Proposition 47 is the California initiative passed by voters in 2014. It raised the bar for property crimes making most retail thefts into misdemeanors. Democrats have been under pressure to do something about Prop. 47 as concerns about brazen shoplifting have gone up.

Last year, an effort launched by California DA's and funded by big retailers (Walmart, Target, Home Depot) aimed to rollback prop. 47 by putting a new initiative on the ballot. Ever since that effort got going, elected Democrats led by Gov. Newsom have been doing their best to sabotage it.

In June the new initiative had made it onto the ballot, but Newsom had a plan to kill it. He offered a set of bills aimed at retail crime which he offered to sign immediately (no waiting for the ballot initiative to pass). The catch was that the promoters of the ballot initiative would have to agree to drop it.

To ensure this became an either/or choice, Democrats drafted the bills with a poison pill clause which would render the bills inoperative if the ballot initiative subsequently passed. Dems claimed this was necessary because the bills and the ballot initiative were incompatible, but these claims were mostly bogus. 

The truth appears to be that Newsom and other Dems felt the rollback of Prop. 47 was too tough on criminals and would lead to more of them in prison. Also, they were concerned that a popular ballot initiative cracking down on crime might bring a lot of Republicans to the polls. They wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Today, Newsom signed the bills in question. As Politico reports, it's too late to pull the rollback initiative off the ballot but Newsom is still hoping he can sap its funding.

Newsom and Democrats in the Legislature had originally designed the retail theft package this spring as a form of leverage in negotiations with the coalition of local prosecutors, big-box retailers and grocery chains which had placed the measure off the November ballot.

But after those efforts failed to produce a compromise ahead of the June 27 deadline — and after Newsom scrapped plans to introduce a rival ballot initiative of his own — top Democrats opposed to Prop 36 have turned their attention to trying to drain the measure’s funding sources...

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas told reporters earlier this week that he’s “optimistic” the bills signed into law today will encourage some retailers to abandon their support. “I think this is a strong package of bills,” he said.

But this may not go as smoothly as Gov. Newsom hopes. There are already some signs that Democratic mayors, who are a lot closer to the problem of rampant retail theft, are bucking Newsom's solution and continuing to support the ballot initiative which is called Proposition 36.

The mayors of San Jose and Elk Grove, along with the Sacramento County district attorney, announced a new political action committee Wednesday aimed at getting the sweeping state retail and drug punishment initiative Proposition 36 passed.

"We know that the public safety debate has at times become partisan. It should not be," San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said.

Mahan stood at the state Capitol alongside Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen...

"We've heard the narrative that perhaps Proposition 36 is only supported by Republicans. That is not true," Singh-Allen said.

As someone who lives here, I would very much like to see the rollback of Prop. 47 by passing this new initiative called Prop. 36. Will this stunt by Newsom and Democrats in Sacramento be enough to stop that from happening? I really don't know. It may depend on how many other Democrats are willing to break ranks and campaign for it. Here's a local news report from a CBS affiliate in Sacramento.