CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : U.S. SENATE : Old Dispute Resurfaces in New McCarthy Ad

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Leo T. McCarthy launched a television ad attack on Rep. Mel Levine Tuesday, resurrecting a 12-year-old controversy that occurred during the bitter battle by a Levine ally to oust McCarthy from the speakership of the state Assembly.

It was the second McCarthy ad in two days that sought to raise ethical questions about his two opponents for the Democratic nomination for the six-year Senate seat. An ad introduced Monday went after Rep. Barbara Boxer of Marin County for writing bad checks on the now-defunct U.S. House bank, an allegation he repeated in the new ad on Tuesday.

Levine was the focus of the Tuesday commercial, although it criticized both Levine and Boxer for voting for the congressional pay raise.

The major thrust, however, was that Levine used “improper influence to soak taxpayers for a phony government job for his wife . . . until state investigators blew the whistle.”

As the announcer said that, a newspaper headline flashed on the screen: “Improper Influence Cited in Levine Hire.”

The ad’s closing statement was: “Barbara Boxer and Mel Levine: They’re not right for the U.S. Senate. They’re what’s wrong with Congress.”

Hope Warschaw, a Levine spokesman, said that Levine is outraged by the McCarthy ad and the involvement of his wife, who is a graduate of Harvard and the UCLA law school.

“This really is the ultimate in sleaze,” she said.

The dispute involved Levine’s wife, Jan, and her appointment to a job with the state Public Utilities Commission at the same time Levine was serving as a member of the state Assembly. It is based on a San Jose Mercury News story of April 1 that reported Jan Levine was hired for the legal job at the insistence of John Bryson, then the executive director of the Public Utilities Commission and now chairman of Southern California Edison Co.

Levine, a friend of Bryson, sat at the time on a subcommittee that oversaw the commission’s budget. The job was created for Jan Levine in Sacramento even though most of the commission’s lawyers worked in the agency’s main office in San Francisco, the article noted.

The State Personnel Board held that the hiring was not in accord with state regulations and the position and Jan Levine’s appointment were terminated.

Warschaw said the job was eliminated because the commission failed to follow state civil service directives and had nothing to do with the fact that Jan Levine was being considered for the appointment. A board official subsequently wrote a letter saying that she was “not a party to the mistakes that occurred” and could be reappointed at any time, Warschaw said.

Jan Levine resumed the job in San Francisco, and served there for two months, before deciding to return to her former position with the Center for the Public Interest in Los Angeles.