Proposition 9 (2018)
Issue: Splitting California into Three Separate States
Campaign: No on Prop 9
Clients: Civic groups, business community
Spending: $10,000
Initial poll: N/A
Final results: Kicked off ballot by State Supreme Court
Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper has been trying to break up the state of California for the last several years, ostensibly to create more manageable, smaller states. In 2018, Draper funded and qualified a measure that would have replaced the existing state of California with three new states.
The measure was widely panned by civic groups, editorial pages and many Californians, but no funded opposition emerged to counteract Draper’s millions and defeat the measure, forcing opponents to run a very different kind of effort.
Spectrum Campaigns teamed up with a small, bipartisan team of consultants and some civic leaders and civic-minded attorneys to pursue two opposition tracks: one a full-out assault on the measure in the press, and the other a legal effort to get the state Supreme Court to remove the measure from the ballot on the grounds it violated the state Constitution.
Wigglesworth, a former ligation attorney who has a degree from the University of Michigan Law School, worked with long-time public interest attorney Carlyle Hall to position the litigation in simple, compelling terms for both the Court and the court of public opinion. Various civic and environmental groups signed on in support of the petition and against the measure. Numerous newspaper editorials supported the petition to remove the initiative from the ballot.
Ultimately, the state Supreme Court held that Proposition 9 violated the state Constitution and removed it from the ballot before the election – a rare occurrence given the traditional deference to voters.