Santa Cruz’s soda tax draws national intrigue
To people who know of Santa Cruz throughout the U.S., the sleepy beach town of 60,000 is most often associated with its wave breaks and the popular products branded with its name: mountain bikes, skateboards, cannabis grinders, peanut butter.
Yet, over the past couple months, and in particular the past couple weeks, Santa Cruz has meant something else to a growing national audience: proof that Big Soda is vulnerable.
Santa Cruz’s Measure Z, which proposed a 2-cents-per-fluid-ounce distribution tax on most sugar-sweetened beverages, appears poised to pass after the final votes are counted this week. It would mark the first soda tax passed anywhere in the country since 2018, and unlike those successful campaigns in Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland and Philadelphia, Santa Cruz passed its without much money or significant institutional backing.
When the Santa Cruz City Council voted over the summer to put Measure Z on the ballot, councilmembers correctly predicted a sophisticated and expensive opposition campaign from the American Beverage Association, the soda lobby representing Coke, Pepsi and Dr Pepper. The industry poured more than $1.7 million into its local operation, bringing in blue-chip political consultants, spending big on advertisements and backing an early lawsuit, campaign finance reports show. The Yes on Z campaign spent less than $45,000.
Any lingering questions or curiosities around why a tiny coastal city’s marginal tax proposal necessitated a full-court press from the soda industry are beginning to find answers. For new taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, Santa Cruz might prove to be an arrow in the American Beverage Association’s heel.
“The news out of Santa Cruz is important,” Jim Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America, told me. “It shows Big Soda is not invincible.”
Last week, as Measure Z’s lead grew, Krieger convened a Zoom call with public health officials from eight counties in one of the mountain states. He told me the officials wanted to discuss Santa Cruz’s soda tax, and what that might mean for their own, similar pursuits. Krieger, also a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who helped lead Seattle’s successful soda tax in 2017, has fielded calls from “four to five cities, and three states” that are considering tax measures in the wake of Santa Cruz’s effort.
Krieger said Measure Z comes amid a shifting national picture, in which local governments are struggling to raise revenue as pandemic-relief funds dry up. State, city and county officials, he said, are also “freaking out” over potential funding cuts by the incoming Trump administration that could impact local programs.
“The tax movement has been in hibernation, and this is bringing it back to life,” Krieger said. “People will be looking around for revenue sources, and maybe even these kinds of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes.”
However, the passage of Measure Z at the ballot box can be looked at as Everest 1 of 2. If the vote count holds this week, the city will likely have to defend it in court. For more on that, read my latest story.
OF NOTE
Clarity on the democracy front: On Tuesday, three weeks after Election Day, the Santa Cruz County Clerk’s Office says it expects to have “nearly all” of the remaining roughly 2,900 ballots counted, which should give us certainty in a handful of races still waiting to be formally called: Measure Z, Pajaro Valley Unified School District Trustee Area 3 and the final of three open seats on the Scotts Valley Unified School District board of trustees.
Hark! Santa Cruz’s housing bond sings: Last week, after an extended lull and broad uncertainty around whether an affordable housing financing measure was actually possible for Santa Cruz over the next two years, a citizen group unveiled its plans to begin circulating a ballot petition early next year. The petition will look to put a dual parcel tax/real estate transfer tax on the November 2025 ballot, which is estimated to bring in at least $5 million per year to help the city build affordable housing.
POINTS FOR PARTICIPATION
The county board of supervisors and the city councils in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Capitola and Scotts Valley are all off this week.
ONE GREAT READ
Cormac McCarthy’s secret muse breaks her silence, by Vincenzo Barney for Vanity Fair
The niche corner of the culture reserved for literary nonfiction registered a Richter-scale event last week when Vanity Fair published an 11,000-word semi-bombshell about the secret relationship Cormac McCarthy had with one Augusta Britt, whom he first met when he was 42, she 16. Britt would go on to play McCarthy’s secret muse for the next decades, influencing his most popular works, from “Blood Meridian” to “All the Pretty Horses.”
The story ignited debates over McCarthy, muses in art, female agency and relationships between middle-aged men and teenage girls. It also turned the article’s writer, Vincenzo Barney, into an overnight polarizing sensation. As Barney told Slate after publication, the story, which many have called the “literary scoop of the year,” fell into his lap as he was working on a book about McCarthy.
Yet, Barney has quickly become a divisive figure among a certain segment of the literary community. His purple, maximalist prose has startled many who read the story, while others have complimented the piece for being an unfamiliar voice. Much of the criticism, in my opinion, reads as envy. Yet, it’s clear Barney does not subscribe to the old literary axiom that the best writers are those who get out of the way.