Race for State Insurance Commissioner Taking Shape : Campaign: Attention is focusing on Sen. John Garamendi, the newest candidate. He is less critical of insurers and more dubious of lawyers than are the other Democrats seeking the post.

After months of preliminary maneuvering, the state’s first elective race for insurance commissioner is beginning to take shape, with attention focusing on the newest candidate, state Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove).

Garamendi already has emerged as a different kind of candidate in the Democratic primary, less stridently critical of insurer points of view and more dubious of the trial lawyer lobby than most other Democrats in the field. And Garamendi is drawing fire from four candidates in the contest who hope to win the bulk of votes from consumers angry with the insurance industry.

Former Common Cause director Walter Zelman, who formally announced his candidacy Tuesday, Board of Equalization President Conway Collis, television commentator Bill Press and attorney Ray Bourhis all are identified to some degree with the lawyers’ side of the argument over insurance prices.

Like the lawyers, they say that the sacrifices necessary to reduce costs ought to come primarily from the profits of the insurance companies, not through changes in the legal system to cut down on lawsuits, the role of trial lawyers and the ability of victims to recover damages.

Zelman and Collis have slightly qualified this, saying they would not rule out eventually supporting some kind of no-fault system involving legal reform. But both are soliciting trial lawyer money for their campaigns and indicate that a no-fault option is at the bottom of their priority lists.

Zelman, Collis, Bourhis and Press also identify with continuing attempts to enforce Proposition 103, the landmark insurance initiative adopted by voters in 1988 but thus far hardly implemented.

Garamendi has struck another note. As early as 1977 he authored a no-fault auto insurance bill and was a supporter of successful medical malpractice legislation that put a lid on damages that could be awarded litigants, thus cutting insurers’ costs and curtailing price increases in malpractice insurance. Only one other Democratic candidate, little-known and poorly funded Alhambra City Councilman Michael Blanco, is supporting no-fault insurance.

Garamendi is the only candidate on the Democratic side to say he thinks Proposition 103, with the changes in it made last year by the state Supreme Court, is “impossible” to implement. While saying that, as commissioner, he would act “in the spirit” of Proposition 103, he said Monday he would try to go beyond the measure to seek new insurance laws in the Legislature.

This may not be a majority position in the Democratic primary, but with Garamendi alone among the better-known candidates on one side of the insurer-trial lawyer divide, and the four other relatively well-known candidates all on the other side, Garamendi may be in the most advantageous position. In a multi-candidate race, a plurality probably will be enough to win.

With Democratic candidates spending far more--and being better established in voters’ minds as consumer advocates than Republicans--the winner of the Democratic primary is likely to be a heavy favorite to win the commissioner’s job in the general election.

Neither of the two GOP candidates, legal reform advocate Tom Skornia and insurance agent Wes Bannister, have obtained much campaign financing nor established much voter name-identification. In the most recent contribution report, Bannister had collected $33,655 and Skornia $11,500, while two Democrats, Press and Collis, were both above $300,000. At that time, Garamendi was not a candidate and was not required to report, but he is believed to have more in contributions saved up for the race than either Press or Collis.

So, attention has focused on the Democratic race in which all of the other candidates--plus the main sponsors of Proposition 103, consumer advocates Ralph Nader and Harvey Rosenfield--have gone on the attack against Garamendi.

Nader and Rosenfield wrote Garamendi a letter this week criticizing him for close association with insurer points of view and urging that he seek some other office than insurance commissioner.

The other candidates say that if they can establish Garamendi in the public mind as a professional politician closer to the insurers than they are, then he may be beatable.

“His identification with Sacramento and identification with the insurance industry is going to kill him,” Press said Tuesday. “And the one who wins is going to be the one who emerges as the strongest consumer advocate.”

To all of this, Garamendi responds that he has been associated as a legislator his entire career with consumer interests and would be devoted to them as commissioner. At his formal announcement of candidacy Monday, he also used some sharp rhetoric against the insurance companies.

“I am ready to lead Californians in their rebellion,” he said. “I will not be under the thumb of the industry. I will tame this beast.”

A moment later, however, answering the Nader and Rosenfield criticisms, Garamendi had a slip of the tongue, declaring: “I have always been on the side of the insurers.” A moment later, he said he meant to say: “I have always been on the side of the consumers.”

Each of the other candidates is trying in his own way to strike a populist tone.

Zelman, flanked at his announcement by two dozen leaders of consumer organizations, emphasized his past fights in Common Cause, not only against insurance companies, but also banks, landlords, the liquor lobby and the airlines.

Collis, adopting the most vitriolic tone, declared Monday that he would become the “nightmare” of the insurance industry and “break their backs.”

Bourhis, citing his role last year in getting a court order directing Insurance Commissioner Roxani Gillespie to begin prosecuting complaint cases against the companies, has pledged to personally represent consumers as commissioner in bargaining with companies for group discounts.

Press has promised “to create out of this office the strongest consumer protection agency in the country” and has been talking of a plan to make California the first state to provide universal health insurance.

A recent California Poll put Garamendi and Zelman out in front in the race for the Democratic nomination. But the poll’s significance was discounted by political experts after it was revealed that the Democratic sample included only 122 potential voters. The 10% possible margin of error in such a sample is so large that any one of five Democrats in the poll could actually have been in the lead or tied for it.

The same poll, with a larger sampling of 423 potential Republican voters, was inconclusive on the GOP side of the race. Skornia led Bannister 16% to 13% with 71% undecided.