Fiedler to Claim Belief That Davis Planned to Quit Race

Rep. Bobbi Fiedler and her chief aide will defend themselves against charges that they tried to lure state Sen. Ed Davis out of the Republican U.S. Senate primary with a $100,000 contribution by contending that they believed Davis had already decided to quit the race before anyone discussed financial assistance.

Sources familiar with the Fiedler position discussed her approach to the case as Fiedler herself hit the campaign trail Saturday in an attempt to show that her indictment will not stop her drive for the nomination.

The congresswoman appeared at a Republican Party function Saturday night in Rialto, where she vowed to continue her campaign.

Fiedler, 48, and aide Paul Clarke, 39, were indicted Thursday by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury under a little-known California statute that makes it a felony, punishable by up to three years in prison, to pay or offer money to a candidate to withdraw from a political contest.

Both Fiedler and Clarke said their attorneys have told them not to discuss details of the case. However, sources in the Fiedler camp contend that they could not have broken the law because from the first day of their discussions with the Davis camp they believed that Davis had already decided to end his debt-ridden campaign.

“The whole premise was that Davis was dead in the water,” said a Fiedler source.

Davis, 69, has called that assumption “preposterous” and pointed to early polls that have consistently shown him to be the front-runner in the crowded Republican primary.

The Davis and Fiedler camps have been giving out conflicting versions of which side initiated the first contact early last November, which led to a series of meetings during which financial aid for the Davis campaign reportedly was discussed.

However, legal experts believe that the key to the case rests in the actual words used by Clarke and Fiedler in conversations with Davis campaign manager Martha Zilm. Zilm, without the knowledge of the Fiedler campaign, was gathering evidence for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

The investigation began in mid-November, after Zilm told the Ventura County district attorney’s office that a Fiedler contributor had suggested that the Fiedler organization might help Davis retire his $100,000 campaign debt if he got out of the Senate race. The Ventura office referred the case to Los Angeles County.

Mention of Money

In the Fiedler version, however, it was Zilm who first mentioned the money during a series of meetings, beginning in early December, with Clarke and another Fiedler aide, Arnold Steinberg. “Martha was the one who brought up the $100,000. We never mentioned money,” said a source close to Fiedler.

Fiedler sources also said that at a meeting Jan. 12 at Fiedler’s home, Fiedler told Zilm that Fiedler would consider helping Davis “as a friend.” But the sources said that Fiedler said she wanted no “quid pro quo.” Clarke also attended that meeting, a source in the Fiedler camp said.

Zilm, according to other sources, was wired for sound and taped the conversation at the behest of the Los Angeles County prosecutors.

A Fiedler source said Saturday that the Washington Post had “got hold of the tapes” and Clarke told reporters Saturday night in Rialto that today’s Post would “clear things up.”

Basis of News Report

However, Post reporter Jay Mathews said Saturday night that he had heard no tapes of the meeting and had written his article based on the account of someone at the meeting, whom he identified in the article as “a supporter of the indicted Fiedler.”

Prosecutors have refused to discuss the evidence against Fiedler and Clarke. However, they have said repeatedly that they would not have presented the case to the grand jury if they had not believed that the two had committed a crime.

Fiedler and Clarke may be the first people ever prosecuted under the statute, enacted in its original form in 1939.

Gerald L. Chaleff, a prominent Los Angeles defense attorney who represents a Fiedler supporter who was called to testify before the grand jury, said the code section is ambiguous, at best.

In full, the section reads:

“A person shall not directly or through any other person advance, pay, solicit, or receive or cause to be paid or received any money or other valuable consideration to or for the use of any person in order to induce a person not to become or to withdraw as a candidate for public office. Violation of this section shall be punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months or two years or three years.”

Point of Confusion

Chaleff said: “The section, except for the word solicit, seems to require some affirmative act, like paying. . . . I don’t know what the word solicit means (as it is used in the law).” The attorney refused to discuss specifics of the case.

Another question, according to Chaleff and Costa Mesa attorney Dana W. Reed, who has done free legal work for both Fiedler and Davis, is whether the state statute applies to a federal election.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven A. Sowders, head of the Special Investigations Division, the unit that presented the Fiedler case to the grand jury, said his staff’s preliminary legal research failed to turn up any other case prosecuted under the law, Section 23905 of the California Elections Code.

Sowders also said he has found no recorded appellate court decisions that clarify the law, suggesting that prosecutors and defense attorneys may spend as much time arguing about what the law means as they do arguing about what Fiedler and Clarke did.

“The indictment surprises me very much,” said Reed, former undersecretary of the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency.

Called Common Practice

“I’ve been in politics for 30 years,” Reed continued, “and it’s not at all uncommon for candidates of the same political party to agree to help each other with their campaign debts. The whole concept of one candidate helping another candidate pay off the debt is something that’s quite common.”

Davis was asked about that Saturday: Had he possibly overreacted when, according to the Davis camp’s version, Zilm first told Davis of the Fiedler camp’s interest in rumors that he was getting out of the race?

“No,” Davis replied. “Somebody assumed that I would conspire with them in the commission of a felony. That was the first thing that occurred to me. . . . I said (to Zilm), ‘Call our lawyer, I think that is a serious federal felony and should come to the attention of the United States attorney.’ When she (Zilm) came back to me and said it was not a federal felony but it was a violation of state law, I said, ‘OK, call Mike, meaning Mike Bradbury, the Ventura County district attorney.’ ”

Davis also said Saturday that he believed his campaign office may have been bugged when he and two aides discussed his campaign finances in November. His aides told him that he had to start raising more money in his Senate campaign, he said, and that he could be in debt by as much as $100,000--the same figure later mentioned in talks between Zilm and members of the Fiedler campaign.

“I racked my brain (about) how that figure could have gotten out,” Davis said. “I was intrigued to the point where I tried to hire somebody to come in and sweep the offices, as they say, to see if there were Dictaphones or telephone taps with transmitters.”

Times staff writer Lanie Jones in Rialto contributed to this story.