CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / PROPOSITIONS : Environment an Issue for Industry, Celebrities

On one side are Hollywood celebrities, major environmental groups and a wealthy investment manager named Harold Arbit.

On the other side are some of the nation’s most powerful corporate interests: oil and chemical companies, agribusiness and the timber industry.

Together, they are the key players in a series of multimillion-dollar campaigns being waged over four Nov. 6 ballot initiatives that affect the environment.

From corporations with economic concerns to movie stars turned checkbook activists, the campaign contributions provide a guide to the interest groups that are promoting the environmental propositions--or would be most affected by their passage.

Rallying behind Proposition 128, known to its backers as “Big Green,” is Assemblyman Tom Hayden and a long lineup of entertainers, including Michael Landon, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and Kevin Costner.

The celebrities’ contributions are a mark of the expanding role the entertainment industry is playing in the traditionally strapped environmental movement. Environmentalists have found in Hollywood a large and wealthy group looking for causes to support.

“Our dilemma as environmental activists has been that we have the issues but we never had the money,” said Robert Hattoy, Southern California regional director for the Sierra Club. “So this year we asked the entertainment community, and they put their money where our mouths were.”

Opponents of Proposition 128, who have labeled the measure “the Hayden Initiative,” have raised more than twice as much as supporters, despite early concerns among corporations that their donations would brand them anti-environment. At least three-quarters of the opposition money has come from oil and chemical companies, including manufacturers of pesticides that would be banned.

“There is a concern across the nation about our situation here,” said Clark Biggs, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation, which also opposes Proposition 128. “Everybody seems to contend that a cancer that begins in California can spread across the nation.”

Farmers, food manufacturers and grocers--from California and around the country--have contributed virtually all the money collected so far to support Proposition 135, a rival pesticide measure that would invalidate key portions of Proposition 128.

A similar battle has erupted over two rival initiatives that would change the way the timber industry operates: Proposition 130, sponsored by environmentalists, and Proposition 138, sponsored by the timber industry itself.

The environmentalists’ campaign to curb logging in California’s forests has received most of its financing from Arbit, an entrepreneur and philanthropist. He has contributed $1.7 million in support of Proposition 130, dubbed “Forests Forever” by its backers.

“I have the choice of buying a $2-million painting and looking at it on the wall,” he said. “ . . . Or I could spend $2 million and have a chance of saving the last 5% of California’s redwood forests.”

The timber industry has poured in virtually all of the $5.7 million to defeat Proposition 130 and to finance its own measure, Proposition 138. Of the money, more than a third has come from just three major timber companies, Louisiana-Pacific Corp., Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Sierra Pacific Industries.

Contributions to all of the campaigns undoubtedly have risen substantially since Sept. 30, the last date figures were available.

Of all the environmental initiatives, the most controversy has surrounded Proposition 128. Among other things, itwould ban at least 20 pesticides, cut carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as 40%, accelerate the phase-out of chemicals that deplete the ozone layer, reduce toxic releases into coastal waters, preserve redwood forests and increase taxes on oil companies to pay for oil spill cleanups. The measure also would create the position of environmental advocate to enforce California’s environmental laws.

Opponents argue that the post was designed for Hayden, the former anti-Vietnam War radical who is expected to run for the office in 1992 if the initiative is approved. Hayden was one of seven official sponsors of Proposition 128 and has a played a key role in its financing.

Of $2.5 million raised by the campaign, the largest donation, $286,000, came from Campaign California, the environmental grass-roots group that Hayden heads. The Santa Monica Democrat also donated $59,000 from his Assembly campaign committee.

Altogether, about $1 million--roughly 40% of the money raised by the campaign--has come from environmental groups, including $189,000 from the Sierra Club and $111,000 in time and materials from the League of Conservation Voters.

Another $1 million has come from members of the entertainment industry.

Much of the Hollywood money came through the efforts of a handful of fund-raisers led by Fonda, a longtime activist and Hayden’s ex-wife.

“Whatever Tom could do, he did; whatever Jane could do, she did,” said Hattoy of the Sierra Club. “But all kinds of new individuals have come up and shown their ability to raise money for the cause.”

