How HexaCom Group Helped San Diego Voters Defeat Measure A — and What the Campaign Teaches About Fighting Flawed Housing Proposals

San Diego has a real housing affordability crisis.

That was never in dispute.

But when San Diego voters rejected Measure A, they sent a clear message that should matter to every city council, industry association, business coalition, housing provider, and public affairs team watching similar proposals across California and the country:

A real problem does not make a flawed solution any less flawed.

Measure A was sold as a way to address housing affordability by taxing so-called “empty homes.” But the fine print told a very different story. It was a new $10,000-per-home tax. The revenue was not guaranteed for housing. The rules and paperwork would come later. Homeowners would face the burden of proving they lived in their own homes and were not subject to the tax. And other cities had already shown that vacancy taxes can create bureaucracy, legal risk, privacy concerns, incorrect tax bills, and no meaningful rent relief.

That became the core of the No on Measure A campaign.

Not “there is no housing crisis.”

Not “do nothing.”

Not “every tax is bad.”

The message was sharper, more credible, and ultimately more effective:

San Diego needs real housing solutions — not a risky $10,000 tax scheme that creates a new bureaucracy without guaranteeing a single dollar for housing.

That distinction mattered.

Measure A Was Vulnerable Because the Details Were Vulnerable

In ballot measure campaigns, details matter.

They matter because voters are often willing to support broad goals. Affordable housing. Public safety. Infrastructure. Accountability. Clean government. Better services. All of those poll well in the abstract.

But ballot measures are not abstractions. They are legal documents. They create real consequences. They shift power. They spend money. They impose obligations. And when voters understand the gap between the slogan and the actual measure, the politics can change very quickly.

Measure A’s proponents wanted the debate to stay at the slogan level: "empty" homes are bad, San Diego needs housing, and wealthy property owners should pay more.

That was the easy argument.

Our job was to force the campaign back to the actual measure.

What did it do?

Who would have to comply?

Where would the money go?

How would the City know who was subject to the tax?

What would homeowners have to prove?

What would happen if the measure got tied up in litigation?

Would the tax actually lower rents?

Those questions became the campaign.

The Strategic Frame: Read the Fine Print

The No on Measure A campaign was built around a simple strategic insight: San Diego voters did not need to be persuaded that housing affordability is a serious issue. They needed to be shown that Measure A was not a serious solution.

That is a very different campaign.

If we had simply argued against taxes, we would have left too much ground to the proponents. They would have framed the campaign as homeowners and real estate interests versus renters and working families.

But Measure A gave us a better, more durable argument.

It was not just a tax. It was a poorly designed tax.

It was not just expensive. It was unfairly structured.

It was not just aimed at “empty homes.” It created a new compliance and enforcement regime that could pull ordinary homeowners into a paperwork fight with City Hall.

It was not just about housing. The money went into the City’s General Fund and was not guaranteed to build housing or lower rents.

That allowed the campaign to speak to a broader voter concern: competence.

Voters are tired of being told that if they care about a problem, they must support whatever policy City Hall puts in front of them. Measure A gave voters a reason to say: yes, housing affordability matters — and no, this is not the way to solve it.

The Government’s Own Reports Helped Make the Case

One of the most important parts of the campaign was not opposition research in the traditional sense.

It was reading the public documents.

The City’s own materials and fiscal analysis raised many of the questions that became central to the No campaign. The City had to estimate who might be subject to the tax. It had to rely on imperfect data. It had to acknowledge uncertainty around exemptions, enforcement, administrative costs, and taxpayer behavior.

That was politically important because it moved the argument away from ideology and into implementation.

Their own reports said they were guessing.

That is a powerful message because it is not just an attack. It is a diagnosis.

Measure A asked voters to approve a new tax first and let City Hall figure out the machinery later. That opened the door to a much more practical line of argument: before you create a $10,000 tax on homes, shouldn’t the City know exactly who is subject to it, how it will be enforced, how much it will really cost, and whether it will actually help housing affordability?

The answer from voters was clear.

The Message Had to Respect Voters’ Concerns About Housing

One reason the campaign worked is that it did not dismiss the housing crisis.

