Contribution Limits Could Cut Both Ways : O.C. politics: Big donors help keep supervisors all but unbeatable, but challengers need the money worse.

Orange County’s five supervisors, who have collected more than $4.7 million during their election and reelection bids, would have seen their war chests sliced by 20% if contribution limits being debated in the Hall of Administration had applied to their campaigns.

A computer analysis by The Times Orange County Edition shows that the supervisors collect most of their campaign funds from small donors, those who give a candidate less than $1,000 in any given election.

But the big contributors, whose donations would be curbed by the reform proposal unveiled last week, pumped significant sums into the candidacies of the five supervisors. They wield such strong influence that in at least one case--a 1986 supervisorial race that broke local spending records--large contributions may have played a crucial role in determining the outcome.

Still, even though experts agree that large contributions have bolstered supervisorial war chests and helped make board members almost unbeatable at the ballot box, campaign contribution limits such as the one proposed last week have their downside as well. Critics warn that challengers often need more money than incumbents to get name recognition, and they say that capping contributions could end up skewing the political environment in Orange County even further toward incumbents.

As a result, the reform proposal announced last week by former County Planning Commissioner Shirley L. Grindle, who helped author the county’s 1978 campaign reform law, has stirred considerable debate. If adopted, the proposal would bar candidates for county office from accepting more than $1,000 from a single contributor during a four-year election cycle.

At the center of the debate over that proposal are the members of the Board of Supervisors, who raise large sums to get their message out but at the same time worry about the escalating cost of politics.

“With a limit and without a big source of PAC money, it could be that campaigns would not be as costly, more people would have to be reached to raise the money,” said Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who tentatively supports the proposed reform and so far is the only board member to stake out a position on it. “We’d have to set our sights differently. We’d have to work harder.”

In fact, The Times computer analysis indicates that if Wieder and her colleagues had labored for the past 13 years under the $1,000 limit rather than under the county’s existing campaign law, it would have cost them a significant chunk of their political money. Combined, the five board members received at least $980,000 from contributors who topped the $1,000-per-election mark.

That comes to about 20% of all the money that the current supervisors have raised during their county government careers.

But while all five supervisors have benefited from large contributions, some have relied on big money more heavily than others.

At the low end of the scale, Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez has raised almost all of his campaign money in small amounts--his average contribution is less than $400. Supervisors Thomas F. Riley and Roger R. Stanton also turn mostly to the small donor, collecting nearly 90% of their money from individuals and companies who give less than $1,000 per election.

Wieder, who faced a tough reelection campaign last year, has depended more heavily on large contributors. She has received about 20% of her campaign money from sources who contributed more than $1,000 per election.

And Supervisor Don R. Roth--largely because of a freewheeling, enormously expensive race for an open seat on the board in 1986--leads his colleagues in expensive fund raising: More than 30% of his campaign war chest, or about $411,000, would never have reached him under a $1,000-per-person, per-election cap.

But while many observers say they would prefer cheaper campaigns, scaling back fund raising through contribution limits is a complicated business.

Opponents of the caps complain that limiting contributions will freeze out challengers, denying them the money they need to reach voters. That makes campaigns less fair and discourages good candidates from running, they say.

“Campaign contribution limits always hurt challengers,” said Harvey Englander, a Newport Beach political consultant. “People like Shirley Grindle don’t ever seem to understand that.”

Roth, in an interview last May, said that he, too, is skeptical of campaign reform, particularly contribution limits.

“Most of us incumbents like more and more tightening of the campaign laws,” he said. “The more you tighten them, the more you make it so that the only people who raise any money are incumbents.”

Reform supporters retort that incumbents already dominate the process, and that without some change, special interest groups will continue pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the war chests of incumbent supervisors and other county officeholders.

That, reformers say, will push up the cost of campaigns and make candidates less responsive to voters.

Sarah Catz, a South Laguna lawyer and political fund-raiser, said she is “intrigued” by the proposed $1,000 contribution limit and believes it could work well for challengers as well as incumbents.

She pointed to San Diego, where city and county candidates may only raise $250 per election from each contributor, and where only individuals, not companies or PACs, may give. Despite that limit, just last week one incumbent council member was ousted from office by a challenger; another was forced into a runoff.

