CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / INSURANCE COMMISSIONER : Will Send Questionnaire to Candidates, Nader Says

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader said Monday that he will send a questionnaire to every candidate in the race for California insurance commissioner at the end of this month and by May 12 make public the answers, along with his own comparative scoring of them.

“The questionnaire will not be a very conventional one,” Nader said. “It will be a detailed series of questions to determine what the candidates’ various positions are, how they view the role of insurance commissioner and to what degree they are prepared to enforce Proposition 103. . . . If they say, ‘who the hell am I to send out such a questionnaire,’ then they ought to be aware of the thousands of Californians who are asking me how they should vote in this contest.”

Nader’s sponsorship of Proposition 103 in 1988 was credited in many quarters for being highly influential in the insurance reform measure’s narrow victory.

Indicating that he would make no personal endorsement in the race, Nader declared in an interview: “The results of the questionnaire, the scores given, will speak for themselves.”

Nader, speaking from his organizational headquarters in Washington, said he will make public all the questions, all the answers and how he scored each answer, thus affording Californians the possibility of deciding for themselves whether he had been fair in scoring the candidates.

In Monday’s interview, Nader was critical of one leading candidate in the early polls in the crowded race for the Democratic nomination, state Sen. John Garamendi. And he was noncommittal on another candidate, television commentator Bill Press, who over the weekend received the official endorsement of the state’s Democratic Party.

Nader said he is convinced that when Garamendi’s voting record as a legislator becomes known, it will become clear that, by backing limits on medical malpractice and other lawsuits, Garamendi had frequently done “what the insurance industry wanted him to do.”

As for Press, he said: “He’s sort of Mr. Bland so far. There are two things we have to ask about him, or any candidate, for insurance commissioner: what he believes in, and what determination and guts he’s going to bring to the job.”

A spokesman for Press said he would answer Nader’s questionnaire. A spokesman for Garamendi had no immediate comment.

In any case, Nader added, it is premature to predict a winner. “There’s a huge undecided, and we’re not down to the nitty-gritty yet,” Nader said. “The campaign is going to heat up. . . . The issues will be joined. Right now, everyone’s blowing his own horn without anything but an echo.”