blog.bioethics.net

Breaking down what really happened in NJ

By James Fossett

Now that the dust has settled a bit and some of the pundits have weighed in, it might be interesting to figure out why the New Jersey stem cell bond proposal got beat. Polls up until the week before the vote were showing strong, but not overwhelming, public support for the measure, so its defeat came as something of a surprise. Three things appear to have been important factors in contributing to the defeat of the bond proposal, which would have authorized $450 million in spending over ten years.

One is lousy turnout -- only about 30 percent of the state’s voters bothered to vote, which is well below the 70+ percent in the last presidential election and the 49 percent turnout in the last election for governor. The major races on the ballot with the stem cell initiative were for state legislative seats, which are not competitive in New Jersey and don’t attract much voter interest. Conventional wisdom has it that low turnout tends to skew towards Republicans, who support stem cell research less than Democrats. Had the initiative been on the ballot with Congressional or gubernatorial races, turnout might have been higher and the composition of the voting public different.

Second is an unusually high degree of public concern with the condition of state finances. New Jersey is broke, spectacularly so, with a large current year budget deficit, a heavy debt load, and enormous unfunded liabilities for state employee pensions and health care. The state’s financial problems have been well publicized, and opposition to the bond issue based on fiscal concerns showed up in pre-election polling as more significant than ideological or moral opposition to stem cell research.

Third, the pro-bond issue forces apparently got outspent and outpoliticked by bond issue opponents. As the New York Times outlined, pro-bond forces started late, didn’t raise much money, and generally didn’t make a particularly strong effort to sell the bond issue to the voters. Bond opponents, by contrast, started earlier, spent more money, and pushed harder, especially just before election day. Big swings in the last week before stem cell votes are becoming common —both the New Jersey bond and last year’s Missouri constitutional amendment, for example, lost considerable support in the week or so before the election. This suggests the fluidity of public opinion about stem cell research and indicates most people don’t decide how to vote until the last minute.

These findings should surprise no one, but the notion that politics influences public policy is something that those who expect major turnarounds in federal stem cell policy after the election of 2008 clearly haven’t thought much about. Changes in federal stem cell policy require changes in federal stem cell politics, and it’s not clear that electing more Democrats, including a President, are going to make the political changes many stem cell advocates seem to expect will happen automatically. Some liberal pro-choice groups, for example, remain adamantly opposed to paying women for eggs; a complaint being raised in some quarters with state stem cell programs; and passing and signing bills that expand the stem cell lines which federal funds can be used to support doesn’t mean any more money will be available. Politics affects policy in Washington as well as in Trenton, and those denigrating what’s going on in the states should remember that.

James W. Fossett co-directs the Rockefeller Institute of Government/AMBI states and bioethics program. He is also responsible for the Rockefeller Institute's health and Medicaid studies and is Associate Professor of Public Administration and Public Health at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany.

Earlier on blog.bioethics.net:
+ Stem cell federalism flunks in NJ? Not.
+ Following up on the NJ stem cell funding defeat
+ Stem cell funding goes down in New Jersey