Deukmejian Moves to Defuse Toxic Waste Issue

Gov. George Deukmejian was reported by aides Monday as heading into the stretch drive of his reelection campaign with a hefty $3.7 million in the bank and a new hard-hitting advertising effort aimed at undercutting the toxic waste attacks of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on the radio.

For their latest $100,000 barrage of radio advertising, Deukmejian tacticians seized on agreement by the City of Los Angeles last week to pay a $625,000 fine for dumping raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay, the largest such fine issued against a city under the federal Clean Water Act.

Democrat Bradley has made what he has called the governor’s ineffective handling of toxic wastes a top priority issue in his effort to unseat Deukmejian. Some public opinion polls have indicated that Californians have more faith in Bradley than in Deukmejian in dealing with toxic problems.

Deukmejian campaign director Larry Thomas told reporters that the new commercial stressing the Santa Monica Bay fine “clearly takes away from the mayor the standing that he might have, or at least any enhanced standing, to claim that he is better able to handle the waste problems of the state of California.”

The Bradley campaign shot back that the Deukmejian commercial constitutes a “smoke screen to hide his pathetic record” on toxics and asserted that “the only toxics in Santa Monica Bay come from those that are illegally dumped into the sewer system (while) George Deukmejian has allowed cancer-causing substances to seep into Californias’s drinking water supply.”

Meantime, Deukmejian flew into generally friendly political territory in Northern California, visiting Redding, Yreka and Susanville.

In Redding, Deukmejian stressed to reporters his experience in state government as legislator, attorney general and governor, hitting Bradley as an opponent who “hasn’t even had one minute’s experience in state government policies and programs--the operation of the state.”

In broad terms, Thomas outlined the Deukmejian campaign’s fund-raising and spending figures in advance of official filing of required documents with the secretary of state. From July 1, though Sept. 30, he said, $3.1 million was raised and $4.4 million spent.

During the entire campaign, starting in 1985, Thomas said, $11.7 million was raised and $8.4 million spent through last month.

Bradley, whose fund raising from the outset has run a distant second to Deukmejian’s, was reported by his campaign to have $633,885 on hand as of Sept. 30. Spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said Bradley raised $2.5 million in the last three-month reporting period, including $270,000 in loans. She said he spent $2.3 million during the period and overall had raised $5.1 million.