Actor in Anti-Prop. 65 Ads Now Working for Measure

An actor who appears as a disgruntled farmer in television commercials opposing Proposition 65 stepped out of character Thursday to say he regrets playing the part and is now working to help pass the anti-toxics ballot measure.

The ads also have opened up a serious rift within the anti-65 campaign, with two of the state’s largest private utilities, Southern California Edison Co. and Pacific Gas & Electric Co., considering whether to stop supporting the campaign.

In the commercials, which actor Dan Leegant of Berkeley now labels “misleading,” the farmer he plays complains that his “neighbor”--the publicly owned Rancho Seco nuclear power plant near Sacramento--is exempt from the initiative’s restrictions on putting chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects into drinking water.

The character, speaking with a drawl, calls Proposition 65 a “crazy thing written by politicians who don’t like farmers, I guess. It says my neighbor can use weedkiller, but I can’t. It also says my neighbor can use bug spray, but I can’t.”

The ads imply that the ballot initiative “would make it less safe around nuclear power plants, which is totally untrue,” said the Yes on 65 campaign manager, Tom Epstein, who accompanied Leegant at press conferences here and in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t weaken any state laws. Nuclear plants are exempt from state regulation.”

Officials of both PG&E; and Southern California Edison, both of which operate nuclear power plants, are unhappy with the commercials for very different reasons.

“We didn’t like the (anti-nuclear) implications of that,” said Edison Executive Vice President Michael R. Peevey. “We remain opposed to the initiative, but we are reviewing our role in the (No on 65) organization.” He said the utility has made a significant contribution to the campaign but is now uncertain whether it should contribute any more.

“The commercials unfairly paint the wrong picture” of nuclear power, said Jack Koehn, vice president of governmental relations at PG&E.; His company has contributed $20,000 to the anti-65 campaign but is now reconsidering a plan to give another $20,000.

The anti-Proposition 65 campaign stands by its commercials and intends to keep running them, said Michael Gagan, campaign manager for the No on 65 committee, who accused Leegant of “a breach of his professional ethics.”

“At no time during the filming did he bring any reservations to our attention,” Gagan said. “All I can say is that perhaps Mr. Leegant is a better actor than he is a politician.

“The spots factually point out that there are many things that a publicly owned nuclear power plant can do under Proposition 65 that a farmer living next door cannot. That’s a fact. We didn’t even mention nuclear power. Rancho Seco can and does use pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that the farmer living next door won’t be able to use.”

Provisions of Measure

The initiative would require state government to develop a list of chemicals that cause cancer and birth defects and to set maximum exposure levels that would be permitted. Businesses that expose employees or the public to the chemicals would have to issue warnings of the potentially harmful effects. The measure also would increase criminal penalties for polluters and allow residents to sue those who knowingly use listed chemicals that pose a threat to drinking water supplies.

Proposition 65 specifically exempts government entities from its requirements. To have included government would have vastly complicated the measure, said David B. Roe, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the initiative’s principal authors. Instead, the drafters chose to take aim at large businesses that account for the largest share of toxic wastes posing a threat to drinking water supplies, Roe said.

“Proposition 65, it’s full of exemptions,” has become the central theme for anti-65 advertising.

The Rancho Seco plant is owned by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, a publicly owned utility, which would be exempt from many of the key provisions of Proposition 65. California’s other nuclear plants are privately owned.

Celebrity Caravan

In defense of the ads, Gagan noted that actor Peter Fonda had bared his rump and “mooned” the San Onofre nuclear plant while traveling with a caravan of celebrities drumming up support for the initiative last weekend. “That is much more nuclear-bashing” than the anti-65 commercials, Gagan said.

The anti-65 campaign had hired Leegant for his skills as an actor, Gagan said, and did not apply “a political litmus test” in choosing him for the work, for which he was paid $1,275 including expenses.

Describing himself as “a political person” but someone who knew nothing about Proposition 65 before making the commercial in August, Leegant said that he had been assured by his San Francisco agent that the anti-65 message was something he could live with.

But during the filming he said that he began raising questions about the initiative. He said he realized he was on what he now regards the wrong side when a reporter told him that Barbra Streisand, Henry Winkler and the Sierra Club all supported Proposition 65.

Five days after the filming was complete, he wrote the Yes on 65 campaign explaining his role in the commercials and volunteering to work for passage of the initiative.