CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS INSURANCE COMMISSIONER : Garamendi Skips Another Debate; Tactic Angers Foes

State Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) was three blocks away when a major association of insurance agents and brokers held a 90-minute debate Monday morning among six candidates for state insurance commissioner. Pleading fund-raising obligations, Garamendi missed it.

This was nothing new. Symposiums or debates among the candidates for insurance commissioner are being held around the state two or three times a week, but Garamendi, one of two leaders in the polls in the race for the Democratic nomination, thus far has attended only one such gathering.

The other leader in the polls, television commentator Bill Press, attended many early symposiums but recently has missed quite a few. He too pleaded conflicts Monday, as did two other relatively well-known Democratic candidates, Walter Zelman and Conway Collis.

But with Garamendi, skipping almost all public encounters with the other candidates appears to be an integral part of his campaign strategy.

Other candidates are annoyed. Zelman, for example, said Monday, “I think it’s clear that Garamendi will do everything he can to avoid these debates. . . . His strategy is to stay out of the fire as best he can, raise money and buy TV (time). The more exposure he gets . . . the less chance he has and he knows it.”

In a telephone interview Monday, Garamendi refused to commit himself to appearing this weekend with four other Democrats--Press, Collis, Zelman and San Francisco attorney Ray Bourhis--at a debate scheduled for the Democratic State Convention by party Chairman Edmund G. Brown Jr.

He said he had told Brown that such an encounter would be “a divisive spectacle” that the party should avoid. A party spokeswoman, however, said Monday that Brown is continuing to press Garamendi to participate.

Before he formally announced his candidacy March 5, Garamendi said in an interview that he would avoid debates as long as possible.

On Monday, Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters, who was on the panel of questioners for the insurance agents’ debate, quoted Garamendi as telling him, after ducking another recent symposium, “When you’re shadow boxing, nobody can hit you.”

Garamendi denied making the comment.

At the one public appearance he did make, on March 13 before a meeting of the Service Workers International Union here, the senator came under sharp attack from Press and Collis for allegedly being more friendly with the insurance industry than the other Democrats in the race.

“I got the impression that day that Mr. Garamendi would certainly not want to subject himself to that kind of attack again,” Collis said Monday.

Garamendi said it is unfair of his opponents to portray themselves as tougher on the insurance companies than he is.

“I’m as desirous of controlling excessive costs and inappropriate actions of this industry as anyone else in the race, and, in the Legislature, I’ve been at this for many years,” he said.

At Monday’s debate, Republican candidate Tom Skornia said he had been informed that, despite a pledge to the contrary, Garamendi had not returned several thousand dollars of insurance industry campaign contributions.

But Garamendi said he has returned the contributions, and he said Skornia was wrong in suggesting that Garamendi would raise money from insurers in the future.