# The Movement: An Autopsy of Prop 9 **URL:** **By** Roy A. Childs, Jr., Michael Lipson **Published:** August 1, 1980 --- “By mid-April, Prop 9 had begun trailing badly in the polls and by two weeks before the election, the “No on 9” forces had grabbed the upper hand.” ## Why Prop 9 Lost On June 3RD, THE TAX revolt suffered its first major setback in two years, when California voters soundly rejected Proposition 9—which would have slashed state income taxes in half—by a stunning margin of nearly 2 to 1. The defeat wasn’t really a surprise, however. By mid-April, Prop 9 had begun trailing badly in the polls and by two weeks before the election, the “No on 9” forces had grabbed the upper hand. Although the loss represents a backlash from the public sector rather than a new political trend, libertarians must learn from it if they are to build a viable, long-term tax revolt. This defeat proves that, by himself, Howard Jarvis cannot bring together the diverse coalition necessary to make high taxes a thing of the past. Prop 9’s defeat is also proving to be mildly embarrassing to _The Libertarian Review_, which, in its July issue, published two articles on Jarvis II without even mentioning Prop 9’s falling status in the polls, and without any criticism of Howard Jarvis’s strategy. But in this respect, LR was following an unfortunate trend in the libertarian movement: me-tooing Jarvis’s every move. In 1978, when the tax revolt burst forth into the mainstream of American politics, perhaps this was the best thing to do. Now, however, with the voters’ rejection of Jarvis II, it is clear that libertarians must pursue a far more ambitious goal in the tax revolt, setting its ideological tone and content and moving it beyond the quagmire of traditional Left/Right politics. Certainly, we should be grateful to Howard Jarvis for what he has done. No one has worked more diligently to spark the tax revolt. He spent thirty years in relative obscurity, fighting for the day when the people of California would listen to him. Nevertheless, the libertarian movement has adulated him without separating the libertarian and right-wing components of his approach. The fact is that from a libertarian perspective, Jarvis’s strategic flaws run much deeper than the abrasive manner which has virtually become his trademark. From the beginning, the libertarian anti-tax movement has sought to unify diverse elements from Left and Right, to unite the anti-tax sentiments of the peace movement and the anti-tax sentiments of conservatives into one big political coalition powerful enough to roll back government power. Howard Jarvis, not only seems not to understand this approach, he did everything he could to turn off a great many of the people who would eventually benefit from lower taxes and the resulting booming economy. Who, besides white, heterosexual, middle class homeowners could feel comfortable with his rhetoric? Certainly not blacks, Hispanics, or gays. In a much-quoted campaign statement in San Francisco, for example, Jarvis described that city as “a garbage dump \[with\] too many queers, minorities and just plain assholes.” In those brief five seconds, he killed any chance Prop 9 had in San Francisco. And that statement is unfortunately typical. The problem is that Howard Jarvis makes the same mistake that most conservatives do when they try to appeal to larger audiences than they are used to: he presumes that his social values are universal. Libertarians—some of whom might even share Jarvis’s social views—at least realize that everyone has a legitimate right to behave differently. Jarvis does not. His social intolerance is reflected in his call for “law and order,” which is nothing more than a code word for using tax-funded police to put “troublemakers”—real or imagined—in their place. His unflinching commitment to this has even led him to support an initiative which would insulate police departments from budget cuts, if they result from declining tax receipts. The plain fact is that to many poor and minority taxpayers, urban police departments are a constant source of oppression—witness the massive numbers of police brutality cases in ghetto areas, the constant surveillance of deviant political and religious groups, and even the harassment of innocent motorists. The Los Angeles Police Department, a sponsor of the initiative to exempt police from budget cuts, is notorious for such inexcusable abuses. And if police departments escape the wrath of the tax revolt, their oppression of minority communities could actually escalate and their arrogance increase. Taxpayers in such communities could hardly be expected to back the cause of a man who seems to want to visit such a fate upon them. Another problem Jarvis had with Prop 9 was a lack of support from the fastest growing segment of the electorate—the elderly. The elderly formed a vital part of the coalition that voted yes on 13 two years ago; yet they deserted Prop 9. Many of them voted for Prop 13 because they were socked with skyrocketing tax bills that threatened to force them out of their own homes. But this time it was a different ball-game. Since most people over 60 are either retired or approaching retirement, they saw little to be gained from an income tax cut, but much to lose in the form of Medi-Cal, public transportation, and recreation. Naturally, they voted Prop 9 down. So did the people who made less than $15,000 a year, whether they lived in ghettos or not. They generally presumed that the tax saving would not equal the loss in government services they’d sustain. It was alleged by the No on 9 campaign that 45 percent of the tax savings would go to 9 percent of the population. _The Wall Street Journal_ refuted this