Quick Take
Measure Z, the 2-cent sugary drink tax proposed in the city of Santa Cruz, now has an almost-certain path to victory after it widened its lead to 1,129 votes on Friday; however, more than 1,800 ballots remain to be counted in the districts that touch the city of Santa Cruz. The county clerk's office expects "nearly all" the ballots to be tallied by Tuesday at 4 p.m.
Friday, Nov. 22, 5:30 p.m. — Little changed after Friday’s vote tally, as only 159 votes were added to the election for Measure Z, the 2-cent sugary drink tax proposed in the city of Santa Cruz. The tax maintained its near-certain path to passage, expanding its margin by a single vote to 1,129. However, more than 1,216 votes remain left to be counted within supervisor District 3, and nearly 600 ballots remain in District 5, which together cover nearly all of the city of Santa Cruz and the UC Santa Cruz campus. Rita Sanchez, filling in for Santa Cruz County Clerk Tricia Webber on Friday, said she expects “nearly all” remaining ballots to be tallied by 4 p.m. Tuesday.
The lurking, but unknown, impact of same-day registration ballots, and how many can be attributed to students on UC Santa Cruz’s left-leaning campus, has kept city of Santa Cruz voters on edge in the past three major elections. Late returns flipped the District 3 supervisor race for Justin Cummings in 2022; during this year’s primary, Joe Thompson held out an unrealized hope that the late campus vote would send him to the District 5 Santa Cruz City Council seat.
Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley already appeared to claim victory for Measure Z in a recent “Mayor’s Message” he published in the Sentinel over the weekend. Steve Maviglio, a well-known Sacramento political consultant who led the opposition campaign on behalf of the American Beverage Association, said he would wait for all the ballots to be counted before making any declarative comments.
Two weeks after Election Day, nearly 79% of registered voters’ ballots have now been counted, with County Clerk Tricia Webber’s office adding 1,315 votes to the countywide tally Tuesday. All totaled, 132,406 votes have been counted; Webber estimated that there were about 2,455 ballots outstanding. The next update is set for 4 p.m. Friday.
Santa Cruz City Councilmember Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, who has helped lead the pro-Z camp, said on Election Night, Nov. 5, that the campaign was “feeling really proud.”
“These are early votes, and there are more votes to be counted, but I’m proud of the work we did,” Kalantari-Johnson said. “Once we were able to really connect with voters, people really began to understand [the measure].”
Kalantari-Johnson said one of the most effective messages was the framing of the campaign’s battle with the influential soda lobby American Beverage Association as Big Soda vs. Santa Cruz.
“That really resonated with people, that this was big industry trying to manipulate and strong-arm local voters,” Kalantari-Johnson said. “We won’t let big industry decide for us.”
“The fact that the vote is this close shows that even in the most progressive communities in California voters are standing up to a regressive tax that has never been shown to improve public health,” Maviglio told Lookout by email on Election Night.
Earlier that evening, Maviglio predicted a close tally.
“I think it’s going to be tight,” he said. “It’s always difficult fighting city hall, no matter how much money you have.”
Measure Z opponents, backed by nearly $1.7 million in spending from the American Beverage Association, worked to paint the 2-cent-per-fluid-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages as regressive and guaranteed only to pad the city’s tax revenue coffers.
When the Santa Cruz City Council voted over the summer to place the soda tax on the November ballot, city leaders acknowledged they were opening the doors to a major and, at best, yearslong battle with one of the country’s most powerful lobbies
Since, the Committee for a Healthier Santa Cruz, the local campaign to pass Measure Z has been outmatched in almost every quantifiable way. The American Beverage Association pumped more than $1.2 million into the opposition camp, the Campaign for an Affordable Santa Cruz. It has flooded the internet, televisions, news outlets and social media with advertisements calling the tax as a regressive fee that will hit low-income families the hardest, and criticized the city for wanting to inflate the prices of soda, energy drinks and most kombuchas to pad its own tax revenue coffers.
The support campaign, led by Santa Cruz City Councilmembers Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson and Martine Watkins, has raised just under $40,000, half of which stands on a $20,000 donation from the American Heart Association. The campaign has relied heavily on volunteers and a grassroots door-knocking operation. In October, the group held a news conference at the city’s town clock, where two people dressed as the Grim Reaper stood before a two-story, inflatable red soda can that read “Diabetes” in the classic Coca-Cola font.
If passed, the tax is estimated to bring in an additional $1.3 million per year to the city’s general fund, where it can be spent on anything from staff salaries to park improvements. Part of Measure Z’s passage would create an appointed committee that oversees and recommends how the soda tax revenue should be spent. Supporters of the tax say this accountability arm will help guide the dollars toward health initiatives.
Just as soda taxes have done in other communities, Measure Z has made odd bedfellows among local political and activist groups. The progressive Santa Cruz for Bernie joined the Santa Cruz County GOP in opposing the tax; the racial justice nonprofit Santa Cruz Black is also against the tax, while the local chapter of the NAACP endorsed it. Former campaign rivals Lani Faulkner and District 1 Supervisor Manu Koenig have both endorsed the initiative.
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