TV Ads Against Prop. 65 : It’s Instinct That Counts When the Chips Are Down

In earlier installments, Sacramento-based political consultants Sal Russo and Doug Watts were hired to run the campaign against Proposition 65, the toxics initiative. They spent the spring and summer researching toxic laws and testing public sentiment. By August they had settled tentatively on a strategy of attacking as unfair the complete exemption granted to government entities under the measure, and Watts created an initial round of four commercials.

On Friday, Sept. 12, the political strategists seeking to defeat Proposition 65 reconvened in Doug Watts’ office to look at the results of a long-delayed poll. They were not going to like all that they saw.

The poll was to have been conducted in late July. Its main purpose was to determine whether a winning campaign could be fashioned around an attack on the exemptions allowed under Proposition 65. In particular, the strategists wanted to test how voters would respond to the fact that government entities--some notorious polluters among them--would be exempt from the measure.

Money problems, however, forced postponement of the poll, and Watts had relied largely on his instinctive faith in the exemptions message as he produced an initial round of television commercials.

Now, six weeks and four TV spots later, the poll at last was in. It indicated that the overwhelming popularity of the toxics initiative had yet to diminish. When the ballot summary was broken down and read to respondents sentence by sentence, however, there was one notable deviation.

Asked to respond to the sentence, “Allows exceptions,” 57% disapproved. This showed that Watts’ instincts had not been all wrong. And yet, as a closer inspection of the numbers revealed, they had not been all right either. As the poll progressed, most of the 57% eventually swung back to support Proposition 65, apparently reasoning that exemptions was not a strong enough argument to overcome all that was good about the measure.

Exemptions, pollster Gary Lawrence said, “is going to do great, but it is still going to leave us short. . . . Exemptions sets them up. It freezes the linebackers, but then we need to do some fancy running to take advantage of the frozen linebackers.”

The football metaphor perhaps softened the pollster’s message, but the importance of what he was saying was obvious: the exemptions argument was not enough. The campaign must develop an additional message in order to persuade the electorate.

Study “Cross Tabs”

The consultants moved quickly to what they called “cross tabs.” With computerized cross tabulation of responses and demographics, they could see how different arguments worked with different kinds of voters.

For instance, they could determine how a commercial about a nuclear power plant played with a blue collar Democratic young man in Fresno, as opposed to a well-to-do Republican matron in San Diego. They also could calculate which demographic set would produce proportionately the most voters, and how reaction to specific arguments would vary in the five major California media markets.

With the right arguments directed at the right voter blocs in the right media markets, a majority constituency could be pieced together. Or so the theory went. Lawrence divided the electorate for purposes of the Proposition 65 campaign into two demographic groups. Exemptions would work for one, he said, but not for the other.

“Suspicion, fairness--that works with women, older people, the less educated, blue collar demographics,” Lawrence said. “Then there is another group. Better educated, men, upper scale, white collar. We can also say exemptions to people in this group, but simple fairness and suspicion are not going to do it for them.

‘Let’s Be Realistic’

“They have to see the consequences of the exemptions. . . . What are the consequences if Proposition 65 happens? And let’s be realistic.”

“We don’t have to be realistic,” said Sal Russo, Watts’ partner. “We just have to be credible.”

The fourth strategist present, campaign manager Michael Gagan, said that “the amateur quarterbacks”--consultant code talk for steering committee members who did not favor the exemptions theme--had suggested commercials warning that jobs would be lost if Proposition 65 passed.

Russo reacted to this concept by pretending to snore.

“The No. 2 thing they mention,” Gagan went on, “is overkill. Say we use an overkill approach? Make fun of it. Show how silly it is. Apple cider will have to be labeled, things like that.”

Russo brightened: “We can say, ‘This thing is such a joke let’s just laugh it off the ballot.’ ”

“But,” Lawrence said, “just because it’s a joke is not enough. We have to give them a serious consequence.”

‘Who Benefits?’

Gagan proposed a third argument: “Who benefits?”

“That was my argument,” Russo said.

Watts smiled, sighed. “How many times have we done that? Go after the lawyers. Well, we might have to do it again. It certainly has worked before.”

Russo said he would find it difficult himself to believe anyone who claimed that they actually were threatened by Proposition 65.

“ ‘I’m concerned,’ I can see maybe,” he said, “but not ‘I’m threatened.’

“What about the fear of a conspiracy against the people?”

