THE POST-ELECTION, BETTER-LUCK-NEXT-TIME REPORT : Why One Mr. Smith Couldn’t Even Make It to Sacramento

ON PRIMARY ELECTION NIGHT, June 4, 1990, the air was thick with congratulations. The walls of my hotel suite were covered with blowups of newspaper editorials endorsing my candidacy for state insurance commissioner. The editorials (80% of the state’s endorsing newspapers had supported me), as well as the many friends who stopped by, praised my campaign for its elevation of issues over gimmicks and negativity. They congratulated me for my aggressive independence from special interests. They lauded my intellectual and moral victory. They said I had set an example of how a campaign should be run.

I got 8% of the vote, finishing fourth in a field of seven.

IN THE CLASSIC 1939 MOVIE, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” an idealistic citizen politician (James Stewart) defeats big-money interests on Capitol Hill. Like Mr. Smith, I was an outsider and a citizen politician. But my campaign was far less successful, except at vividly reinforcing an inescapable truth in politics today: Mr. Smith can’t get to Washington anymore. He can’t even make it to Sacramento.

I was not naive; I knew the rules of the electoral game. For 12 years, as the executive director of California Common Cause, I had been the state’s primary critic of a system dominated by special interests. I had consistently attacked those who benefited from the system, those who lived by it and even those who wouldn’t support the effort to change it.

Campaign Rule No. 1 is the most compelling: Money Dominates. Candidates may get some free exposure through the media, but, with the possible exception of the most visible and controversial of races, the effect of such exposure pales before that of 30-second TV spots and slate cards that show up in mailboxes the day before an election. The money to pay for them comes mostly from special-interest contributors, sometimes from personal wealth. Candidates who can’t get the former and don’t have the latter are in deep trouble.

Rule No. 2 is almost as absolute: Running for Office Is a Career Track All Its Own. If you’ve been elected, you can get elected. If you’ve run before, you’ve raised money before. If you’ve gotten money, you can get more. You have a base, a network of donors, a recognizable name. Successful candidates are usually professional candidates; they set their sights on elective office years in advance, running again and again, expanding their ability to bankroll a campaign and increase their name identification--even when they lose.

Rule No. 3 is simply dispiriting: Credentials and Substance Help . . . but Not Much. Appropriate credentials and experience mean little without the money to broadcast them. Slashing attacks on opponents make better 30-second sound bites than thoughtful analyses of the issues. In the end, a campaign is not about whether you can do the job, it’s about whether you can get the job.

And all these rules carry more weight in the primary election, where no party label helps voters sort out the differences among the hopefuls.

From the beginning, the odds were against me because my candidacy defied the rules. I had no fund-raising base, no personal wealth, no access to special-interest dollars. I was, at best, a respected enemy of those interests. I didn’t fit Rule No. 1. I had never run for office, had never planned on doing so. I wasn’t even on the first step of the electoral ladder. I was known to insiders, but not to the general public. So much for Rule No. 2. My strengths--credibility with the press, experience with the issues, (I was the only candidate who actually had done political battle with the insurance companies), support from consumer leaders--were not, according to Rule No. 3, valuable commodities. Still, in the summer of 1989, I thought I had a chance. I was running for an office created by the Proposition 103 insurance revolt. It seemed to be a job made for someone with my background. Maybe, for this one office, in this one set of circumstances, the rules could be challenged.

But even in the beginning, the good news / bad news aspects of my run were clear: An early poll of political insiders rated me the most qualified candidate for insurance commissioner. It also rated me least likely to win.

IN MID-JULY, SEVEN FRIENDS and advisers gathered in Santa Monica in my friend Phil Recht’s living room to assess my chances and to plot strategy. Choosing a strategy and a message was easy. I would be what I always had been: the consumer advocate, the non-politician, the ethics candidate. A vote for me would be a vote not only for an independent insurance commissioner, but also for the higher purpose of changing the rules.

Building name identification would be harder. Walter Zelman was not exactly a household name, but I had a weapon: The Secretary of State had said I could use my occupation on the ballot: “Director, Common Cause.” Voters who had never heard of me might know of Common Cause and what it stands for. The association probably would not win the election, but we figured that it was worth 8 to 10 points in the polls and election returns.

