Campaign Finance Reform Initiative OKd for Ballot

A far-reaching campaign finance reform initiative backed by a bipartisan coalition of some of California’s biggest business and civic groups has qualified for next year’s primary election ballot after initially being disqualified for insufficient signatures, Secretary of State March Fong Eu announced Friday.

The initiative, sponsored by Common Cause and Walter B. Gerken, chairman of Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co., is designed to bring down the skyrocketing cost of campaigning for legislative offices while overhauling a political apparatus that relies heavily on special-interest contributions.

It is a system that has led to charges by critics that the state Legislature is “the best that money can buy.”

The proposed ballot measure is the same one that narrowly failed to qualify for last year’s general-election ballot after election officials reported that it had fallen short by 6,795 valid signatures of voters on petitions.

The decision was reversed after a recount showed that 6,895 of 7,540 disputed signatures were valid, thus qualifying the initiative by a slim 100-vote margin.

“Despite the results of our initial verification procedures, sufficient valid signatures were submitted by the required deadline,” Eu acknowledged in announcing that the initiative will appear on the June, 1988, ballot.

The ballot measure borrows heavily from recommendations made by a privately financed bipartisan group, the California Commission on Campaign Financing.

If approved by the voters, it would limit legislative contributions and expenditures, authorize partial public financing of campaigns, ban the transfer of funds among legislative candidates and prohibit contributions in non-election years.

Walter A. Zelman, executive director of California Common Cause, said the proponents hope to raise as much as $3 million for the campaign. “We would like to raise a minimum of $1 million and go up from there,” Zelman said. “If we can raise $3 million, we will do that.”

Zelman added that he was hopeful that some of the money would be forthcoming from a $1.3-million campaign fund amassed by the late state Treasurer Jesse Unruh and now controlled by seven trustees.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said after the treasurer’s death last August that Unruh in earlier private conversations had offered to spend part of those funds to subsidize an initiative that would include public campaign financing.

Tough Measure to Enact

Campaign finance reform always faces an uphill fight in the Legislature because members are reluctant to tamper with a system that has kept them in office. That is particularly true for the Legislature’s Democratic leadership, which is struggling to maintain majorities in both houses so that it can control the redistricting process after the 1990 federal census.

The Legislature failed to agree on a public campaign finance reform plan this year, including one offered by powerful Speaker Brown.

At one point, Brown said that if it failed to pass, he would sponsor an initiative to do the job. But an aide said Friday that this should not be interpreted to mean that the Speaker will contribute Assembly Democratic campaign funds to help boost the Common Cause initiative. The aide said that Brown had not decided what he will do next. All 80 Assembly seats will be up for election in 1988.

Gerken pledged an all-out effort to win voter approval of the campaign finance reform initiative, noting that it has been endorsed by a blue-ribbon bipartisan coalition of business, civic, academic and labor leaders.

“The California campaign spending arms race is totally out of control,” he said. “The rush to raise greater and greater amounts of campaign money in larger and larger denominations is eroding public confidence in political institutions. Candidates, the voters and even major contributors are beginning to realize the system is in need of fundamental overhaul.”

Spending Up Steeply

Legislative campaigns cost $57.1 million last year, a 30% increase over 1984, and are expected to hit the $100-million mark by 1990.

A 1984 campaign finance reform initiative, Proposition 40, which contained very limited public financing, was rejected by the voters. It was sponsored by Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra).

Johnson blamed the defeat on voter distaste for the public financing feature, on his inability to collect enough financial support, partisan politics and opposition by special-interest groups that feared that a change in the existing system might work to their detriment.

Gov. George Deukmejian earlier that year also vetoed a Democrat-authored reform bill calling for public campaign financing.

The governor said he did not believe that it was appropriate for the taxpayers to subsidize the political ambitions of state legislators.

Most of the previous efforts to change campaign spending laws have been tarnished by charges that they were little more than partisan efforts designed to help one party more than the other.

Supporters of the Common Cause initiative believe they can overcome this hurdle by stressing that the support groups are independent from the Legislature and represent a broad spectrum of political viewpoints.

Aside from Common Cause and Gerken, the measure is backed by such industry giants as Carter Hawley Hale Stores, First Interstate Bancorp, Fluor Corp., Genstar Corp., Metropolitan Life Insurance Corp., Kaiser Aluminum, Security Pacific Corp., Clorox Co. and Whittaker Corp. The Los Angeles County American Federation of Labor, the state Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters also are among its supporters.

Other Initiatives in Works

Many of these supporters have been major contributors to legislative campaigns.

Although unsuccessful in his first effort, Johnson is working to qualify another initiative for next year’s ballot.

It would cover all state and local elected officials--not just legislative candidates. It also would limit contributions, prohibit public financing and ban transfers of money between candidates, but it would not impose spending limits.

Two other proposed campaign finance reform initiatives also are in circulation. One, by Rep. William Thomas (R-Bakersfield), would prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to help finance legislative campaigns, require candidates to raise more than 50% of their money in the district they wish to represent and curb the total gifts and speech-making fees that a lawmaker could accept.

The other is backed by members of a group called Crime Victims for Court Reform, which was active in the successful fight to unseat Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird from the state Supreme Court. The measure, proposed by Paul McCauley of Los Angeles and Don Floyd of San Diego, would prohibit transfer of funds between legislative candidates and prohibit anyone from holding the offices of Assembly Speaker or Senate Speaker Pro Tem for more than two years.