California looks a lot different than it did a generation ago. Its residents are far more diverse, and they live in a far more expensive state. There’s way more renters and proportionately way fewer Republicans.
Yet today’s Californians have at least one thing in common with their late 1970s forebears: They still really like Proposition 13.
In 1978 California voters approved Prop. 13 with a whopping 65 percent of the vote. A populist backlash to soaring property values and their attendant taxes, the ballot measure placed stringent caps on how much local governments could charge homeowners and businesses for the land they own. Overnight, Californians enjoyed some of the lowest property taxes in the country.
Since then, Prop. 13 has been blamed for everything from the poor performance of California public schools to a shortage of affordable homes to the perpetuation of racial inequality. In progressive quarters, the initiative has become a poster child for bad ballot-box policy.
But this year, when the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California surveyed voters about Prop. 13, 65 percent said it had been mostly a good thing. Yes, the exact same proportion that voted for the measure 40 years ago.
That’s a pretty stunning approval rating. By comparison, Gov. Jerry Brown—one of the most popular California political figures in recent memory—has never seen his job approval breach 60 percent over the past eight years. In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump here by a margin not seen since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, although she got less than 65 percent of the vote.
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