The Initiative and Referendum in California, 1898-1998

By John M. Allswang

This book provides a detailed analytic history of direct legislation—the initiative and referendum—in California from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the present day. California was one of the first states to implement mechanisms for direct legislation, and these mechanisms have been used with growing frequency as the entire process has become professionalized (from signature-gathering through fund-raising to legal challenge and defense). The author studies this important political device in terms of voter interest and behavior, its role in public issues, and how it has affected the state’s politics and government.
The book first analyzes how and why direct legislation came to California, seeing it as a typical example of the disconnected nature of progressive era reforms. It then studies selectively, from among the 300 propositions that have been on California ballots, those propositions that have been most relevant to the major issues of their time, have generated the highest levels of voter interest and participation, and have shaped the development of state politics and government.
The author pays particular attention to the explosion of direct legislation, in frequency and consequence, since the Proposition 13 “property tax revolution” of 1978. He also describes how California’s contemporary direct legislation experience—from tax rebellion to harsher criminal justice to controversial ethnic issues—has had national ramifications. The book concludes with a careful analysis of the current state of the initiative and referendum in California: voter attitudes toward the process, its role as a “fourth branch” of government, and arguments for and against changes in the procedure.
Based on extensive research in campaign documents, manuscript collections, the contemporary press, and other primary sources, the book also makes extensive use of voting data, public opinion polls, and official filings of campaign expenditures. All in all, it is the most comprehensive study ever made of a political process that is used today in twenty-seven states.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9780804780070

Book preview

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Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2000 by the Board of Trustees of the

Leland Stanford Junior University

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Allswang, John M.

The initiative and referendum in California, 1898—1998/ John M. Allswang.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

9780804780070

ISBN 0-8047-3821-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Referendum—California—History—20th century. I. Title.

JF495.C2 A45 2000 328.2794’09’04—dc21

99-044068

Original printing 2000

Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00

Typeset by Keystone Typesetting, Inc., in 10/12.5 Sabon.

Once again, for S, E, & Y

and in memory of BKK

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

List of Tables

Preface

Introduction

1 Progressivism and the Origins of Direct Legislation

2 Direct Legislation in Good Times and Bad, 1920—1939

3 Old Issues and New, 1940—1969

4 Howard and Paul to the Rescue, 1970—1982

5 Initiatives All Over the Place, 1984—1994

6 Not Quite History, but More of the Same, 1996 and Beyond

APPENDIX A - Direct Legislation Propositions, 1912–1998

APPENDIX B - Definitions of Statistics and Terms

Notes

Bibliographical Essay

Index

List of Tables

TABLE 1.1

TABLE 1.2

TABLE 1.3

TABLE 2.1

TABLE 2.2

TABLE 2.3

TABLE 2.4

TABLE 2.5

TABLE 2.6

TABLE 3.1

TABLE 3.2

TABLE 3.3

TABLE 3.4

TABLE 3.5

TABLE 4.1

TABLE 4.2

TABLE 4.3

TABLE 4.4

TABLE 4.5

TABLE 4.6

TABLE 4.7

TABLE 4.8

TABLE 4.9

TABLE 4.10

TABLE 5.1

TABLE 5.2

TABLE 5.3

TABLE 5.4

TABLE 5.5

TABLE 5.6

TABLE 5.7

TABLE 5.8

TABLE 5.9

TABLE 5.10

TABLE 6.1

TABLE 6.2

TABLE 6.3

TABLE 6.4

TABLE 6.5

TABLE 6.6

TABLE 6.7

TABLE 6.8

TABLE 6.9

Preface

Like most historians of my generation, I long assumed that what was important in American history began at the Atlantic Ocean and ended at the Mississippi River. Even after I had come to live and work in California, my academic mind remained well to the east. But over time I became increasingly interested in, and often bemused by, my adopted state. As a political historian I found its politics a bit odd, but obviously important, reflecting the increasingly influential position California was playing in all aspects of our national life. Nowhere was this so evident as in the direct intervention of the people in the political process, ignoring the principles of representation and disdaining the role of party.

