The more things change, the more they remain the same.
The Los Angeles Times has had several publishers, and is now owned by a Chicago corporation. Its politics has gone from far-far-right to its current left-of-center. But one thing stays the same: the Times remains utterly and completely opposed to the notions of Recall, Initiative and Referendum.
According to the I&R Institute, the first use of the initiative in California seems to have been under the 1903 Los Angeles City Charter Reform (opposed by the Times). It seems that people were so upset with the LA Times' control of the city that they passed a city initiative:
Reformers in Los Angeles won voter approval, in December 1911, of a unique local initiative to create a municipally owned, yet editorially independent, newspaper to compete with the anti-labor, anti-reform Los Angeles Times and provide unbiased news and an equal forum for all political views. Each political party was given a column in every weekly edition.
This bold experiment in free speech attracted the state's top newspaper talent and got off to a highly successful start. After less than a year, however, it failed because of the harassment of vendors and an advertiser boycott organized by the Los Angeles reformers' arch-enemy, Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the Times.
The Times was loved even then. According to the History News Network,
The recall was used several times in ensuing years, resulting in the ouster of several councilmen and, in 1909, of Mayor A.C. Harper. Following Los Angeles' lead, several California localities adopted the device.
Wonder if these officials had anything to do with making the owners of the LA Times -- Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler -- extremely rich in the Owens River water grab of 1905.
One other thing to note: then, as now, the fight to restore the state to the People was led by the Republicans, who were quite hated by the Times. I wonder what these Progressives of 1911 would say about their modern namesakes.
The first significant statewide initiative in California abolished the poll tax in 1914, and a construction bond initiative for the University of California also won voter approval that year. Immediately thereafter, anti-initiative forces launched their first counterattack, in the form of a constitutional amendment passed by the legislature to make it more difficult to pass initiative bond proposals.
Hiram Johnson, the Governor who put the Initaive and Recall into the state Constitution, had this to say about the LA Times' publisher of the era, Harrison Gray Otis:
San Francisco has its own "dregs of infamy," Johnson said. "But we have nothing so vile, nothing so low, nothing so debased, nothing so infamous in San Francisco as Harrison Gray Otis. He sits there in senile dementia with gangrene heart and rotting brain, grimacing at every reform, chattering impotently at all things that are decent, frothing, fuming, violently gibbering, going down to his grave in snarling infamy."
And the Times hasn't yet stopped. The current publishers wouldn't be caught dead praising Otis, the Chandlers no longer control the Times, and the paper's politics are firmly liberal, but on the subject of Direct Democracy they've never been reconciled. Every time the People carve the powers-that-be a new ass*ole, the LA Times writes about how horrible the process is, and how this should all be left to their puppets in the Legislature.
Expect a movement later this month, supported by the Times, to gut the Recall. As always, for our own good.