When Candidates Pick Their Ballot Job Titles, They’re Counting Votes

State election officials faced one of the stickier political problems of the day a decade ago when a Peace and Freedom candidate asked to be identified on the ballot as a mother/trucker.

At first, election authorities laughed. Then they balked--it was a little too close to a familiar profanity.

But, recalled secretary of state spokesperson Caren Daniels Meade, “She was, indeed, a trucker and a mother so she got to use it.” The candidate may have won some votes for her sense of humor, but she lost the election.

More recently, a candidate for Congress last year in Orange County took a poll to see which description would be best beneath his name on the ballot: businessman, business executive, business owner, businessperson or independent businessman.

To his amazement, candidate Nathan Rosenberg of Newport Beach found that independent businessman was viewed more favorably by 46% of the respondents, contrasted with 3% who preferred the simpler businessman. The rest fell somewhere in between.

As it turned out, Rosenberg still lost to a man with a considerably more impressive job title-- White House counsel. That belonged to now Rep. C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who was a lawyer for President Reagan. And even he had tried to gain a bigger advantage by mentioning Reagan in his title. A judge ruled, however, that the law doesn’t allow candidates to evoke another person’s name.

Like Rosenberg and Cox, most political candidates take their job titles very seriously. They pay consultants and pollsters big fees to help decide which one would benefit them most. And they vigilantly watch over the titles being claimed by opponents, ready to point out the slightest exaggeration or half-truth. Not infrequently, these battles end up in court.

As with everything else that might translate into votes, the designation of job titles has become a political science. But it is a science unique to California--the only state in the nation to allow job titles other than incumbency on the ballot, according to the Federal Election Commission.

As pollsters probe the voters’ minds on issues of the day, they also search for subtle variations in candidate titles. The data is then mixed with gut instinct about how people react as they scan the candidates’ names at the most important time during the campaign: in the voting booth. Below the major offices of President, vice president and governor, experts say that people depend more and more on the job designations to give them a clue as to who, amid a sea of largely unfamiliar names, will best represent their view of government.

Angela (Bay) Buchanan of Irvine, a former U.S. treasurer, does not need polls to know that she would have an advantage if she could use her former title when she appears on the ballot seeking the 1990 GOP state treasurer nomination. Buchanan is challenging incumbent Thomas A. Hayes, who was appointed to the post last year.

“It’s a position I held that I think indicates my qualifications for office,” Buchanan said.

Buchanan’s supporters are already trying to find a way around the state law that does not allow the use of former job titles unless the person is retired or has resigned from his or her post to run for office. Buchanan, who was appointed by President Reagan, resigned in 1983 from the post she held for 2 years and has since been a political consultant and fund-raiser.

“It’s more than a little important,” said Buck Johns of Santa Ana Heights, a Buchanan supporter. “I think if Bay can list former United States treasurer, that’s a big plus.”

Roger Stone, a hardball Washington GOP consultant who is advising Buchanan, said no decision has been made about what Buchanan might do to try to get around the law. But he gave a clue to his thinking.

“Frankly, we wonder about the constitutionality” of the law prohibiting the use of previous jobs, Stone said, raising the specter of a court challenge.

Hayes, of course, is expected to campaign on his credentials as the state’s chief banker while pointing out as often as possible that Buchanan’s federal treasurer’s job was largely ceremonial. Though Hayes’ campaign advisers say he has not decided whether he would challenge Buchanan’s use of the federal title, some of his supporters have.

“Tom would be crazy not to fight her tooth and nail on that,” said an Orange County Republican activist who is aligned with Hayes.

When job designations first began, the titles were pretty much matter-of-fact. A farmer listed himself as a farmer, a lawyer as a lawyer.

But through the years it was discovered that certain job titles carried more pull with voters. Thus a butcher became a meat purveyor, a trash hauler became a waste management consultant and a telephone line repairman became a communication specialist.

John Fairbank of Fairbank Bregman & Maullin, a Los Angeles political consulting and polling firm that advises Democratic candidates, said he believes today’s voters are searching titles for someone “who will speak out for them, who will be on their side, someone who will go after special interests, fight the traffic problem, or the drug problem.”

Fairbank said he tries to match his candidates with a job title that carries “intensity.” For example, when faced with a candidate who was both a UCLA professor and an environmental activist, voters preferred the activist label by a 20% margin, Fairbank said.