This book is about that popular participation in political decision making. Specifically, it deals with direct legislation, a process whereby the people at large can ignore or confound their elected representatives by directly enacting or revoking statutes and constitutional amendments. The process began in what is generally called the Progressive Era, at the turn of the century, a time when middle-class business and professional people began to use the power of government to shape society to their emerging values. And it has grown in significance well beyond the expectations of that era. Direct legislation as process has never existed apart from substance; that is, the social, political, economic, and cultural issues being addressed have always been at least as important as the way they were being decided by the public.

California has been more important than any other state in the development of this form of democratic politics. Particularly since the Proposition 13 Revolution of 1978, California has influenced other states not only to use direct legislation, but also to apply it to specific contemporary issues. Thus, a focus on California projects, to some degree, well beyond the state’s borders. This phenomenon has been sometimes impressive, sometimes disturbing, and sometimes screwy; its development and effects over a century’s time are the subject of this book.

The book is the result of a much lengthier process than I had ever anticipated. I began the research in the early 1990s, working on the origins of direct legislation and data collection for the whole period. This resulted in an article or two, and a book which was designed primarily as a reference source and guide to research. Then, in the middle of the decade, my work on the topic came almost to a halt, interrupted by almost four years of administrative duties and a few other things. Only in the last few years have I been able to get back to it and complete what I had long anticipated. The delay was not without value, however, since the second half of the 1990s has been an important period in the development of initiative democracy.

Over this long period of time, and inquiry into three hundred elections spanning nearly a full century, I have benefited from the assistance and graciousness of a very large number of institutions and individuals—more, indeed, than I may remember. The Special Collections and Map & Government Documents libraries at UCLA, as well as the Institute of Governmental Studies and Bancroft libraries at UC Berkeley, were most welcoming. This was true also at the Huntington Library, Stanford University Library, and at my own institution, California State University, Los Angeles. The staffs of the California State Archives and the California State Library in Sacramento also helped with my repeated searches for various kinds of rarely used information. The Office of the Secretary of State of California, particularly the Political Reform Division, and the California Fair Political Practices Commission, were very helpful with voting and campaign contribution information.

My tenure as Field Institute Faculty Fellow in 1997—1998 permitted me to formulate my own questions, in collaboration with Professor Ted Lascher of California State University, Sacramento, for the Field (California) Poll of August 1997. I am grateful to Mark DiCamillo of the Field Research Institute for his assistance with those questions. The early stages of research for this book were supported by two grants from California State University, Los Angeles, which I am pleased to acknowledge.

At various times, a number of individuals have read and commented upon parts of this manuscript. Tom Sitton of the History Division of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County provided some helpful advice early in the project, and then, as reader for Stanford University Press, made numerous suggestions, great and small, that improved the quality of the manuscript. Martin J. Schiesl of California State University, Los Angeles, frequently shared with me his extensive knowledge of California history. Bruce M. Stave of the University of Connecticut, as usual, provided insightful comments and support. Thomas Goebel of the German Historical Institute and Helmut Klumpjan of Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg also provided useful suggestions based on their own work on direct legislation.

Norris Pope and Stacey Lynn of Stanford University Press, and copy editor Ruth Steinberg, were all very helpful in the development of the manuscript.

Suzanne Allswang has, despite her limited English, proved to be a most effective copy editor. Yael and Justin Prough, and Eden Allswang Bruner and Marc Bruner provided latent support that helped establish overall perspective.

Dealing with hundreds of elections and such a wide variety of information and data seems to produce a copious quantity of errors, no matter how high the quality of one’s assistance. While I would like to blame others for the blunders that remain, I fear that the responsibility is mine.

J.M.A.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 1999

Introduction

The process of direct democracy, including the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, has played an important and controversial role in American city and state politics and government since the end of the nineteenth century. The initiative allows voters to originate, by petition, statutes or constitutional amendments, which are submitted directly to the electorate for approval or rejection. In the referendum, voters by petition can demand that a statute passed by the state legislature be put on the ballot for popular approval or revocation.¹ And in the recall, voters can petition to place on the ballot a proposal to remove an officeholder.

