☆ Tom Rubin: Prop 5’s defeat leaves Bay Area’s activist agencies in terrible shape (1/2)
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Out-of-touch housing activists failed to broaden their appeal to the everyday taxpayer—could that explain why Prop 5 got “slapped down?” Tom Rubin, co-founder of the grassroots group that likely nudged RM4 off the ballot earlier this year, points out MTC/BAHFA still haven’t gotten the message. They insist on bond money going to prevailing wage contracts, thus inflating the cost of “affordable” housing. An Opp Now exclusive Q&A.
Opportunity Now: What does it mean for the Bay Area that Prop 5 lost?
Tom Rubin: I think they got slapped down pretty good with Prop 5; and there wasn't even all that much opposition spending, if you look at it.
ON: Yeah, the opposition to Prop 5 was massively outspent.
TR: There is no shortage, particularly in California, of left-wing billionaires that are willing to put their money into elections.
ON: Do you think the national shift toward the right affected local results?
TR: One of the big mistakes the Democrats really made was playing to their established voter blocks and support groups, while Republicans broadened their appeal. I find it remarkable that the Republican Party is now the party of the common man and woman in the United States.
ON: You’re not seeing any efforts by Democrats in California or the Bay Area to broaden their appeal?
TR: It’s going to be a long time. We’re still seeing crazy things: like with RM4, they insisted on prevailing wage.
ON: Prevailing wage means any contracts using bond money have to pay union wages?
TR: Yeah, they wanted taxes to build more low-income housing, and then push for legislation that MTC can require prevailing wage.
Guys, you do realize that makes it far more expensive to build affordable housing? Don't you see the inconsistency? Of course they do. They don't care. They have to protect their base with the construction trades.
ON: Do you think BAHFA was chastened by the election results?
TR: Yeah, I think they know they’re in terrible shape. But they think they have no choice. They must continue to push the same agenda. They will try to figure out how they can make it more salable, more palatable to the voters.
They are very, very good at polling. They spend a lot of money on it, and the people in charge know how to hire good pollsters and interpret the results; and they tend to follow the results. They're also very good at lobbying in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C., particularly Sacramento.
ON: Any insight into why they pulled RM4 off the ballot over the summer, or is that still a mystery we still have to parse?
TR: Our group SHIFT, Bay Area—we were called $20 Billion Reasons at the time—we’ve been talking about this a lot. Our consensus is that they looked at the polls and realized the chances both for RM4 and Prop 5 were very slim. The inner circle at MTC decided they were going to just pull RM4 and avoid being embarrassed.
We actually put in a public records act request to get any updates on polls. We got all the polls up until the vote in June to put it on the ballot. And they looked bad. They were even discussed at the meeting where RM4 was put on the ballot by BAHFA.
There were a lot of encouraging words, but there's a general rule that you really want to see a poll that says you've got a ten-point margin before putting a bond on the ballot. At best, they were barely at 55%.
ON: And then you found that math error on the ballot, which said RM4 would cost $670 million per year, when the actual amount was $911 million per year.
TR: I think we can take credit for that being embarrassing enough, so we may have had some influence on the decision to remove it from the ballot; but we’ll never know for sure.
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