Roberti Hits Deukmejian Voter Letter as Deceitful

Senate Democratic leader David A. Roberti on Thursday blistered as deceitful a letter signed by Gov. George Deukmejian urging certain Democrats to switch parties and register as Republicans.

The Los Angeles lawmaker charged that the letters to 22,000 selected Democratic households, mostly in the legislative district of Assemblyman Steve Clute (D-Riverside), contained false assertions and “vicious innuendoes.”

“What concerns me is his willingness in the letter to deceive voters,” Roberti said in a statement. He warned that for Deukmejian to “engage in such tactics does not bode well for fairness and honesty in the upcoming political campaigns.”

The letter was part of a GOP experiment in parts of Riverside County where Democrats, primarily those in Clute’s district, voted for Republican Ronald Reagan for President. Republicans hope that the mailing, followed up by telephone calls and offers to register Democrats as members of the GOP, will swell their numbers.

Cites Proposition 13

Among other things, the letter, mailed in mid-August and paid for by the California Republican Party, asserted that “Democratic leaders opposed Proposition 13 (the property tax cut)” in 1978.

Roberti said that for Deukmejian to single out Democratic leaders as the sole opponents of Proposition 13 is misleading. “The governor knows better because he--then and now a Republican--was a principal opponent” of the measure.

Kevin Brett, a spokesman for the governor, defended the letter as accurate. He said: “It requires no apology. Anyone who received it is certainly capable of determining the merits of the arguments it makes.”

He recalled that in 1978 Deukmejian was the leader of Senate Republicans who had endorsed Proposition 8, which the Legislature offered as an alternative to Proposition 13. It was defeated overwhelmingly.

In his “Dear Friend” letter, Deukmejian told the Democratic recipients that if they voted for Reagan, voted to abolish the inheritance tax in 1982 and favor the death penalty, “you are already voting like a Republican. Shouldn’t you be a Republican?”

The Deukmejian letter also said that “Democratic Party leaders oppose President Reagan’s tax cut proposal.” Roberti noted that Deukmejian himself has “voiced serious concerns about the effect of the Reagan plan on California’s timber and cattle industries and also on average taxpayers in this state.”

Deukmejian, while falling short of wholeheartedly embracing the President’s plan, has called it a “good beginning.”

In the letter, Deukmejian said Democratic voters have told him that “Democrats seem to be more worried about protecting the rights of criminals than the rights of victims” and, “Democratic Party leaders refuse to stand up to America’s enemies.”

‘Vicious Innuendoes’

Roberti deplored such statements as “vicious innuendoes that Democratic leaders endorse more crime and that Democrats won’t stand up to America’s enemies abroad.” He said Deukmejian “knows this is false . . . and California’s citizens know that it is false.”

Mike Pottage, an assistant to Assembly GOP leader Pat Nolan of Glendale, said the test effort in Riverside County “has produced several hundred Republican registrations” and party tacticians are deciding where similar “soft” Democratic districts will be targeted for similar campaigns.