Ad Attacks Wilson’s Welfare Initiative Plan : Politics: It compares the pay of top officers of firms donating to the measure to benefits paid relief recipients.

Advocates for children and poor people launched their campaign against Gov. Pete Wilson’s welfare initiative Wednesday with a newspaper advertisement attacking the “rich” corporations that are helping finance Wilson’s ballot measure.

In a strategy designed to take advantage of public attention that has recently focused on the high compensation paid many top corporate executives, the advertisement lists the salaries of the top officers in companies contributing to the initiative and compares them to the benefits paid welfare recipients.

“Why are California’s largest corporations attacking the poor?” the ad asks in large headlines above a photograph of a young welfare mother and her 3-year-old daughter.

Beth Steckler, director of Campaign for a Fair Share, a coalition of organizations opposing the initiative, acknowledged that the full-page ad was aimed at the core of Wilson’s financial support: the large corporations that have donated thousands of dollars to help pay for his signature-gathering efforts.

She said the coalition was placing its initial ad in the Western edition of today’s New York Times in an effort to “get the attention” of corporate leaders and discourage them from making further contributions to Wilson’s initiative. She said her organization, which has limited financing, will try to place ads in other newspapers as it raises more funds.

“What we would like to say is for California corporations to stop, to call off their war against the poor,” she said.

The ads produced angry reactions from some corporate officials, who complained that the coalition was attempting to link two issues--executive compensation and welfare payments--which are “totally unrelated.”

“It’s ludicrous to suggest that we’re overpaying our CEO and then turning around and trying to take money from others. That’s simply not true,” said William Strawn, media manager for Pacific Telesis.

He complained that the ad was inaccurate on several points relating to his company, specifically its contention that Pacific Telesis CEO Sam Ginn had been given a 16% raise last year when in fact he took a 6.4% cut in pay. Nor were Ginn’s salary and benefits $2.1 million as reported in the ad but only $1.8 million, said Strawn.

“It seems to me the thrust of the ad is to try and persuade people they should not make contributions (to the initiative campaign),” he said.

Although more than 1 million signatures have been gathered for Wilson’s initiative, the secretary of state’s office has not yet officially qualified it for the Nov. 3 ballot. It is also being challenged in court by advocacy groups who claim it embraces more than one subject in violation of the state Constitution.

The initiative attempts to reduce welfare costs by cutting families’ benefits up to 25%, denying additional grants to children born to mothers on welfare and limiting welfare payments to poor families who move to California from states where payments are lower. Under the proposal, a family of three now entitled to maximum benefits of $663 a month would in most instances be cut to $507 a month. At the same time, the ballot measure also shifts some major budgetary powers from the Legislature to the governor.

Lenny Goldberg, director of the California Tax Reform Assn. and a member of the coalition fighting the initiative, defended the ad, saying he thought it appropriate to point out that many of the corporations contributing to the ballot measure were being run by executives whose enormous salaries would make it difficult for them to relate to the problems of the poor.

He said most of the chief executives of the utility, banking and defense industry companies that have so far contributed more than $250,000 to the initiative, are run by executives who make from $810,000 to $2.9 million a year.

But Strawn and a spokesman for Wells Fargo & Co. said their corporations had not taken any position on the initiative but were only contributing because they believed the voters should be given the opportunity to take a look at the welfare system since it is one of the major items in the state budget.

Their statement, however, was met with skepticism by members of the coalition.

“I have never contributed to anything that I didn’t support and I can’t believe that Pacific Telesis is,” said Kay Knepprath of the California Homeless and Housing Coalition.