Landon, of “Bonanza” and “Highway to Heaven” fame, illustrates Hollywood’s support of Proposition 128. He has contributed $4,500 and made television and radio commercials in behalf of the measure. Part of the reason, he said, was gradual loss of sea animals from the offshore reefs in the seven years he owned his Malibu beach home--a loss he attributed to pollution. “In that short space of time, my children and I watched that happen,” he said. “It was unbelievable.”

In opposing Proposition 128, the large oil and chemical companies have led the way. Aerospace, agriculture, timber, construction, electronic, retailing, real estate and manufacturing interests and utilities contributed most of the rest.

Much of the opposition money has come from out of state, donated by companies that have operations in California or fear that Big Green will set a nationwide precedent. Early on, some had to be persuaded to join the fight.

“We were just coming out of Earth Day, when the companies were spending lots of dough trying to prove they were great environmentalists, and they did not want to look bad,” said an official with the opponents’ campaign who asked not to be identified. “Corporate America are not really gutsy people . . . and they thought they could not win.”

As of Sept. 30, the campaign committee to defeat Proposition 128 had received $4.4 million of $6.6 million raised by corporate committees opposing the measure. By contrast, the insurance industry spent $63.8 million on insurance initiatives in 1988.

Kirk West, president of the California Chamber of Commerce, said the opponents will spend less than $16 million, “but more than what has been reported so far.”

The three biggest contributions reported so far were $405,000 from Monsanto Co., $397,500 from Atlantic Richfield Co. and $395,000 from Chevron. Other large contributors from the chemical and pesticide manufacturing industry include ICI Americas, Ciba-Geigy Corp., E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Co., DowElanco and Rhone-Poulenc Inc., which have all given hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Supporters of Proposition 128 have charged that these corporations are among the nation’s biggest polluters. For example, St. Louis-based Monsanto was the second-largest discharger of toxic chemicals in the country in 1988, releasing 202 million pounds, according to the initiative’s backers.

Diane Bartolanzo, a Monsanto spokeswoman, defended the company’s record, noting that the figure includes 190 million pounds of a fertilizer the company injects underground in Texas in compliance with environmental regulations.

The company would suffer if Proposition 128 passes because the measure would ban alachlor, an herbicide and probable carcinogen produced by Monsanto.

Bartolanzo said the company opposes the initiative primarily because it fears its California plants could be hampered by a provision reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40%.

While the oil and chemical companies have worked to defeat Proposition 128, farmers and their allies have put their money into Proposition 135, which would invalidate the pesticide provisions of the environmentalist initiative.

Growers, food companies, wineries, florist associations, grocery firms and farm bureaus--including some from out of state--have all contributed to the $3.1-million total.

The California Farm Bureau Federation so far is the largest donor, giving $202,312 in money, time and materials. The California Grape & Tree Fruit League contributed nearly $200,000 and E.J. Gallo Winery gave $100,000. The Illinois-based American Farm Bureau Federation kicked in $100,000.

“Farmers have given more to this initiative than anything in the history of California agriculture,” said Biggs.

The battle over the two timber industry initiatives has been just as fierce and almost as costly. Environmentalists are promoting Proposition 130, which among other things would ban clear-cutting in all forests, restrict logging to 60% of the timber volume and spend $742 million in bonds to purchase ancient redwood forests and retrain loggers for other jobs.

The industry has countered with Proposition 138, which among other things would relax existing constraints on logging, make it more difficult for the state to buy redwood forests for parks and spend $300 million to plant trees--including many that could later be harvested by loggers.

The environmentalist measure was largely inspired by Arbit, who made millions as head of Concord Capital Management, an investment firm that handles $2 billion in assets for 30 nonprofit organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Motor Co. pension fund.

So far, he has donated $1.7 million of his own money to finance Proposition 130. The campaign has collected an additional $400,000 from more than 7,000 other donors.

The timber industry has waged an all-out attack against Arbit, questioning his motives and accusing him of planning a scheme to help himself financially.

Despite a barrage of charges from the industry, the campaign has provided no proof that Arbit has a personal stake.

The timber industry hopes to defeat the strict environmental controls of Proposition 130 and win approval of the weak regulatory system it wrote into Proposition 138.

Nearly all of the $5.7 million collected so far to defeat Proposition 130 has come from the major timber companies, with the rest coming in small donations from more than 2,500 others associated with the industry.

Louisiana-Pacific gave $757,000, Georgia-Pacific contributed $680,000, and Sierra Pacific Industries chipped in $636,000, records show.