Finally, we told ourselves, neither of the two announced candidates looked very powerful. Board of Equalization member Conway Collis had the support of Proposition 103 author Harvey Rosenfield, but Collis had a spotty reputation with the media and no credentials as a consumer leader. Television commentator Bill Press was better known, and had solid support in progressive circles, but he, too, had no track record on consumer or insurance issues. Both had run for office before and could raise more money than I, but neither was a dominating fund-raising presence.

In the living room that afternoon, the most critical campaign element was introduced: “Have you got 10 people who can raise $10,000 each?” someone asked.

I laughed. “No,” I said. “I have two people who’ve promised to raise $5,000, and a few others who say they will but probably won’t.”

We didn’t set a precise fund-raising goal, but we felt reasonably confident that we could raise $225,000, enough to run a bare-bones campaign. We would need much more for TV ads, but we didn’t count on getting it. Our hopes rested more on the expectation that no one else would have a big TV budget and on my relationship with the press: For 12 years, I had been the first person reporters called to get the public-interest viewpoint on Sacramento politics. We hoped that the controversy surrounding Proposition 103 would produce an unusually visible campaign and that my credibility with the media would give me an advantage. Strategy and hopes in place, I cautiously moved out onto the electoral diving board. I was still the head of a nonpartisan political organization, so I kept a very low profile. But I called around, testing the idea. “Bob, you may have heard, I’m giving some thought to running. . . .” The response was lukewarm to warm.

At the end of September, I asked the board of Common Cause for a six-week leave, I filled out the paperwork required to start collecting campaign donations, and I started asking people for money.

“Joan, this is Wally. I’m running for insurance commissioner and I need. . . .”

IT WAS LATE OCTOBER, and I sat in my small campaign office in West Los Angeles, phone in hand, dialing for dollars. I thought I was doing fine. My fund-raiser knew better.

“How much have we got?” she asked between calls.

“Ten thousand in cash and about $20,000 in commitments,” I replied.

She thought for a moment. “That’s about $24,000. Keep working the--”

“No,” I interrupted. “It’s $30,000.”

“Walter,” she said, “it’s $24,000. Trust me.” Fund raising, I would learn, was a four-step process: Find a donor, get him on the phone, get a commitment and get the money.

Ask candidates what they hate most about fund raising, and they’ll all produce the same answer: Cold calls. Nobody has that many friends. One day I made 37 calls without getting past one answering machine or secretary. Other candidates’ supporters, I learned, were the easiest to reach. They had a simple way to say no.

Another problem was getting donors to give enough. The maximum allowable contribution from an individual was $1,000, and every fund-raising specialist told me the same thing: “You’re getting $250 when you should be getting $1,000. Stop asking for contributions. Ask for the max.” I wasn’t afraid to ask. But $1,000 was a hefty sum to the son of a left-wing attorney (my father spent years defending New York City teachers during the McCarthy witch hunts) who had never had much money and had ambivalent feelings about those who did.

Finally, over lunch with a supporter who had lectured me about letting givers off the hook, I took the advice.

“Robert,” I said, “Give me $1,000.”

I got $500.

By early December, I had edged out to the end of the diving board. I resigned from Common Cause, hired a small office staff and held my first fund-raiser--a breakfast in a Beverly Hills restaurant. About 100 supporters showed up, and we collected $20,000, for a total of about $60,000 in two months. The amount wouldn’t intimidate opponents, but it reaffirmed our expectation that we could at least get to $225,000.

Still, from the first fund-raising pleas, I found it hard to keep the money issue from consuming me. In late December, I turned 46 and the staff held a party for me at the office. John Balzar of the Los Angeles Times had shadowed me for the day and seemed impressed with how the “reformer” was meeting the system head-on. I was ahead in the polls, and free media attention and insider gossip were positive; the birthday celebration became one of the high points of the campaign.

I tried to speak from the heart to the 50 or so friends and supporters present. I thought I was giving a warm, emotional talk about commitment to higher purpose in politics.

Later that night, Phil asked me, “Wally, why did you talk so much about money?”

“Money?” I asked, amazed. “I talked about money?”

ONCE AWAY FROM the phones and strategy meetings, I had to become The Candidate. What that meant didn’t really hit me until that first fund-raiser. I’d been a public figure for years, but I’d always represented a cause. Now the cause was me. I tried making it something else--ideas, changing the rules, higher purpose. But it rarely worked. In the end, I had to sell myself.

