Petition drive works to overturn new cash bail law

SAN DIEGO – Backed by a private-equity firm, a large bailbond company here is financing a campaign to repeal California's landmark criminal justice reform.

The new law would abolish the state's bail-bond companies, and in response, a handful in the industry have raised more than $2.5 million to repeal the measure. The largest share of that, almost $800,000, comes from Triton, a bail company owned by Endeavour Capital, an Oregonbased private-equity firm that has managed billions in investments.

The donations are paying for an army of campaign workers who have descended on California's shopping centers to beseech passersby for petition signatures. The campaign, which needs 365,880 names to put the measure before voters in 2020, pays the sidewalk solicitors a Sidewalk solicitors in California are being paid $3.25 for each signature they gather in support of a referendum on the state’s new bail law. Here, a man seeking signatures approaches shoppers in National City.

few dollars for each signature – the going rate around San Diego was $3.25. Arithmetically, the donations may be enough to delay the law's implementation for at least a year.

“You gonna help me out, sweetheart?” asks a woman with long fake eyelashes accosting shoppers at a Walmart in exurban San Diego.

“Señora, es usted un votante? Would you mind signing?” says a clipboard man in a Spider-man T-shirt a few miles away at another Walmart.