Constitutional convention campaign suspends drive for November ballot

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Sponsors of a proposal to rewrite the state’s constitution ended their effort to place a constitutional convention on the November ballot. ‘We’re going to take a hiatus on this issue,’ said Jim Wunderman, head of the Bay Area Council, the business group that provided the initial momentum for the effort. ‘We were not able to raise the amount of money we needed to place the two ballot measures on the ballot.’

The announcement comes as recent campaign finance reports showed lackluster fundraising for the constitutional convention. Repair California, the reform group backing the convention, raised more than $352,000 during 2009 – a significant but far less amount than the millions of dollars typically needed in California to gather signatures to qualify a pair of initiatives for the November ballot.

‘The money basically ran out,’ Wunderman said Friday.

-- Anthony York in Sacramento