Former U.S. labor secretary on what pulled him into soda tax fight a decade ago
Good morning, everyone. This week, I bring you an abbreviated In the Public Interest. We will skip the Monday, Oct. 21, edition and return on Oct. 28, the penultimate Monday before Election Day.
I’m off this week for a quick international recharge before we hit the home stretch of 2024’s election season.
And what a season it’s been, particularly in the city of Santa Cruz, where a ballot measure to tax the distribution of sugar-sweetened beverages has set the stage for a David vs. Goliath battle between the perhaps dangerously lean and volunteer-led campaign to pass Measure Z, and the monied, soda industry-backed effort to kill it.
The campaign has been a blur of ad blitzes, door knocking, narrative shaping and, perhaps most confusing for voters, citations of competing studies about a soda tax’s ability to improve public health.
Late last week, after I published a deep dive into the measure, I received an email from former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. I had reached out to Reich after I caught wind of his rallying role in Berkeley’s 2014 Measure D campaign, the nation’s first successful soda tax ballot measure.
“I was a bit involved with the Berkeley campaign in 2014 because I saw data that showed clear correlations between soda taxes and decline in soda consumption and improvements in health,” Reich said. “I believe the Berkeley soda tax has confirmed these correlations.”
Whether Santa Cruz voters pass this tax in November, the election will mark the end of only the prologue to what is expected to be a yearslong and expensive legal battle.
“The legal costs of this are going to be astronomical,” said Steve Maviglio, head of the soda industry-backed opposition camp that is threatening to sue if the measure passes.
Santa Cruz Councilmember Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, who, with Councilmembers Martine Watkins and Sonja Brunner, is leading the pro-Z push, remains confident. “When this goes to court,” she told me, “we feel pretty confident that we’re in the right.”
If Santa Cruz’s measure is successful, it would be California’s first new local food tax of its kind since 2018, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Keep Groceries Affordable Act, which dammed up any communities mulling soda taxes similar to those adopted in Bay Area cities Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland and Albany. However, as I outline in the story, a 2023 appeals court ruling might have opened a new door.
Many comparisons have been made between Santa Cruz’s upstart effort and Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation soda tax measure success in 2014. While the opposition is no less formidable with their soda industry backing and giant spending advantages, there’s a big difference this time in the amount of resources available to the pro-tax side.
Berkeley’s pro-soda tax effort spent over $900,000, had a professional campaign operation, and enjoyed major backing from billionaire Mike Bloomberg. They were outspent by 2.5 to 1. Santa Cruz’s pro-tax campaign had brought in less than $16,000 as of the most recent campaign finance reporting deadline, had to transition to a leaner, volunteer operation after fundraising fell short, and has been outraised 53 to 1.
The next campaign finance reports will drop on Oct. 24, and Lookout will be all over them.
The last point I’ll mention is that both campaigns have been pushing their own studies on whether soda taxes actually work to reduce consumption of sugary drinks and promote public health. I cover this extensively in my story.
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