Reporting from Sacramento — California business usually shows singular unanimity on election day.
This year is a bit different.
With voting Tuesday, the business community has coalesced, as usual, behind Republican candidates, including gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman, who is promising tax cuts and reduced regulation.
But business is divided over several controversial ballot measures. The initiatives pit the conventional corporate culture against many high-tech and green-tech companies in Silicon Valley and other entrepreneurial hubs.
The biggest split is over Proposition 23, an attempt to suspend California's 3-year-old law aimed at limiting emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
The emissions law, AB 32, was the first of its kind and a signature achievement of outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the initiative would put that law on hold unless the state unemployment rate stays under 5.5% for 12 straight months — something that has happened only three times in 40 years.
"Some companies are playing offense and some are playing defense on Proposition 23," said Mark Baldasarre, president of the Public Policy Institute of California. "What you have is a more complex situation" than in most elections.
A similar split in business has developed over Proposition 26. The ballot measure would make it more difficult for lawmakers to raise fees paid by companies to fund a variety of government services, including environmental protection and pollution prevention.
Most trade groups support Proposition 26, but a key high-tech organization, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, hasn't taken a position.
"We've never been the strangle-the-government-and-drown-it-in-the-bathtub type of organization," said the group's president, Carl Guardino.
Business leaders generally oppose Proposition 19, which would legalize and tax marijuana, but some back it. Financier George Soros donated $1 million last week to fund last-minute TV ads supporting the proposition, far more than the $42,000 that major businesses gave to the other side.
Tracing the money has always been a good barometer of where business stands — and how strong its stance is — on ballot measures.
Proposition 23
Proposition 23 is being pushed primarily by two Texas oil companies that operate in California — Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp.
Manufacturers and other conventional business groups worry that the emissions law would drive up already high electricity rates in a weak economy and lock them in permanently.
"Energy costs would go up 30% to 60%," said Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers & Technology Assn. "It's going to price many manufacturers out of the California market."
They and their allies, including Occidental Petroleum Corp. in Los Angeles, have pumped about $9 million into the Yes on 23 campaign.
But they have been outspent 3-to-1 by their green-tech opponents, backed by Schwarzenegger, environmentalists and Democrats.
Last week's Los Angeles Times/USC poll indicated that 48% of likely voters oppose Proposition 23 and 32% favor it.
The emissions law currently in place has solid support from venture capitalists, who want to invest in cutting-edge, clean-energy technology. Green-energy development — and the jobs that would come with it — would be fostered by a requirement that California reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels over the next decade.
Silicon Valley high-tech companies and entrepreneurs also embrace the law as an incentive to make California a world leader in renewable resources, including solar and wind power.
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group, whose members generate more than
$2 trillion in annual revenues worldwide, always has been enthusiastic about California's landmark law.
"Our members believe that reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on imported fossil fuels presents an opportunity to transform the economy from one based on coal, oil and gas to one that runs
on clean renewable energy," the group said in its opposition statement to Proposition 23.
Also opposing the measure are the state's three biggest power utilities: the corporate parents of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Southern California Edison Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. They favor development of more renewable energy to help them meet a state mandate to generate one-third of their electric power from nonpetroleum sources by 2020.
Though Occidental supports the initiative and has contributed $300,000 to the cause, Chevron Corp. in San Ramon, California's biggest corporation, is noncommittal.
On the sidelines are the powerful California Chamber of Commerce — mainly because its members are split — and its Los Angeles-area affiliate, which said it "appreciates arguments on both sides."
Proposition 26
Business also is divided over Proposition 26, which would require a two-thirds vote to approve state and local fees on businesses that aren't linked to a specific service.
