CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / BOARD OF EQUALIZATION : Incumbents’ Legal Woes a Boon to GOP

Two incumbent Democrats--one a convicted felon and the other suspected of filing false travel claims--are giving Republicans their first real hope of winning a majority on the obscure but powerful State Board of Equalization.

One of the Democrats is beaten already. Paul Carpenter cannot serve even if elected because of his conviction on federal racketeering, extortion and conspiracy charges stemming from the time he spent as a state senator. The second Democrat, William Bennett, is being investigated by the California attorney general’s office and the Sacramento County district attorney because of questionable travel claims.

The cloud over Bennett is not nearly the magnitude of the problem that plagues Carpenter. Nevertheless, both are the focus of a Republican campaign to seize control of a board that has been a Democratic bastion for more than three decades.

“For the first time we have two weak incumbents,” said Ernest Dronenberg, the board’s lone Republican.

Carpenter’s conviction Sept. 17 and increasing publicity about Bennett’s travel expenses have turned Republican challengers into viable candidates who were once the butt of jokes for attempting to unseat incumbents.

“When I first started this campaign I was on my own. I was the only one who thought I could win,” said Jeff Wallack, who is running against Bennett.

So hopeful of victory is the GOP that the party for the first time in years is getting actively involved. On Oct. 9 it staged a fund-raiser for all four Republican candidates and Gov. George Deukmejian showed up to help play host. Dronenberg, who represents an eight-county district in parts of Southern California and is considered to hold a safe seat, is donating his share of the proceeds to the other three candidates.

The State Board of Equalization, which rarely catches the public eye even though its actions affect nearly every taxpayer in the state, is an oddity in state government because it is the only administrative board that is elected. The five-member board decides tax cases and heads the agency that administers the state’s sales, gasoline, alcoholic beverage and cigarette taxes. Four of the board’s members are elected from districts and the fifth member is the elected state controller.

The districts have populations of roughly 7 million but vary dramatically in geographic size from Bennett’s sprawling 33-county district in Northern California to Carpenter’s tiny domain in southern and central portions of Los Angeles County.

Although all four seats are being contested this year, the only serious race was supposed to be a battle between Republican businessman Claude Parrish and Democratic lawyer Brad Sherman for a post that Chairman Conway Collis will give up in January. Collis’ district includes the remainder of Los Angeles and 16 other counties.

But Carpenter’s and Bennett’s legal troubles have changed all that. In Carpenter’s race, the federal conviction suddenly gave a political unknown--Joe H. Adams Jr.--a fighting chance at winning his first public office. Despite his felony conviction, Carpenter’s name remains on the ballot. If elected, however, he would not be allowed to assume the job, which would be filled by appointment of the next governor.

“Adams can change more votes per dollars spent than any candidate running for any office because he has a very simple message--my opponent has been convicted of political corruption and is probably about to enter federal prison. That’s a very strong message,” Sherman said.

In Bennett’s case, a virtual shoo-in was turned into a spirited contest. Since the beginning of the investigation, Bennett has maintained low visibility while Wallack has campaigned actively, visiting newspaper editorial boards, touring each of the counties in his district and making appearances on talk shows. Toward the end of the campaign, he said, he hopes to have money for a mass mailing and possibly a few radio and television spots.

Even before the fund-raiser, Wallack had raised more than $55,000, more than any challenger Bennett has faced in his 19 years in office. In recent weeks, Wallack garnered tepid endorsements from two Sacramento newspapers that had formerly been strong Bennett supporters. Calling its endorsement of Wallack “reluctant,” the Sacramento Bee said it could not ignore “what appears to be a disturbing pattern of petty misappropriations over several years” by Bennett.

Bennett, who in the past has attributed discrepancies in his travel accounts to a lapse of memory and blamed the current investigation on his political enemies, will no longer comment on his legal difficulties. Reporters who call his office are told he is out campaigning.

Republicans concede the challenge for them in both races is to raise enough money not just to tout their candidates but to get word to the voters of Carpenter’s and Bennett’s vulnerabilities. So far, Carpenter’s conviction has boosted the fund-raising efforts of all the Republican candidates, but they acknowledge it still is not enough to launch massive mailings or purchase radio and television time.

“If we have money to spend, the most important thing we have to do is let the Democrats know (Carpenter) has been convicted of a crime,” said Adams, a 30-year board employee who is still putting in a full day’s work and only campaigning in the evenings.

Dronenberg, despite his optimism about Republican chances, acknowledged that without money, victory would be no certainty for Adams even though Carpenter has shut down his campaign.

“I still remember that we elected a dead sheriff in San Mateo (County) a few years ago,” he said dryly. “He (Carpenter) definitely has name identification in the district and I don’t know how much this negative publicity has affected him because of the low profile of the office.”

Indeed, Carpenter was already indicted when he won the Democratic primary against five highly vocal but poorly financed opponents. In little-noticed races like those for the Board of Equalization, elections are won with slate mailings, endorsements and ballot designations. In the primary, Carpenter’s opponents never had the money to advertise his indictment and he was able to use past political chits to prevent any of them from getting either a Democratic Party endorsement or their names on a major Democratic slate.

Although no one is conducting any kind of campaign on Carpenter’s behalf, his former press consultant, Jerry Goldberg, said Democrats may vote for him in the hope that Democrat Dianne Feinstein will win the race for governor. If she does, and Carpenter also “wins,” Gov. Feinstein will appoint his replacement.

For the Democrats, however, the unexpected blow is the sudden weakness of Bennett, a veteran officeholder, former World War II bomber pilot and somewhat of a folk hero for his David-and-Goliath battles of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s against utility giants.

Bennett, an outspoken lawyer who refuses to accept campaign contributions, was the toast of the nation for a brief time when he won a long, lonely Supreme Court fight to keep El Paso Natural Gas Co. from acquiring a gas pipeline in California that would have given it near monopoly status in the state.

So it was a shock when the board’s executive secretary, Cindy Rambo, submitted copies of his travel reports to the attorney general’s office in May and asked for an investigation. Since then, according to sources, the attorney general’s investigators have found that at least 68% of his expense claims contain some sort of irregularity. The attorney general’s office has called in the Sacramento district attorney to join it in the investigation.

“I think we’ve got two good key issues to emphasize--Bennett’s absenteeism from meetings and his fraudulent expense vouchers--and they will be mentioned every single day between now and Nov. 6,” Wallack vowed.

In most instances, the charges of irregularities involve conflicts between Bennett’s claims of overnight travel and his gasoline credit card receipts and mobile phone records. Often Bennett would claim out-of-town overnight travel when records and receipts showed his state automobile in use in his home area, according to state documents.

Several months into the investigation, Bennett submitted new reports for the years under scrutiny. The new reports dealt with the years 1988 and 1989 and dropped many of the claims for lodging in Sacramento. They were accompanied by a certified check to cover the difference between the higher expenses claimed in the original reports and the lower amounts in the new claims. The check was refused while the investigation is pending.

Sherman, who once envied incumbents for the ease with which they won election, now counts himself lucky not to be one. “The whole Paul Carpenter thing gives the Board of Equalization more than its fair share of that negative feeling about incumbents that both parties are seeing,” he said.