The terms direct democracy and direct legislation are often used synonymously, although, strictly speaking, the former term includes the recall whereas the latter does not. Because there have been no statewide recalls in California, however, we can ignore the fact that the terms were often used interchangeably. To confuse matters a bit more, the term referendum has often been used, especially but not exclusively in the past, not only as the name of a particular process but also as a synonym for direct democracy in general. Here, the term will be used only in its specific sense.

The initiative and referendum were originally adopted to serve as a lifeboat of sorts—to provide a way for the public to directly intervene in the legislative process when the state legislature was unresponsive to public concerns. Somewhere along the way direct legislation moved well beyond its original intent, to the point that it has often overwhelmed the governing processes it was designed to monitor, becoming in effect a fourth branch of state government. Consequently, the impact of direct legislation on the structure and operation of California politics and government is as worthy of study as is its role in deciding important issues in the state’s life.

The idea of direct popular participation in governmental decision making, as opposed to representative government, is a modern one that nonetheless has ancient roots. It is based on the related idea of the collective popular wisdom, albeit with the people defined in often restrictive terms. Supporters of the ideal of popular governance have often pointed to its origins in ancient Athens, and it is true that Athens and other Greek city-states did permit all adult male citizens to meet and participate in government decisions. In a way, Athenian democracy was more direct than what we call direct democracy today, since the people did not assert their influence from discrete polling places but rather met and discussed and decided issues face to face.²

In the Athenian capital, the practice of democracy often entailed as many as six thousand people at a time engaging in such direct participation; no wonder oratory became a Greek virtue. These six thousand represented about one-fifth of those qualified to vote, suggesting that low turnout is not an exclusively modern phenomenon. Moreover, that total of 30,000 qualified participants was only about one-third of all citizens, given that women and minors had no political rights. And citizens made up only about 10 percent of the entire Athenian population, foreigners (metics) and slaves being excluded.³ So the construct of the people who participated in direct democracy was a limited one, which is not so different from our own day—whether considering the matter of the legally excluded or the voluntarily uninvolved.

As in other things, Athens cast its influence on Rome to some extent. But the idea of direct popular democracy pretty much died there. While an active imagination might find subsequent mass popular participation in governance in one place or another, at one time or another (the Germanic tribes, for example, or Iceland), there is no real direct line of descent from these ancient practices to modern ones.⁴

The New England town meeting of colonial days is often cited as another example of direct democracy. There, as in Athens, every adult male could participate in decision making, although at first there were religious as well as age and gender requirements. The early New England town was small, religiously and culturally unified. Popular participation in governance reflected the intertwining of church and state, and political practices followed church-based ones. Ultimately, popular democracy at the town level did survive secularization in New England, and it has persisted to some degree to the present day, particularly in the smaller towns.⁵

Even before the end of the seventeenth century, however, population growth and geographic spread made the town meeting increasingly unwieldy; representative governance began to replace it. Moreover, the idea of direct mass political participation did not exercise much influence on the rest of America, which has honored it more in rhetoric than in practice. The American experience from the colonial period on was overwhelmingly one of the development of representative political institutions. It was that practice that the founding fathers sought to perfect in the Constitution, and that their successors turned into political democracy—long qualified on gender, race, and other bases, but broader than before.

One exception to the decline of direct democracy from the early national period on had to do with the adoption and amendment of state constitutions. It became increasingly common after about 1820 for changes in these documents to be submitted to voters for approval or rejection. In some states, various other issues were occasionally put out for popular decision, as well.⁶

Equally or perhaps even more influential than the New England experience was the Swiss one. It became the model for many of the advocates of direct legislation in the American states at the end of the nineteenth century. Modern Switzerland had modeled its own constitution on the American one, but jumped ahead of the New World in developing direct democracy. Switzerland was similar to the United States in some ways, particularly in aspects of its polity, where the distribution of power between commune (Gemeinde), canton, and national government paralleled the American city-state-federal system.

