ELECTIONS 20th SENATE DISTRICT : Complaint Is Filed Against Gun Group

Supporters of state Senate leader David A. Roberti launched a counterattack Monday against a pro-gun group that is working to defeat him, charging that the organization violated state campaign disclosure laws.

Roberti said three of his supporters filed a complaint with the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission aimed at Californians Against Corruption, which has claimed that it sent more than 200,000 anti-Roberti attack mailers to San Fernando Valley voters and plans more.

But a spokesman for the Signal Hill-based group denied the allegations and said Roberti is “grasping at straws to discredit his critics.”

One of California’s most powerful Democrats, Roberti is battling four other candidates in a June 2 runoff to replace former Sen. Alan Robbins in the 20th Senate District, which covers the south-central Valley. Robbins last week was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges.

Roberti’s main opponent is Republican Carol Rowen of Tarzana, a veteran abortion rights activist running for public office for the first time. Roberti, who opposes legalized abortion, was forced into the runoff with her after garnering only 34% of the vote in an April 7 primary--far short of the 50%-plus-one he needed to win outright.

Gun owners are trying to defeat Roberti in retaliation for his sponsorship of a landmark 1989 bill that banned sales of military-style assault weapons in California. The National Rifle Assn. and California Rifle and Pistol Assn. recently endorsed Rowen, although she said she did not ask for their backing.

Californians Against Corruption mounted a similar campaign in 1990 against former Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles), who co-sponsored the assault gun ban with Roberti. Although Roos won reelection with 68% of the vote, gun activists claimed that their mailers denied him thousands of additional votes.

Roberti’s supporters complained Monday to the commission that Californians Against Corruption did not file a state-required report on how much it spent against Roberti. The complaint noted that while state law requires reports on any spending over $500, the gun group has said in news stories that its mailers cost $120,000.

Roberti’s supporters also said the group failed to report expenses incurred in filing a lawsuit challenging Roberti’s legal residency. A longtime resident of upscale Los Feliz, Roberti moved to a small rented house in Van Nuys to run in the 20th District after he was pushed out of his old, Hollywood-based district by reapportionment.

Californians Against Corruption spokesman Ray Hickman said his organization is not required to file spending reports because its expenses were borne not by the committee, but by hundreds of volunteers who each paid less than $500 of their own money.

Hickman said the committee sent copies of its anti-Roberti brochure to more than 2,000 gun activists around the country, who each reproduced at least 100 copies and mailed them to 20th District voters.

The brochure, which made no specific mention of the assault weapon bill, criticized Roberti as the “king of the back-room, special-interest deals in the state Senate” and noted that he appointed Robbins and two other Democratic senators who were later convicted of corruption charges to influential committee chairmanships.

The mailers described Californians Against Corruption as a “grass-roots, nonpartisan group of citizens.” But its leader, Manuel Fernandez, has acknowledged in an interview that the majority of its members are gun activists.

Hickman denied that the chain-letter mailing tactic was an effort to dodge state disclosure laws, saying leaders of Californians Against Corruption believed that their allegations would have less credibility if news reporters and voters believed that they were made by gun enthusiasts.

“We had to have something that the news media would listen to,” he said. “CAC was the vehicle for that.”

Hickman went on to describe Californians Against Corruption as “a front” for the Constitutional Rights Foundation, a gun activists group formed to fight the assault weapon ban in court.

Jeanette Turville, a Fair Political Practices Commission spokeswoman, said the technique of using volunteers to vastly multiply the number of anti-Roberti mailers “is really unique,” but that commission lawyers had no immediate comment on its legality.

As for the anti-Roberti lawsuit, Hickman said it was prepared by several people but that he did not know how much it cost. In any event, he said, the costs were picked up by individuals, not the pro-gun committee and therefore no reporting requirement was triggered.

Roberti spokesman Steven Glazer said the suit, which is on appeal, cost “tens of thousands of dollars” and should have been reported.

Glazer said the pro-gun group was attempting to “fool voters about what their true intentions are” by not filing expenditure reports and by trying to conceal their real agenda of wreaking political revenge on Roberti.

Roberti was damaged during the April 7 election, Glazer said, by the huge volume of mailers, which also challenged Roberti’s residency and pointed out that he has received large campaign contributions from lawyers, savings and loan executives, and other special-interest groups.

“When they lie, when they tell voters things that aren’t true and spend enormous amounts of money to say it over and over, yes, it hurts,” Glazer said.

Hickman said the commission complaint was an “act of desperation” by Roberti.

“My feeling is that Roberti is grasping at straws to discredit his critics and to draw attention away from the actual facts,” he said.