Big win for schools as Prop 30 defies polls - by Kathryn Baron and John Fensterwald
California schools’ rendezvous with rock bottom is over. A massive grassroots campaign, an eleventh hour surge in advertising and strategic targeting of likely voters pulled Proposition 30 over the halfway mark yesterday, giving both Gov. Jerry Brown and California public schools and community colleges a victory. With all of the vote reported, Prop 30 led 53.9 to 46.1 percent. The initiative is expected to raise nearly $7 billion for education this year by raising income taxes on the wealthiest Californians and increasing the state sales tax by a quarter-cent for the next four years.
Gov. Brown and Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Assn., left, during a campaign stop for Prop 30. CTA was the largest contributor to the initiative (photo courtesy of CTA). Click to enlarge.
“I know some people had some doubts, had some questions – can you really go to people and ask them to raise their tax?” Brown told supporters celebrating at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento Tuesday night. “We had a lot of obstacles. We overcame them.”
The same can’t be said of Proposition 38, the other school funding initiative on the ballot. Voters soundly rejected it by a margin of nearly 3 to 1. Southern California attorney Molly Munger, who, with her husband, put $47 million of her own money into the campaign, and generated ill will with ads taking aim at Prop 30, conceded defeat in a written statement in
