In State Politics, Marlene Bane Raises Both Cash and Controversy

After three decades as a low-profile insider, a tenacious Tarzana woman has emerged as a heavyweight fund-raiser and controversial force in state politics.

Marlene Bane, wife of Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana), has carved out a unique niche in state government through a blend of intelligence, intimidation, soft-spoken charm, organization and, most of all, friends and relatives in high places.

She has the ear of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, for whom she raises millions of dollars he spreads among Democrats seeking election to the Legislature. She also is a confidante and major fund-raiser for her husband, chairman of the powerful Assembly Rules Committee.

As one lobbyist put it: “She gets the power of an assemblyman without having to be elected.”

There are those who say she abuses that power, overstepping her authority, twisting arms a little too far to raise money.

There have been other concerns about her as well. In 1986, she was embroiled in a conflict-of-interest dispute over computer software she helped to develop and which was being marketed to the Assembly. Two decades earlier she was one of four people charged with violating the “truth in endorsement” section of the state Election Code. But the charges were dismissed when a judge ruled that the penalty for a violation was not spelled out.

The Times has learned that she falsified academic credentials on a resume she filed with the state Health Services Department eight years ago, claiming that she had several degrees from California universities.

Reaction on Resume

Shown a copy of the resume, a visibly shaken Tom Bane said he had not been aware of her claims. He said his wife is a “very insecure person” who made up the academic credentials to impress physicians she serves with on a state board.

The assemblyman declined to allow his wife to discuss the resume, but through him she confirmed his statements.

“I protect her every time I can,” he said. “I care for her in every way; because she has me as a support, she’s able to accomplish things.”

In the Capitol, Marlene Bane, 55, operates from a tiny office a few feet away from her 74-year-old husband’s and separated by a sliding wooden door. From her cubicle, she politely offers him advice, playfully scolds him for eating candy and acts as full-fledged partner in their political marriage.

Her calendar is often as crowded as his. She fields calls for him, talks to lobbyists about legislation, consults staff on political strategy, organizes fund-raisers for Brown and her husband and confers with victims of lupus, a genetic disease from which she suffers.

‘Share in Everything’

“We share everything,” her husband said. Active in Jewish affairs, she helps organize privately financed trips to Israel for legislators.

Other legislative spouses help their mates raise campaign funds or oversee their offices. However, few have as much influence in as many different fields or receive as much salary for fund raising as Marlene Bane. She is driven professionally, associates say, by a desire to earn money and to keep her husband in office, even though he has not faced a major election test in years.

At her fingertips, she keeps such details as the cost of potholders sent to constituents. At fund-raising events she organizes, she glides around in a designer gown bubbling to her guests or issuing directions to her staff.

In private, her voice is sometimes barely above a whisper and her conversation turns often to her children and her husband.

“I’m 5-foot, 3-inches, and I weigh 110 pounds,” she said when asked about her clout in the Capitol. “I’m hardly an imposing figure. I don’t have any power. I don’t have a vote here. There’s very little I can do.”

However, she added, that “doesn’t mean I can’t ask the Speaker to talk to someone. But I certainly don’t have authority to say that the Speaker will punish you.”

Even before their 1981 marriage--both were married previously--the professional lives of the Banes had been intertwined for two decades. During his first stint in the Legislature in the 1960s, she served as a legislative aide. After he lost a bid for Congress, she helped him start a savings and loan trade association.

In 1974, she managed Bane’s successful bid to return to the Assembly. After he won, she ran his district office in the San Fernando Valley and served as a consultant to the Assembly Select Committee on Genetic Disorders, which focused much of its attention on lupus, a potentially fatal genetic disorder.

Suffers From Lupus

Marlene Bane, who has suffered from lupus since childhood and suffers occasional flare-ups, serves as an unpaid member of the state Lupus Appropriations Board. Since its inception 12 years ago, the three-member board has awarded nearly $7 million in taxpayer grants. The Banes have been at the forefront in raising public awareness about the disease and obtaining funds to fight it.

Assemblyman Bane, who at one time chaired the Assembly Select Committee on Genetic Disorders, said that after they were married, it was no longer “politically wise” to have his wife on the public payroll as a consultant to the panel and she left.

In the early 1980s, as Tom Bane became one of Brown’s chief lieutenants, his wife’s role as a Democratic fund-raiser took shape. The assemblyman recalls that Brown was impressed with Marlene Bane’s ability to attract contributions for her husband. Brown sought her out to head his fund-raising efforts in Los Angeles.

She was an instant hit. Marlene Bane estimates that between 1981 and 1987, Brown’s annual fund-raising dinner parties in Los Angeles--the centerpiece of her efforts for the Speaker--netted about $5.5 million, including $1.5 million last year.

At least part of the costs for those dinners were offset by Assemblyman Bane’s campaign committee, which reported spending about $160,000 for the Los Angeles bash between 1982 and 1987.

Also, some of his wife’s fund-raisers are staffers in the assemblyman’s office who take leaves of absence to work for his wife.

