Campaign-Spending Initiative May Get Unruh Funding

The June ballot measure to limit legislative campaign spending, and provide for public financing of Senate and Assembly races, is expected to receive a $100,000 contribution from the political fund left by the late state Treasurer Jesse M. Unruh.

Trustees of the Unruh campaign treasury met Friday and agreed on a plan to turn over the money from the fund, which contains at least $1.3 million in unused Unruh campaign contributions, sources familiar with the trustees action said Sunday.

Walter Zelman, who heads the campaign for the ballot measure--Proposition 68--said he was “happy and disappointed” by the decision.

“I’m very happy to receive such a large sum of money. It will be a real boost,” he said. “But we will be disappointed if it is the only money (from the fund) for the campaign.”

Zelman, who heads Common Cause in California, has been pressing for help from the Unruh fund for months but has been stymied by disagreements among the trustees.

Proposition 68 gives legislative candidates public funds for campaigns if they agree on spending limits. It also would limit individual and small-business contributions to $1,000, limit big business and most political action committee donations to $2,500 and restrict contributions from any group to all candidates to $200,000.

Unruh had backed the measure, advised Zelman on campaign strategy and specifically said in the legal document disposing of his campaign fund that he wanted part of the money to go to a campaign reform measure.

Although Unruh, beginning from his days as Speaker of the state Assembly, had been a famous political fund-raiser, he became disenchanted with the process in recent years and called for changes.

But the trustees of his fund--old friends, his widow, Chris, and his son Robert--have been unable to agree on how to spend the money. Unruh also specified that some of the money was to go to the University of Southern California Institute of Politics and Government and to political campaigns or political action committees run by any of his five children.

One son, Randy, asked the committee for a substantial amount of money to run for a seat on the Culver City Council, but then withdrew from the contest.

Sources said the trustees finally responded to Zelman’s repeated requests Friday by voting an initial contribution of $100,000, providing their attorneys clear up some unspecified legal details.

Zelman indicated that he will continue to press for a larger donation.

He said he believed that the fund has grown to as much as $1.5 million with interest payments and said the Proposition 68 campaign will need more help “if the other side comes in with a multimillion-dollar campaign” in the final days before the election.