From media and audience reactions, I learned quickly that candidates must be oppressively aggressive, pushing themselves forward at every opportunity, analyzing less and promising more. Sensing my reluctance, one supporter reminded me, “when people look for a leader, they look for a tough son of a bitch.”

I had to look the part, too. Marlene Bane, wife of Democratic assemblyman Tom Bane from Tarzana, gave specific advice: “You’re a candidate, you’ve got to look like a candidate,” she whispered to me at a fund-raiser in Beverly Hills. “Wear a white shirt!”

In January, I stood outside the Los Angeles offices of acting Insurance Commissioner Roxani Gillespie. Next to me was a prop--a door with a glass pane inscribed “State Insurance Commissioner” and a sign hanging on it that read, “Not for Sale.” It was my visual aid for hoped-for film at 11.

“The people of California,” I proclaimed, “cannot trust the next insurance commissioner to cut rates if the hands of the candidates for that office are reaching into the deep pockets of powerful special interests.” I proposed that all candidates sign an ethics code restricting special-interest contributions and limiting campaign spending.

It seemed like a no-lose tactic. If my opponents signed the code, I would have leveled the playing field. If they didn’t, I would have a distinguishing, potent political issue. “I signed an ethics code,” I could say. “Why won’t they?” If they were going to take special-interest money, I had to make them pay for it.

But it didn’t quite work the way we planned. There was no film at 11, just a few buried newspaper stories. And my opponents, knowing that the best political defense is any kind of offense, struck back. By identifying myself as “Director, Common Cause” on the ballot, they said, I was allowing the good name of that nonpartisan organization to be dragged into a partisan cause. They would sign the code if I dropped my ballot ID. It was a standoff.

By the end of February, much of December’s optimism was gone. We were raising less money than our already conservative estimates; the free media coverage we’d counted on was more wish than reality, and my Mr. Clean image was no longer so clean. The best that could be said was that no one else was doing much better.

Then came March.

EARLY THAT MONTH, my friend Lloyd Connelly, a Democratic state assemblyman from Sacramento, called to confirm a rumor. “Garamendi’s coming in,” he said. “He’ll out-raise and outspend all of you. It’s over.”

John Garamendi was a state senator, a Democrat from Walnut Grove with no track record on insurance issues. But his candidacy fit the rules. As an incumbent, he had access to special-interest contributors and a $250,000 war chest from previous campaigns; I had $25,000 cash on hand. He was personally wealthy. And he had run again and again, including two losing efforts for statewide office during the past eight years. He had name ID and the biggest contributor base of all the candidates. If the rules meant anything, he would win.

Still, I went forward. A week later, I formally kicked off my campaign with a news conference outside the Farmers Insurance office in Los Angeles. I emphasized the support I had from California’s consumer leaders, many of whom were present. But one reporter revealed a different story. Television coverage focused on my misdemeanor conviction, almost 20 years earlier, for possession of a small quantity of marijuana. It was a one-day story, but it put me on the defensive.

Four days later, in the Sunday L.A. Times, Ralph Nader labeled me Impostor No. 2 (Garamendi was Impostor No. 1). I had expected Nader to do what he could to aid Collis, the candidate of Nader ally Rosenfield, but this was too cheap a shot. For 10 years, I had led the fight for much of Nader’s consumer and reform agenda. Now, I thought, he was betraying the movement he had created. I countered with a letter of support signed by 22 state and national consumer leaders, but the damage was done.

The worst was yet to come.

On March 29, in response to objections raised by both a Common Cause employee and a former employee, a Sacramento judge decided that the ballot designation “Director, Common Cause” was a job title rather than what the law called for: “principal professions, vocations, or occupations.” This despite years of precedent and no specific prohibition against employer names. Garamendi could use “State Senator”--not “elected official” or “politician”--on the ballot. But I had to be “Director, Consumers’ Organization.” I lost my best means of communicating who I was.

Phil Recht, who had become my campaign chairman, acted as my lawyer during the hearings. On the plane back to Los Angeles, he asked me: “What shall we use for a ballot designation?”

“How about ‘Unemployed Impostor’ ?” I replied.

After the change in ballot designation, polls gave me 5% of the vote--third place, a distant 10 points behind Garamendi and Press.

Early in March, when Garamendi entered the race, Lloyd Connelly had suggested, “Go get a beer, go into a closet, and figure out whether there’s a reason to run other than winning.” I hadn’t taken his advice then, but I did now.

