Tiny Medfly Carries Big Political Sting : Agriculture: Politicians face the risk of angering constituents with aerial pesticide spraying. The other tough choice: allowing the fruit fly’s infestation to ruin the state’s agricultural industry.

An old campaign poster hanging in the headquarters of Pete Wilson’s campaign for governor serves as a powerful reminder of the political sting that the tiny Mediterranean fruit fly can carry for local and state officials.

The poster from Wilson’s 1982 Senate campaign victory over former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. shows Wilson swatting a Medfly, the head of which has been replaced by Brown’s.

It was designed to remind voters of Brown’s delay in 1981 in ordering aerial pesticide spraying to eradicate the pest, allowing a small infestation in Santa Clara County to explode into a statewide outbreak and damaging Brown’s political career.

Today, with Brown’s political mistake on their minds, officials have acted swiftly to spray malathion to eradicate Los Angeles County’s worst Medfly infestation. But the political risks increase every time a new fly is found, including the possibility of having to order aerial spraying of the same neighborhoods more than once. Even worse would be allowing the Medfly to again threaten California’s agricultural industry.

“They know this issue has bitten a politician in the past, and they are not going to let it happen a second time,” said political consultant Sal Russo, a former aide to Brown’s successor, Gov. George Deukmejian.

From Deukmejian on down to the politically ambitious Los Angeles County supervisors, the tough act is to balance the interests of powerful agricultural forces who want swift and strong action to wipe out the Medfly against the interests of city residents who fear damage to their health and car finishes from aerial spraying.

So far, there have been no reports of political fallout from the single night of aerial spraying in each of the five sectors of the county encompassing 89 square miles, including communities around Dodger Stadium and in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

“I haven’t heard anybody complain,” said Vice Mayor Suzanne Crowell of affluent San Marino, who did not even hear the helicopters spraying malathion over her city Thursday night. “Maybe we’re all more aware of the dangers of the Medfly.”

“I have a hunch that if anybody’s car gets discolored, then we might start hearing about it,” said San Marino Mayor Paul Crowley. In heavily Latino South El Monte, city officials reported no complaints about Thursday night’s spraying.

For his part, Deukmejian, elected with strong backing from farmers, has left the Medfly battle to his agricultural advisers.

“The governor believes it is an egregious error for a chief executive to second-guess his or her experts in the California Department of Food and Agriculture,” said press secretary Kevin Brett. “The previous chief executive chose to do this at his own political peril and the peril of the state’s economy.”

Earlier this week, two members of a state scientific advisory panel voiced concern that the recent infestations point to a widespread county problem and called for increased aerial spraying and additional trapping. But county and state agricultural officials disagree. They believe that infestations are isolated incidents caused by smuggling of bad fruit out of quarantine zones.

County Agricultural Commissioner Leon Spaugy said, “Since this fly is not a strong flyer, he has to be given an assist by the traveling public.”

In 1981, Brown, responding to his environmental constituency, balked at recommendations from his experts to spray the Santa Clara Valley before the insects migrated from back yards to farmlands. Finally, he reluctantly ordered it, saying he was forced to do so under the threat of a federal quarantine of California agriculture--a $14-billion-a-year industry.

The notorious Medfly lays its eggs in more than 250 varieties of produce, ruining it for market.

Jerry Scribner, Medfly project director in 1981, said the politics of Medfly have changed dramatically since the Jerry Brown Administration.

One night’s spraying of malathion is not the touchy political issue it was in 1981, when the Medfly was new to urban dwellers who saw the pest as a distant problem affecting the farm belt.

Aerial spraying today “is happening more quickly, almost before people have a chance to get organized in opposition,” Scribner said. Thursday’s spraying, for example, occurred within 72 hours after additional Medflies were found in San Gabriel Valley neighborhoods.

“I think this would be a lot more controversial if you spent months making the decision,” said Scribner, now an attorney in Sacramento.

Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Pete Schabarum, who represent San Fernando and San Gabriel valley neighborhoods sprayed with malathion Thursday, said that the public better understands the need for aerial spraying.

“If the spraying did not occur,” Antonovich said, “we would have an infestation that would shut down the entire food supply in California, and the public would be blaming every local and state official for that occurrence.”

The five supervisors, who usually take advantage of every opportunity for publicity, have been low-key on the big Medfly story. None have been present for the helicopter takeoffs prior to spraying, even though every TV camera in town has been there.

“These single air applications have not really created any political problems,” said William Edwards, the county’s chief deputy agricultural commissioner. But, he and others said the political situation could change if additional flies are found, possibly requiring more than one night’s spraying of the same territory.

Supervisor Ed Edelman, whose Westside district was sprayed last year, said he would question the advisability of more than one night’s spraying. “I think if they tell you to take your car and cover it up, it can’t be good for you,” he said.

Until now, officials have sprayed one night over infested neighborhoods, followed by the release of millions of sterile flies to breed the pest out of existence. But the supply of sterile flies produced at a state-run laboratory in Hawaii is nearly exhausted.

Officials have been looking into buying sterile flies from Guatemala or Mexico. But they are moving cautiously, remembering a suspicion that supposedly sterile flies bought from Peru in 1981 may have actually been fertile and spread the infestation.

Assemblyman Richard Katz, whose northeast San Fernando Valley district was sprayed last Monday night, said it would cause political problems if officials treated infested areas differently, choosing “paint on Mercedes vs. paint on Chevys.”

County Agricultural Commissioner Spaugy, meanwhile, said the “politicians understand the necessity of not allowing this fly to spread to other areas. Even though we may encounter resistance on the local level, I think the broader decision is if we’re unable to contain it here, we’re looking at an expanded area of treatment and more concerns from more people.”

The county has attempted to ease public fears and, in turn, reduce political fallout by distributing flyers to every residence before spraying and staffing a hot line to answer questions about the health effects.

Former Gov. Brown, asked about his handling of the 1981 Medfly crisis, admitted in an interview Friday, “I can’t say from a political point of view it was handled right.”

However, he said he still remains concerned about the health effects of aerial spraying of pesticide. “I think Deukmejian will spray until hell freezes over and they’ll worry about the health effects later,” he said.

He said politicians are taking a lower profile for fear of the political consequences of making a mistake.

They want to “leave it to the experts, which works fine as long as it works fine. But then when things go awry, people will be looking for the responsible parties,” he said.

Some officials in the spray zone have their own way of responding to political pressure.

“We’ve gotten about a dozen calls,” said Keith Till, administrative services officer at San Marino City Hall. “We’re telling them that this is the decision of the state of California, and it really isn’t a local decision whether the spraying should take place.”