To tax sodas and other sugary drinks
The American Beverage Industry has spent $7.7 million— the second-highest amount ever spent to defeat a San Francisco ballot proposition — on its effort to try to prevent the city from becoming the first in the country to tax sodas and other sugary drinks.
Proposition E on the Nov. 4 ballot is drawing plenty of national attention — and plenty of cash from the soda industry. Its campaign contributions so far trail only the nearly $10 million Pacific Gas and Electric spent to defeat a public power measure in 2008.
The soda industry’s spending is revealed in 70 pages of campaign finance forms just filed with the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Some of the biggest expenditures include $820,000 to well-known San Francisco campaign consultants John Whitehurst, Sam Lauter and Mark Mosher and $2.6 million to Goddard Gunster, a Washington, D.C., public affairs firm.
The soda industry has also paid for polling, for a talent agency to find actors for its commercials, for billboard space around the city, and for advertising space on just about every local radio and television station in the Bay Area.