claim, noting that present loopholes would be left intact by Prop 9, thus making the state income tax even more “progressive” than before. But Jarvis’s campaign hardly ever stressed this fact in rebuttal, and neither the poor nor the elderly supported his tax cut. Nor, even more important, did they volunteer to work for it. Proposition 13 was a true grassroots effort. It cost almost nothing to qualify it for the ballot, because so many volunteers—including many elderly and poor volunteers—worked to collect signatures for it. The bulk of the money collected for the campaign could therefore be reserved for all-important media advertising. Proposition 9, unlike Prop 13, was not a grass roots campaign. It was run by Butcher-Forde Associates, a professional conservative organization specializing in direct mail initiative drives. Relying on direct mail to qualify 9 for the ballot meant two things, both important in understanding why it failed. First, it completely bypassed the community organizing and grass roots involvement which were the hallmarks of the Prop 13 battle, making the campaign much less decentralized and much more dependent on Jarvis’s own strategy for Prop 9’s victory. Second, this meant that there was almost no local organization after Prop 9 had qualified for the ballot, making the campaign for 9, in its final months, almost completely a one-man show. This meant that Jarvis and Butcher-Forde effectively sealed themselves off from the electorate which made it easier for them to ignore whole constituencies which should have been united behind Proposition 9. And since most of the money raised for Prop 9 was squandered by the direct mail campaign to get it on the ballot, little was left in the closing weeks before the election, and Jarvis found himself heavily outspent by the No on 9 forces. None of this should be blamed completely on Jarvis, however; tragically, California libertarians gave Prop 9 only lukewarm support. Our victory at the polls two years ago lured us into com-placeny, and we succumbed to the temptation to let Howard Jarvis run the show. Unlike the 13 campaign, no LP literature was printed, no outreach was done to community groups and no LP activists became seriouly involved. As the tide began turning and the No on 9 Committee gained momentum in early April, we ignored the signs of impending defeat. Libertarians, in short, succumbed to a fatal disease in politics, the temptation to ride a winner. As a movement, we cannot afford to hand the moral fiber of the tax revolt to a man incapable of bringing our principles and ethics to the voters. Certainly Jarvis can light a momentary flame in the public’s eye, but he has a limited strategic vision with no ideology which transcends the traditional Left/Right spectrum. Yet it is such an ideology alone which can enable us to unite diverse groups into a coalition to roll back government power. To rebuild the tax revolt, libertarians must use their own sense of strategy. The National Taxpayers Union-supported Committee to Abolish the Sales Tax (CAST) is an excellent example of how we can broaden the traditional anti-tax coalition to include the working class. Sales taxes discriminate against the poor; no amount of rhetoric can evade this fact. People with meager incomes pay a much higher proportion in sales taxes than those with higher incomes. Yet so acute is Howard Jarvis’s middle class tunnel vision that he opposes abolition of the sales tax on the curious ground that it is a “fair” tax. “When I am paying the sales tax,” he says in his recent book _Mad as Hell_, “I have to pay only as much as I decide that I can afford; otherwise I don’t buy the item.” Libertarians know that there is no such thing as a “fair” tax, and that the sales tax is one of the most regressive of taxes in any case. I hope that libertarians will work with CAST to build the grass roots campaign that Jarvis did not, this time around. The Libertarian Party should use it as an opportunity to bring economic issues to minority groups and to the poor. Looking back several years from now, the defeat of Proposition 9 will seem like a necessary learning experience. We will go forward to the second stage of the tax revolt, and the stakes will increase. If we learn from Howard Jarvis’s mistakes, if we learn how to bring new constituents into the anti-tax movement, using our ideology and strategic vision as a guide, the tax revolt will succeed. Michael Lipson is the Managing Director of Students for a Libertarian Society. ## In praise of Howard Jarvis Michael Lipson’s VALuable analysis of the defeat of Proposition 9 in California contains several useful insights and suggestions, and a few flaws and omissions. In my view, his criticisms of Howard Jarvis are much too severe, his criticisms of libertarians too mild, and there is at least one important strategic concern which he doesn’t address. Howard Jarvis is no libertarian; he is rather a remnant of the Old Right, a populist, anti-tax, anti-big government crusader who has worked long and hard to roll back government power—by cutting off its money. It was Jarvis, more than anyone else—though we should never forget Paul Gann’s contributions—who worked for the victory of Prop 13 in California. The plain fact is that the man is seventy-eight years old; to expect him to have the social views of Michael Lipson, a twenty-five year old libertarian activist with a rather cosmopolitan background, is an absurd expectation. Jarvis is a curmudgeon, often charming, frank, and abrasive. We shouldn’t blame his antics for the defeat of Prop 9, for the truth of the matter is that compared to his behavior in 1978, 1980’s Prop 9 campaign saw him shine like an angel. If he alienated people in 