Representatives and lobbyists for some of the nation’s biggest corporations packed into a conference room in California’s Capitol on June 21. They had been summoned to hear an offer, one that would keep the California Consumer Privacy Act—a measure reviled by the tech industry—off the ballot.

State Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, a former Assembly speaker and, until last December, of counsel to Glaser Weil Fink Howard Avchen & Shapiro, told those gathered that he had a deal for them. San Francisco real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart would drop his initiative, Hertzberg said, if they agreed not to fight—and the governor signed—legislation that would incorporate many of its privacy provisions.