Concepts for commercials underscoring Assemblyman Tom Hayden’s active promotion of Proposition 65 flowed. Watts waved the whole approach away: “Anytime we have tried to link Tom Hayden to an issue it hasn’t worked. I have got another idea. Actors and actresses versus scientists--who do you believe?”

‘Fear of Looking Stupid’

“When you are having trouble getting them to vote for logical reasons,” Lawrence said, “how about getting them to vote for fear of looking stupid?

“What if we show them it’s a fraud.”

Brainstorms scudded across the room.

They talked of Trojan horses and the Brooklyn Bridge, blind dates and door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen. Famous frauds through history. Everyday household frauds. “Have we ever done a wolf in sheep’s clothing?” Lawrence asked.

The pollster mentioned how much he liked a national advertising campaign for Isuzu--spots in which a pitchman makes outlandish claims about Isuzu trucks and automobiles while captions flash below to contradict him with more believable messages. Watts made a note.

A decision had been reached, slowly, subtly, and without any dramatic pronouncement.

From now on, Proposition 65 was not only full of exemptions.

It was also a fraud.

Watts wasted little time adapting. One of his more obvious qualities is a courage of conviction--and a readiness to forsake conviction when confronted with better evidence. Also, he had foreseen all along the possibility that a mid-campaign course alteration might be called for, once poll results came back.

The trick was to stay within the overall umbrella theme of “more safety, not less.” With the exemptions opening, the full field of potential messages was no longer open to Watts and his colleagues. For instance, it would be overly jarring to complain now--having already advanced the argument that Proposition 65 was not tough enough--that the measure would chase businesses out of California. But criticism of the initiative as a fraud, or as a potential feast for “bounty hunter” attorneys, conceivably fell within the rhetorical shadow of “more safety, not less.”

Ten days after the Sept. 12 meeting, Watts produced a second generation of spots, six in all, each embroidering--or in some cases abandoning completely--the earlier exemptions slogan. All were shot in a warehouse that Landy Hardy, the director of photography, had converted into a studio.

Stage Set Office

For the first commercial a false office was constructed of sheet rock. A frosted glass door identified the working domain of Ira J. Sleazebaum, atty., “Lawsuits are our speciality. “ Behind the door was a desk littered with junk, a bottle of booze, Styrofoam cups, disheveled files, books, paper clips and the like. Propped against one wall, out of camera range, was a life-size cardboard cutout of stripper Sally Rand, stripped. Hardy said he positioned her there for luck.

The spot opened with a visual attention grabber in the comic heftiness of a delivery man in blue coveralls. His name was Billy--it said so on his shirt--and he was the real item. Randy Bond, the commercial director, had spotted Billy on the street a few days earlier, making a delivery. Billy looked as if he had just stepped out of one of those funny Federal Express ads, and Bond immediately foresaw a career in commercials for this hulking man with Elvis sideburns.

Bond hailed him and asked if he had ever been on television. Billy had not but was willing. Bond took down his number and told him to expect a call. The call came sooner than either expected.

Billy’s role was to walk by the door, lost and frustrated, with a tiny package cradled in one hand. Then the shot moved inside the office where a bald-headed actor portraying a lawyer talked on the telephone. An announcer’s voice--added later--would say that with Proposition 65, “lawyers will make out like bandits.” A buxom secretary wiggled in and handed the lawyer a brochure on Hawaii and he chortled, “After this election, I’m going to be on easy street.”

Getting It Right

“Eeeezzzeeee street,” Watts coached. “That’s how I heard the line when I wrote it.”

“Eeeezzzeeee street,” the actor mimicked. “I’m going to be on eeeeezzzzzeeee street.”

Three days later they shot a commercial called Forest Prime-evil. Or at least that is what Watts called it at first. Everyone else called it “the Isuzu spot.” Watts resisted proudly for a time, but soon even he succumbed and began calling the spot “Isuzu”--a tacit admission of the obvious. The concept was a direct steal from the automobile maker’s national advertising campaign.

In the spot, a chubby actor with kinky hair, dressed in a red flannel shirt, wandered through what appeared to be a pristine forest. With only a slight suggestion of pomposity, he extolled the virtues of Proposition 65 and punctuated his spiel with a wide, overtly angelic grin.

In the editing studio later, captions would be inserted to mock the actor’s every point, and the last--flashed just as his smile unfurled--would read, “He also has a bridge he’d like to sell you.”

