CAMPAIGN JOURNAL : Oil Spill Draws a Flock of Politicians

This foul glaze of crude oil sloshing over California’s coastal waters threatens the birds, enrages the surfers, worries the beach dwellers, raises hell in the petroleum company board rooms . . . and, of course, sounds the call to action for California’s election-minded politicians.

Disasters always have a pull on politicos, even though such events can be risky propositions. Ridicule awaits those too eager to capitalize on someone else’s misfortune.

But this was not the case Thursday as officeholders lined up on the sands of Huntington Beach--or via broadcast news hookups--to decry this grim mix of oil and water on a sunny winter day.

Perhaps politicians seemed comfortable here at the scene because of California’s bipartisan and seemingly hardening political consensus that the state is ill-protected from these kinds of crude disasters. Or maybe it was because oil spills, made by humans, are within the power of humans to control, if only with the right leadership.

“This situation of the last 24 hours demonstrates conclusively that we have to do something, and we have to do it quickly,” said candidate for governor John K. Van de Kamp, a Democrat and California’s attorney general.

Van de Kamp stood in the sand with the tanker American Trader wallowing off in the hazy background with its frantic circle of tenders. A wooden State of California podium had been dragged onto the beach to add an official feel to the scene. But Van de Kamp followed political etiquette as to dressing down for disaster--arriving in tennis shoes, gray slacks and a bright green cable-knit sweater, rather than a politician’s suit and tie.

Controller Gray Davis likewise stood at the podium wearing a sweater--blue.

Across the continent, Republican candidate for governor and U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson joined the Democrats in outrage via a pre-dawn television interview beamed home from Washington. He chose burgundy for his sweater.

“I didn’t get the sweater memo,” laughed Republican candidate for lieutenant governor John Seymour, a state senator from Anaheim. He showed up on the beach in coat and tie.

“It’s wasn’t all bad, though. Most of the media don’t know me by sight. The fact that I had a tie on identified me--they said, ‘Hey, that guy has got to be a politician or somebody.’ So I probably got more coverage this way.”

Leo T. McCarthy, the Democrat who is seeking a third term as lieutenant governor, showed up also in coat and tie. He was prepared to take off his jacket and go shirt-sleeved. “But I looked and I had a huge tear in my shirt, so I had to keep my coat on,” he shrugged.

The spill had barely begun before experts predicted that it would prod non-believers into action on new oil spill legislation in Congress and the Legislature.

Further, the more ambitious of the state’s political leaders did not hesitate to size up its potential spillover into the 1990 California election campaigns.

Van de Kamp figured spectators would feel as helpless as the oil slopping about at the mercy of the breezes. He offered them a way to take action--by signing petitions to qualify his “Big Green” environmental initiative for the November ballot. Among other things, the ballot proposition would establish tanker safety standards and impose a new tax on oil to create a $500-million cleanup superfund.

“You can do something,” he said to the crowd.

Like other politicians, he also knew that reporters, dozens of them, and their score of satellite TV trucks, helicopters, cameras and sound booms, would be anxious, to say the least, for deeds to record.

Hold up those petitions for the cameras, they asked him. Here, let us shoot you gathering signatures. Please, general, move over closer to the water. There. Thanks. No one seemed to mind that the attorney general stood behind a podium where the official state seal of Controller Davis was emblazoned.

Seymour took credit for action establishing a center to treat oil-soaked bird and sea lions. Wilson re-emphasized his independence from the Bush Administration and renewed a call for the President to prohibit offshore oil drilling. He also exhorted Congress to act on requiring double-hulled tankers.

Davis and McCarthy spoke as two members of the State Lands Commission, which has responsibility for California tidelands. They urged support for state Legislation to prepare California for an even larger spill.

They practiced their “sound bites” along the way. “This spill is a wake-up call for California,” McCarthy said.

“Once again, Lady Luck has smiled on California,” said Davis, referring to the fair winds that held the slick offshore. “. . . No one, however, should confuse good luck with good planning.”

Republican candidate for lieutenant governor Marian Bergeson, who represents the Orange County coast in the state Senate, joined the pilgrimage to the beach. She vowed to fight any further offshore oil drilling. She also sent a shot at rival Seymour for his votes in favor of coastal oil development.

Local Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and C. Christopher Cox, joined by Rep. Mel Levine of Santa Monica, came as a delegation, arriving with a showy beachfront helicopter landing.

Absent from the spill scene were two California politicians of note.

Dianne Feinstein, Democratic candidate for governor and former mayor of San Francisco, thought it would be unseemly to traipse onto the sand. “She doesn’t hold an office; it’s a little difficult for her to claim a platform to speak,” said aide Dee Dee Myers. “There is nothing worse than standing on the beach with your thumbs in your suspenders waiting for someone to ask you a question.”

Gov. George Deukmejian also stayed away, but probably for different reasons. He is California’s foremost political champion of coastal oil development. “He feels the situation is being capably managed,” said Press Secretary Bob Gore.