That would have been a mistake.

San Diego voters know housing is too expensive. They know rent is high. They know young families, workers, seniors, and first-time buyers are under pressure. Any campaign that sounded indifferent to that reality would have lost credibility.

So the No on Measure A campaign made an important strategic choice: we acknowledged the problem, then challenged the solution.

That is often the difference between a defensive campaign and a winning campaign.

The message was not, “Everything is fine.”

The message was, “Housing is too important for gimmicks.”

That allowed us to argue for more homes, faster approvals, accountability, and policies that actually increase supply — while rejecting a vacancy tax that created bureaucracy without guaranteeing housing results.

The strongest campaigns give voters permission to hold two thoughts at the same time.

San Diego has a housing crisis.

Measure A was still the wrong answer.

The Campaign Was About Trust

At its core, Measure A became a trust question.

Do you trust City Hall to impose a $10,000 home tax based on rules that still need to be written?

Do you trust that the money will go to housing when the measure does not guarantee that?

Do you trust a new enforcement bureaucracy to distinguish between a truly vacant home, a family hardship, a military deployment, a death in the family, a renovation, a second home, a rental unit, or a home caught in some other complicated personal circumstance?

Do you trust that a measure already carrying legal and administrative risk will produce meaningful housing relief instead of lawsuits, paperwork, and cost?

Campaigns are often won when voters move from the proponent’s intended question to the question the measure actually deserves.

The proponents wanted voters to ask: should empty homes be taxed?

The No campaign asked: should City Hall be given this much power through a measure this poorly drafted?

That second question was the campaign.

Execution Still Matters

Strategy matters most. But strategy does not execute itself.

The campaign had to translate a complicated measure into understandable voter communications across paid media, earned media, digital content, coalition outreach, and direct voter contact.

That meant repeating core points without letting them become stale:

Measure A is a $10,000 tax on homes.

The money is not guaranteed for housing.

Homeowners would have to prove they are exempt.

The rules and paperwork come later.

Other cities have already run into problems with vacancy taxes.

San Diego needs real housing solutions, not another tax bureaucracy.

That kind of message discipline is essential in ballot measure campaigns. Voters are busy. Ballots are long. News coverage is fragmented. Attention is limited. A campaign cannot afford to chase every argument or answer every attack on the opponent’s terms.

The job is to identify the core truth of the campaign and keep driving it until voters understand the choice.

In San Diego, the core truth was that Measure A was not a housing solution. It was a flawed tax scheme.

The Larger Lesson for Ballot Measure & Public Affairs Campaigns

Measure A is part of a much larger trend.

Across California and around the country, local governments are under pressure to address housing affordability, homelessness, budget deficits, and service demands. That pressure is real. But it is also producing a wave of measures that sound appealing in concept and break down under scrutiny.

Vacancy taxes. Transfer taxes. Rent control expansions. New fees. New mandates. New enforcement programs. New “temporary” taxes that never seem to go away.

Each one deserves to be judged not by its slogan, but by its actual mechanics.

Who pays?

Who decides?

Where does the money go?

What are the unintended consequences?

What happens to supply?

What does enforcement look like?

What are the legal risks?

Is there evidence the policy will work?

Those are not side questions. They are the campaign.

That is especially true in ballot measure fights, where voters are not just expressing an opinion. They are writing law.

Bottom Line

The defeat of Measure A was not simply a rejection of a tax.

It was a rejection of a flawed approach to housing policy.

San Diego voters read the fine print. They asked the right questions. They saw the difference between a real housing solution and a risky tax bureaucracy.

For HexaCom Group, this campaign reinforced a lesson we have seen again and again in ballot measure campaigns: voters are practical. They will support serious solutions to serious problems. But they can also spot when a proposal overpromises, underdelivers, and asks them to trust City Hall with too much power and too few answers.

That is why research matters.

That is why message discipline matters.

That is why execution matters.

And that is why campaigns are won by doing more than opposing bad ideas.

They are won by explaining clearly why a bad idea is bad — and giving voters the confidence to say no.