Brothers Use Initiative to Make Profit From Politics

The F. G. Kimball Co. is a well-kept secret in Westlake Village, and its owners invest a lot of time and money keeping it that way.

The firm is not listed in the phone book. The address the company divulges is a post office box. To confuse unwanted visitors, one door leading to the company’s suite of heavily guarded offices is unmarked, while the other entrance bears the name of the previous tenant.

The company also frequently moves to different locations in Westlake Village--preferred because of its remoteness--to discourage would-be vandals or saboteurs.

“We’re security conscious to the point of being paranoid,” acknowledged Kelly Kimball, the company’s 28-year-old president.

The Kimball Co.’s modus operandi might resemble that of a CIA operative or a bookmaker, but the nature of its operation is far less exotic.

Army of Workers

The company is in the elections business. It is one of the few firms in the nation that qualifies initiatives for ballots in California and a growing number of other states. The company’s army of senior citizens, out-of-work actors, laid-off union workers and housewives has gathered enough signatures to qualify such initiatives as those favored by lottery proponents, Howard Jarvis, Peripheral Canal opponents, and people seeking welfare and campaign finance reform.

The company--which employs 15,000 people on commission during any given election season-- maintains the secrecy for pragmatic reasons. Each day, petitions bearing 1.5 million signatures are processed in the Westlake Village office before they are sent out, often by courier, to county clerks across the state for validation. It would be tempting, company officials speculate, for initiative opponents to attempt to destroy the valuable signatures.

“All we need is a pipe bomb to come through the window and we’re out of business,” Kimball said.

Over the years, the Kimball Co. has received countless bomb threats, and petition gatherers in the field have been harassed, pushed, kicked and had their petitions ripped to shreds. When Kimball’s circulators were collecting signatures for Proposition 15, the gun-control initiative, about 200 irate gun lovers pulled out their weapons when they were approached.

Highly Specialized

Professional petitioning is a highly specialized field. Election officials with the California secretary of state’s office know of only one other firm in the business, Tom Bader & Associates in San Diego. (Bader became interested in the field as a student at Los Angeles Valley College when he answered a newspaper advertisement soliciting signature gatherers.)

More and more groups with causes in California are turning to these two firms because of the difficulty encountered enticing enough volunteers to gather the large volumes of signatures needed in a relatively short time.

The company is run by Kimball, 28, a political science major who attended college in eastern Kentucky on a diving scholarship, and his 30-year-old brother, Fred G. Kimball Jr., a former member of the Coast Guard and a past professional water skier. Kelly Kimball wears a suit and tie and acts as the company’s affable front man, while Fred Kimball prefers a T-shirt and jeans and works with the computers. Both are Chatsworth High School graduates.

As children, the brothers recall collecting signatures at a nickel apiece for their father, Fred G. Kimball Sr., who was one of the state’s pioneers in the field. The senior Kimball, a former real estate manager, got his start in the business in 1968 when he volunteered to help Los Angeles County Assessor Phil Watson qualify a property-tax relief measure for the ballot.

Kimball succeeded, but the measure failed on election day. Watson was so impressed, however, that he hired the elder Kimball as a deputy assessor and four years later he qualified another initiative. Kimball next helped out then-Gov. Ronald Reagan with a tax-reform proposal.

“It turned out I had a talent for getting things on the ballot,” recalled the senior Kimball, who drops by the Westlake Village office occasionally to see how his sons are doing.

But their father never considered the initiative business something he or anyone else could make money on. When he helped Reagan, for example, he received a pair of cuff links and two autographed photographs. But Fred Kimball Jr. thought the endeavor could be a moneymaker, so the brothers gambled and formed the company in 1978.

Wide-Ranging Causes

Today, the Kimball Co. aids right- and left-wing causes and those of nearly every political stripe in between. It vigorously strives to maintain a nonpartisan reputation, sometimes by collecting petitions for opposing sides.

The company, for instance, qualified the “Deep Pockets” statewide initiative favored by physicians and municipalities and opposed by trial lawyers. The initiative would sharply curb the use of the state’s provision allowing plaintiffs to collect awards from the wealthiest or most heavily insured defendants even if they are only marginally at fault. The company’s petition circulators are now working on a proposed initiative opposed by doctors and supported by attorneys who want to eliminate restrictions on the amount of malpractice awards.

The company also is involved with a campaign finance initiative favored by Common Cause, a tax measure supported by Howard Jarvis, and a toxic-waste proposal sponsored by environmental groups.

Rejected Klan Offer

The brothers occasionally do spurn some potential customers. They rejected an offer by the Ku Klux Klan to sponsor an initiative substituting a Robert E. Lee Day for the national holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. They also turned down Larry Flynt, the pornography king, who wanted to qualify as a presidential candidate. The company also recently got a call from Lyndon LaRouche supporters who were looking for someone to circulate an anti-AIDs petition, a job they said they would refuse.

The Kimballs are always looking for more business. They admit that they do approach organizations that they believe should sponsor initiatives. A group that Kelly Kimball suggests should consider launching a ballot initiative is the animal rights activists.

The Kimball brothers will guarantee a spot on the ballot to just about anyone who has $300,000 to $600,000. The amount of the fee is determined, in part, by the number of signatures required. The company enjoys a 100% success rate in the more than 30 initiative drives it has orchestrated.

Professional firms do enjoy a higher success rate than volunteer efforts, said Barbara Lee, an election analyst with the secretary of state’s office. “It’s more of a sure thing if they handle it,” she said.

Most Measures Fail

Once an initiative is on the ballot, though, the Kimball Co.’s job is finished and the guarantees end. Voters have defeated some of the initiatives the company has qualified.

Actually, most propositions do fail, according to statistics kept by the secretary of state. In California, 593 initiative petitions have been circulated since 1912, 189 qualified for the ballot and only 54 have been approved.

The Kimball Co.’s success depends on the ingenuity of the people in the field. The company’s circulators have discovered they are luckiest with captive audiences. Movie lines in Westwood are a favorite spot. One elderly man has enjoyed great success collecting names on RTD buses that he rides on his senior citizen discount pass. Another man, gathering signatures for the lottery initiative, set up a card table at a San Diego swap meet. He attracted so many people that other exhibitors wanted their booths moved next to him.

The Kimballs contend they are performing a patriotic service to voters--even if they are making money. They say firms like theirs are essential because politicians often shy away from issues because of controversy or because of pressure from lobbyists.

“There is a need for this job,” Fred Kimball Sr. said. “There is no way to get the Legislature to act on certain issues.”

The Kimballs advocate changes in the laws to make the initiative process even simpler. That would open up the field to those who do not have the money to be heard now, they say.

“One of the biggest problems with the process is that you need money to use us,” Kelly Kimball conceded.