What people don't realize is how lucrative initiative drives are for those who actually organize them. The process might drain businesses in CA and even throughout the nation (leaving less to fight the recessionary pressures), but those working the initiative drives make out like bandits.
An earlier two month GOP initiative drive over something more than stupid, like depriving illegal aliens of drivers licenses, (when in fact illegal aliens already couldn't get drivers licenses in CA), netted the organizers $400k over the 2 months effort according to a news report.
I saw some of that group's petition people. They looked like gullible volunteer labor, not at all like pros. I'm guessing that either the GOP was taken for a ride on that issue, or that the GOP went along for the ride for the information they got from the petitioners. They could add the data on thousands of people (who would be known not to be too bright) to their Voter Vault so they can pester them all election season and go to their door to make sure they get to the polls on election day to vote Republican.
But apparently a former Giuliani staffer and others thinks more money can be made as the GOP attempts to steal electoral votes from CA, by changing the way electoral votes are deligated to be similar to that of a small minority if U.S. states.
Excerpt LA Times report "GOP retools drive to change electoral votes ":
Veteran Republican consultants said Monday that they were relaunching a drive to change the way California allocates its electoral college votes, aimed at helping the 2008 GOP presidential nominee capture the White House.
Political strategist David Gilliard said he was taking over the ballot initiative campaign, along with strategist Ed Rollins and fund raiser Anne Dunsmore. Consultant Mike Arno will oversee the signature gathering effort.
"Our budget is going to be whatever it takes to make the June ballot," said Gilliard, who played a key role in placing the 2003 recall of California Gov. Gray Davis onto the ballot.
Woohoo! Are they going to make the bundle on that one! Come on everyone! Donate Donate Donate!
These people need new cars!
Fat cats, businesses take note! Grabbing some of CA's electoral votes is the way to steal the next election. Just drop the money in the box.
And if it doesn't work out, some people will have made a huge bundle out of it.
It shows the Republican desperation that they continue to play such tricks.
The initiative would change California's method of allocating its 55 electoral votes from winner-take-all, which favors Democrats, to a congressional district-based approach. Republicans currently hold 19 congressional seats, so the GOP nominee presumably could win a similar number of electoral votes.
The effort stalled last month when its original organizers failed to raise the $2 million needed to place it on the June ballot.
Until recently, Dunsmore oversaw the fund raising for former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's presidential campaign -- prompting Democrats to charge that Giuliani was behind the initiative drive. A major Giuliani benefactor, Wall Street mogul Paul E. Singer, donated $175,000 to fund the original effort.
Yeah, Giuliani can beat Hillary. That's why he ran away from the 2000 New York Senate race. He couldn't even beat her in his own state.
"Republicans seem to be pursuing a strategy where they will lose at the polls and, along the way, define the GOP as the party of electoral fraudster," said Chris Lehane, a former Clinton White House aide who was organizing the opposition.