The referendum process, where, as in Athens or early New England, the people could come together to approve or reject decisions made by government, went back in some cantons to the sixteenth century. But the expansion of that process, along with the initiative, and implementation through the ballot rather than public meeting, was a nineteenth-century development, spreading from canton to canton until it became nearly universal and was placed in the 1874 federal constitution. Direct legislation became a key feature of Swiss democracy, unique for its time, and a major and constant force behind decision making at all levels of government. In the fact that direct legislation in Switzerland was and is national as well as cantonal and communal, it reached a stage that has yet to take place in the United States (efforts in that direction are mentioned in Chapter 6)⁷

Would-be American political reformers visited and read about the Swiss experiment in the late nineteenth century and were inspired to bring it to these shores. Chief among these converts were the Populists and other western radicals and reformers of the 1890s, which is why the early statewide successes of direct democracy were almost exclusively in the West: South Dakota in 1898; eight more western states plus Maine by 1910; and then three more western states, including California, one year later.⁸ At the same time, western cities had also adopted direct democracy and were implementing it frequently by the first decade of the twentieth century.

California was thus one of the first states to adopt direct democracy; more to the point, it has used these mechanisms almost constantly and with accelerating frequency throughout the twentieth century—more so than any other state. With the origination of increasingly fundamental and general, sometimes draconian, measures by voter groups (especially since the famous Proposition 13 in 1978), along with the professionalization of the entire process from signature gathering through legal challenge and defense, direct democracy has become both a major enterprise and a significant problem.⁹

Curiously, historians of California, even of its politics and government, have paid little attention to direct legislation. Study of the topic has been confined primarily to political scientists and public policy experts, where prescriptions for reform were often the main concern, with the historical background at best of secondary interest.¹⁰ There has been little effort by scholars to relate what was going on in the direct legislation process to broader coinciding political, social, economic, and other developments in California society. Since most important issues in California life, from the Progressive Era to the present day, have indeed been reflected in, and often decided by, the direct legislation process, this was an omission waiting to be filled. That, along with the effects of the initiative and referendum on the structure and nature of California politics and government, required a close examination of the development of direct legislation over time.

This study investigates the origins and development of the initiative and referendum in California from the 1890s to the present day. The topic is an important one for understanding not only the development of California, but often for national insights as well. For one thing, the process is widespread. Every state but Delaware uses the initiative process for approving constitutional amendments, and most use it also for bond issues.¹¹ Currently, twenty-seven states have the popular initiative and/or referendum. Thus, what has happened in California has been reflected, although generally to a lesser extent, in other places. More importantly, the direct legislation process has clearly mirrored the major issues in California and national life from decade to decade. Thus, to study the California initiative and referendum is to study a microcosm of the major sociocultural, economic, political, and other issues that the people and politicians have cared about, in the state and beyond.

Direct legislation has been controversial from the very beginning. It is, after all, a denial of the basic premises of representative democracy, based on the argument that representative democracy sometimes does not work. There have always been critics who denied the validity of the direct legislative process itself, arguing that it replaces a well-established and effective system of legislation with an inferior new system that perverts the governmental process.¹²

The contrary argument, which has convinced three generations of Californians, is that rule by the people must extend beyond representation when that representation does not, in fact, do the people’s bidding. At the outset, when South Dakota, California, Oregon, and other states instituted direct legislation at the turn of the century, it seemed not only a reasonable but a necessary step. Many people, led by middle-class business and professional groups, were convinced that large economic interests controlled their state legislatures, buying obeisance of the politicians, which, in turn, guaranteed those interests continued freedom to direct the economic life of their states. Thus, it was an extension of democracy to empower the people to act directly when their legislators were not doing their will.

