CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / INSURANCE COMMISSIONER : Unknowns Are Often More Specific on Issues

Relatively unknown candidates have often been more precise on the issues in the race for insurance commissioner than the leaders who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on television ads to state, without much elaboration, that they will enforce Proposition 103.

Democrat Michael Blanco, an Alhambra city councilman, has campaigned in scores of forums in strong, blunt language for implementation of no fault auto insurance. Since Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) has blocked this in the Legislature, Blanco has also called for Brown’s ouster.

To Republican John L. (Jack) Harden, the cause of high auto insurance prices is fraud. Stop fraud, he told a debate of the five Republican candidates Thursday on Century Cable, and he would guarantee a 50% fall in insurance prices within six months.

Democrat Ray Bourhis, a San Francisco trial attorney who does have some advertising but not as much as the leaders, has promised to prosecute consumer complaints and even brought specific suits during his campaign against insurance companies he says are violating the state’s insurance code.

But for the most part, issues in the insurance commissioner’s race have revolved more around the general attitudes of the candidates, their sympathies or lack of them for the insurance companies or the trial lawyers, and the more amorphous issue of a candidate’s character. Sometimes, the issue has simply been the character of their advertising.

State Sen. John Garamendi’s campaign, the most heavily funded of three well-funded Democratic campaigns, announced Friday that it will not answer a negative ad by television commentator Bill Press with a negative ad of its own. “The senator believes there has been too much negative campaigning,” spokesman Rob Deignan said.

Garamendi may also feel he is ahead and doesn’t want to rock the boat. No candidate has been more reluctant to commit himself on specific issues, and his spokesman declined once again Friday to respond to criticisms by either consumer advocate Ralph Nader or opponent Conway Collis, chairman of the State Board of Equalization. The theme of Garamendi’s single ad has been that he will make insurance companies “obey” Proposition 103. How, he doesn’t say.

Meanwhile, former state Common Cause Director Walter Zelman--who earlier advocated a specific plan for government health insurance for all, replacing all private health insurance and to be financed through a payroll tax of about 10%--has spent most of his time of late contending that he is the candidate who is most independent of special interests.

As proof of that, by the end of the week Zelman was able to cite the editorial endorsements of 12 of the 17 newspapers in the state to endorse in the Democratic primary race. Most of these, he noted, had lauded his independence.

“But that independence from special interests has a price,” Zelman said. “Unlike my leading opponents . . . I have no funds with which to run 30-second TV commercials.”

Here are summaries of positions by some candidates on key campaign issues:

Attitude toward the insurance industry: All seven Democratic candidates say they are determined to stringently regulate the industry and enforce Proposition 103. Garamendi has been under attack for associating with industry positions and taking industry money in the past. He has renounced his previous support of no-fault insurance, backed by the industry, and refused insurer contributions in this campaign. Collis has taken the most militant anti-industry line, vowing to jail company executives and even to be “unfair” to the companies to get Proposition 103 implemented. Only one of the five Republican candidates, attorney Tom Skornia, has taken the strong anti-industry line adopted by the Democrats.

Attitude toward the trial lawyers: Press, having taken at least $273,500 in contributions from trial lawyers, has been most assiduous among the Democrats in supporting the lawyers’ positions, as has attorney John S. Parise on the Republican side. The rest of the candidates indicate that some of the reforms they would undertake to solve the insurance crisis may involve financial sacrifices of the lawyers as well as the insurers. Even Press has indicated there are circumstances where he would take on the lawyers, as a last consumer resort.

Health insurance. Only Libertarian Ted Brown, who opposes government regulation in all cases, has been unwilling to contemplate an increased government role in providing or facilitating the purchase of health insurance. Some candidates, such as Skornia, prefer employer-financed health insurance, but all except Brown would use the government to provide it under certain circumstances. Press and Zelman have been most outspoken for universal public health insurance.

No-fault insurance. Blanco and Republican Wes Bannister, former mayor of Huntington Beach and an insurance agent, have been most outspoken for it. Skornia has favored it as an advocate of legal reform. Zelman has embraced a limited form of it, and Collis says he would not absolutely rule it out. Press rules it out. Garamendi’s abandonment of it was questioned by Nader, a foe of no-fault, as possibly insincere.

State-run nonprofit auto insurance. Only Collis has advocated this, and then only in the event that the companies fail to implement Proposition 103. The rest say it is, at best, premature, or often question whether it would work.