SACRAMENTO — Though California voters rejected propositions Tuesday to expand the rights of property owners and hike tobacco taxes, activists behind both measures said they were buoyed by the success of similar measures across the country and promised to renew their efforts.
The activists said that both propositions lost only narrowly and that although opponents held the line in California for now, momentum for their causes had been fueled by victories elsewhere.
Proposition 90 would have limited the ability of government agencies to seize private property for shopping centers and other private development. Its supporters cite nine other states where such limitations were passed.
And though a proposal to hike tobacco taxes, Proposition 86, was rejected by Californians, new taxes on cigarettes were approved in Arizona and South Dakota, and other anti-smoking measures were approved in Nevada, Ohio and Florida.
"We still have momentum," said Cass Wheeler, chief executive officer of the American Heart Assn., a leader in the push for increased tobacco taxes. "We will come back to fight another day in California."
Unlike the relatively modest 80-cent and $1 tax hikes on a pack of smokes approved by voters in Arizona and South Dakota, the California proposal attempted to quadruple the tax with a $2.60 increase.
Mark Baldassare, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said voters may have balked at the size of the tax, as well as confusion about how the money would be spent. The proposal called for divvying the new revenue among many healthcare programs, including subsidies for hospitals that bankrolled it.
Tobacco companies blitzed the airwaves with advertisements warning that there were hidden goodies buried in the initiative meant to boost the profits of its sponsors.
"Voters saw there was a money grab by a special interest," said Carla Hass, spokeswoman for the No on 86 campaign.
Even so, Baldassare said, support for an increased tobacco tax in concept remains strong.
"I have no doubt something like this will be back in California," he said.
Organizers behind the failed property rights proposal also may have overreached. Landmark measures that passed in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon and South Carolina focused exclusively on barring governments from taking property for private projects. The measures were a reaction to a 2005 Supreme Court decision that specifically permits local and state governments to remove people from their homes and to give the property to developers.