Hollywood Backdrop

For a final sequence, the camera pulled back to reveal the forest was really potted trees and a Hollywood backdrop. While the camera rolled, Bond, a makeup woman and other crew members rushed forward to congratulate the actor as a gaffer squirted fake mist through the set.

“How did I do?” the actor asked, “Do you think they’ll buy that?”

Bond, in an ad lib line that closed the commercial with an ironic twist, responded distinctly over happy chatter.

“Are you kidding? They’ll buy anything. “

On the last morning of this commercial-making spree Randy Bond was not his usual cool self. He was irritated, rattled. Professor Irwin Corey--the zany nightclub comedian who had achieved some measure of fame in the 1960s by appearing on late night television as the “World’s Foremost Authority”--was en route to the studio, and Bond still had no idea what the commercials were supposed to be about.

“I can’t be creative until I have a script,” he griped, and later he elaborated: “The reason I’m nervous is that Doug called Carla (Bond’s wife) last night and said bring bags of peanuts, generic shampoo, apple juice and decaffeinated coffee. And that’s all I know about what we are going to do.”

A Smile, and Scripts

Watts showed moments later with a confident smile and four scripts.

“Well,” he announced, “a comedy writer I’m not.”

One spot was called “Noble Peanut,” and advanced the argument that under Proposition 65 peanuts would have to carry warning labels because of a natural toxin they emit in tiny amounts. Another was entitled “Fairness,” a simple vehicle for Corey to present a ludicrous, 30-second lecture on the measure’s more glaring inconsistencies. The script contained the line: “Is that fair? Only if your father is Kadafi.” Watts wasn’t sure what the line meant, exactly, but he figured it might get a laugh and “the Jewish vote.”

The last scripts involved Corey playing with caps from USC, UCLA, the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford--another comic spoof on exemptions.

Watts was trying to pull off a sly trick with the Corey spots, reaching both constituencies identified by Lawrence with the same commercials. They were an attempt to nurture doubts about suspicion and fairness--doubts that play well with the blue collar segment--and at the same time seem ridiculous enough to be almost camp to a better educated audience. Put another way, the ads were intended to send a literal message and still be a spoof on themselves.

One Long Routine

Corey demonstrated uncommon energy for a 74-year-old and fairly ripped through the spots, tossing in ad lib improvements along the way. The crew laughed constantly. Like many comedians, Corey could not disengage the joke machine when the camera was idle. The day was one long Irwin Corey routine, and that is a lot of Irwin Corey.

During lunch Corey delivered a nasty and largely off-color nightclub routine on Ronald Reagan. He was not aware, of course, that one member of his audience--the member paying his $5,000 fee--had served as the President’s media director during his reelection campaign.

“Reagan says the greatest pollutant is the trees,” Corey joked at one point in the harangue. “He says trees poison the air. Wonder what tree he is talking about? Probably his family tree.”

Watts achieved a wan smile.

Even as the second generation of commercials was in creation, the first round of four spots was beginning to receive significant play on television. This was far later than Watts had wanted. The campaign plan’s call for “early media, sustained media” had not been heeded. There were two reasons.

First, lawyers for the proponents had sent letters in July to station managers. They demanded free air play for Yes-on-65 commercials if opponents of the measure purchased substantial time for their spots.

“We plan to prepare 30-second radio and television spots appropriate for fairness doctrine rebuttals, and will be pleased to make them available to your station for airplay. We are requesting one free spot message, at comparable airtimes, for every two spots aired by opposing forces.”

Interpretation of how the television fairness doctrine applies to ballot proposition campaigns varies from station to station. Some believe that they risk loss of their federal licenses if substantial free air time is not given to financial underdogs. Others fret less and let money arbitrate: Those who pay get to play. Still others sidestep the matter by discouraging either side from telecasting commercials.

Lawyerly Missives

In early September, the Proposition 65 opponents were informed by several major stations that they could not buy time until the other side did. So the opponents unleashed a lawyerly missive of their own: “The principal supporters of the initiative include Mayor Tom Bradley, whose campaign operatives have conceded the initiative was a Bradley campaign tactic. In short, the proponents of this initiative have been and will be fully capable for their broadcast advertising. Any pleas of poverty should be very carefully examined by your station.”

Slowly, some stations--not all--opened up time. Others refused until the campaign’s final two weeks, when the Yes-on-65 campaign made heavy media buys in conjunction with the Bradley campaign.

This dispute unfolded at a time when the financial cupboard of Watts and company essentially was bare, and this piece of irony was the second reason why it took so long to start placing commercials on television.

