Anti-Bird Coalition’s $900,000 Radio-TV Ad Blitz Gets Going

Less than a month before the election, the cash-poor campaign to defeat California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other Supreme Court justices unveiled Tuesday its long-awaited media strategy--a $900,000 statewide blitz that campaign officials insist is affordable even though they have less than $500,000 on hand.

The television and radio campaign, starting more than a month after Bird launched her own series of television ads, focuses on the court’s record in death penalty cases. The one commercial previewed Tuesday features Marianne Frazier, mother of a 12-year-old murder victim, urging voters to defeat Bird and Associate Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph R. Grodin.

“Your vote can stop them from letting other killers escape justice,” Frazier says in the 30-second commercial that shows her sitting next to a picture of her murdered daughter, Robin.

Sentence Reversed

In a 1984 opinion written by Grodin and signed by Bird and Reynoso, the court reversed the conviction and death sentence of Robin’s killer on grounds that testimony about his prior criminal record should not have been introduced at his trial. Last June, the defendant, who remained in custody during the retrial, again was found guilty and resentenced to death--a fact not mentioned in the commercial.

In the commercial, Frazier’s throaty, plaintive delivery drives home one of the central themes of the campaign against the justices: that the families of murder victims feel abandoned by a court that has consistently overturned death sentences--56 of 59 during the nine years Bird has been chief justice. (Bird voted to reverse all 59 sentences.)

Frazier told reporters who watched the commercial that the court’s rulings would be different if the justices allowed their emotions to play a larger part in their decisions.

“If they had opened up their hearts and listened to their hearts . . . had they used any kind of emotions,” she said, the justices would have acted differently in the case of her daughter’s killer.

Her comment drew a rejoinder from Steven Glazer, director of communications for Bird’s campaign, who said the justices “do have compassion for victims” but must not let their feelings “negate their obligation to enforce the law for everyone, including people accused of heinous crimes.”

Frazier said she believes that if Bird, Grodin and Reynoso remain on the court, the death sentence of the man who killed her daughter, which has been appealed, will be reversed a second time. Of the two other justices who concurred in the original reversal, one is no longer on the court and the other, Allen E. Broussard, is not up for reconfirmation in November.

Lee Stitzenberger, campaign manager for the coalition of groups sponsoring the anti-court commercials, said $750,000 would be spent on television ads and $150,000 on radio spots.

Stitzenberger said the coalition has spent $150,000 for the first week of TV ads which, he said, were to start Tuesday.

Campaign spending reports filed Tuesday show that the coalition had just over $470,000 on hand as of Sept. 30. The coalition is made up of Crime Victims for Court Reform and Californians to Defeat Rose Bird, the two largest groups opposing the justices.

Stewart Mollrich, the coalition’s creative director, said the campaign expects to raise $200,000 more from contributions to be solicited through two direct mail drives. Mollrich said the rest of the money will be raised through what he described as “one-on-one” fund-raising aimed at selected contributors.

Stitzenberger said he believes the coalition can match Bird’s television campaign spot for spot during the final weeks before the election.