Key Players Resign In Electoral Revamp Efforts

Sep. 28, 2007 (KGO) (KGO) -- A drive to change how California allocates its electoral votes is now all but dead.

We revealed who's been paying for this campaign, and afterward, its key backers quit.

It was a ballot initiative plan that was controversial from the start.

The plan called for a split of California's electoral votes by congressional district, thus making it darn near impossible for a Democrat to win the White House in 2008.

The plan was to collect enough signatures to get the electoral vote count change on the ballot.

Last week, the spokesman for the proposed ballot measure explained it would be better to split California's winner take all system, so Republicans could get their share.

"It's a bunch of a people from California trying to do right by Californians," said Kevin Eckery, Californians for Equal Representation, in a September 19, 2007 interview.

That spokesman resigned and has not returned our calls.

Governor Schwarzenegger's close political ally and former personal attorney, who was heading the ballot initiative campaign, also resigned.

Documents showed that all the money to run the signature gathering was coming from a group in Missouri calling itself T.I.A. or "Take Initiative America."

The group was organized on September 10th.

The next day, the agent for T.I.A., Charles Alan Hurth, sent $175,000 to fund the California ballot measure.

"I mean the story was too good to be true, in some respects," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist whose been working to defeat the ballot measure.

"This was starting to get some national attention. The New York tabloids were covering this. The New York Times was looking at it. Major networks were looking at covering it. National Public Radio was covering it," said Lehane.

The heat over the mystery money just got to be too much says ABC7's political analyst, who is in Columbus, Ohio at a conference on political ethics.

"I think the resignations tell you two things: one, that this measure is probably dead in the water, and two, there is probably more to the story if people keep exploring," Bruce Cain, Ph.D., UC Berkeley Washington Center.

Professor Cain is talking about a number of the political and financial links between Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani and the backers of the initiative drive.

"I think they didn't want this mess to spread any further and I think the resignations are a way to bring the whole thing to a close," said Cain.

A spokesman for the state Republican Party is still hopeful.

"I don't believe you can say this initiative is dead in the water, at this point in time," said Kevin Roberts, California Republican Party.

I asked the GOP spokesman if he thought Californians had a right to know who was funding the signature gathering needed to qualify a ballot measure.

"At this point, I wouldn't comment one way or another on it," said Roberts.

The big question that remains is who really donated the $175,000 to fund the campaign signatures?

You can bet Democratic Candidates for President would like to know if any of the Republican hopefuls were in on it.

The governor didn't want to buck his own party over this initiative, but was willing to tell ABC7 News he thought it reflected a "loser's mentality."

That comment may have gone a long way towards drying up support for this measure.

Get more News »

• Email
• Print
• Report a typo
•