California Elections : THE GOVERNOR’S RACE : Bradley Hoping Toxic Waste Issue Will Give Him a Boost

Table 141 in the thick book of printouts of a public opinion poll explains much of what is happening in Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s campaign against Gov. George Deukmejian.

Such polls, combined with the instincts of campaign managers, are guidelines in the inexact business of running a candidate for public office.

This one, taken for Bradley in January, had plenty of bad news for the mayor. Deukmejian led Bradley 51% to 39%. Worse yet, 17% of the voters felt the governor was doing an excellent job and 46% said his performance was good.

But Table 141 offered a slender hope to Bradley’s campaign chairman, Tom Quinn. It indicated that more than 66% of those polled would vote against Deukmejian if they believed that he had received “substantial election contributions from toxic polluters.”

High-Risk Plan

From those figures, combined with his instinct for attack-style politics, Quinn devised a high-risk plan in which the customarily dignified and bland mayor launched a savage attack against Deukmejian.

Some of the time, he is portraying Deukmejian as protecting insurance companies against tough state regulation. But mainly, Democrat Bradley is charging that the Republican governor is a captive of toxic waste polluters who have contributed heavily to his campaign. The star of Bradley’s anti-Deukmejian commercials is toxic waste, shown thick and gooey, as disgusting as the slime in the film “Ghostbusters.”

The aim: to reduce Deukmejian’s lead in the polls and convince potential donors that Bradley has a chance of winning, thus increasing the mayor’s presently weak flow of campaign contributions. Money was needed soon to keep the campaign going during dry summer months when funds are hard to raise, and to build up a surplus for television commercials in the fall.

Quinn said he believes that exploitation of the toxics issue may do the job. “It is a very hot issue,” Quinn said, which gives the mayor his best chance of portraying Deukmejian as a “conservative, pro-special-interest Republican.”

Limited Chance of Success

But other polls, including that of the Los Angeles Times, indicate that the chances of success are limited. “People are concerned about toxics, no doubt about it,” said Larry Berg, director of USC’s Institute of Politics and Government, which did a poll on the toxics issue last December. “But how you translate it into votes, I don’t know.”

Mervin Field, director of the California Poll, agreed, saying, “it’s a lurking issue, but it is very difficult to mobilize public opinion” on it. The Bradley campaign launched its toxics ad attack in April when public opinion polls were showing the mayor down by at least 15 points, a precipitous drop from earlier surveys. The slump was attributed largely to the mayor’s delay in announcing his neutrality in the controversy over the reconfirmation of California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

Quinn, denying that there had been such a sharp drop, said his own January poll convinced him that Bradley was well behind even before the Bird issue heated up. “I don’t think we had a significant drop in the polls since the campaign began,” he said. “And in the last month, we have pretty well stabilized.”

“To be down 16 points in May does not mean a candidate is going to lose,” said Quinn, who complained that news stories continued to portray the mayor as sinking rapidly, making contributors and other supporters more pessimistic.

‘Self-Fulfilling Prophesy’

“Something that is not true may become true,” Quinn said. “The press can make something a self-fulfilling prophesy.”

The campaign resembled a troubled business, with overhead stubbornly continuing while income dwindles.

Television commercials can cost as much $300,000. Radio commercials, trumpeting the same anti-toxics message, were a bargain basement $50,000--but still an appreciable amount to a campaign that had only $1 million to Deukmejian’s $7 million. Grass-roots organizers Steve Sulkes and Kerman Maddox are in the field, requiring salary and expenses. Press Secretary Ali Webb and three assistants maintain contact with broadcast and newspaper reporters. Each time the mayor goes on a campaign trip, one of the advance people--Karen Sentino, John McDonald, Kathy St. John and Bill Schulz--precedes him, arranging the meetings and drumming up crowds.

Even fund-raising costs money. The last reports submitted to the state showed fund raisers Irene Tritschler received almost $50,000 and Don Muir $25,500 for three months’ salary and expenses.

A lid is kept on expenses where possible. Volunteers are used to help researcher Michael Feuer gather anti-Deukmejian material.

Salaries Must Be Paid

Campaign manager Mary T. Nichols receives $5,000 a month, less than she earned as a member of a downtown law firm. Quinn, whose communications company, Americom, is arranging all the campaign advertising, said he will not be paid unless there is money left at the end.

Each week, receipts and expenditures are tallied. Bradley confidante Maureen Kindel, city Board of Public Works president, meets regularly with Tritschler to check the bottom line, Quinn said.

