Quick Take
As of Friday afternoon, Prop 1 was ahead by the narrowest of margins – around 20,000 votes out of nearly 4.4 million votes counted. The initiative, which needs a simple majority to pass, would fund new mental health treatment facilities.
With ballots still being counted in the wake of Tuesday’s primary election, California voters are slightly favoring Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $6.4 billion plan to build mental health treatment beds and housing through a ballot measure that he characterizes as critical to addressing the state’s homelessness crisis.
With approximately 57% of the vote counted by midafternoon Friday, by an Associated Press estimate, 50.2% were in favor and 49.8% against, with the yes margin have narrowed slightly since election night. Nearly 4.4 million votes had been counted, according to the California Secretary of State, with just over 20,000 votes separating the sides.
Proposition 1 is a two-part ballot initiative. It includes a bond to build treatment facilities and permanent supportive housing for people with mental health and addiction challenges. It also proposes changes to a longstanding tax on personal incomes over $1 million, known as the Mental Health Services Act, by requiring counties to spend 30% of that revenue on housing instead of other services.
Newsom has previously said Prop 1 will help California fulfill a decadeslong promise to get “people off the streets, out of tents and into treatment.”
The Yes on Prop 1 campaign amassed a nearly $21 million war chest for the ballot measure, drawing support from law enforcement groups, major health care organizations and the mental health advocacy group NAMI California.
“This is exactly where we thought we’d be,” Anthony York, a spokesman for the Yes on Prop. 1 campaign, said Wednesday. “There are 2 to 3 million ballots outstanding. I’d say we’re cautiously optimistic.”
In contrast, the opposition campaign raised very little money. Opponents are led by clients of mental health services and some small mental health agencies who worry their programs could lose funding if the measure passes. Others, including the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, opposed the measure because of its cost.
Paul Simmons, executive director of the opposition campaign, struck hopeful tone as early votes started rolling in.
“We expected to be further behind in the early voting,” Simmons said. “This being at 51% or 50% is very encouraging to me.”
Recent polling casts uncertainty over what many initially considered an easy win for the governor. Fifty percent of likely voters supported the measure a week ago, according to the latest poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. The poll tallied opposition at 34% and undecided at 16%.
Prop 1 needs a simple majority of the vote to pass.
Jon Coupal, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, said the results so far show that Californians are concerned about government spending.
“This has two strikes. No. 1, it was a bond measure. People are sensitive right now to government debt. A lot of people had the reaction of, I’m all for helping the homeless but do we really need a bond to do this?
“Then secondly, I think people are well aware of the billions of dollars we have thrown at homelessness and mental health and the problem just seems to get worse, so I think people may look at that and say, you’re asking for more money and you’re not demonstrating any results,” he said.
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