Leaders Urge Backing for Measure T to Limit Campaign Giving : Politics: Initiative would allow maximum of $1,000 per contributor to any candidate for county office.

In a prelude to next month’s elections, a coalition of political and community leaders appealed to Orange County voters Thursday to support the Measure T campaign reform initiative that sets a flat, $1,000, across-the-board limit on the amount of money a candidate for elective county office can accept from any contributor.

In order for the measure to pass, a majority of voters must approve it during the June 2 elections.

“Our support of Measure T comes from our conviction that every citizen should have access to their elected officials,” Tricia Harrigan, president of the League of Women Voters of Orange County, told a press conference in the Civic Center. “If the average citizen doesn’t get a fair hearing people get completely turned off” of the political system.

Although there is already local legislation in place designed to prevent conflict-of-interest abuses, a loophole in the TINCUP (Time Is Now, Clean Up Politics) law allows candidates to get around current restrictions by forming political action committees.

These unregulated groups, often made up of developers and other special-interest groups, allow sophisticated contributors to funnel large contributions into supervisors’ campaigns while still enabling the supervisors to vote on these same developers’ projects.

By contrast, under the TINCUP law, a supervisor can take just $1,944 from any individual or company in a four-year period before having to declare a conflict of interest and stop voting on issues pertaining to that particular contributor for four years.

Under the proposed Measure T ballot initiative, it would be against the law for any candidate for elective county office to receive a contribution of more than $1,000 from any source--PAC or otherwise--during an election cycle. If passed, the new law would close the existing loophole.

Furthermore, Measure T would extend to all elected county officeholders, whereas TINCUP covered only the Board of Supervisors. Those who violate any provision of the measure would be subject to a $5,000 fine and be barred from running for office for four years following the date of conviction.

“Unless contribution limits are also placed on these other offices, they too will soar so people will have to spend $500,000 to get elected,” said Shirley L. Grindle, who spearheaded the 1978 TINCUP law. “We also believe it will be a lot easier and a lot simpler for everyone to understand.”

Grindle and Harrigan were joined at a press conference Thursday by Supervisors Roger R. Stanton and Gaddi H. Vasquez, and William R. Mitchell, president of Orange County Common Cause.

There is little organized opposition to the measure. Even those who have voiced reservations about the ordinance say they are virtually certain that it will pass.

“I think the campaign is going to win. What’s unfortunate is that they could have made a law that didn’t have constitutional problems,” said political consultant Harvey Englander.

Both Englander and lawyer and professional campaign manager Dana Reed, each of whom wrote the supervisors earlier this year to express concerns about the ordinance, predicted that the new cap on donations would make it tougher for challengers to mount serious campaigns.

Englander called Measure T “an Incumbent Protection Act.”

The cost of campaigning has increased so much in recent years, he said, that it is “not realistic” to expect most challengers to attract enough publicity to threaten an incumbent if they can only raise less than $1,000 from each donor.

Nevertheless, he said, “I don’t see anybody coming out to oppose this. . . . It’s very hard to oppose campaign reform--this is motherhood and apple pie. The only problem is the pie is a little stale.”

Vasquez however, applauded the law and urged its passage.

“I think it makes the process more consistent by creating a bona fide campaign contribution limit,” Vasquez said. “That is certainly a trend the public would like to see.”

Stanton, also supportive of the measure, predicted that it would pass by an overwhelming majority.