Occasionally - once every decade or two - powerful California political currents merge to create a whirlpool of intersecting conflicts that force voters to make some truly fundamental decisions about the society in which they live.

This year may be one of those events. Having made the historic, even risky, choice to oust an incumbent governor and elect an untried novice - a famous actor to boot - as his successor, California voters may now face a stunning array of ballot measures.

Political veterans are already comparing the November election to what has been considered to be the mother of all ballot wars in 1988, when voters waded through a raft of conflicting insurance regulation measures, two campaign finance reform proposals, a cigarette tax increase, and a precedent-setting school finance scheme. Campaign spending on the insurance measures alone reached $100 million.

Signature-gathering firms, campaign consultants and advertising designers got rich on what happened in 1988 - one consultant bought a mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean, even though he was on the losing side of one campaign - and they're salivating over many high-dollar conflicts reaching the ballot this year.

More than 50 measures are in play, but even if just a dozen of the most contentious reach the ballot, it will be a banner year. And, as in 1988, the biggest ones pit business and employer groups against rival factions such as organized labor and attorneys who specialize in personal injury lawsuits.

One biggie is already ticketed for November - a referendum bankrolled by employers to overturn a new state law requiring business to provide health insurance coverage to workers. Health care providers and labor unions will defend the law while business groups try to overturn it.

The battle over the health care law typifies the tone of the campaigns to come on the major pending measures. While employers contend that it will accelerate their operating costs, already among the highest in the nation, to unacceptable levels and discourage job-creating investment, the mandate's supporters say it's needed to cope with a worsening lack of health care access among the working poor.

The issue itself, meanwhile, typifies another trend: political conflicts driven by the state's complex, rapidly changing social and economic matrix. On one hand, California needs business to create 250,000 new jobs a year to employ its rapidly increasing work force, but at the same time the state is becoming a two-tiered society, with health care access being one of the social demarcation lines.

The same "business climate" argument permeates two other issues that may be headed to the ballot: reform of the state's very expensive and very troubled workers' compensation system, and an overhaul of the laws governing litigation.

Both workers' comp costs and fear of litigation make California less attractive to job-creating investment, backers of both campaigns contend. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to adopt the workers' compensation ballot measure as his cause should the Democratic-controlled Legislature fail to make significant changes on its own, and is conducting private negotiations on that issue now as the deadline for submitting initiative signatures draws near. Advocates for tightening up California's litigation rules, meanwhile, are pointing to a new U.S. Chamber of Commerce report rating California as 46th among the states in its friendliness to business from a liability standpoint.

Labor unions, health care providers and attorneys who specialize in workers' comp cases are readying for a multimillion-dollar battle against the initiative if it reaches the ballot, while lawyers who handle business liability and personal injury cases will spend heavily to defeat a measure that tightens their opportunities to sue and collect - a replay, of sorts, of other ballot battles between business and lawyers in years past.

And those are just three of the potentials. We could have a huge battle over Indian tribes' monopoly of casino gambling, and others over local government finance, changing legislative and congressional redistricting and/or bringing back some form of an open primary election system, to mention a few others.