1980, he had done more to alienate them in 1978. Neither should Jarvis’s strategy be completely discarded. Lipson makes much of Jarvis’s backing of the referendum which would have isolated the local police from the effects of budget cuts, pointing out that many people view the police as oppressive. But most voters are middle class, and to them the local police are a bulwark against violent crime. They suspect, and rightly, that the politicians and bureaucrats cut police budgets first when they are confronted with tax revenue reductions, in order to punish rebellious taxpayers and scare them into believing that tax cuts must bring with them a reduction of efforts against violent crime—that, in effect, there is no other fat in government budgets. Yet the American Bar Association estimates that up to half of our law enforcement resources are not devoted to the war against violent crime at all, but to a pointless, puritanical war against marijuana smokers, poker players, prostitutes, and dealers in “pornography.” A libertarian would point this out to middle class voters, and argue that some cuts in police budgets are not only possible, but also desirable on civil liberties grounds. Jarvis, not being a libertarian, does not see this, and his attempt to reassure middle class taxpayers that tax cuts would not lessen their protection against violent crime was fairly reasonable. If we want to criticize Jarvis’s strategy, a far better place to begin would be in his choice of tactics. During the campaign for Proposition 13, Jarvis made the issue one of justice: President Carter prates about “human rights,” he said, but never says what those rights are. Foremost among them, Jarvis pointed out, is the right to acquire and keep property. And people’s homes were being stolen from them. They worked their whole lives to buy a home, and taxes made it impossible to keep them. The image of retired couples and elderly widows being thrown out of their homes because of oppressive property taxes was what gave that crusade its fire. By 1980, Jarvis had become at once more sophisticated and more complacent. To achieve some “responsibility” in the closing days of the Prop 13 campaign, Jarvis enlisted economists like USC’s Arthur Laffer, of “Laffer Curve” fame, who claimed that cutting taxes would actually raise government revenues, because of economic growth. In the Prop 9 campaign, economics replaced justice, and the fire went out of the crusade. Instead of repeating his argument from justice, Jarvis relied for the most part on economic projections and statistics, making the issue one of efficiency and economic forecasting, criticizing government waste and addressing the obscure and difficult question of how large the government surplus was. The urgency was gone. Then, too, Jarvis faced another problem: the fact that Proposition 9 came after the victories of Prop 13 in 1978 and Prop 4—the Gann Tax Limitation Initiative—in 1979. Critics argued that we needed time to assess the effects of these two measures, and that Prop 9 was excessive and irresponsible. It wasn’t, but unless Jarvis was prepared to address the question of what to cut back as state revenue declined by several billion dollars, it was to prove an effective argument against 9. In fact, neither Jarvis nor anyone else was willing to talk about what to cut. Libraries, parks, schools, and everything else were taken as sacred. Virtually free college educations provided at taxpayers’ expense seemed to be sacred as well. This proves that the tax revolt will not get far until and unless we succeed in persuading a good number of people that much of what government does simply shouldn’t be done. Finally, let us look at the role libertarians played in both campaigns. After the victory of Prop 13, I wrote in the July 1978 issue of _LR_ about the role libertarians played in the campaign: > Libertarians were proud, and justifiably so, for here was a cause they had worked for, a libertarian cause that had won. They had written and passed out leaflets, appeared at meetings, debated, asked questions in the public debates of others, come to rallies, spoken out on radio and television, manned literature tables, and campaigned for 13 in the streets. There followed a list of what a number of libertarians had done to promote Prop 13. None of this was true during the Prop 9 campaign. Perhaps because of the early polls showing Prop 9 an easy victor, perhaps because they were so active in opposing the reinstitution of the draft, or were exhausted by the successful attempt to achieve ballot status for the Libertarian Party in California, libertarians were largely inactive during the Prop 9 campaign, doing none of the things they did during 1978. There were, to be sure, a few honorable exceptions, such as _Reason’s_ Manny Klausner and LP Chairman Dave Bergland. But they were in a tiny minority. That is the fundamental reason I don’t like Lipson’s attack on Howard Jarvis. It is absurd to talk about leading the tax revolt merely on the grounds that our libertarian ideology is against taxes, when we did little more than cheer Jarvis on this year. To lead something, we must work. It isn’t Jarvis’s fault that we didn’t. When Prop 13 soared to victory in 1978, Jarvis was excessively modest: “This isn’t my victory,” he said, “it was a victory of the people. Now the tax revolt is in the hands of the people. It’s up to you.” We didn’t take him at his word. The next time, we should. Libertarians must move beyond their ideological ghetto if they are ever going to accomplish the massive reforms which we so desperately need. The Clark for President campaign has already made the first step in this direction; it is up to the rest of us to join—now.