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Trumping Gas
Two Republican Factions Split over Repealing New Fuel-Tax Hike
S
tarting this week, you’ll spend a couple extra bucks to fill up your gas tank — a spurt of inflation that some Republicans hope will power their party’s comeback in California. The first installment on a massive $52 billion spending bill, passed in Sacramento last spring, came due on November 1, as the state imposed at the pump a 12-cents-a-gallon increase in the gasoline excise tax. As it did, a coalition of conservatives launched a referendum campaign to repeal the tax, along with the rest of Senate Bill 1. The measure authorizes a decade’s worth of higher transportation taxes and fees, not only on gas but also on vehicle registrations and diesel fuel. “With the momentum we’ve gathered over the past six months, our grassroots effort to repeal the gas tax is kicking into high gear,” said Carl DeMaio, a San Diego radio yakker and reformed politician who’s leading the charge for the Reform California campaign. “When the gas tax hits Californians,” he added, “the issue goes from the theoretical to the real, and our grassroots coalition powering the real initiative will only continue to grow.” This being the Republican Party in the Era of Trump, however, internecine complications already are ensuing.
petition signatures to make the 2018 ballot. Other key elements of the traditional GOP alliance already are vowing to spend millions to defeat the repeal plan, however.
‘With the momentum we’ve
gathered over the past six months, our grassroots effort to repeal the gas tax is kicking into high gear.
’
• GOP state chair Jim Brulte is all-in on the measure, because: Why not? At a time of Democratic hegemony in California, Republican registration continues a drip-drip-drip decline — party voters now represent just 26 percent of the state’s electorate, barely above decline-to-state independents. • Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, along with most of California’s 13 other Republican members, also have signed on; at the very least, having the gas-tax repeal on next year’s ballot might boost Republican turnout in a midterm election when national Democrats are heavily targeting nine GOP incumbents in the state. • A laundry list of large, and historically Republican, business organizations and interests backed passage of SB 1, however, because of the promise of an improved state transportation system that would benefit them financially. This group, organized as Fix Our Roads, has warned the gas-tax repeal crowd that they’re prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars opposing the bid to gut the gas-tax infrastructure program.
“If this measure qualifies for the ballot, there will certainly — Carl DeMaio be a $30- to $40-million-dollar campaign against it,” Rob Stutzman, a Sacramento politiThe 43-year-old DeMaio — the first cal consultant who advises the business openly gay local official in San Diego group, which includes the state Chamber history—served on City Council from of Commerce, said last week. “Gas-tax 2008-2012, but later lost close races, both repeals will actually work against Repubfor mayor and for Congress. The latter licans at the ballot next November.” campaign was marked by rancorous sexual harassment charges from former Coarsening the discourse. Adding aides and allies. to the intraparty conflicts, there actually In his latest incarnation, DeMaio are two proposed gas-tax repeal initiahosts a Limbaugh-knockoff program on tives being circulated. The second comes drive-time AM radio. Consistent with from Orange County Republican Assemthe role of right-wing media guerilla, he’s blymember Travis Allen, who’s promotembraced the gas-tax repeal as a cultural ing his own version while running for as much as a purely political issue, cast- governor. As reported by the state politics webing it as a cause that cuts across partisan lines and could boost the GOP, as did the site CALmatters, Allen last week did a iconic Proposition 13 property-tax initia- rip job on Fix Our Roads worthy of The tive in the 1970s. Donald himself, labeling an assortment A host of elected and institutional of age-old Republican interest groups as Republicans have rushed to support the “special interest thugs.” repeal effort, which needs 585,407 valid — Jerry Roberts So there’s that.
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NOVEMBER 2, 2017
THE INDEPENDENT
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