But sponsoring a ballot initiative is forever.

That lesson hit home last week as I interviewed former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger during a global forum on direct democracy in Mexico City.

Californians elected Schwarzenegger governor 20 years ago this October. His second term concluded at the end of 2010. But in a very real sense, he is still governing us, for two reasons.

First, because he is a singularly relentless person, who, once he starts something, refuses to let go. Second, because he has been among the most prolific backers of ballot initiatives in the history of the state and the country.

When it comes to ballot initiatives, getting the voters to enact your law or constitutional amendment is just the beginning. Every year brings new legislation, and every election brings new ballot initiatives that might affect or even cancel your ballot initiative.

So, you must defend it.

The best-known example of this is Proposition 13 and its late sponsor, anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis. Today, 45 years after Prop 13’s passage and more than 30 years after Jarvis’ death, there is still a Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to protect Prop 13 and its limits on property taxes.

Schwarzenegger, now 75, has been actively protecting and extending successful measures for two decades, with a tenacity so unusual I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s arranged for the Terminator to travel through time to keep his initiative alive.

To understand the Sisyphean devotion that initiative protection requires, consider Proposition 49, which Schwarzenegger convinced voters to pass way back in 2002, the year before the 2003 recall that made him governor.

Prop 49 was a measure to reserve a piece of the budget to fund after-school programs, which had been a focus of Schwarzenegger’s charitable work. Back then, I was among a crowd of reporters and political observers who saw Prop 49 as little more than a showpiece to set up a future Schwarzenegger run for the governorship.

In retrospect, we badly underestimated Prop 49, and Schwarzenegger. As governor, he defended the Prop 49 funds for after-school programs against cuts and elimination, especially during the budget crisis of the Great Recession. Since leaving office, he has continued that defense work, while advocating for additional funding from other sources.

As a result, California offers more support for after-school programs than the other 49 states combined. Last fall, the Biden administration dispatched U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to California to celebrate Prop 49—and to tout it as a model for other states.

The other two initiatives that Schwarzenegger guards like a junkyard dog are a matched pair of political reforms: groundbreaking 2008 and 2010 measures that changed state redistricting. Effectively, the measures stripped the state legislature of the power to draft district lines for its own members, and for members of Congress. Instead, the initiatives gave that power to a bipartisan citizens commission.

Those were hard-won victories for a governor whose early attempts at redistricting had failed. (After a failed initiative on redistricting in 2005, I wrote that he should give up the cause. He didn’t take my advice.) Those wins for Schwarzenegger also won him constant opposition from political parties and leading politicians trying to undo the measures in the courts.

Schwarzenegger has not been content to fight off these challenges alone. He’s successfully backed ballot measures to enact similar redistricting reforms in other states, among them Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah.

I’ve long dismissed redistricting reform as too small a change to resolve California’s political problems. My columns have proposed, instead, wholesale constitutional change that ends our tradition of single-member districts in favor of a proportional representation system that would force the parties to share power.

But it’s easy for me to criticize. As I spoke with Schwarzenegger, I found myself thinking about how hard it would be for reformers, who have launched such an effort, to turn proportional representation into a reality.

They would have to get someone to write an initiative, raise millions of dollars to qualify it for the ballot, and then somehow convince voters to adopt it.

And even if they managed to do those things, their work wouldn’t be done. They’d have to spend the rest of their lives, and beyond, defending the proposal against court challenges and other initiatives.

In other words, they’d have to find their own inner Terminator.

The post In California Politics, You Must Find Your Inner Terminator appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The new “Cal 3” ballot initiative, which would create three states, has roots in pre-Civil War days, when the proposal was to split us into a pro-Union north and pro-slavery south. In these and all other cases, would-be splitters of the Golden State make the mistake of using the map to divvy us up, putting some regions into one new California and others into another new California.

Why can’t the splitters see that this geographic strategy is self-defeating?

After all, the fundamental reason for splitting California is that so many Californians feel stuck in a place with too many people who don’t understand us—simply because they are too different. So the splitters seek to tap into a hope—that we would get more of what we wanted if only we lived in smaller Californias where more people were like us.

But this logic simply doesn’t apply here. Our regions are too much like our state—too vast and too diverse. Even with three geographically drawn California states, millions of us would remain trapped with too many people with whom we don’t agree.

To split the state, it’s better to do this democratically, not geographically. Let every Californian choose their state, based on their dreams, not their address. Since California is a state of mind, doesn’t each mind deserve its own state?

