Homestretch for Measure S: Turnout Key for School Parcel Tax

By Jorge Casuso

June 1 -- On the surface, it’s hard to tell there’s an election Tuesday. Missing are the thousands of signs that bloom on lawns across the City during political campaigns, the publicized fundraisers and heated debates.

Which is exactly what proponents of Measure S want -- a low-key (some have called it “stealth”) campaign that mobilizes backers and keeps home opponents of the $225-a-year parcel tax to help bail out the cash-strapped school district.

But if there is little evidence a campaign is underway, a large political organization that has raised and spent more than $200,000 and recruited between 400 and 500 volunteers has been working behind the scenes to get the 16,000 supporters they have called and visited out to the polls.

“It wasn’t a stealth campaign, but it was a targeted campaign,” said architect Ralph Mechur, who is heading the effort. “We’re working hard, we’re doing everything, we’re running our game plan. What it comes down to is who votes on Tuesday.”

Opponents of the parcel tax -- who have raised about $7,000 -- agree the key will be turnout. Measure S proponents, they contend, have run a “stealth” campaign that is using big money to buy a victory by targeting voters with slick mailers that fail to mention that the measure is a tax.

“The same people who complain the hotels bought the last election are buying this one,” said opposition leader Mat Millen, referring to the successful hotel-backed effort to defeat the City’s living wage law in 2000. “They never say that this is a tax.

“The name of the game in this election is to get the identified voter to the polls,”” Millen said. “We haven’t raised enough money to do that. The major problem is that this is a stealth campaign… They just want their people to vote.”

Proponents of the parcel tax are hoping that targeting parents with children in the district, renters loyal to Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights and Democratic homeowners will help them reach the necessary two-thirds vote, a goal that Measure EE, a parcel tax on the 2000 ballot, failed to win.

“We’ve identified a lot of yes votes, now it’s a matter of getting them out to the polls,” said former School Board president Pam Brady, who stepped down two years ago after three terms. “It’s about momentum, enthusiasm and education.”

Parents of district students -- who account for about 10,000 of the 66,000 registered voters in Santa Monica and Malibu -- are at the core of the effort to pass the tax, which would pump $6.5 million a year into the district over the next six years.

“Certainly parents are the first people we want to identify,” Brady said. “But a number of parents weren’t registered to vote.”

As a result, the Measure S campaign has focused on the PTA councils to both get the word out to parents and to help mount a registration drive, Brady said. Parents also used networks at neighborhood organizations and children’s clubs.

“How we have run this campaign is personal contacts. It’s about talking to people,” Brady said. “You go everywhere you can. We let parents carry the ball on that.”

A key goal of the Measure S campaign has been to encourage voters to cast absentee ballots, which are traditionally used by older, more conservative homeowners that tend to vote against tax increases.

Although those ballots will not be counted until election day, as of last week 5,400 absentee ballots had be received by the County Registrar, according to the Measure S campaign.

On Sunday more than 50 volunteers knocked on the doors of supporters, and every line at the phone bank at the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union was staffed with volunteers urging backers to vote Tuesday. It is the final push in a campaign that has sent out ten mailers to targeted households in both cities.

Former Mayor Dennis Zane was one of the volunteer parents walking the precincts Sunday, knocking on the same doors he went to when he pushed for rent control nearly a quarter century ago.

“It’s very encouraging,” said Zane, who spent five days walking the precincts. “People get it. They understand.”

Opponents of the tax measure used their $7,000 to buy 200 lawn signs -- “I put them up, two days later they’re gone,” Millen complained -- and to copy and send one mailer to about 7,000 homeowners urging them to “Save Proposition 13”.

Opponents acknowledge they will have a harder time defeating Measure S than they did bringing down the $300 parcel tax on the 2000 ballot.

Unlike the 2000 election -- which included a Governors race and a slew of local contests -- Tuesday’s election is a single-issue race. And that’s a major advantage for the Measure S campaign, which hopes the conservative homeowners who flocked to the polls to unseat Governor Gray Davis won’t care enough to turn out.

Still, Millen is hopeful that conservative homeowners, who are about equal in number to parents with children in the local schools, will turn out.

“Because it’s a two-thirds vote, we have a chance,” Millen said. “They’re hoping that the homeowners won’t turn out and that they turn out the parent of every kid in school.”