Anti-Alcohol Activist Battles PTA in Beverly Hills Over Wine Auction

The scene: the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta Carnival at El Rodeo School in Beverly Hills. The crime: illegal liquor sales.

At least that’s how Trisha Roth sees it.

Roth may have lost the Beverly Hill City Council election earlier this month, but she hasn’t given up her fight against alcohol. The latest target of her crusade is the annual PTA carnival last Sunday, where bottles of vintage Mouton Rothschild were sold at a silent auction.

The six bottles of 1978 and 1980 vintage Bordeaux were prominently displayed at the carnival, amounting to a “glorification of alcohol,” said Roth, whose war on alcohol and drug abuse was a prominent part of her council campaign.

The auction, said Roth, contradicted the message “in the classroom . . . that alcohol is a drug, and we know (it’s dangerous) from a health perspective and a safety perspective.” Adults, Roth said, should be consistent role models for their children.

She has asked the Beverly Hills city attorney to investigate the wine sales, noting that there were no signs at the auction warning of the dangerous effects of alcohol on pregnant women and fetuses, as required by Proposition 65.

At the carnival, Roth, who has two children at El Rodeo and is the school PTA’s recording secretary, made her feelings known to organizers and school officials.

Although most had no problem with her message, some were dismayed by her methods and timing.

“I listened to her . . . but I was not about to intervene and start changing the whole auction around,” PTA President Patti Tanenbaum said.

“All of us oppose consumption of alcohol by minors and would do nothing to promote it,” said Tanenbaum, whose husband, Robert, was one of the two incumbents to defeat Roth in the council election.

Roth “embarrassed some of the ladies . . . who worked so hard” on the fund-raiser, Tanenbaum added. “It’s too bad she pointed fingers like this.”

Tanenbaum said Roth should have instead complained to the PTA before or after the event, noting that a list of auction items was sent to every parent a few weeks beforehand. “To have, at the eleventh hour, come up with this, in this kind of way, was so upsetting.”

But Roth said: “I’m not going to sit around and sit on it. I was very direct, right away.”

And to criticism of her actions, Roth replies: “Are we looking at the wrong person? I wasn’t the one who broke the law.”

All this is familiar territory for Roth. She complained about the district’s adult school offering a wine-tasting class, and the district canceled it. She has called for investigations of restaurants and even her own Temple Emanuel for failing to post Proposition 65 warnings. She has argued with the American Cancer Society about allowing a wine-tasting fund-raiser to be held on its behalf. “This comes up with every nonprofit organization in the country--everyone wants to make money, and everyone knows you make more money if you sell alcohol than if you don’t sell alcohol,” she said.

At the school carnival, five Mouton Rothschild splits fetched $25 each, and a regular-sized bottle went for $75, said auction organizer Lillian Raffel. The bidding netted about $11,000 from about 200 items, including membership to the Beverly Hills Country Club, Madonna and Janet Jackson concert tickets, and a gift certificate for a cake to feed 250 people.

“I’m taking a lot of flak for it, but nobody ever said it was a popular issue,” Roth said. “You have to be consistent and you have to be persistent if you’re going to make a change.”