Bets, Bottles and Bullets

LOCAL ISSUES

In addition to all the battles for office high and low across the nation, there were some fierce campaigns on a farrago of issues. Casinos, handguns, disposable bottles and cans, nuclear safeguards, the size of local governments were among the hundreds of objects of referenda, initiatives and propositions on city and state ballots. Voters in Maryland confronted 21 issues on which their judgment was sought, those in Massachusetts nine, in Georgia 28, for example. Verdicts on some of the most interesting and important:

GAMBLING: A VEGAS EAST

New Jersey voters decided by a large margin to allow gambling casinos to be built and operated in Atlantic City. The referendum on gambling was one of the hottest issues in the state, arousing the strong opposition of religious leaders and law-enforcement officials who warned that turning the beach-resort city into a Las Vegas East would attract not only tourists but also organized crime, prostitution and loan sharks. The Committee to Rebuild Atlantic City spent $1 million arguing that casino gambling would resuscitate the dowdy, declining resort and bring much-needed revenue into the city and the state. Two years ago, voters turned down a proposal that would have allowed casinos to be established anywhere in New Jersey. This time the reverse vote may have been due to the fact that the gambling will be confined to Atlantic City, and to the provision in the gambling proposal that all state revenue from the casinos (estimated to be $17.7 million by 1980) will go to aid programs for the elderly and disabled.

NUCLEAR ENERGY: SIX NAYS

In the six states of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Ohio, Oregon and Washington, there were initiatives to put tight restrictions on the building of new nuclear-power plants. In a stunning defeat for the persistent foes of nuclear power, the initiatives lost across the board. All of the proposals contained the same two key provisions: 1) that utilities accept unlimited liability in the event of nuclear disaster, waiving the federally imposed limit of $560 million for any one accident, and 2) that state legislatures certify--usually by two-thirds majorities, which are difficult to get--that each proposed plant meet stringent safety requirements. But the environmentalists were heavily outspent by utilities and other pro-nuclear forces who argued that crippling the construction of new plants would rob the U.S. of a necessary alternative to foreign oil as an energy source.

GUN CONTROL: SHOT DEAD

In Massachusetts, a pioneering effort to ban all handguns fell to a crushing defeat. The referendum proposal was aimed at the nation's most common murder weapon, the cheap Saturday Night Specials; it would have limited possession of handguns to the police, the military and such organizations as museums and historical societies. The proposal was put on the ballot by a volunteer citizens' organization called People Versus Handguns led by popular Middlesex County Sheriff John Buckley. It was also supported by much of the state's press, like the influential Boston Globe, which in one editorial published the roster of 73 people, including two children (ages two and 14), who had been killed by handguns since Jan. 1,1975. But Massachusetts was blanketed by pro-gun propaganda put out by the National Rifle Association and Smith & Wesson, the nation's largest manufacturer of Saturday Night Specials, which happens to be located in Springfield, Mass.

FARM LABOR: CHAVEZ'S DEFEAT

In California, bitterly disputed Proposition 14 was defeated--a voter decision that could provoke new trouble in the longstanding conflict between the state's farm workers and growers. The proposition, sponsored by Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers Union, would have reified in the state constitution Governor Jerry Brown's path-making solution to California's labor problems. In 1975, at Brown's urging, the California legislature guaranteed farm workers the right to select union representatives by secret ballot. The legislature also created an Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) to administer the elections, some two-thirds of which were won by the U.F.W., the rest by Chavez's bitter union rival, the Teamsters.

The problem for the U.F.W. was that the growers, irritated by the ALRB'S pro-Chavez tilt, mobilized the third of the legislature necessary to block additional appropriations, thus bringing implementation of the law to a screeching halt. Chavez decided to circumvent the legislature, trying via Proposition 14 to get the law added as an amendment to the constitution. Growers' interests, in the face of the U.F.W.'s well-organized campaign, lifted their opposition to ALRB funding to deprive Chavez of his main issue and, in the end, his case.

The environmentalists succeeded in Michigan, Maine and Massachusetts in passing bans on throwaway bottles and cans. In general, however, more referendums were turned down by voters than accepted. Massachusetts, for example, rejected a measure to mandate a flat rate for both residential and industrial users of electricity. In Florida, the so-called One Percent Amendment would have limited the size of the state bureaucracy to 1% of the population (the bureaucracy is now 1.16%); it lost. So did an attempt in Oklahoma, the second in four years, to allow liquor to be sold by the drink in hotels and restaurants. The well-financed campaign of the "drys" against booze claimed --with apparent effect, though no basis in fact--that liquor is a factor in breast cancer.

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