Second poll finds governor's bonds opposed by most voters

By: TOM CHORNEAU - Associated Press Writer | Thursday, January 15, 2004 10:44 AM PST ∞

SACRAMENTO (AP) -- A second major statewide poll has found that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to sell $15 billion in bonds to pay off California's deficit does not have much support among voters.

According to a Field Poll released Thursday, most voters believe taxes will need to be raised to resolve the state's budget problems.

The bonds, which will go before voters as Proposition 57 on the March 2 ballot, are needed to pay off short-term notes that come due in June. Without the bonds, Schwarzenegger will likely have little choice but to cut spending dramatically while also increasing taxes, which he has promised he would not do.

The Field Poll shows only 33 percent of those surveyed support Proposition 57, while 40 percent oppose it. Twenty-seven percent said they were undecided.

"We've measured over a hundred different propositions since I got here in 1978 and in that period, any initiative that starts behind in the first poll rarely passes," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.

"I'm not saying that it is dead in the water but the historical record is somewhat foreboding," he said.

A poll this week from the Public Policy Institute of California reached a similar conclusion, showing that 35 percent of the state's likely voters support Proposition 57 while 44 percent oppose it and 21 percent are undecided.

Todd Harris, spokesman for the governor's recovery bond campaign, said the poll results "don't tell us anything that we didn't already know. Which is that we are going to need to wage an aggressive campaign to educate California voters on the dire fiscal ramifications if Proposition 57 is not adopted."

The Field Poll was conducted from Jan. 5 to Jan. 13, after Schwarzenegger's Jan. 6 State of the State speech in which he urged support for the bonds. The results were drawn from interviews with 648 randomly selected likely voters. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Like other governors with strong voter mandates, Schwarzenegger received an approval rating of 52 percent -- about average for new chief executives during their initial honeymoon period, DiCamillo said.

Three months after taking office in 1999, former Gov. Gray Davis had a 58 percent approval rating, while Democrat Jerry Brown received a 67 percent approval rating when he first took office in 1975.

Still, voter confidence in Schwarzenegger to handle the budget problems is much higher than voters had in either Davis or former Gov. Pete Wilson when both faced big deficits. Last April, for instance, only 9 percent of the voters had a great deal of confidence in Davis to solve the budget crisis and only 9 percent were strongly confident in Wilson when big budget problems faced him in February 1993.

Today, the poll found, 22 percent of voters say they have a great deal of confidence in Schwarzenegger to "do the right thing" to resolve the budget problem.

Schwarzenegger has invested considerable political capital in the bonds, putting them at the center of his fiscal recovery program. His 2004-2005 budget assumes that voters will ultimately approve the borrowing and he has even set aside $3 billion from the total to help him close next year's spending gap.

Because of his popularity and his star status, supporters say Schwarzenegger can get voters to support Proposition 57.

The Field Poll, however, found that two-thirds of those surveyed said the governor's support for the borrowing would have no effect on their decision. The PPIC poll found half of the voters were not swayed by Schwarzenegger's support of the bonds.

Instead of borrowing, a majority of voters said they favor two kinds of temporary tax increases -- a hike in the income tax on the wealthy and raising the sales tax, according to Field.