These questions are addressed in Chapter 1, which seeks to explain the way in which direct legislation came to California. (My titular starting date of 1898 is somewhat arbitrary, but does reflect the political emergence of the issue at the local level.) Inevitably, an examination of the origins of direct legislation requires some reconsideration of the nature of California Progressivism, of which the initiative and referendum were definitely a part.¹³ As we shall see, California Progressivism was very much a function of individual and group interest and political activity, with cooperation among individuals and interest groups resulting more from construed political need than from construed commonalty of purpose. Thus, the various issues that came to be seen as the elements of Progressivism were actually combined with some reluctance and some happenstance, and quite often represented different constituencies.¹⁴

Subsequent chapters are organized on a chronological basis, followed by topical divisions within. It became obvious early in the study that it would be impossible to take topics like sociocultural conflict, taxation, or the environment, and follow them one by one from 1912. to 1998. The substance of such questions changed considerably over time, and many of them were very much products of their eras (e.g., an alien land law in 1920 and the ending of affirmative action programs in 1998), sometimes with connections to other issues across topical lines. One always loses something with chronological organization, but in this case it turned out to be the best way to present and analyze the development of direct legislation.

The actual chronological divisions that separate Chapters 2 through 6 are arbitrary. There have been few distinct natural divisions in the development of direct legislation. Rather, the substance of initiatives and referendums, and the groups that were most active in the politics of direct legislation, shifted gradually with the major problems of the times in California and the nation. What might be a logical break point in one area of political activity, such as taxation, might not be equivalently so in another, such as governmental reform. The divisions that I ultimately decided upon were those that seemed to serve the best analytical purposes, where questions carried over from one time period to the next proved not unduly difficult to handle. The uneven length of the book’s chapters reflects the increasing importance of direct legislation in recent decades.

This is a work of history, not one of policy analysis, prediction, or prescription for change, although none of the latter are entirely absent. I seek to explain here the main themes of initiatives and referendums in a series of time-determined periods. I particularly want to focus on the way in which important California and American problems and issues—and group interests—were reflected in battles over direct legislation, and what decisions were made in these matters by the people of the state. At the same time, the development over time of the institution itself will be analyzed: Who used direct legislation? What factors led to success or failure? What were the roles of money, professionalization, and political organization? Whose interests were actually served? How were the nature of California government and California politics affected by the constant use of direct legislation? Finally, I will look at the contemporary status of direct legislation, its strengths and weaknesses as seen by political professionals, outside observers, and the California public.

My focus here is on popular initiatives and referendums—those placed on the ballot by petition. I do sometimes refer to legislative propositions as well, when they are important aspects of a particular problem or trend. But I have not tried to include information about every one of the popular initiatives and referendums that have appeared on California ballots since 1912—a number that reached 300 in 1998 (plus about 850 propositions placed on the ballot by the legislature for constitutional amendments, bond issues, or other matters). Rather, I have selected individual propositions for inclusion because they fit at least one of several criteria: (1) propositions encompassing major trends and group conflicts in a given time period, such as Prohibition in the 1920s and crime in the 1980s and 1990s; (2) propositions that were individually very important and/or divisive, such as the overthrow of open housing legislation in 1964 and Proposition 13’s revolution in taxation in 1978; (3) groups of propositions that appeared repeatedly, relating to important trends in the state or the nation, like public welfare and campaign finance reform; and (4) propositions that revealed the major forces, particularly financial, operating in California politics at a particular time, such as the debate over oil exploration in the 1930s and the incredibly expensive battle in the 1980s and 1990s between insurance companies and trial lawyers.

Even with these criteria, this study ends up referring to quite a large number of initiatives and referendums. This can sometimes be daunting for the reader, particularly because, until the 1982 general election, propositions were numbered separately for each election. Thus, there is a Proposition 10 for the 1936 general election and a Proposition 10 for the 1938 general election—and a Proposition 1 in every election. In 1960, the state started including initiatives and referendums on the June primary ballots as well as the November general election ballots, with the result that there are often two propositions with the same number in the same calendar year. Hopefully, the context will avoid confusion about what is being discussed at any point. As an additional tool, I have included Appendix A, which is a chronological listing of all direct legislation measures—their numbers, dates, type, descriptive names, and whether they passed or failed. This should help the reader refresh his or her memory as propositions are mentioned in the text.