Fairbank helped now-Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who owned a printing business, to choose his ballot designation in 1980 when Katz challenged an incumbent and won. Katz had a lot he wanted to communicate when he finally chose small independent businessman : He said he wanted to let San Fernando Valley residents know that he was a “non-lawyer with a business background who can identify with the concerns of working men and women.” He also thought his title told voters that he was “someone who was going to put Valley issues first as opposed to partisan politics.”

Former Whittier Assemblyman David Stirling tried to punch up his designation when he ran 8 years ago for the GOP nomination for state attorney general. Stirling listed himself as Attorney/Businessman/Legislator.

But Stirling lost to a senior assistant attorney general at the time. Though the man, George Nicholson, was among about 20 lawyers at his management level, many believe he won the nomination because voters mistakenly thought he was the No. 2 person in the office. Nicholson later lost in the general election to former Los Angeles Dist. Atty. John K. Van de Kamp, a Democrat.

Despite its wide use, Fairbank said he advises clients running for the offices they currently hold never to list themselves as incumbents. Incumbency has its undeniable power with voters, most experts agree. But Fairbank said the word itself is “a terrible designation” because “it sounds like you expect to be reelected.”

On the November, 1988, ballot, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Roberta Ralph made the mistake of describing herself as an “incumbent” rather than “Judge of the Superior Court” as other Superior Court judges had done. She was the only sitting judge on the court to lose.

“I was told a lot of voters don’t have the faintest idea what incumbent means,” Ralph said in a post-election interview.

Several consultants agreed it is better to state the office one holds using as many words as possible as an eye-catcher. This takes advantage of a quirk in the law that allows incumbents to use any number of words beyond the three-word limit imposed on other candidates.

Designations for California candidates seeking local, state and federal offices were first allowed in 1932 because of a problem of same-name candidates. Two years earlier, for example, there were four men named Hopkins running for Los Angeles County assessor. Also, incumbent state Treasurer Charles G. (Gus) Johnson found himself faced with Augustus J. Johnson as an opponent. Pairs of Youngs, Smiths, Millers and Johnsons were running for other offices, according to Bruce C. Bolinger, a former legislative consultant who now is Nevada County clerk.

“The incumbent Johnson blamed the presence on the ballot of the other Johnson on one of the two Smiths also running against him,” Bolinger said, indicating the mischievous quality of elections in those days.

Through the years, the designations have evolved from the mundane to mini-campaign slogans. In the days of the tax-cutting Proposition 13, there were a rash of tax reduction specialists. Such titles have since yielded to the environmental and consumer advocates of the present day.

Retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jerry Pacht, who once heard many of the ballot designation disputes, said: “People try all kinds of imaginative schemes to associate themselves with whatever’s popular. They want to be crime fighters or tax protesters. People would pretend to be a (Proposition 13 advocate) Howard Jarvis tax adviser when that was hot. They’d think up all kinds of things.”

Some of the designations are less provocative than they are funny. In last year’s primary, for example, various Libertarian Party candidates listed themselves as a bulk-mailing consultant, political philosopher, chess promoter and beer deliveryperson.

There is nothing wrong with a used-car dealer calling himself just that, GOP consultant Stu Mollrich of Newport Beach said. “But when people vote, you don’t want them to giggle when they go into the polling booth.” For that reason, he said, he probably would recommend the candidate call himself a company president.

Teacher or educator have held in good stead, particularly in school board races. In 1969, when 133 candidates ran for seven spots on the newly formed Los Angeles Junior College Board of Trustees, a study found that certain voting cues helped voters sift through the daunting list of choices. These cues included ballot placement, ethnic identification, endorsements and job titles. Candidates who listed education-related occupations gained 5,000 votes over other candidates, according to the study.

As GOP pollster Arnold Steinberg of Sherman Oaks noted, some candidates believe they are well-known enough that they do not need a ballot designation. Baxter Ward, a television commentator and former Los Angeles supervisor, did not describe his profession when he ran against incumbent Supervisor Mike Antonovich last year; Ward lost.

But 23 years ago, a retired actor who wanted to be governor had better luck when he left a blank beneath his name. He won, simply, as Ronald Reagan.