Bradley had been working on a toxics strategy since last year. War against firms they considered toxic polluters comes naturally to Quinn and Nichols, who battled big corporations on the air pollution issue when each headed the California Air Resources Board in the Administration of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

In the summer, city dweller Bradley took a well publicized river rafting trip in the Sierra, designed to show him off as an environmentalist. Later in the year, Deputy Mayor Tom Houston and Nichols worked with environmentalist groups to write a tough toxics control initiative for the November ballot.

When Fairbank, Bregman and Maullin took the January telephone poll of 996 registered voters for the campaign, a question was thrown in to test the public reaction to a campaign that would charge Deukmejian was a tool of toxic polluters. Those polled were asked the likelihood of their voting for Deukmejian “if he has received substantial campaign contributions from toxic waste polluters.”

Might Make Difference

A total of 42.1% said it was less likely that they would vote for Deukmejian, 24.4% said somewhat less likely, 4.6% said somewhat more likely and 3% said more likely. And a huge majority of those polled, 86.3%, said it was important to speedily clean up toxic waste dumps and more closely control toxic waste dumping.

That concern was mirrored by other surveys. A USC Institute of Government and Politics poll in December showed support for toxics controls and fear of pollutants. But the survey indicated that a substantial number of the 510-person sample trusted Deukmejian on the toxics problem. A total of 52% said they trusted him, while 46% said they had little trust.

A Los Angeles Times Poll of 2,022 people, taken in March, showed potential Deukmejian weakness on the toxics issue. It said 22% believed that Bradley would do a better job on toxics than Deukmejian. Only 16% expressed confidence in Deukmejian. But significantly, 34% saw no difference between the two and 27% were not sure.

The poll said that 31% felt Deukmejian could get things done in overall performance, compared to 20% for Bradley, with 48% either not sure, or seeing no difference between them. The two were evenly ranked on education and leadership.

And the poll showed a danger sign for Bradley. Those taking some liberal positions, such as favoring handgun controls or a nuclear freeze--the Bradley electoral base--tended to support the mayor less enthusiastically than conservatives back Deukmejian. For example, handgun control advocates were evenly split while opponents of control heavily favored the governor.

Need Convincing

Added together, the polls showed that the public had to be convinced that Deukmejian is a toxics villain.

Bradley’s radio commercials on toxics were the first shot. One Democratic campaign manager, not associated with the Bradley team, said he felt that they had an immediate, positive effect. The commercials were so hard-hitting that they became the object of debate, with Deukmejian and some political commentators blasting them as sleazy. As a result, the strategist said, the campaign debate turned from the Bird issue, which was badly hurting Bradley, and forced Deukmejian to reply to the attacks. They were followed up by television commercials, which are now running.

And, according to Bradley strategists, the toxics strategy will allow the mayor to take advantage of publicity generated by two highly publicized initiative campaigns this year.

One is the toxics control measure, ready to qualify for the November ballot. Its backers expect oil, chemical and other companies to pour millions of dollars into a campaign against it, generating such a furious contest that environmentalists and other fearful Californians will be pulled to the polls and will vote for Bradley, the self-proclaimed anti-toxics candidate.

And in the current June primary election campaign, the toxics issue is being raised by the campaign against Proposition 51, the June ballot measure designed to end what many local governments say is a crisis in liability insurance.

Limiting Liability

Two anti-Proposition 51 ads contend that the measure would limit the liability of toxic polluters sued by their victims. One of the ads by strategists Michael Berman and Carl D’Agostino features the same sort of toxic ooze seen in the Bradley ads and the other shows Democratic Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp declaring, “the chemical companies behind Proposition 51 say that toxic polluters who cause cancer should not be held fully accountable.”

But outside political experts are skeptical about the strategy.

“It’s one of those unique issues where the public is very fearful, and so fearful that it doesn’t know what to do about it,” said pollster Mervin Field.

Field said that voters will have to be convinced Deukmejian was at fault and that Bradley can solve the problem. He said a dramatic chain of events might accomplish that--a major toxics accident in which Deukmejian and the state were “clearly in the wrong,” accompanied by “the perception that Bradley is better qualified than anyone to correct it.”

To do that, Field said, “Bradley would need an impeccable record and would have to be advocating it (toxics controls) for some time.” Field, however, noted that Bradley’s own environmental record is under heavy attack from Republicans, and from Los Angeles area environmentalists, because of city-caused sewage spills into Santa Monica Bay and his approval of oil drilling on the shore at Pacific Palisades.

In the face of skeptics, Quinn said he thinks that the strategy will work. “I think there is a logical chance of winning,” he said. “Not a certainty, but it is wrong to say we can’t win because we are down in the polls.”