ELECTIONS / STATE ASSEMBLY : Reagan Picture Prompts a Complaint

A spokeswoman for Ronald Reagan complained Friday about the use of the former President’s picture in a campaign brochure mailed recently by Orange County state Assembly candidate Mickey Conroy.

The brochure pictures Reagan shaking hands with Conroy, one of seven candidates in the special election Tuesday for the 67th Assembly District. A caption says the former President was congratulating Conroy on his endorsement by the conservative California Republican Assembly.

But after seeing a faxed copy of the mailer, Reagan spokeswoman Cathy Goldberg said the brochure is “deceptive and false.” As a policy, she said, Reagan does not endorse Republican candidates in contested primaries.

She said Conroy’s literature is “misleading” because voters might interpret the photograph as an endorsement.

“It’s just another in a series of lies and deceptions that Conroy has put out to the voters in the hope of confusing them and stealing the campaign,” said David Ellis, campaign manager for William G. Steiner, Conroy’s chief opponent. “The natural implication is that the President is endorsing him.”

Goldberg’s comments were prompted by a complaint from Steiner’s campaign. In response, aides for Conroy said Friday that they do not believe the photograph is misleading, and they noted that Steiner also has included Reagan’s photograph in campaign literature.

“They’re getting pretty desperate,” said James Bieber, campaign aide for Conroy. “It’s such a trivial thing, and they’re trying to blow it into something ridiculous.”

Ellis acknowledged that Steiner’s campaign used a photograph of Reagan in a campaign brochure that highlighted a letter the former President wrote to Steiner in 1984 congratulating him for his efforts for the Orangewood Children’s Home. Unlike the Conroy letter, Ellis said, Steiner’s literature did not imply that the President had commented on the Assembly race.