Environmental Hazards
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Look closely at the front of practically any restaurant in California, or thousands of other everyday consumer store fronts, and you will see a notice warning that entry to the premises implies possible exposure to one of a range of chemicals which the State of California has determined may be unsafe. The warning on this so called Proposition 65 notice is sobering one, and one might imagine that it would be intimidating to many members of a public which is increasing anxious in the eyes of some business interests and their defenders, irrationally so about environmental hazards. Yet the Proposition 65 notices seem to have no negative effect on the businesses which must post them. Their very ubiquity renders them virtually meaningless; when half the stores one enters have such a notice, it no longer connotes an unusual and distinctive hazard but becomes part of the invisible background noise of commercial life. The ironic fate of Proposition 65 is thus to have become at once a conspicuous and an invisible feature of California life. You can hardly go a day without seeing a warning notice referring to it, but you probably won't see it, because you have learned to ignore it. Yet one of the most furious and expensive of California political battles was fought over Proposition 65. What led up to Proposition 65? What forces brought it about, what forces fought it, and what if anything was the consequence and effectiveness of the proponents' victory?
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is need for alliances between conventional liberals and environmentalists is the changing nature of lobbying. Lobbying used to be almost entirely an "inside game" played between interest group representatives and influential individual legislators. Observers of the national scene have noted, however, the emergence of a new form of "grass roots lobbying."5 This is the process by which interest groups fan grass roots support for some position in order to put pressure on legislators to support it. The weakening of parties and internal legislative discipline means in part that individual legislators are beholden less to the leadership than to their home town supporters and organizations. The way to get to them is to get to their own grass roots base of support.
"Grass roots lobbying" is now a Washington DC phenomenon, but it possibly began earlier in California than anywhere else, due to its long history of weak parties, relative absense of traditional political machines, and the initiative process, which lends itself to "single issue" pressure from the grass roots. As early as the 1950s, grass roots "clubs" tended to supplant the older party organizations. Thus, Sacramento is long familiar with grass roots lobbying,
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Approximate Word count = 4088
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)
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