Joyce Koupal; Activist Who Co-Founded People’s Lobby

Joyce Koupal, who with her late husband co-founded the feisty People’s Lobby, a volunteer political campaign organization prominent in the 1970s, has died in San Francisco. She was 64.

Mrs. Koupal died Friday of cancer, attorney and friend Roger Jon Diamond said Saturday. She died 16 years after her husband, Edwin, who also died of cancer.

People’s Lobby was once described as “not an organization, but two people--Ed and Joyce--with a lot of true believers who follow an honest passion for political reform.”

The activist group became known throughout California in 1972 when the Koupals promoted a clean environment initiative known as Proposition 9. The measure was defeated by voters, but it established People’s Lobby as a volunteer force to be reckoned with.

Two years later, People’s Lobby and Common Cause--after several battles between the two organizations--joined forces to qualify a political reform initiative for the ballot. That measure won.

The Koupals, who lived for several years in Sacramento before moving to Los Angeles, began their political activism with a suit to block an oil company’s effort to purchase the area’s sewage treatment system. They won.

Next, they attempted a campaign to recall then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. That failed.

They also befriended consumer activist Ralph Nader, organizing groups in western states to protest nuclear power plants.

Their first and foremost goal, no matter what measure or candidate they championed, was to improve government.

After her husband’s death in 1976, Mrs. Koupal reduced the People’s Lobby initiative campaign efforts. She said that high-priced professional groups and the changing economy had made voluntary organizations obsolete.

“It’s very difficult now to get a group of volunteers together to do anything,” she told The Times in 1988. “People are at work earning money to eat, and many women had to go back to work in the late ‘70s. So almost the entire volunteer community was gutted.”

The organization fell out of political prominence in the 1980s. At one point, a Sacramento bar owner named his establishment “People’s Lobby” in an attempt to take advantage of the group’s former popularity.

Mrs. Koupal is survived by the couple’s three children, Christine, Diane and Cecil.