As Marlene Bane’s successes mounted, so did her rewards. In 1981, for her efforts Brown gave her a set of Italian wine and champagne glasses worth $1,574. By last year, Brown was paying her a fee of $77,000, according to campaign contribution reports. In total, she has received an estimated $390,000 from Brown, an amount she said is “not a whole lot of money compared to what I could have made in the private sector.”

A former Brown staff member said Marlene Bane became especially important because of her ability to tap donors who would not otherwise give to the Speaker. “It’s not the liberals” who are the key to her fund raising but the “middle-of-the-road Jewish” contributors, the staff member said.

‘Absolutely Necessary’

Brown hailed Bane as the best in the business because “she raises more than anyone else.” He said she is “absolutely necessary” to his operation, which typically attracts more contributions than any other in the Assembly.

Her technique is to oversee a group of solicitors while making only a few calls on friends. In those calls, she said, she may chide someone by declaring: “You know I don’t think buying a table or two at Willie’s dinner is where you belong, so buy five.”

Others, however, say the operation goes too far. “She has a cadre of people. . . . They try to browbeat you to death,” said a legislative staff member familiar with the operation and who would discuss Marlene Bane only if granted anonymity. “Not only is she doing it for Willie, but she’s the wife of a powerful assemblyman. It’s the double whammy.”

In the view of one Los Angeles executive, who asked not to be identified: “There’s nobody in the state Legislature or in Congress who even begins to have such a huge continual fund-raising (operation) as Willie Brown. It sure is tasteless. They are on the phone night and day getting funds.”

While praising Marlene Bane’s political skills, Doris (Dodo) Meyer, longtime deputy to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in Van Nuys, said: “It’s very hard to say no to Marlene or her operation. Sometimes you get five calls from five different people, even if you’ve been put down as a no.”

Brown scoffed at the suggestion that his fund-raisers badger donors. If he had received complaints, Brown snapped, “I didn’t listen.”

Added Marlene Bane: “We don’t threaten or strong arm.” She acknowledged that her management style has a hard edge, portraying herself as “a very, very difficult taskmaster . . . a perfectionist.”

Disclosure of her false academic credentials arose as The Times was reviewing her role on the state lupus board.

In an interview with Marlene Bane before The Times obtained a copy of her resume, she said she had a doctorate in genetics from UCLA and an unspecified honorary degree from UC Davis. When UCLA failed to find a record of her degree, Marlene Bane was pressed to produce a copy.

Errors Acknowledged

Instead, the next day her husband called The Times on his wife’s behalf and acknowledged that she had not earned a degree from UCLA and had only an honorary doctorate of law from Mid Valley College of Law, which has since merged with another school.

The Times then acquired a copy of the resume on file with the Health Services Department. It said Marlene Bane is a graduate of UC Berkeley, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude. It also said she holds a master’s degree in education from UCLA, a doctorate in law from “Valley College of Law,” and an honorary Ph.D. in genetics from UC Davis.

None of the universities has records of those credentials. However, one of the founders of Mid Valley College of Law recalled giving her an honorary law degree in the 1970s.

Assemblyman Bane said his wife, a New York native who grew up in San Francisco, actually attended UC Berkeley for two years in the early 1950s and received her honorary law degree in the mid-1970s.

He said none of her work for the state requires academic credentials, insisting that the falsified background has not hurt the public. The Health Services Department said the other two members of the lupus board are doctors but members are not required to have medical expertise.

In 1986, Bane became involved in a controversy over her ties with a firm marketing computer software her husband was urging Assembly members to buy as a means of responding to constituent inquiries and mail.

The software grew out of an elaborate card-file index Marlene Bane developed to track every time a constituent contacted her husband’s office and the reason. A former Bane staffer said the idea behind the system was to put letters with the assemblyman’s name in constituent mailboxes. “Even routine problems would generate five or six letters,” he said.

Mike P. Shulem, who with the Banes created a computer software version of the card-file system, said Marlene Bane invested $1,700 as a 25% interest in his Data Plus Imagination.

Since 1984, Assemblyman Bane’s campaign committee has spent at least $240,000 on contracts with Shulem or his firms--either for constituent services or purchasing computer hardware.

Ties Become Public

The ties between Shulem’s firm and Marlene Bane came to public attention when the Assembly Rules Committee began to solicit bids for software in 1986. Republicans objected to installing any software, warning that the taxpayer-financed computer programs could be abused for political purposes.

At the end of 1986, before the contracts were awarded, Assemblyman Bane, a champion of obtaining constituent services software, especially Shulem’s, assumed chairmanship of the Rules Committee, which was in charge of choosing software for the Assembly.

In part to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Marlene Bane sold her interest in the firm for $1,700. Said Assemblyman Bane: “I insisted on $1,700, which was what she put into it because I didn’t want anybody questioning whether or not there was a profit made on the problem.”

Meantime, another Shulem-controlled firm--Monarch Constituent Services--landed software contracts valued at $9,000 apiece with 33 legislators, mostly Assemblyman Bane’s fellow Democrats.