The research material for this study is quite various—from manuscript collections to newspapers, from campaign broadsides to myriad government documents. Inevitably, it includes a good deal of quantitative data—voting returns, census information, campaign spending reports, and public opinion polls. This data is a key part of both the descriptive and analytical material on direct legislation. Thus, the book includes numerous tabular presentations of data, accompanied by discussion of their significance. I believe these tables provide the reader with a clear and convenient summary of some of the study’s most important findings.

The statistics have been kept straightforward and simple—only percentages and coefficients of correlation. This is for two reasons. First, all of the data except the public opinion polls was reported at the county level, and these are large and heterogeneous units that permit only gross analysis. And second, I wanted to make the book accessible to a variety of readers, including myself, resisting the ease with which modern computer programs make it possible for any scholar to generate highly sophisticated statistics which he or she neither needs nor, perhaps, understands, and which needlessly alienate readers. Appendix B provides information on the general methodology of the study and an explanation of correlation coefficients for any readers who are not clear on their interpretation.

Since many of my main sources (manuscript collections, government documents, etc.) are cited again and again, I have used abbreviations for them in my notes. The meaning of each of those abbreviations is given at the start of the Notes section following the text.

1 Progressivism and the Origins of Direct Legislation

Two factors account for the development and adoption of the initiative and referendum in California. The first of these was the phenomenon of progressivism, a primarily middle- and upper-class effort to expand the role of government for political and economic reform. Since one of the tenets of Progressivism was the belief that weakening of politicians and strengthening of the people would result in better government, the issue of direct legislation became popular in numerous cities and states. In California, where the Progressives took power with the 1910 gubernatorial election of Hiram Johnson, the initiative, referendum, and recall were part of their reform program.

The second factor in the adoption of direct legislation in California was the leadership of John Randolph Haynes. Indeed, neither the origins of the issue, nor its ultimate incorporation in the measures advocated by the Progressives as they sought power, nor its implementation under Governor Hiram Johnson can be understood apart from Haynes, who sometimes seemed about the only person in California who really cared about the initiative, referendum, and recall. He was in many ways a unique personality, who corresponds little to the traditional picture of the Progressive. Whether that factor is idiosyncratic, or quite common in the history of Progressivism, relates directly to the question of the nature of Progressivism.¹

John Randolph Haynes was born in rural Pennsylvania in 1853, in a middle-class family whose English ancestors had been involved in both political and religious reform. He established a successful medical practice in Philadelphia and was also involved in local politics, opposing the Philadelphia Republican machine. This influenced his lifelong interest in public affairs and his commitment to the political empowerment of the masses.² Haynes moved with his family to Los Angeles in the 1880s, where he became extremely wealthy through his medical practice and a variety of investments and other economic interests, at the same time becoming socially prominent and active in public life. Like others of his class, Haynes joined the Chamber of Commerce, served on the boards of several corporations, and was active in numerous social clubs and organizations. Unlike them, however, he was a Christian Socialist and a Fabian. Even at the height of his medical career, Haynes devoted a tremendous amount of time to a wide variety of public issues, including some that were quite unpopular with most middle-class Californians.³

Haynes had been influenced by William Dwight Porter Bliss, an Episcopal minister and founder of a Christian Socialist society. Bliss’s movement was less ideological than practical, focusing on such reforms as women’s suffrage, child labor, graduated taxes, public ownership, and the idea of direct legislation.⁴ Bliss’s influence on Haynes’s thinking provides at least a partial explanation of both the range and the relative radicalism of Haynes’s political and social activism. He was deeply involved, for example, in the issue of mine safety, corresponding extensively with government and private agencies, and urging federal regulation.⁵ Haynes was not a Social Darwinist, and he argued for the importance of environment rather than heredity in the formation of character; thus he became an advocate for vagrants, African-Americans, child workers, and other submerged groups, and he also had good relations with organized labor. Most of his positions have not generally been seen as typical among Progressives.⁶

