• Click here to learn more about the propositions and how to help the campaign
• Click here to download a CFT VOTER GUIDE

Governor Schwarzenegger has called an expensive ($45 to $80 million) special election for November 2005. (See CFT President Mary Bergan's statement on the election.) The stakes are extremely high because Schwarzenegger has allied himself with President Bush in his effort to privatize and reduce public services. He is attacking unions—and especially singling out education unions—while demonizing public sector workers in line with a long-term right wing campaign to discredit government.

After promoting a continuously shifting package of proposals since last year, the governor settled on three items as his "reform" package: an assault on teacher employment rights (Prop 74), a state budget power grab (Prop 76), and redistricting (Prop 77). The governor's allies also qualified a dangerous "Paycheck Deception" initiative for the ballot (Prop 75), a new version of the Proposition 226-style attack (defeated in 1998) that singles out public employee unions to silence their voice and prevent their participation in politics. Saying only that he supported Prop 75 "in principle" for months, the governor finally endorsed it in late September.

Although his merit pay and pension privatization proposals were so poorly crafted that the governor was forced to put them on the back burner for the time being, they will undoubtedly reappear in a new form soon. So will his efforts to outsource classified jobs and services to his corporate donor friends. Thus, even as we focus especially on defeating Propositions 74, 75, 76, and 77, we can't forget that after November the fight won't be over.

The CFT is working with the Alliance for a Better California to defeat the governor's initiatives and pass pro-worker, pro-consumer protections. The Alliance has been pursuing a strategy combining grassroots organizing with paid media advertisements to educate the public about the governor's attacks. These activities (one of the most successful of which occurred on May 25) will continue until the election.