2 Aides Working for Oil Drilling Initiative Opposed by McCarthy

For months it has been a sliver just under the skin of Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate and a man proud of his record on the environment.

On Tuesday, McCarthy fessed up to the irritation. He said members of his campaign team had crossed him up on an issue he cared a great deal about.

McCarthy was referring to his top media strategists, Robert Shrum and David Doak, and to their association with a cause--seaside oil drilling in Los Angeles--which he adamantly opposes.

“I regret what they are doing, and I have so informed them,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy said a conflict developed when Doak and Shrum, who were already working for him, hired on with Occidental Petroleum Corp., which is leading the fight against a proposed ban on oil drilling on land along the city’s coastline.

McCarthy said Doak and Shrum were “on the wrong side” of the oil drilling issue. He said it had been a mistake for them to go to work for Occidental. And he vowed never to let the same kind of situation occur again.

“I will simply go out of my way when I run for reelection in 1994 for the United States Senate to avoid anything resembling that kind of conflict.”

But McCarthy said he would not ask Doak and Shrum to resign from his campaign.

“We signed a contract,” he said, one that “did not prohibit them” from going to work for Occidental. McCarthy went on to describe Doak and Shrum’s consulting firm “as one of the best in America.”

The situation is ticklish for McCarthy because of the extent to which he is relying on the talents of Doak and Shrum to get him back in a race dominated by his Republican opponent, incumbent Sen. Pete Wilson.

Quiet most of the summer and continuing to trail Wilson in the polls, the McCarthy campaign is counting heavily on an effective fall television ad blitz. That is where Doak and Shrum come in. The two have vaulted to the top of their profession, in no small part due to the television ads they crafted for former Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt of Missouri. The ads are widely credited with lifting Gephardt from also-ran status to serious, if brief, contention for his party’s nomination.

In 1986, Doak and Shrum were part of the campaign team that won a stunning come-from-behind victory for Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston. They and the rest of that Cranston team are now working for McCarthy. The reputation of Doak and Shrum also brought them to the attention of Occidental. Shrum said last month that he and Doak would be working on the oil company’s campaign against the drilling ban. Neither he nor Doak, however, could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Occidental and its celebrated chief executive, Armand Hammer, have been engaged in a 20-year struggle to win the right to drill for oil on a beach-fronting site beneath Pacific Palisades.

For more than a year, McCarthy has expressed his opposition to Occidental’s drilling plans, and he said Tuesday that he will campaign against the oil company.

“I am prepared to say anything, to do anything to achieve a victory against Oxy,” he said.

Meanwhile, he faces the chagrining prospect of having his two most prominent consultants working against him.

At the same time, McCarthy said Doak and Shrum will have a hand in scripting his own message on the environment. McCarthy also said he “reserved the right” to air a campaign commercial stating his position on the coastal oil drilling controversy. But he said Doak and Shrum would have nothing to do with the making of that commercial.

McCarthy insists that his consultants’ work on behalf of Occidental will not blur his own message on the environment or tarnish his record.

“I have the Sierra Club’s endorsement. I have the League of Conservation voters’ endorsement because I have been a strong environmentalist on a whole range of issues for many years.”

Nevertheless, some of McCarthy’s closest supporters are worried that his consultants’ association with Occidental will provide cannon fodder for Wilson’s fall ad campaign.

“If Leo ends up with a bad rap on the environment, it would be a cruel distortion of his record. But he would have no one to blame but himself and his own campaign staff,” said one supporter who asked not to be named.