Martha Zilm: Undercover Job Puts Focus on Campaign Chief

The tapes that led to the indictment of Rep. Bobbi Fiedler have thrown a spotlight on the 48-year-old campaign worker who made them.

Now jocularly known in political circles as “Agent Z,” Martha Zilm was the person who secretly made the tapes at the behest of the district attorney’s office.

“The tapes can’t be released soon enough as far as I’m concerned,” Zilm said in a telephone interview earlier this week.

Zilm, manager of state Sen. Ed Davis’ campaign for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, began cooperating with Los Angeles County prosecutors last November as they investigated an allegation by Davis that Fiedler’s opposition campaign had tried to lure Davis out of the race with a $100,000 contribution to help pay off his campaign debts.

Fiedler, Clarke Indicted

A grand jury indicted Fiedler and her top aide, Paul Clarke, on Jan. 23 under a state law that makes it a felony to pay or offer to pay someone to quit a political race.

A major component of the evidence was the more than five hours of tapes made by Zilm in her phone conversations and meetings over a two-month period with Fiedler, Clarke and Fiedler pollster Arnold Steinberg, who was not indicted.

Zilm will not discuss the specifics of the investigation, but sources in the district attorney’s office said she wore “a wire,” or hidden microphone, for her face-to-face conversations with the Fiedler campaign staff.

“It is not an experience that I would want to repeat,” Zilm said. “I did what I had to do. But if I were asked by the district attorney’s office to cooperate, I would do it again. I think that is your duty as a citizen.”

For the last 17 years, Zilm has lived on a quiet street in Thousand Oaks with her two children and husband, Charles, a marketing executive for Hughes Aircraft in Torrance. For years, she was one of the little people in political campaigns. She manned the phones and opened the mail in school board races. She once put her children in a stroller and walked precincts for Ronald Reagan when he ran for governor.

But in 1979, someone introduced her to Davis, the former Los Angeles police chief. He was looking for a manager for his 1980 state Senate campaign. Zilm got the job and steered Davis through a tough Republican primary.

In 1984, Davis was reelected to the state Senate with 75% of the vote. “I think I wanted Ed to run for the U.S. Senate before he thought about it,” Zilm said. So she and longtime Davis adviser Arthur Finkelstein of New York began planning the 1986 Senate campaign even before the 1984 state race was over.

Zilm is so devoted to Davis that she agreed to work without pay in the primary. If Davis wins, she said, she will get paid once the campaign moves into the general election phase and large sums of campaign money begin to come in.

Some political professionals privately downgrade Zilm’s importance in the Davis campaigns, saying that she is merely an on-site steward for Finkelstein, who flies in occasionally for meetings and talks often with Davis and Zilm on the telephone from New York.

Davis Doesn’t Agree

But Davis disputes that assessment:

“I have always said that a successful political candidate has to reject 90% of the recommendations of their consultants. Arthur may recommend a lot of things, but Martha and I decide between us what fits my style and my constituents. Martha knows what fits for me. And she is an excellent executive for the campaign staff.”