“I actually think that it (a $1,000 limit) would be a catalyst for getting some new blood into politics here,” Catz said. “San Diego is a good example that contribution limits can work.”

Although no sitting Orange County supervisor has ever relied on contributions of $1,000 or more for the majority or his or her fund raising, large donations have come in handy at times, they say.

In 1976 and 1978, Supervisor Riley, who had been appointed to the board to fill a vacancy, faced back-to-back reelection campaigns. Pressed for money, he turned to stalwart supporters, and they helped him buy the name recognition he needed.

“I probably would have had a lot of difficulty if I’d had the $1,000 (limit),” Riley said. “We had some high-priced consultants to help us, and I was out calling people for lots of money.”

A decade after Riley’s 1978 contest, Vasquez faced the first supervisorial bid of his career, running for reelection to the seat that Gov. George Deukmejian had appointed him to when Supervisor Bruce Nestande left office. Vasquez raised more than 80% of his campaign contributions in relatively small donations, but a $10,000 donation from the Lincoln Club, a local Republican organization that includes a number of prominent developers, didn’t hurt.

But it was the 1986 election to fill the seat of retiring Supervisor Ralph Clark that saw the campaign contribution floodgates thrown open. By the time it was over, the four candidates had spent a total of $1.6 million, making that contest the most expensive race in Orange County history.

And at each key stage of the contest, the ability to raise large contributions was decisive.

In that election, then-Anaheim Mayor Roth faced off against then-Orange Mayor James Beam and former Rep. Jerry Patterson. A fourth candidate, Manuel Mendez, rounded out the highly competitive field.

As the race unfolded, success at the polls closely tracked big contributions. Beam outdrew Roth in the big-money circuit during the June election and won by a hair, though not by enough to prevent a runoff.

Patterson finished third at the polls and in terms of donations from contributors who gave more than $1,000. He also lent $89,000 to his own effort, a loan that was co-signed by several Democratic Party leaders. Under most contribution limits, candidates are allowed to spend unlimited money of their own on their campaigns, so that money would probably have been allowed in any case.

Mendez, meanwhile, finished last in both the fund raising and the voting.

In the runoff election between Beam and Roth, the tables turned. Roth raised more large contributions than Beam, and this time Roth came out on top, winning by a stunningly slim margin of 1,087 votes.

The large contributions to Roth for the runoff race mattered most because they were shrewdly spent, observers recall. In particular, a flurry of late donations helped advertise Roth’s endorsement by outgoing Supervisor Clark.

“Our polls told us that the endorsement from Supervisor Clark was worth seven or eight points in the polls,” said Beam. “That mailer got the endorsement out. I think it won it for him.”

Englander, who managed Roth’s campaign, agreed that the last-minute contributions--many of which exceeded $1,000--could have been the deciding factor.

“We went after that money before the November runoff,” he said. “We needed to, especially to get the word out about the Clark endorsement. Could a $1,000 limit have affected the outcome? Quite possibly.”

Contribution limits would have dramatically affected both the Beam and Roth camps, Englander added. “There’s no way that either campaign could have reached or involved nearly the number of people that we did,” he said.

Some experts believe that the 1986 campaign, extraordinary at the time for the huge sums that were raised and spent, may foreshadow Orange County’s political future. For while 1986 was the first open-seat contest in years, several more may fast be approaching.

Riley and Wieder, for instance, each have indicated that they do not plan to run for reelection in 1994.

Vasquez and Stanton are considered likely congressional candidates at some point, which means their seats also could open up in the coming years. That leaves only Roth, and he, too, could be a candidate for higher office.

How would contribution limits affect the open-seat races that Orange County seems destined to have in the near future?

“My guess is that if we had had the limits in 1986, they would have affected us about the same,” said Beam, who estimates that he would have raised about $300,000 less with the limits than he did without them. “It just would have been a cheaper race. I suspect that would be true in the future, but until you get out there and do it, you never know. And by then you’re already a little bit pregnant.”

As the debate over contribution limits swept through the county Hall of Administration last week, some of Orange County’s most prominent contributors were eyeing the ruckus curiously, anxious to see how it is resolved but timid about getting embroiled in it.

Jerry Pierson, president of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, which has spent $44,700 on supervisorial races since 1977, said he is skeptical of the $1,000 limit but is more frustrated by the array of campaign laws throughout the state.

