California politics is a strange thing to the 30 million who live in the Golden State (like me!) which must make it especially bizarre to the 300 million kicking it in the other 49 states. Joe Biden will easily take the 55 electoral college votes we have to offer on November 3 (the state has not gone Republican in a presidential election since 1988 and was reliably red before Bill Clinton won the state in 1992).
As such, the numerous propositions on the ballot dominate media buys in the state in the months leading up to the election. But we’ve never seen anything quite like Prop. 22 . The record $180 million spent on the proposition, which seeks to reclassify app-based drivers as contractors — not employees, as they must currently be listed — is backed by the companies that would benefit most by such a change: Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and Instacart.
It may go without saying that this would be a horrific reversal for app-based workers in California, but given the number of undecided voters, perhaps not. You may not be a California voter ( there’s still time to register! ) but the politics at play here are national. Uber and Lyft threatened to shut down operations in California after the state required the corporations to pay their drivers a living wage. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi received more than $40 million in compensation last year while at the helm of a company that has never made a profit .