Haynes shared with other Progressives a suspicion of big business, and particularly of its political power. And he shared his generation’s fascination with science and factual information: to prepare an article on sterilization, for example, he wrote 517 letters to asylums, reformatories, and other institutions to obtain data to include in his analysis.⁷ Haynes devoted an impressive amount of time to each of these issues and others, but it was politics and government that became the main focus of his reform interests between about 1895 and World War I. Haynes’s interest encompassed several aspects of political and governmental reform, including the short ballot, political corruption, and the direct primary. But, above all else, he focused on direct democracy, which became an article of faith as well as efficiency:

Let me confess it gentlemen, democracy is a part of my religion. . . . We find that happiness, enlightment [sic] and propserty [sic] among the people increase in precisely the same ratio as do their power, influence, and participation in government. Responsibility tends to develop the best that is in us.⁸

But if his commitment was moral, his approach was scientific. He studied the practice of direct democracy everywhere it existed, constantly, beginning in the mid-1890s, keeping copious clippings and notes, corresponding widely, and becoming a nationally recognized expert on the initiative, referendum, and recall.⁹

It is important to note in this context that Haynes, despite the great variety of his reform interests, was never a leading figure in statewide Progressivism, although he was a powerful presence locally. He supported many of the Progressives’ issues, contributed a good deal of money to them, and wrote to Progressives, as to others, in seeking to implement direct democracy. But he remained an outside figure, rarely spoken of by regional and statewide Progressive leaders, and he was clearly not important in their planning and politics.¹⁰ He appears never to have actually joined the Lincoln—Roosevelt Republican League, the heart of California Progressivism, perhaps because it was Republican and he never considered himself one, despite supporting almost all of the Republican Progressives.¹¹

It is also significant that none of the other leading Los Angeles Progressives, such as Meyer Lissner, E. T. Earl, Marshall Stimson, or Edward A. Dickson ever evinced much interest in direct democracy. This was equally true in northern California, where only Milton T. U’Ren (who was secretary-treasurer of Haynes’s Direct Legislation League) was really involved. Hiram Johnson, for example, was still reputedly unclear on the operation of the initiative, referendum, and recall when he ran for governor in 1910.¹²

Like many other Progressive causes, direct democracy was first introduced at the city level and later became statewide in focus. The original political impetus came from the Populists, who had raised that issue, among others, locally and nationally. As early efforts at Los Angeles political reform proved unsuccessful, the time became ripe for an effort at structural reform in the mid-1890s.¹³ The date of the actual founding of the Direct Legislation League is unclear, but it seems to have begun operation in 1898.¹⁴ It was in 1898 that the local chapter of Bliss’s Union Reform League, of which Haynes would become president, proposed the initiative, referendum, and recall to the city’s Board of Freeholders, which had been created for the purpose of preparing a new city charter. The Board did support a watered-down proposal without the recall in its proposed charter, but the advocates of direct democracy opposed the proposal because of this weakness, and it failed to win voter approval. Haynes then became a candidate in the 1900 Board of Freeholders election, vowing to develop a new charter that included real direct democracy. He won the support of both major parties and received more votes than any other candidate. But the state Supreme Court invalidated the Board of Freeholders as an institution, temporarily halting the development of the issue.¹⁵ California voters, however, did approve a constitutional amendment in 1902 that permitted home rule cities to amend their charters by initiative local action, and this was a key to implementation of local direct democracy.¹⁶

