Defeating Proposition 223: how opponents of the "95/5" school funding initiative dramatically turned around public opinion to beat it 55-45

In spite of - or perhaps because of - our lack of financial resources, we were able to execute a highly disciplined grassroots and free media campaign that laid the foundation, block by block, for our paid media at the end.

"What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?" asked Dave Low of the California School Employees Association and the coalition formed to oppose the "95/5" ballot initiative.

Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "The coalition would like you to handle the 'No' campaign."

"What's the bad news?" I asked.

"After you see the poll, you may think that was the bad news."

The 95/5 initiative, which would find its way onto California's ballot last June as Proposition 223, was a proposal originating with the United Teachers of Los Angeles and financially backed by Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Its major feature was a requirement that 95 percent of all local school district funds be spent "in the classroom," with no more than 5 percent for "administration."

When the first poll was delivered, it was worse than expected. Only 12 percent of California voters were opposed to the basic concept of limiting administrative spending. The poll, conducted before we were brought aboard, was quite thorough. It attempted to poke holes in various initiative features and questioned the idea of a rigid education funding formula - but to no avail. Not once did support for the initiative fall below 50 percent in any scenario. The prospect of beating Prop 223 was daunting indeed.

To make matters worse, the coalition's two major financial backers, CSEA and the Association of California School Administrators, were also part of the coalition to defeat the union check-off initiative, Prop 226, and would be devoting a sizable portion of their resources to that campaign. Our budget for the anti-campaign was just over $2 million, an amount that wouldn't go very far in California's expensive media markets. Money, ironically, was a secondary concern. Without a winning strategy, the dollars were not important. Our order of battle, therefore, was to:

a) find a winning strategy,

b) save our dollars for paid media, and

c) create and deploy a genuine grassroots/free media campaign.

Until we had a winning game plan, all we could do was internal fundraising. While the constituent groups in our coalition were accustomed to distributing a lot of printed materials, fliers, buttons, etc. on public issue fights, I urged them not to spend scarce dollars until we could see through our research a clear path to the goal line. Despite heavy pressure from "the troops," the spending embargo held.

As with most initiatives, Prop 223 was composed of a number of features, making it ideal for multivariate analysis. We enlisted Val Smith to construct an analytical model to help us find what traditional polling was failing to find.

After days of war-gaming, Smith and the research team developed a conjoint model that pitted different "winners" against different "losers." For those unfamiliar with the conjoint technology, it is a research tool that requires respondents to make choices rather than simply express opinions. It weighs voter response to a particular variable in the presence or absence of other variables. For initiatives, it is often the only tool that unlocks the clue to voter behavior.

Like most successful research, the conjoint model produced results that seemed obvious - after the fact. Voters chose options that made "winners" out of school children, teachers and local control and "losers" out of administrators, teacher unions and the City of Los Angeles.

The electorate was perfectly willing to throw administrators to the wolves. No campaign message would overcome that deeply embedded predisposition. Only when voters thought that their local schools might lose dollars to Los Angeles did they finally react.

Since Prop 223 would fine local school districts five percent of their budgets if they didn't meet the spending formula (money which would be redistributed to complying districts), and since the Los Angeles Unified School District was the most likely to be able to meet the spending formula due to its economies-of-scale, voters sensed that the whole scheme was simply a scam by the L.A. teachers union to pad its own district's budget.

The "Beat L.A." strategy worked in every corner of the state - and even broke even for us in downtown Los Angeles, where voters seemed uncomfortable benefiting at the expense of other districts.

This gave our anti-campaign a message that did not require an accounting degree to understand: Prop 223 is going to take money away from your local school district and ship it to downtown L.A.

The portion of the campaign targeted to L.A. consisted primarily of the education community urging a "No" vote. We even ran a separate television spot in L.A. featuring PTA President Rosalind Turnbull.

Meanwhile, grassroots veteran Bonnie Mertus was organizing the tens of thousands of coalition group members into a coherent, manageable army. The state was divided into 18 regions with team leaders representing the various constituencies. We prepared a calendar of 10 Action PAKs that would be distributed according to a predetermined schedule.

Each Action PAK had a specific strategic and tactical purpose. Each team was given 10 packets to be hand-delivered to local teachers and associations in an attempt to halt the progress of the "Yes" campaign among its fellow teacher groups. By keeping the target relatively small, and by limiting the time for the project's completion (two weeks), we were able to keep campaign activities fresh and avoid fatigue.

Not every team received 10 endorsements, but we did end up with over 100 associations joining the "No" campaign, more than 10 times the number who supported it.

Next, we focused on volunteer recruitment, resulting in thousands of parents, teachers, school employees and administrators agreeing to give several hours to the campaign. Again, all efforts were "bite-sized," which made getting commitments easier.

We then targeted all California's newspapers with media kits, which were sent to team leaders for local distribution. Each newspaper - including dailies, weeklies and shoppers - was individually contacted by phone. A response sheet completed by the team leader was faxed back to the campaign listing the editor, reporter covering the story and up-to-date fax and phone numbers. If possible, the locals arranged an editorial board meeting with the smaller papers or, when requested, mailed the media kits to the relevant editors and publishers. The top dozen papers were handled separately by a statewide team of our most articulate representatives, headed by ACSA's Bob Wells. Wells, along with Barbara Howard and Dave Low from CSEA, were essential players in keeping the campaign on-message.

Our goal was to pave the way for news conferences, free media events and editorial decisions that would come later. Our work in this area was rewarded beyond our highest expectations. Of the more than 800 papers contacted, not a single one endorsed 223. Of those that editorialized, we won 100 percent. Editorial cartoons, sample editorials and quotes could be downloaded from our campaign Web site.

Other PAKs included programs, most of which covered a 10- to 15-day period, soliciting phone bank locations, seeking local coalition endorsements, establishing speaker's bureaus, etc. The "end game" reinforced the paid ads with news conferences to pull together our coalition and to generate positive local-angle news stories during the final two weeks.

Because our message helped to eliminate partisanship from the issue, it allowed us to win every endorsement we sought - including education, labor, conservative, liberal and taxpayer groups. We also won the official support of both major parties for the "No" side.

We assumed that the polls would have us trailing badly until the final two weeks, a prediction that proved quite accurate. When our paid media went up, the impact was felt immediately and continued to grow as the election neared. The "Yes" campaign began airing its own spots during this period, but it did not confront our "L.A. gets the money" message.

We lost the absentee vote (much of which was cast before our paid media began), but immediately began to turn the tide as election day votes were counted.

Amazingly, Prop 223 went down by a larger margin (55 to 45 percent) than did the union paycheck measure, Prop 226 (53 to 47 percent) which attracted tens of millions of dollars for its "No" campaign. The breadth of the victory was due to the hard work of countless volunteers who never surrendered against seemingly hopeless odds. In spite of - or perhaps because of - our lack of financial resources, we were able to execute a highly disciplined grassroots and free media campaign that laid the foundation, block by block, for our paid media at the end.

Although overshadowed in the media by Prop 226 and the English-as-a-second language initiative (Prop 227), the 223 campaign probably affords more learning opportunities for political professionals in that it integrated the paid media message with genuine volunteer activity on a scale seldom achieved (or attempted) in modern campaigning. It also provided one of the clearer examples of why strategy must precede tactics.

Find a clear path to the goal line first. Then plan how to expend campaign resources.

Wayne Johnson is president of Wayne C. Johnson & Associates Inc., a California public affairs and campaign agency.

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