And there was a reason. I couldn’t stand the thought of my campaign becoming a footnote that might suggest all the wrong things: “Good guy reformer quits after learning rules the hard way.” I still believed I could make a difference.

ONCE I KNEW THAT I couldn’t win, I was free of the rules and the restraints they imposed. I was liberated. I could be as substantive and as specific as I had always wanted to be.

Most candidates don’t like to be specific: Saying exactly how you will accomplish something--lowering insurance rates, for example--is much riskier than simply promising to do it. A detailed position automatically leaves you vulnerable to attack.

I got very specific: I called for a Canadian-style health-insurance-reform plan with public funding and private delivery, went further than any opponent with a detailed plan to bring down automobile insurance rates, and, most dramatic of all, I became the first major candidate to support a form of no-fault insurance. I offered proposals to address the crisis of inadequate prenatal care and the lack of insurance for long-term care needs of the elderly. I challenged the logic of Gov. Deukmejian’s earthquake insurance “reform,” which included surcharges that would produce even greater profits for insurance companies. I produced a list of types of insurance (one-flight airline insurance, $100-a-day hospital coverage) that people generally should not buy.

Not surprisingly, I got more press coverage for my one attack on Garamendi, for refusing to campaign, than for my 10 issue-oriented news conferences combined.

Even so, positive signs began to surface: My press releases were being read and were winning me the label of most “independent” and “substantive” candidate. Garamendi was criticized for his ties to the insurance industry, and Press was called to task for his sizable contributions from personal-injury attorneys.

Then, on May 18, at 7 a.m., Joanne McNabb, an old friend from the consumer movement, called from Sacramento. “Have you heard about the Bee?” she asked. “They’ve endorsed you.”

It was the highest moment in the campaign. Later that day, I learned that the San Jose Mercury News also had endorsed me; within two weeks, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Fresno Bee, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Bay Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Bakersfield Californian all followed suit. Even the Los Angeles Times, which had decided not to endorse for the primary, came close to doing so in a June 1 editorial, asking, “Why all the money for the insurance post?” It advocated that voters choose a candidate with the “courage” not to take special-interest money, one with a willingness to address the issues. On the Democratic side, the paper concluded, I was that candidate.

But, as the rules promised, credibility and substance were no match for a professional with money. Lingering in the polling booth and looking at my name on the ballot, I felt relaxed. But that wasn’t the way I wanted to feel.

IN THE END, the rules held. John Garamendi won the Democratic primary election for insurance commissioner. Free media coverage of the race was minimal and voter interest nearly non-existent. After months of campaigning, it came down to who had the most recognition going in and the most money for 30-second ads and slate cards in the last 10 days. My hoped-for unconventional campaign turned out to be as conventional as campaigns get. Garamendi’s victory, it seemed, was as much a mathematical as a political outcome.

As this goes to press, nine days remain until the Nov. 6 General Election. Garamendi is once again the almost certain winner, this time over Republican Wes Bannister, Libertarian Ted Brown and Peace and Freedom candidate Tom Condit. The public has a preference for a Democrat in a consumer-oriented office, and Garamendi remains the best-funded, best-known contender. And he continues to be no more substantive than he has to be. It is a stubborn irony of modern American politics that the candidates who are least likely to win are the most likely to be straightforward and specific on the issues.

Ever since the June primary, people have been asking me when I will run again. They don’t ask if, they ask when. The process of campaigning, after all, put me on the first rung of the politician’s ladder. Those who ask seem to think I could do better next time.

They’re right. After all the phone calls and meet-and-greets, I could probably deliver 50 supporters, maybe even 100, who could raise $5,000 each for another run. My name recognition has no doubt modestly improved, and I now have a reputation as a candidate. And if Proposition 131 is approved, it would create sweeping campaign-finance reforms that would give citizen politicians a much greater opportunity to compete and win.

Barring such reform, it is unlikely that I will run again. Even if the rules are less hostile to me now, I am no more comfortable with them. I was never obsessed with holding office, and I believe that something akin to obsession is required.

I didn’t run just to make a point; I wanted to win, or at least come close, and by that standard, my campaign was a failure. Even so, I can’t forget that 7 a.m. phone call from Sacramento. The editors who endorsed me must have known I was going to lose. They could have used their space and influence to favor a front-runner. But they deemed it important to send a different message: The rules have to be fought and changed.

Cynicism comes easily in politics. But so does hope.