The hard part of splitting California would be divining the right categories for division. To start, let’s stipulate that we shouldn’t be divided by age, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, or race, since forming states on a discriminatory basis is probably still unconstitutional, even under President Trump.

When I pose the question of how best to divide California non-geographically, the most frequent answer is, by income. Why not give the billionaires their own state, since they like to decide everything? Wouldn’t states based on income at least solve inequality? Unfortunately, no. Nothing would stop the billionaires from imposing their values and skewing the income curve in the other states that would serve the millionaires, yuppies, the poor, and whatever is left of the middle class.

Housing might offer a more effective divide. We could divide the place up by preference on that most divisive of issues—density—with those who like tall buildings near transit no longer forced to share a government with devotees of the single-family home.

Or why not exploit the way that Prop 13 has divided us by property taxes, with new homeowners paying more and effectively subsidizing longtime homeowners? You could divide the state according to the decade in which your current home was purchased, and the tax base set. Renters would get their own separate state.

Negotiating traffic is something that all Californians have in common, but how we do it is a point of contention. Why not one state for those who drive to work alone, and others for carpoolers, bicycle riders, and scooter enthusiasts? A small state could also serve the 5.3 percent of Californians who use public transit.

And if the internet is polarizing American democracy, why not deepen the digital divide by setting up states based on our preferred social media platform, smartphone brand, or by whether you rely on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or—the inhumanity!—basic cable.

Health is another area where Californians have both high standards and very different practices. Take exercise—practitioners of traditional yoga, hot yoga, barre exercises, jogging, and walking all deserve their own states. So do smokers, nonsmokers, pot smokers, and vapers. And why not stop fighting about food and just let vegans, vegetarians, meat eaters and devotees of the latest faddish diet all govern themselves? We might divide up the state based on childbirth preferences—with competing states of Doula and Midwife and Ob-Gyn.

Ideas matter in California, and the personal can be political. So we could split up under the competing banners of Second Wave, Third Wave, and Fourth Wave Feminism, with yet another state for those who say they’re pro-woman but just don’t like the word “feminist.”

And for a state so devoted to leading in climate change, a split based on energy usage feels like an opportunity for leadership. You could live in a different state depending on whether you prefer solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, or fossil fuels. This wouldn’t be much of an adjustment. People who live in the Petroleum State already have long commutes and high mortgages that keep them breathing exhaust, while the people in Solar State have subsidized panels and enjoy the good vibes of government-bedazzled credit. Residents of the Nuclear State could just leave the AC on all the time to keep their cores cool.

Now that I think about it, consumption so defines Californians that it might be the best way to separate us. Why not a different state—Ralphs, Vons, Safeway, Dollar Value, Albertsons, Whole Foods, Stater Bros—depending on where you do your grocery shopping? (I’d happily live in Trader Joe’s.) Or in coffee-crazed era, we could separate based on allegiance to Starbucks, Peet’s, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and McDonald’s—with a breakaway republic for those who prefer the hyperlocal.

Since Californians take their entertainment so seriously that we elect stars to high office, why not four different Californias, each ruled by a stunning musical diva? I’d live in Beyonceland, but would respect those who chose to reside in KatyPerryville, TaylorSwiftopia, or The State of Rihanna. We also could split into four states called Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix, and “Sorry, But I Actually Have a Girlfriend and a Life.”

The fairest way to create new Californias would be to assign each of us to a different state by lottery. The downside of such random splitting: Each of those states would end up looking like a smaller version of the California we have today.

And if you don’t like any of these ideas, why not try placating Tim Draper, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist bankrolling the current “Cal 3” ballot initiative?

I saw Draper recently in San Mateo, where he had closed down 3rd Avenue outside his private entrepreneurial university (Draper University for Heroes) for a “Blockchain Block Party.” Draper, like most rich people, thinks a lot about money. He’s a big believer in digital currency, which he sees as a positive force for disrupting economies to spur new ideas. Breaking up California geographically would inspire similar new thinking, he says.

At his party, he handed out chocolate Bitcoins (which were delicious) and revealed a giant banner reading, “Tim Draper Predicts…. Bitcoin Will Go to $250,000 by 2022.”

Of course, Bitcoin trades at $6,500 as I write. But this is California—to each their own. We could give Draper and his cryptocurrency disciples their own state, while also having states for those who pay with their phones or with credit cards.

The post Let’s Split up California Into Separate States of Mind appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.