Write-In Winner Lays Colorful Past on Table

Three weeks ago, Michael Lasky saw one side of politics when he drew accolades for being the first state Assembly write-in candidate to qualify for the ballot in San Diego for at least a decade. At a recent Democratic Central Committee meeting, Lasky received loud applause after he was introduced by a party official who proudly called him “Lasky the Miracle Worker.”

On Wednesday, the 44-year-old UC San Diego doctoral candidate was exposed to the rougher side of politics when, his hand forced by anonymous telephone calls to reporters, Lasky revealed that his background includes a prison sentence stemming from a 23-count felony conviction on mail fraud in the 1970s, leftist activism and reported membership in the Communist Party in the 1960s, arrests on rioting and other charges, and an incident in which he was kidnaped and shot by two black militants in 1969.

“I knew this would leak out--it would have been naive to think it wouldn’t,” Lasky said in an interview. “But I don’t want it to be the source of a lot of rumors and whispers. I want it out in the open, with the facts objectively presented because I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done.”

However, Lasky, understating the obvious, acknowledged that the disclosures about his past “aren’t the most desirable development” in his candidacy against Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier (R-Encinitas) in this fall’s 75th Assembly District race.

Local Democratic Party leaders, who learned of Lasky’s background for the first time from the candidate himself Wednesday, said that they were stunned by the bizarre twist in a race that, until now, had been a source of pride within party circles.

“This comes as a real shocker,” said Richard McManus, acting San Diego County Democratic Party chairman. “We’re going to try to get as full a disclosure of the facts as we can, research the legal implications and then the Central Committee probably will want to make some kind of judgment.”

Lasky’s felony conviction does not bar him from seeking office, according to Caren Daniels-Meade, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office. However, Democratic Party officials conceivably could ask Lasky to voluntarily withdraw from the race, McManus said.

Saying that he will “listen closely to and be influenced by . . . the party’s wishes,” Lasky emphasized that he hopes to remain in the race. Earlier this month, Lasky, president of the University City Democratic Club, conceded that he has little chance of success in the heavily Republican district but explained that he fought to qualify for the ballot because “every public official needs to be held accountable at election time.”

“This is obviously going to be used to try to silence me,” Lasky said. “But I don’t believe that the views I expressed 20 years ago, or things done to me 10 years ago, should be used to invalidate what I’m doing now.”

Lasky said that he believes that either Mojonnier or her associates were the source of the initial leaks to the news media about his past. Mojonnier said Wednesday, however, that she herself had recently received an anonymous tip about Lasky’s background, but she denied that she played any role in trying to publicize the damaging information about her opponent.

“I didn’t do anything of that sort,” Mojonnier said. “I really haven’t pursued it because I haven’t had time to check out whether the information was accurate.” However, Mojonnier added that she had sent a letter to the secretary of state’s office asking whether a felony conviction bars an individual from seeking office.

Although Lasky said that he was “not at all embarrassed” about his background, he explained that he did not inform party leaders about his past earlier “because I didn’t see any reason why I should be the one to censure myself by perhaps destroying my own candidacy before it even got started.”

“If there’s anything that I can be criticized for, it’s only for being a bit fanatical in the ‘60s,” Lasky said. “I saw things in black-and-white terms and didn’t recognize the shades and grays as well as I do now. The things that happened to me were the result of taking principled stands.”

Lasky explained that he was a vocal leftist during his days as a UCLA student in the 1960s, and was particularly active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Although Lasky said Wednesday that he had never been a member of the Communist Party, numerous newspaper accounts of rallies, press conferences, speeches and other events state that Lasky often publicly identified himself as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States.

“I was a member of a splinter group, but never the Communist Party itself,” Lasky explained. “Back then, all leftist groups were lumped together. The saying was, ‘One’s as good as another.’ ”

In January, 1967, the Grossmont Junior College’s board of trustees barred a campus speech by Lasky, who then was editor of the People’s Voice, a Los Angeles-based Communist newspaper, according to a Los Angeles Times story. An October, 1969, Times account of a news conference at which a brawl broke out between rival anti-war factions quotes Lasky as saying that he hoped to “bring the war home,” adding, “We call for preparation for insurrection. We call for civil war at home.” In another Times story, Lasky claimed credit for having helped to inspire the Watts riots as a “class uprising, not a race riot.”

Lasky also helped organize the Auto Maintenance Workers Union, which held strikes against car wash companies throughout Southern California over wage disputes in the mid-1960s. A January, 1965, Times story states that Lasky and four others were arrested “during a near-riot” at a Gardena car wash. In that story, Lasky explained that the union had been established by the “Workers Organizing Committee,” which he described as a Marxist group that opposed the U.S. Communist Party because it “collaborates” with capitalists.

Lasky on Wednesday said that the leftist groups in which he had been involved favored China’s interpretation of Marxist doctrine, not the Soviet Union’s. That philosophical difference produced dire consequences for Lasky in December, 1969, when he was kidnaped, robbed of $300, shot five times “and left to die” by two men who Lasky told police had worked for him as “recruiters”--an incident that Lasky described as “a Communist Party assassination plot.”

Lasky survived the shooting, although his right leg was temporarily paralyzed. A former Black Panther was later convicted on charges of conspiring to kill Lasky and sentenced to life in prison, while an accomplice received a lesser sentence.

In the early 1970s, Lasky established his own advertising brokerage agency in Los Angeles, a business that led to additional run-ins with the law. In 1976, Lasky and three associates were convicted on mail fraud charges stemming from an alleged scheme to bilk businesses across the nation out of money for advertising services that had not been authorized. Under the scheme, Lasky’s firm purportedly placed unauthorized ads in small newspapers and then billed the businesses and individuals that the ads promoted.

The criminal case followed an unsuccessful attempt by postal authorities to shut down Lasky’s Space Advertising Agency Inc., which prosecutors charged did business under 27 different names and from 16 addresses in the Los Angeles area. Lasky himself also used the alias of Michael Conneley, prosecutors said.

A December, 1976, Times story stated: “During the 22-day trial, Lasky steadfastly maintained that his business was a legitimate one, although he conceded that he did fire some salesmen who made false representations in soliciting advertising.” Lasky reiterated his innocence on Wednesday, claiming that his conviction stemmed from the “vicious lies” of an employee that he had fired after learning that he was falsifying orders in order to earn higher commissions.

Lasky also said Wednesday that his prosecution was “the authorities’ form of retribution” for his earlier leftist activism. One assistant U.S. attorney, Lasky said, told him that “this was going to settle the score, because he had to go to Vietnam while people like me protested against the war.”

After his appeals were exhausted in January, 1980, Lasky surrendered to U.S. marshals to begin serving a three-year prison term, of which he ultimately served about 22 months. While in prison, Lasky was diagnosed as having a fatal kidney disease, he said, and since has had two kidney transplants, the second one in March, 1985. Lasky described his health Wednesday as being “as near to normal as it was before the problem.”

In light of Lasky’s acknowledgement that he expected his past to “inevitably leak out” in a political campaign, the obvious question is: why did he decide to run, particularly in a race that he realistically could not even hope to win?

Lasky’s answer is that “hiding from my past is not how I choose to lead my life.”

“I could have led a very peaceful and tranquil life by becoming an obscure academic at some state college,” Lasky said. “But that’s not what I want to be. I want to be an outspoken person speaking out for what I believe.

“I would be living a lie if I did not speak out, if I did not fight against the injustices that I see in the world. If this is the price that I have to pay to do that, then so be it. I’m not ashamed of my past. I just hope that others won’t ignore what I have to say in the present and future simply because of my past.”