No one foresaw a money shortage. A detailed fund-raising apparatus had been installed during the summer. Given the likelihood almost all contributions would come from industry, the business community had been divided into categories. Within each category major entities were identified. A contribution target was set for each category and each company. Committee members were selected to captain the collection drive for specific categories.

Reality Descends

When the campaign plan listed a budget of $5.8 million, the steering committee had recommended that it be expanded by a few million. Why purchase pistols when cannons can be had? By mid-September, though, reality had descended. The campaign had yet to count its first million in contributions.

Watts had hoped to spend half a million dollars on placement of television and radio spots in August and average more than $300,000 a week on television from Labor Day to Election Day. Instead, August was a complete washout and the minimum $300,000 level was not achieved until the third week of September. The campaign was six weeks behind.

“I think right now we have been seriously hampered in our ability to win the election,” Russo said in an interview after the Sept. 12 meeting.

Explanations were easier to come by than donations.

“Some companies think this thing has been crafted so wisely it is going to be impossible to defeat,” Russo said.

“And there are some who think it’s legally flawed and can be dealt with better in court.”

Corporate Concern

Another restraint was corporate concern about public image. Executives feared that to give to the No-on-65 campaign would be interpreted as a confession: We gave, therefore we pollute.

Some would-be contributors did not believe that the ramifications of Proposition 65 could be as far-reaching as the campaign claimed. Russo and Watts took to giving speeches, painting black scenarios to audiences of reluctant donor categories.

Brewers, for example, were warned that under Proposition 65, cans of beer might be required to carry warning labels.

Russo was asked if he himself believed this.

He sighed. “It wouldn’t surprise me. I mean it’s going to be more like the cigarette pack label. I don’t think it’s going to be a skull and cross bones, probably. But I could easily see that you’re required to put some kind of a explanation on there that says that, ‘This product may contain carcinogens.’ ”

Banks Were Warned

Similarly, banks were warned that they were at risk. Why banks? Foreclosed farm property had put them in the agriculture business. Discount stores with large parking lots could also be culpable. How? Toxic emissions from automobiles could drip through the asphalt or run down gutters and poison water supplies.

The computer industry, so protective of its image as a clean answer to the low-tech belching of smokestacks, fell far behind its donation goals despite what the consultants considered a clear-cut threat from Proposition 65. High-tech by-products already had been found to be fouling water in the Santa Clara Valley.

Russo complained heatedly during one fund-raising oration that the electronics industry had not given “one cent” to the campaign. The next week he received a letter from one of the Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial giants. Enclosed was a single penny.

Supporters of Proposition 65 screened their first commercial for reporters at a Sept. 16 press conference. It showed actor John Forsythe walking across a playground to a 5-year-old boy and his mother. The child had no legs and no arms.

His mother, Forsythe said, “is lucky her son is alive. Many others lost their babies because they were exposed to toxic chemicals in California.”

How would Watts react? One assumed that he at least would concede discomfort with the prospect of pitting Irwin Corey and Ira J. Sleazebaum against real children with authentic deformities. Wrong. Not for nothing are political consultants sometimes called spinmasters.

“I think they have a credibility problem,” Watts said of the Proposition 65 proponents. “I just don’t think that if you are watching television at home, and you see that spot, that you are going to believe it. You are not going to believe that if your kids drink tap water their arms will fall off.

“I think they are stretching.”

More Believable

Later, over lunch, he would elaborate. Both sides were seeking to sell voters on the risks of not adopting their respective positions. It was Watts’ contention that the electorate would respond to the most credible risk, and the risk of passing an unfair, fraudulently motivated ballot proposition, he believed, was more believable than the suggestion to voters that rejecting the measure risked maiming their children.

“By its very nature, one of those births only occurs one in every 100,000 times. Well, I looked up statistics of things that happen to babies one in every 100,000 times. . . . You have a long list which seem to me to be pretty gruesome illnesses to babies that happen far more frequently than a baby being born with no arms or no legs because of toxic poisoning.

“So I don’t think people will relate to it. I mean, people don’t relate to blind people. Blind people happen far more frequently. People don’t relate to children born with congenital heart diseases. It happens all the time. I mean you can have empathy for a compatriot in your office whose father is murdered, but can you see yourself in a position mourning over your father’s grave after he was murdered? Not quite. And even that incidence is greater than that of a child born with no arms or no legs based on the water they drank from a toxic poisoned well. . . .”

