Potholes in the Low Road

The campaign over a ballot initiative is a battle of ideas. The ideas, both pro and con, are distilled by campaign consultants into a lowest common denominator that can be projected via television and billboards to the mass of voters. The final message may or may not be entirely relevant to the issue in question. It may be as simple as “Costs Jobs!” or “Wastes Millions!” If the message hits home, the key is to repeat it as often as the campaign budget allows.

But the process that ultimately leads to the final advertising campaign is by no means simple, as Times staff writer Peter H. King demonstrated in his recent seven-part series exploring the inner workings of this fall’s campaign to defeat Proposition 65. The reader could peek over the shoulders of the campaign consultants and media wizards every step of the way as they conceived and marketed their plan to kill the environmentalist-sponsored measure to prevent toxic wastes from reaching California drinking-water supplies.

We watched in fascination as the consultants floated ideas, tested strategies with focus groups, polled public opinion, filmed commercials and sweated to get the money to air the ads. Among others, the idea of a talking cow was rejected. The experts finally settled on the key message that Proposition 65 allowed too many exemptions. In other words, the voters were asked to believe that the opponents--the industrial makers and users of toxics--really favored a tougher law when in fact they wanted no part of Proposition 65 at all. The exemptions message was the keystone to a $4-million campaign, which, of course, lost soundly on Election Day.

This is not to discount the value of experience and judgment in framing and running political campaigns. They are important to the system. But, reading the King series, one had to wonder at times if any reasonably perceptive high-school graduate, armed only with a good dictionary and thesaurus, might not have done just as well.

The cynic’s view is one of suspicions confirmed: If a campaign has the choice of the high road or the low road, the low road will be taken. “It would be nice,” consultant Doug Watts had said, “to deal with this on a higher intellectual plane . . . . But there is no doubt we can beat this thing with somewhat deceptive tactics, skirting the issues. If faced with just having to defeat it, that’s what we’ll have to do, but I have a reluctance.” His reluctance evaporated in the heat of the campaign.

The series will not necessarily persuade future campaigners to adhere to the intellectual high road. Misleading, negative campaigns against ballot initiatives have been too successful in the past. But King’s work certainly has taken some of the mystery out of the alleged wizardry of the campaign consulting business. From now on, campaign bankrollers may be a little more skeptical of the genius of their consultants and a little more wary of what their money is buying.