ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Political Advisers Need Ethics Code : Candidates entrust them with their careers and reputations, and political contributors with large sums of money.

Each election season, Orange County citizens receive the latest chapter in the smarmy story of local political campaigns.

People in politics and the news media get really worked up over these questionable tactics. Scandal and gossip are a lot easier to report and more fun to read about than complex governmental issues. But does the average voter really care about either?

Party ethics panels convene to debate minor semantical nuances in campaign mailers and sometimes repudiate candidates. The (thankfully) defunct County Fair Campaign Practices Commission often censured campaigns for bizarre reasons.

Honest mistakes, like accidentally listing the names of “supporters” who really had not endorsed, become the focus of protracted media inquiry. Honest mistakes become heinous plots.

The controversy over campaign ethics is not limited to Orange County, by any means. Ask Willie Horton.

For years there’s been a quiet ethical debate rumbling nationally through the American Assn. of Political Consultants. Should political practitioners be bound to an ethical code? What should a code require? How should it be enforced? Who will do the enforcing?

So, a few weeks ago some of America’s leading consultants and a team of academics huddled at William and Mary College in Virginia. We brought the debate out in the open in a series of panels on campaign finance, the role of advertising, and standards of professional conduct for consultants.

Creating an ethical code is more complicated for political consultants than for other professions. For one thing, we’re a new breed of animal. With notable exception, political consulting agencies are a phenomenon of the 1970s and ‘80s.

You don’t need a college degree or a license or certificate to practice. Like Christian Ahab Simmons in Ray Strother’s novel “Cottonwood,” all you need do is hang out your shingle and: Voila! You’re a bona fide political consultant.

Before he was a political consultant, Stu Spencer was a city parks manager. Bill Butcher was a geography major. I was a financial officer for the county hospital. We have little in common, so even when we try, merely defining our newborn profession is no simple matter, much less designing a meaningful ethical code for it.

I’m one of those who believe we are a profession and we should act like it. People put their careers and reputations in our hands. Donors entrust us with thousands--or millions--of dollars. Reporters look to us as a source of reliable information.

Advertising and public relations agencies (good gosh, even journalists!) are bound by codes of professional conduct. Should any less be expected of those who represent elected officials or ballot propositions that can alter the state Constitution?

Clients should have a right to know how much of their campaign spending actually finds its way into their consultant’s pocket. Yet there’s nothing that requires it today, and this naive trust is routinely abused.

And what of ads or mailers that only vaguely resemble the truth? If agencies did it for a can of spaghetti sauce, they’d face stiff penalties. Yet, because an election campaign is protected free speech, there are few remedies in law. Unless consultants police themselves the profession’s reputation will continue to deteriorate.

While consultants should act ethically and should somehow be required to do so, our clients cannot be excused from their share of the responsibility.

Many candidates--Tom Riley, Marian Bergeson, John Seymour, Mike Roos, to name a few--would lose an election or fire their consultant rather than risk their honor by shading the truth or by drawing on a voter’s base instincts.

In 1977, I was part of a consulting team for Mike Roos in his successful bid to become a state assemblyman from Los Angeles. At one point, several of us urged Mike to mail a truthful brochure comparing the candidates. The mailer would include photos of him and his opponent, a black man who had pointedly avoided mailing photos of himself in the solidly white district. Roos refused to authorize the mailer. He believed it would win votes not because of his own character or political views, but because of his opponent’s race. Mike decided he’d rather lose than live with that. He killed the mailer, won the election and launched a brilliant career.

Yes, political consultants should adopt--and enforce--an ethical code. If we want to attract top-notch talent to our agencies, we need to protect our own image by controlling our own behavior. If we want reporters to believe us, they first must be able to believe our advertising. If we want clients to pay the premium fees we demand, we need to act like professionals, not like hired gunslingers or carney barkers.

But ultimately, the ethical conduct of political consultants is mostly a matter of internal business practices and enlightened self-interest for an emerging profession. It has little or nothing to do with the outcome of elections or the quality of government.

An enduring truth of America’s strange democracy is that the better candidate usually wins. If we’re unhappy with our elected officials, it’s more a reflection of the weak field of talent who offer themselves as candidates than an indictment of either the process or the practitioners.