Lawmakers Are Stampeding in Last Chance for Campaign Funds

Lawmakers return from vacation today for the final four weeks of the legislative session, amid a last-chance stampede to wring out as many election campaign dollars as possible before a court-ordered “brief window of opportunity” is slammed shut.

“We need to do some serious fund-raising before next year’s campaign gets under way,” Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) told state capital lobbyists in an invitation to his money-raiser aboard a river boat.

While collecting funds for reelection will consume a substantial portion of their time, legislators must also grapple with such important unresolved problems as splitting up an estimated $600 million in extra revenue from the new tobacco tax and fashioning an affordable automobile insurance system for low-income drivers.

Second Half

Other front-burner issues include devising new standards of ethical conduct for members of the Legislature and their staffs, a massive overhaul of the ailing workers’ compensation program, extending health insurance to employees of companies with five or more workers and trying to find alternative ways of disposing of garbage as California swiftly exhausts landfills.

The Legislature will recess Sept. 15 and reconvene in January for the second half of the 1989-90 session.

During the final frenetic weeks of legislative sessions, as the fate of major legislation is being decided in a pressure-cooker environment, lobbyists are accustomed to being swamped with scores of invitations to political fund-raisers. But this time, the solicitations contain a new ring of urgency.

This ingredient was provided by the 2nd District Court of Appeal, which ruled on Aug. 1 that fund-raising by legislators and their challengers in non-election years must cease. Most legislators interpreted the court’s deadline as Sept. 30.

Some incumbents of both parties had already scheduled fund-raising breakfasts, lunches, dinners and cocktail receptions for August and September. But the court decision ignited a “last-chance” blitz of $500- and $1,000-a-person money-raisers as lawmakers scrambled to beat the deadline.

“Sen. Bill Campbell is having an EMERGENCY fund-raiser,” proclaimed an invitation to a $1,000-a-person cocktail party for the veteran Republican from Hacienda Heights.

Noting that under the court ruling he cannot raise reelection funds until he runs again in 1992, Campbell told the lobbyists, “Now that’s an emergency!”

In their rush to get solicitations in the mail, some legislators cranked out hastily typed appeals on their semiofficial legislative stationary, instead of the more traditional formal invitations.

Take Months

Several cited the court ruling, that will be appealed and may take months to resolve. For example, Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Bonita) told the lobbyists that the court left “a brief window of opportunity to contribute.”

In boldface type, Deddeh’s invitation to a breakfast reminded them that “I must receive any contributions on or before Sept. 30.” He said pointedly, “I look forward to working with you during the remainder of this session.”

One Republican, Assemblyman Stan Statham of Oak Run, also featured the ruling in an appeal to lobbyists but he eschewed a fund-raiser. Instead, he directly appealed for contributions “at this time.”

Walter Zelman, director of California Common Cause and the sponsor of last year’s Proposition 68 political reform initiative from which the judicial ruling sprang, acknowledged the irony in the flood of non-election year fund-raisers prompted by the court.

“Hopefully, over the long haul, this kind of fund-raising will be eliminated,” he said. “This is legislators calling in special interests who have bills before them and saying, ‘Contribute to me.’ There is no (election) opponent. No choice. It just doesn’t serve any public purpose.”

One veteran petroleum industry lobbyist said that the inundation of invitations appeared to be about the same as in previous non-election years but added that the wave of pleas for campaign funds since the court action “reflects a sense of urgency.”

Big Jolt

Basically, the court shook non-election year fund-raising with what one Democratic political analyst described as an “8.5 jolt on the Richter scale” by upholding a provision of Proposition 68.

Among other things, the ballot measure prohibits legislative candidates from raising funds in non-election years. Although Proposition 68 was approved, a rival measure, Proposition 73, received more votes.

Consequently, the state Fair Political Practices Commission decided that most features of Proposition 68 had been nullified by Proposition 73 and began adopting regulations to implement Proposition 73.

The appellate court, however, upheld the non-election year fund-raising restriction of Proposition 68, an action that the commission decided last week to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

“What’s happening is that the incumbents have listened to the court and said this is my only chance, and they are trying to raise as much as they can,” observed Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), host of a reception for himself Aug. 28.

“The more money an incumbent (collects), the less likely it is that he’ll be challenged for reelection,” Ferguson noted.

Ethics Plan

Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), who crisscrossed California during the legislative summer recess and lobbied newspaper editors on the merits of a proposed new Senate ethics plan, said the last chance fund-raising merely reflected longtime political practice.

“The fund-raising has accelerated because of the (Sept. 30) deadline,” he said. “If one side feels the other side is going to do something, it does it too. It’s just the case.”

In the first six months of 1987, the last non-election year, members of the Legislature raised $11.3 million. For the same period this year, according to Common Cause, they surpassed that sum, raising at least $11.7 million.