Public employee unions have dodged a bullet this election year.

Proponents have stopped pushing a measure to prohibit unions from deducting political money from public employee wages.

Supporters of the measure had trouble raising enough money to gather the 694,354 valid signatures they needed to qualify the constitutional amendment for the ballot, said Lew Uhler, president of the advocacy group the National Tax Limitation Committee, which worked with the initiative's proponents.

One big fundraising obstacle was the hesitation of GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and her high-powered supporters, who feared putting the initiative on the ballot would draw pro-union voters to the polls who would vote against Whitman, Uhler said.

The proponents had hoped tea party activists would gather enough signatures, but those efforts fell far short. The proponents also couldn't hire enough professional signature gatherers because of their lack of funds.

"The Whitman campaign made it reasonably clear that they preferred that this not be on the November 2010 ballot," Uhler said.

Another failed initiative would have amended the constitution to scale back public employee pensions and retirement benefits and raise the minimum retirement age for such employees, among other actions.

Initiative proponent Marcia Fritz said she ran into the same problem as Uhler's colleagues. Potential donors to the initiative held back on giving due to Whitman's concerns, Fritz said.

"If Whitman gets elected, we will definitely go for both of these in an off-year election when there's not a governor running," Fritz said.