retail theft, homelessness, and drug overdose deaths.”
