The effort to overturn the state’s recently enacted gas tax is hitting the road this week with former San Diego City Council member turned conservative talk radio host Carl DeMaio at the wheel.
In the run-up to California’s Nov. 6 general election, DeMaio and his media spokesman Dave McCulloch are planning to take their message from Southern California to Sacramento, hosting live radio shows and events in their bid to overturn the 12-cents-a-gallon tax increase that went into effect last year.
DeMaio kicked off the planned two-week excursion on Wednesday morning, addressing a couple hundred supporters at De Anza Cove Park in the city of San Diego. He fired up the crowd standing in front of a 40-foot-long yellow tour bus emblazoned with the campaign slogan: Yes on 6: Repeal The Gas Tax.
“We want road repairs,” DeMaio told the enthusiastic gathering. “We want traffic congestion relief. We’re not going to get that by simply raising taxes on working families. We’re going to get that by fundamentally altering and changing how Sacramento spends the existing gas tax.”
DeMaio’s ballot initiative would also require a two-thirds vote of the public to enact any new state taxes on fuel.
Gov. Jerry Brown has attacked DeMaio as a “political terrorist” and said the money from the new gas-tax increase will bring in more than $5 billion a year for badly needed transportation projects, from fixing roads to boosting public transit.
At the same time, many business groups, including the state Chamber of Commerce, have supported the levy.
Still, DeMaio’s on-going narrative of government fraud and waste has resonated with many voters, generating a significant support base in San Diego where he lives. Attacks have ranged from allegations the money would be diverted to politicians’ pet projects to the notion that public transit shouldn’t be paid for with fuel taxes.
Several Republicans running for office this year who attended the Wednesday event echoed these sentiments, including Diane Harkey, who is trailing Democratic rival Mike Levin in the race for the 49th Congressional District.
“They will take this money and use it for whatever cause they want,” Harkey said.
Following the dot-com crash in the early 2000s, elected officials in Sacramento diverted more than $3 billion from several transportation accounts to patch the budget. All but about $706 million has been repaid, and no transportation projects were significantly delayed as a result, according to state officials.
The rest of the funds will be replaced within three years, under the bill that enacted the tax hike, Senate Bill 1. Specifically, the legislation added 12 cents a gallon for gasoline, 20 cents for diesel and increased vehicle registration fees.
Such technical arguments have seemed to have little effect on much of state’s public. A SurveyUSA poll commissioned by The San Diego Union-Tribune found this week that 58 percent of likely voters supported repealing the tax, with 29 percent hoping to keep the levy and 13 percent undecided.
“Bureaucrats have taken the funds for the paving, the road repairs, and applied it to the general fund or whatever other projects they have,” said Janis Morris, 67, a Scripps Ranch resident who has donated to the campaign several times.
However, DeMaio perhaps surprisingly wasn’t emboldened by the recent survey, saying he feared voters will be confused by the state’s chosen wording for Prop. 6 on the November ballot.
Continuing his theme of government deception, he called the measure’s title “sinister.”
“The politicians are intentionally trying to deceive you,” he told supporters Wednesday. “They are trying to defraud you of an honest election.”
The Prop 6 ballot title reads: “Eliminates certain road repair and transportation funding. Requires certain fuel taxes and vehicle fees be approved by the electorate. Initiative constitutional amendment.”
The No on 6 campaign defended the wording as accurate, saying that DeMaio is the one that has been disingenuous with this campaign messaging.
“We think that it does impact roads and bridges,” said Robin Swanson, spokeswoman for the campaign to preserve the gas tax. “We think that the official voter information guide is accurate.”
“He’s trying to gin up media however he can,” she added. “He’s saying look at the fraud when he’s perpetrating the fraud.”
The Repeal the Gas Tax road trip comes as the campaign has been massively outspent by supporters of the new levy.
Unions, construction companies and Democrats have raised more than $30 million to defeat Prop. 6.
While congressional Republicans and GOP gubernatorial hopeful John Cox ponied up about $1.7 million to help qualify the repeal effort for the ballot, funding has since dried up.
DeMaio said Wednesday that the repeal campaign has spent roughly $2.5 million, with little left in its coffers, but he didn’t badmouth his political supporters.
“Look, I knew this was going to be David and Goliath going into this,” he said. “There was no presumption that they would give money in the general.”
Republican candidates have continued to use the gas tax as a talking point.
Tony Krvaric, chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego County, said that while the local party wasn’t directly funding the campaign, they were including issue in much of its messaging.
“We’ve done in-kind contributions,” he said. “We’ve put stuff everywhere. Our job is to get the Republicans to vote yes on 6. We’ve got that covered.”
A legislative analysis found that drivers currently spend roughly $700 a year fixing their cars due to poor roads. With the taxes and fee hikes, Californians will pay an extra $10 a month on average, according to the state Department of Transportation.
Twitter: @jemersmith
Phone: (619) 293-2234
Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com