When the city council refused to support charter amendments for direct democracy, Haynes invited a group of civic leaders to a dinner in 1902, soliciting support for a new nonpartisan Committee on Charter Amendments. From this base, Haynes worked for additional endorsements, from the Municipal League, local labor unions, even the mighty Southern Pacific Railroad and the Los Angeles Times (which would change its position soon after). Such broad-based support persuaded the city council to act, and the initiative, referendum, and recall were proposed as charter amendments in 1902. In the campaign, the recall was the most controversial, but all three passed, making Los Angeles the first city in the United States to so act.¹⁷ Los Angeles reformers, including Haynes and organized labor, made it also the first city to actually recall a public official—Councilman J. P. Davenport in 1904; they then mounted a recall effort in 1909 against Mayor Arthur C. Harper, who resigned before the election.¹⁸

A variety of Los Angeles interest groups also made quick use of the initiative and referendum. The referendum was used twice in 1909 by reform groups, on the sale of street railroad franchises and on increased telephone rates. The initiative was first used in 1904 or 1905 for similar measures, and again in 1906 by the Anti-Saloon League. Other California cities rapidly followed Los Angeles’s lead: twenty-one of them had modified their charters to permit the initiative and referendum by 1910. In almost all cases, direct democracy was part of a package of political reforms, generally including the direct primary and nonpartisan local elections.¹⁹ The inclusion of numerous issues expanded the proposals’ bases of support, which would be the case, also, at the state level.

Building on the momentum of Los Angeles’s success, Haynes acted immediately to move consideration of direct democracy to the state level. And until California Progressives were well organized in 1907 under the Lincoln-Roosevelt Republican League, it was Haynes and the Direct Legislation League that kept the issue alive. He first focused on the new legislature elected in 1902, that would meet in 1903, hoping for constitutional amendments to institute direct democracy. The Direct Legislation League circulated petitions statewide, seeking 100,000 signatures before the legislature met. During the campaign, Haynes wrote directly to every legislative candidate, asking for commitments on the issue. And he arranged for similar letters to be sent to them from the California State Federation of Labor and from individual unions as well as from agricultural groups. He was also able to boast of official endorsements by both the Democratic and Republican parties.²⁰

Haynes’s campaign intensified after the election. He appeared at a meeting of all newly elected state senators and assemblymen from south of the Tehachapis, urging full implementation of direct democracy at all levels of government. It was, he said, a great wave sweeping the United States. As with his operations in Los Angeles, he sought as broad a backing as possible, in this case with representatives from the Municipal League, from organized labor, and from organized farmers. There seemed to be general agreement among the neophyte legislators that the process was beneficial at the city and county level, but some feared that, statewide, it could undercut the powers of the legislature.²¹

The Direct Legislation League tried to tap every possible source of support, staying away from any issues that might be divisive. A concerted approach was made to religious leaders, resulting in distribution of a broadside signed by Congregational, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, African Methodist, Episcopal, and other leaders. Similar efforts were made with the state Socialist Party, the state Prohibition Committee, and a wide variety of nonpolitical organizations.²²

Once the legislature met, Haynes was personally financing a lobbyist for the direct democracy propositions, P. B. Preble of the Alameda County Federated Trades Council. And he personally appeared in February 1903 with his signed petitions and with resolutions from a wide variety of groups, primarily farmers’ clubs and labor.²³ The legislative debate was not extensive, revolving primarily around the number of signatures to be required to put a measure on the ballot. But not a lot of legislators shared Haynes’s enthusiasm for direct democracy; it was not a front burner issue. Interestingly, Walter F. Parker, the Southern Pacific’s man in Sacramento, was on the floor of the Assembly when it voted on the measure and did not oppose it, perhaps because the railroad had not yet developed a policy on the issue. It passed in the Assembly, but lost by one vote (14—13) in the senate.²⁴

The initiative, referendum, and recall continued to be introduced into subsequent sessions of the legislature, in 1905, 1907, and 1909, but with no effect. It appears that the Southern Pacific decisively turned against it, responding to the fact that the successful implementation of direct democracy in cities across the state was trumpeted by its proponents as a way to overthrow the railroad’s influence. This was an important factor in legislators’ actions, since the Southern Pacific did have the power to limit their advancement in the legislature.²⁵

Haynes and U’Ren were nonetheless able to