By Southern California Golf Association Public Affairs
The initiative may have been born in Wisconsin in the early days of the 20th Century as a tool of direct democracy to thwart the power of the large corporate and financial interests that had come to dominate the American body politic during the “Gilded Age,” but in 21st Century California it has been reduced to a tool almost exclusively available to the modern versions of those interests – to them and two-third majorities of both houses of the state legislature, neither of which anyone would suggest is an exemplar of “direct” democracy.
To qualify an initiative in California requires a massive number of signatures of registered voters, and that requires paid signature gatherers in addition to myriad ancillary expenses and a signature count that is at least half again more than the qualifying number. In short, it takes very deep pockets for a party other than the state legislature to qualify an initiative. Nonetheless, there are ten (10) initiatives on California’s November ballot, covering diverse subjects, among them rent control, criminal justice, bonded indebtedness (schools & climate action), same sex marriage, and taxes on managed care insurance plans.
It's not what is on California’s November ballot that offers lessons for the golf industry. It’s what’s not on that ballot that ought to alert the golf community about the power that matters most in the public arena and why all other “powers” pale in comparison – a power that may be more consequential in California than other states but is just as impactful.
That power is public opinion.
After spending more than $25 million to qualify an initiative that would have removed restrictions on drilling near homes and schools, the California Independent Petroleum Association withdrew it. Specifically, the initiative would have overturned SB 1137, a state law that prevents drilling new oil and gas wells within 3,200 hundred feet of homes, schools, parks, and hospitals. The Association and its industry members determined that spending an additional $100 million or more on a statewide campaign sure to be met by funded opposition from environmental interests and their adherents would not likely prove a wise spend, given what their polling had proven was substantial opposition from the general California electorate before any campaign had begun. It’s important to note that the California oil & gas industry had already spent more than $13 million lobbying against the passage of SB 1137 in 2023.
The California oil and gas industry is an enormous one – many multiples of California’s $15.5 billion golf industry. It employs thousands of Californians directly and many more indirectly, generates enormous profits for investors, remits massive state and local taxes, creates myriad economic multiplier effects, and provides a product that virtually every Californian uses, making any argument about increasing the cost of that commodity a compelling one for millions of residents as well as the businesses that produce products whose price points are disproportionately affected thereby. Unlike golf, which is played by 10% of the state’s population, the products produced by the oil and gas industry are used by virtually every Californian, making almost all 39 million of them stakeholders in that industry.
Nonetheless, all the economic arguments in the world are not proving enough to overcome the non-economic arguments in favor prohibiting the drilling of new wells within 3,200 hundred feet of homes, schools, hospitals, and parks. Health, safety, and overall quality of life are trumping them in an instance in which the economic argument has palpable heft. This is why those of us who are paid to secure results continue to preach the wisdom of doing everything within golf’s ability to preach the societal value proposition of the game and its large fields of play to the 90% of the population that doesn’t play the game in terms that the 90% find compelling – health, environment, recreation, heat relief, green space, community, charity, youth development, school/education support. And avoid making golf’s case in terms that the rich oil and gas industry cannot sustain even when it has powerful economic arguments at its disposal.
And let me add that with respect to some pretty dicey issues in recent years – e.g., independent contracting, prohibitions on the use of potable water on “nonfunctional” turf, bans on the use of fertilizers and pesticides on golf resorts in California’s Coastal Zone, proscriptions on the application of noenicitinoids, and two rounds of “Public Golf Endangerment Acts” that would have served up the state’s municipal golf courses for repurposing as affordable housing – the California golf industry has defended its interests rather well and set itself up to move from reactivity to proactivity in future legislative sessions by avoiding the economic case in favor of the non-economic arguments that have proven resonant with non-golfers and their elected representatives. Arguments that have proven their worth by the only metric that matters – RESULTS.
Golf needs to get over its fixation on homo economicus and learn what salespersons, marketers, and “advocates” of and for all things have long known – that human beings are creatures of multi-dimensional priority, or as Napolean Bonaparte wrote in exile about the lesson he learned very early in life: Men won’t die for money, but they will die for medals.
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This article was provided to Golf Business WEEKLY by SCGA's Public Affairs department.
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