Reform California is a 527 political action committee that is dedicated to holding state and local government accountable. We fight costly and unfair taxes, mandates, and fees because working families cannot afford a higher cost of living — and state and local politicians already have enough of our money.
Given that California is currently dominated by one political party with a supermajority – and the other political party has shown itself largely ineffective in its opposition role – Reform California seeks to be the counterbalance to extreme and misguided policies that are costing taxpayers and hurting working families in our state.
Under Chairman Carl DeMaio's leadership, Reform California has become the fastest growing grassroots organization in the state. Reform California achieves its mission in three ways:
Ordinary citizens from all walks of life are funders and supporters of Reform California. In fact, Reform California has grown into one of the largest grassroots advocacy organizations in the country.
This diversity and broad-based support gives Reform California true independence from the political system because our funding is not tied to any special interests with business before the state.
Reform California was founded in 2003 by government reform leader Carl DeMaio with the initial focus on uncovering the financial crisis faced at that time by the City of San Diego. That initial work led to the City of San Diego admitting to falsifying its financial statements and hiding its multi-billion pension debt crisis. After exposing this financial crisis, Reform California outlined a bold fiscal reform plan that saved the City of San Diego from bankruptcy.
Since its launch in 2003, Reform California has led over two dozen initiative campaigns – both in specific regions as well as state-wide. In 2017, Reform California led the successful recall against State Senator Josh Newman (D) who cast the deciding vote in approving the costly and unfair car and gas tax hikes. This successful Recall is only the 5th time since 1912 that a state politician was successfully removed from office through a Recall. In 2018, Reform California collected over 1 million signatures to qualify Proposition 6 – the Gas Tax Repeal Initiative and in 2022 collected over 1.4 million signatures to qualify the California Taxpayer Protection Act.
To date Reform California has defeated over 300 tax hike proposals on the ballot - saving Californians over $32 billion.
Reform California’s “Plain English Voter Guide" is the most referenced voter guide in the state - and was downloaded by more than 264,000 unique voters during the 2022 election.
