Speaker Stirs Sparks at McCarthy Fund-Raiser

It started out tamely enough--a Beverly Hills dinner by 250 of the area’s well-heeled peace activists, including several celebrities, to raise money for Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy’s under-funded Senate campaign.

But before it was over, the event at the Beverly Hills Hotel had taken a hard left turn, a featured speaker had compared Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to Jesus Christ, and McCarthy had distanced himself from some of what was said.

The fireworks came when Helen Caldicott, the Australian-born crusader against nuclear arms, gave a stem-winding speech calling for an end to the arms race. In it, she angrily denounced the U.S. government as the world’s most irresponsible nuclear power.

“Department of Defense, bull . . . department of annihilation,” Caldicott said. Disdainfully, she accused Congress of subsidizing weapons systems to create jobs. “That’s the argument Hitler probably used when he built the gas ovens--jobs,” she said. She described one of President Reagan’s former top arms advisers, Richard Perle, as “a war criminal,” said the CIA’s primary mission is to kill people in the name of anti-communism and described Soviet leader Gorbachev as a “miracle” man who brought to mind Jesus Christ.

Speaking for Herself

Caldicott stressed that she was not speaking for McCarthy, and midway through her remarks, she said she hoped she was not doing him any harm. But she also implored her audience to give McCarthy $1 million (McCarthy’s office estimated that more than $50,000 was raised at the dinner), and she described him not only as a peace candidate but as a “global physician.” Caldicott ended by saying, “If you don’t elect Leo, I will never come back to California.”

Before Caldicott spoke, McCarthy praised her as a “charismatic personality” who has dedicated her life to ending the arms race. But afterward, McCarthy said he did not agree with everything Caldicott had said.

“She expresses herself in a quite different way than I do,” he said. “Those are not characterizations I would use,” he said, referring to her remarks about the CIA, Hitler and Gorbachev.

Caldicott received a cheering, standing ovation from the 250 people at the dinner. And afterward her speech was defended by one of the organizers of the event, Lila Garrett, a television producer and official of Voters to End the Arms Race. Garrett said the group invited Caldicott to speak.

“Helen Caldicott is not a politician. She’s a very emotional and basically not a political person. She can afford to be sometimes factual and sometimes not factual. She can speak in broad emotional language,” Garrett said.

Garrett said that while she was confident that McCarthy “would not have agreed with everything (Caldicott) said, she, Garrett, did.

“I agree that the Reagan Administration bears the major responsibility for the arms race. . . . The Administration does not represent the United States as far as I am concerned. It’s a separate entity.”

Garrett is also a member of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee, a group that can bring considerable money and influence in behalf of liberal candidates. Several members of the committee were on hand at the dinner, which was also attended by a number of producers and actors, including Robert Blake, Luci Arnaz and Robert Walden.

The dinner was part of a concerted effort by McCarthy recently to counter his Republican opponent’s fund-raising strength in Hollywood and in the Los Angeles Jewish community. Traditionally, those sources of money have been crucial to the success of Democratic politicians in California. They are the “golden geese,” in the words of one McCarthy staffer.

But Sen. Pete Wilson has made substantial inroads, despite his conservatism on defense, because he has fought for legislation important to the movie industry and because he has taken a hard pro-Israel line on Middle East issues.

Earlier this week, for example, he was critical of Secretary of State George P. Schultz’s current peace initiative. Wilson told a group of reporters that he thought the United States should be exerting more pressure on Arab states to recognize Israel’s right to exist and less pressure on Israel to give up territory it captured during its 1967 war.

With the California Senate race in its earliest stages, the battle these days is very much one for the money.

McCarthy, at the dinner Wednesday, spoke of Wilson’s financial advantage when he said that the Wilson campaign would be spending an unprecedented $2 million on television advertising during March, April and May--five months before the election.

“That’s a record in California, and that’s what I’m up against,” he said. By contrast, McCarthy has spent only about $20,000 on television advertising.

It has become a truism in statewide elections in California that candidates cannot win without TV budgets of $1 million or more.

With about $3 million on hand at the first of the year, Wilson enjoyed more than a 4 to 1 financial advantage over McCarthy. Moreover, McCarthy’s staff has predicted that the gap won’t have narrowed when new financial statements are filed next week.

McCarthy’s counteroffensive in Hollywood and the Jewish community began in earnest two weekends ago with 14 fund-raising events that varied from a dinner at producer Ted Field’s regal Beverly Hills estate to a night of “celebrity bowling for Leo.”

McCarthy’s Strategy

McCarthy’s current strategy is to attack Wilson as a hawk on most defense issues, including SDI, the proposed space-based missile defense system, which McCarthy opposes.

“Out here, he has managed to create an image of a moderate,” McCarthy said. But, in fact, McCarthy said, “Pete Wilson is and always will be an obstacle to the peace process.”

Meanwhile, the Wilson camp is gleeful over what they see as a Democrat struggling to win back what, in the past, was a reliable Democratic base of support. They boast that Wilson has preempted the support of mainstream Hollywood, and that McCarthy is now forced into a perilous courtship of the most left wing elements of the entertainment community.

Yet regardless of whom he is speaking to, McCarthy’s message on arms issues has hardly been radical.

He says he would divert funds from SDI to strengthen conventional forces and said that approach, combined with negotiations with the Soviets to eliminate long-range offensive nuclear weapons, would foster a climate in which spending on strategic weapons can be reduced.

But McCarthy does support continued funding of certain nuclear weapon systems, such as the Trident submarine and the Midgetman missile (which Wilson opposes). McCarthy said those weapons present less inviting targets because each contains fewer warheads.

So far, McCarthy’s cautious approach to defense questions has not hurt him among peace activists, according to Garrett.

“It’s true, he’s a very cautious, reasonable man. But what I like about Leo McCarthy is that when he commits himself to a position, he sticks by it.”