“I just wish Shirley (Grindle) could get together and everybody could get together and agree on one set of rules,” he said. “Whatever happens, we’ll comply with it, but it’s getting awfully confusing.”

Christine Diemer, executive director of the Orange County Building Industry Assn., another frequent $1,000-and-up contributor to supervisorial campaigns, said her group also is eagerly awaiting a resolution of the debate.

“We’d be pleased to live with whatever the results are. We don’t want to be viewed as a bad guy for contributing large sums,” she said. “But any sort of simplification in the process would be welcome, and we’ll work with whatever comes out of this.”

The computer research for this series was performed by Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum, while staff writer Jim Newton reported and wrote the stories.

How the Analysis Was Conducted

Figures for this Dollar Politics series were developed during a nine-month Times Orange County investigation that used a computer to analyze more than 14 years of contributions to candidates for the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The period was selected to begin just before the county’s political reform law, TINCUP, was passed in 1978.

Using disclosure statements that candidates are required to file with the Orange County registrar of voters, the study identified 19,178 contributions made either to challengers or incumbents from all sources, including individuals, corporations, political action committees and other groups. Candidates are required to itemize contributions of $100 or more.

The information was updated in August to add the latest campaign statements filed with the registrar of voters office.

To determine which contributors gave more than $1,000 during any election cycle, entries were broken into four-year periods. The exact dates depended on the individual candidate’s election dates. Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, for instance, ran in 1980, 1984 and 1988, while Supervisor Don R. Roth ran in 1986 and 1990.

Contributions to candidates who faced runoff elections were broken into separate cycles so that they were not added to contributions for the primary election. In runoff elections, any contributions received between June 30 and Dec. 31 were considered donations to the candidate’s runoff effort.

The computer research for this series was performed by Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum, while staff writer Jim Newton reported and wrote the stories.

Who Gets the Big Contributions?

CONTRIBUTIONS TO SUPERVISORS THAT TOPPED $1,000 PER CAMPAIGN.*

Don R. Roth (33% of all the candidate’s contributions): $411,173

Harriett M. Wieder (20%): $277,346

Thomas F. Riley (15%): $149,108

R. Stanton (14%): $79,514

G. Vasquez (12%): $63,532

* Period covered is January, 1977 through June, 1991

TOTALS FOR ALL FIVE SUPERVISORS

Total Contributions: $4,730,315

Amount Over the $1,000 Threshold: $980,673

Money Raised from Big Contributions: 20.73%

Source: Campaign disclosure reports

CASE IN POINT Big Givers Helped Swing 1986 Race

When Supervisor Ralph Clark stepped down from the board in 1986, it touched off a wide-open campaign to succeed him. The money flowed, much of it in large contributions. And at both stages of the campaign--the June election and November runoff--the winner was the one who got the biggest chunk of his money from major backers.

$1,000-plus Money* % of total % of vote JUNE ELECTION James Beam $153,000 43% 34% Don R. Roth $77,000 29% 33% Jerry M. Patterson $31,000 26% 26% Manuel Mendez $40 1% 5% NOVEMBER RUNOFF Don R. Roth $231,000 59% 50.5% James Beam $149,000 47% 49.4%

* Amount received in excess of $1,000 per contributor. Note: Candidate contributions to their own campaigns are not included.

Some of the Biggest Givers:

Alliance for Representative Government: $25,000 loan to Beam

Firefighters Local 1014: $10,000 to Beam, $5,000 to Patterson

Let’s Reelect Ross Johnson: $24,500 to Roth

Los Angeles Rams: $300 to Patterson, $13,500 to Roth

MCP Foods Inc.: $35,000 in loans to Roth

South County landowner Richard J. O’Neill and associates: co-signed for $89,000 in loans to Patterson (not included in Patterson’s totals because Patterson also signed for the loans).

Source: Campaign disclosure statements filed by the four candidates

CASE IN POINT

Building Industry Assn.

If Orange County were to adopt a $1,000 limit on campaign contributions, it would change the donating habits of many givers. The Building Industry Assn., for instance, has given most of its money during the past 14 years in chunks bigger than $1,000.

60.6% Over the proposed limit: $29,105

39.4% Under the proposed limit: $18,900

Source: Campaign disclosure reports