Watts repeated his often-voiced theory about the three phases of selling--identification, perception and motivation--and how they applied to the Proposition 65 campaign.

Combining the Phases

First, Proposition 65 needed identity. Voters had to be made aware that there was a toxics measure on the ballot. Next, perception. They must be convinced that it was not an act against nature to consider, at least, reasons for rejecting the initiative. Finally voters needed motivation to vote no.

Watts had intended to spend the first six weeks of the campaign on identification, softening up the electorate for a debate about a toxics initiative. Then would come two more sets of spots, one molding perceptions about the initiative’s faults and the last presenting expert testimony about its consequences.

The money shortage, however, had robbed the campaign of an opportunity for this orderly pursuit, Watts said. Polls in late September showed that the bulk of the electorate still had no idea what Proposition 65 was about. Now Watts believed that he must attempt to build identification and color perceptions with the same set of commercials.

“Right now, in order to wake up the audience, I have to take the cymbal player and lead him up to the front of the orchestra instead of the back. . . . We are not using Irwin Corey because it’s the Gospel or anything. It is because it creates awareness and confusion and doubt and concern. It gets people to open their eyes up and say, ‘Hey, I got to pay attention. Hey, that’s funny.’ I mean, interesting is the most important quotient to me in this set--matched with a moderate level of believability.

Raising Voters’ Doubts

“We need to get a crush of voters--the avalanche opinion that is starting to build up there--to start raising their doubts. And when we raise doubts and the voters start to fall we give them expert reference. Who do you go to? In days gone by, wives went to their husbands, a kid goes to his parents. In this case they are going to go to respected leaders and experts, and that is what we are going to be there to supply in the last 10 days.

“My problem is I’m still six f------ weeks behind, and I don’t have this flood of money to hammer home each of these steps between now and then. . . .

“I am absolutely, positively convinced that this thing was ours to win, but the lack of early support and cognizance among business community has hurt us. Substantially.”

Editing of the spot entitled “Lawyers” took place on the last night of September.

The lawyer’s door lettering had been altered. Ira J. Sleazebaum was now Ira J. Sleazebauw. The last letter had been flipped upside down after Watts suffered pangs of apprehension that “Sleazebaum” would be criticized as an anti-Semitic slur. A complete name change would have required reshooting the entire ad, since a window behind the office desk also carried the attorney name. Switching to Sleazebauw was the cheapest fix.

The touchy Sleazebaum question was not the only one Watts confronted in producing this spot. After all the editing was done and the standard “No on 65, It’s Full of Exemptions” panel was tacked on for the closing shot, Watts stopped everything and pressed his palms against his forehead.

“Now, I got to make the big f------ decision,” he said. “I do this every time.”

He concentrated for several seconds.

“Let’s take the ‘It’s full of exemptions’ line off the logo.”

No Second Thoughts

As soon as Watts said it, he walked quickly out of the room, as if to escape any second thoughts. It took the editing technician only a few flicks on his keyboard to execute Watts’ decision, but the broader implications of the deft deletion were obvious.

That same night editing began on the Forest Prime-evil/Isuzu spot. It took shape quickly. Watts was as pleased with it as he had been with the farmer vs. nuclear power plant, called “Neighbors.” In fact, Watts said, if the commercial tested well in market research it would become the main vehicle of the campaign:

“Hello, Isuzu,” he said merrily, “and goodby Neighbors.”

This would seem a nicely timed decision three days later. Dan Leegant, the actor who had played the farmer in “Neighbors,” held press conferences here and in Los Angeles to recant his role. The actor had become dubious about the commercial’s comparison of a small farmer and nuclear power plant during the shooting, and now he told all of California what he had confided on the set--he was on the wrong side.

Knew the Answer

The press conferences were well-covered. The No-on-65 principals tried and failed to obtain a copy of Leegant’s signed paycheck. They wanted this visual reminder that Leegant had accepted $1,200 for his day’s work. They hoped it might prompt a question about whether Leegant had returned the fee. They knew the answer.

Nonetheless, Watts and Gagan granted several interviews apiece throughout the day, always making the point that the factual basis for the commercial had not been challenged. Stations that had refused the Proposition 65 opponents paid air time for ads requested tapes of the “Neighbors” spot to run during their news broadcasts, for free.

Watts and company said they were pleased with all the attention Leegant’s press conference had brought to the campaign, and particularly to the “Neighbors” spot. Arrangements were made to run the Leegant commercial for an additional week.