Bird Foes Collect Larger Amount : $4.7 Million Contributed for High Court Campaign

The campaign for control of the California Supreme Court has already generated more than $4.7 million in political contributions, with Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other justices bankrolled heavily by lawyers while opponent groups drew extensively from business, agriculture and thousands of people answering direct mail appeals.

Backing Bird and other members of the court’s liberal majority are celebrated attorneys such as Melvin Belli, the politically active California Trial Lawyers’ Assn., and a smattering of entertainment figures, including television producer Norman Lear and actor James Garner.

Opponents of the liberal majority include about 40 executives of California companies, including officials of Van de Kamp’s Bakery and Glendale Federal Savings; some major farming interests such as the Newhall Land & Cattle Co. and J. G. Boswell; and Republican king makers Henry Salvatori, Holmes Tuttle, Margaret Brock and Jane Dart, the widow of Justin Dart. Dart, Tuttle and Salvatori were members of a group nicknamed the “kitchen cabinet,” which supported President Reagan’s early political rise.

The campaign against Bird, which has highlighted the plight of crime victims, also drew a contribution from Los Angeles television newsman Jerry Dunphy, who was the victim of a 1983 shooting.

Campaign spending reports on file Monday showed that Bird raised $1.3 million during 1984 and 1985 and banked most of it to pay for advertising for the Nov. 4 election. She reported $1.02 million in her treasury at the start of the year.

Two of Bird’s colleagues on the court, Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, also raised money, year-end reports showed. Grodin collected about $60,000 in contributions and $50,000 in loans, while Reynoso took in $164,000 in contributions.

Others on Ballot

Justice Stanley Mosk, who is characterized by court critics as the fourth member of the court’s liberal wing, is slated to be on the ballot in November but has not said whether he will run. Justices Malcolm M. Lucas and Edward A. Panelli, who will also be on the ballot, have not drawn any organized opposition. Not on the ballot is the seventh justice, Allen E. Broussard.

Bird’s organized opposition is divided into three large committees and reported raising $3.3 million. Of this, all but $419,000 was spent, much of it by the professional consultants paying themselves for running the committees and for the cost of expanding the lists of campaign contributors.

Individually, the reports show:

- Californians to Defeat Rose Bird, whose founders included anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis and a host of Republican office holders, raised $2.5 million and spent all but $348,995. (This group has now merged its efforts with the Crime Victims for Court Reform).

- Crime Victims for Court Reform raised $407,000 and spent all but $24,450. This is a group organized around veteran GOP consultant Bill Roberts and features prosecutors and the families of murder victims, among others, in its cause.

- The Law and Order Campaign Committee, headed by conservative state Sen. H. L. Richardson of Glendora, raised $425,000 and spent all but $45,700. Richardson has since announced he will run for lieutenant governor but keep alive his anti-court campaign as a secondary effort.

The two largest contributions to the court opposition were $25,000 from Los Angeles investor H. B. Keck and $15,000 from Riordan Pantry Ltd., a business owned in part by Richard Riordan, a Los Angeles lawyer active in an anti-court committee, according to a spokeswoman for the committee.

The amounts of other anti-Bird contributions included $500 from Brock, $1,000 from Jane Dart, $300 from Salvatori, $500 from the Newhall farming group, $500 from Boswell, $500 from Van de Kamp’s President James M. Galbraith and $100 contributions from Glendale Federal Savings Board Chairman Raymond D. Edwards and from Tuttle’s automobile dealership. Former Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Curb, who is campaigning for his old office, tossed in $5,000.

Support From Lawyers

The anti-Bird totals do not include reports of a handful of smaller committees that have popped up across the state.

On Bird’s behalf, the largest single donation was $110,000 from the California Trial Lawyers Assn., followed by at least $67,500 from the Los Angeles law firm of Greene, O’Reilly & Broillet, which is composed of some of the chief justices’ close legal friends. Spokesmen for Bird and the Green-O’Reilly company explained that the chief justice abstains from sitting on any cases involving the firm.

Amounts given by other supporters included $10,000 from Lear, $2,100 from Belli and $500 from Garner.

The California Trail Lawyers Assn. also is active before the high court, both as a group and through its individual attorneys, who tend to specialize in tort lawsuits. J. Gary Gwilliam an Oakland lawyer who chairs the association’s Political Action Committee, said the group’s large donation was motivated “because no other entity is going to stand up and protect the court except those sworn to uphold it.”

Bird’s campaign said it is significant that she has more than twice as much cash on hand as opponents at the beginning of the year.

“These consultants (lined up against Bird) have gone from rags to riches and their campaign organizations have gone from riches to rags,” said Steven M. Glazer, spokesman for the Bird campaign.

List of Contributors

Close to $1 million of the anti-Bird money was spent developing a list of 100,000 contributors, said Stu Mollrich, an official of Californians to Defeat Rose Bird. Mollrich insisted these contributors will be good for another $1 million before the election.

Mollrich said more than 4 million pieces of mail were sent to persuade voters to make Bird and her two targeted colleagues the first justices in modern times to be ousted from office.

That mail, along with a series of radio ads by anti-Bird committees, attack the court on two fronts. The court is accused of being soft on criminals, chiefly when it comes to the death penalty. In 55 cases to come before the Bird court, only three death penalties have been affirmed, with the chief justice voting to overturn the sentences in all of the cases.

Additionally, the anti-Bird campaign has criticized the court for rulings that have curtailed the application of Proposition 13, the statewide anti-property tax measure of 1978, and that have gone against the interests of landlords, employers and insurance companies.

Insurance companies, real estate firms, construction companies, banks and financial institutions all chipped in against Bird.

To date, Bird’s campaign, run by her Committee to Conserve the Courts, has conducted only a limited campaign, preferring to marshal its resources for a full-scale counterattack promised for later this year.