1985 Grass-Roots Survey Questioned : GOP Rival Seeks Probe of Lucy Killea

A Republican seeking to unseat Assemblywoman Lucy Killea (D-San Diego) called on the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission on Monday to investigate the propriety of state-financed telephone surveys conducted last year for the two-term lawmaker and three other Democrats.

Candidate Earl Cantos Jr. also challenged Killea to put an amount equal to that spent on her behalf into a trust fund until the watchdog commission can determine whether the telephone boiler room operation, set up by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown’s top aide, involved political campaigning at taxpayer expense.

Killea, who like other Democrats has defended the project as legitimate communications with constituents, said she would abide by the judgment of her campaign advisers--not her opponent--”on how to dispose of my campaign funds.”

But she declined to accuse Cantos of political motivations in seeking the FPPC investigation.

“I don’t know my opponent well enough to know what motivates him,” Killea said. “ . . . I just don’t think it is very credible at this point.”

FPPC spokeswoman Lynn Montgomery said the commission had not yet received Cantos’ letter requesting an investigation.

But Montgomery said when the commission does receive the letter from Cantos--or anyone else requesting an investigation--it will start a staff inquiry to determine whether or not a full-scale investigation is merited.

Cantos said he mailed the letter to the commission Monday.

The boiler room, which costs the state about $37,000, was in operation about six months last year in a leased office building near the Capitol.

Richard Ross, Brown’s chief of staff, said the non-scientific telephone surveys about “real populist” legislative issues were conducted between July and December for Killea and three other Democratic members of the Assembly--Richard Katz of Sepulveda, Steve Clute of Riverside and Jean M. Duffy of Citrus Heights.

All represent “target” districts where Republican strategists are planning major campaign efforts. Duffy announced in October, however, that she does not intend to run for reelection.

Ross conceded that the targeted districts were chosen intentionally. But he said the surveys, intended to drum up grass-roots support for issues championed by the four Democrats, were “legitimate state legislative business.”

They were no more political, he said, than newsletters mailed periodically by lawmakers of both parties.

Cantos, 29, a former Sacramento-based Assembly aide, said he is asking the FPPC to investigate because “enough facts have been brought forth to indicate there is a potential problem and it’s a real gray area.”

“San Diego has been shaken over the past two years by political and financial scandals,” Cantos added. “I call on Mrs. Killea to put the amount of the state money spent on the phone bank into a trust fund.”

He said the money could be returned to Killea’s campaign if the politicians and the project’s operators are exonerated, or it could be “returned to the taxpayers” if the FPPC determines that Democrats were campaigning with public money.

“As a possible candidate for the Assembly against Mrs. Killea, I believe it to be inappropriate for incumbents to use state monies for political gain,” Cantos wrote in his letter to the commission. “However, no one should be condemned without a fair trial, and an investigation would bring the truth to light.”

Cantos, making his first run for elective office, is the son of retired Municipal Court Judge Earl Cantos Sr.