The Importance of the Bay Area's Soda Tax Fight
Photo:julishannon/Flickr/Creative Commons License
While midterm elections don't get the same hype as the quadrennial Presidential elections, there's a case to be made they're way more important simply due to the lower voter turnout. In 2012, over 12.6 million Californians voted. In 2010, that number was 9.5 million, and that was during a year when the governor's seat was legitimately contested. (Unlike this year, when Governor Brown leads his opponent, Republican Neel Kashkari, by about 20 percentage points.) Fewer total votes means that every one is more valuable.
As such, the fight has become more and more heated. There's no better example than the atmosphere in the Bay Area, where one of the country's most important food-related battles is currently raging.
The battle is a two-pronged assault on Big Soda. The first theater of battle is San Francisco's Proposition E, which would introduce a "two cents per ounce" tax on all sugary beverages sold in the city. (This amounts to roughly an extra quarter for every can sold.) The added money would go towards the creation of programs to aid "nutrition, physical activity, and health programs in public schools, parks, and elsewhere." Estimates predict the tax would raise more than $31 million a year. However, polls are divided -- the most common barb lobbed towards the pro-tax contingent is your usual rhetoric about the "nanny state" -- which makes it a bad bet to pass since a two-thirds supermajority is needed.
But that doesn't mean Big Soda is safe, seeing as the liberal bastion of Berkeley also has a soda tax on the ballot. The initiative is called Measure D, and the wording of the tax is essentially the same, the key difference being that the tax levied is only one cent per fluid ounce. And this ballot measure needs only a simple majority (that is, fifty percent plus one) to pass.
In both battles, soda companies have been throwing their riches into the fight. In San Francisco, they've dumped $7.7 million into the media kitty, which breaks down to $15.50 for every registered voter in the city. In Berkeley, the ad spending is "just" $1.4 million, the difference due to the smaller amount of voters. That's nearly $10 million total, an amount that doesn't just get thrown into political battles without the spenders considering the fight important.
And, folks, it is. Because the battle in the Bay may be the turning point in terms of whether or not the nation ever embraces a soda tax. So says Tom Bates, the mayor of Berkeley:
"If it can't pass in Berkeley, where is it going to pass? Honest to God, if they can stop us here, they can stop us anywhere. And they know that."
As of now, the battle history can be seen as less of a fight and more of a landslide. Soda taxes have not yet succeeded on any level in America. If they can't pass in one of the country's most liberal enclaves, what hope does it have passing anywhere else? Big Soda's mentality, then, is to contain the threat here and watch the fight die.
Another big reason for Big Soda's massive spending spree in the Bay? The fact that this tax has proven to have a huge effect on sales. For proof, one need only look to Mexico:
In Mexico too, the third largest market for the company after U.S. and Russia, a rise in beverage prices, following the soda tax imposed this January, has deterred carbonated soft drink consumption... Mexico volumes declined as a result of the soda tax, and could continue to fall in Q3.
According to PepsiCo, their decline in sales is around three percent. (Coca-Cola reported declines in their Mexican sales during the first half of the year as well.) The Mexican soda tax has been costly for Big Soda, which is why they're trying to keep it from happening in America as well.
So when Election Day comes around, keep an eye on these Bay Area propositions. Depending on how it turns out, this could be the end of the fight. Or, maybe, L.A. will be next.