Smoker Rights Bill Saved by ‘Ghost Vote’ : Legislature: Measure squeaks through the Assembly after a decisive ‘aye’ is recorded in the name of a lawmaker who was not on the floor.

Democratic Assemblyman Dick Floyd was on the Assembly floor in spirit, if not in body, Thursday and cast a decisive “ghost” vote for a controversial smokers rights bill.

While his receptionist said he was in his district 400 miles away in Gardena, Floyd’s vote was nevertheless recorded on the Assembly chamber tally board, and gave the measure the margin it needed to pass the Assembly and head to the Senate.

It could not be determined who pushed the button on Floyd’s desk that showed him as supporting the measure. But Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood), Floyd’s seatmate and fellow smoker, shepherded the bill through the Assembly. When asked an hour after the vote if he had pushed the nearby button on Floyd’s desk, Tucker replied: “I don’t recall.”

“I was too busy looking at the tally board,” Tucker said, repeating that he did not recall whether he had pressed Floyd’s button. “I was making sure that the damned bill didn’t die.”

While Assembly rules state that members must be present in order to vote, and that “no members shall operate the voting switch of any other member,” the practice of so-called ghost voting is common. But rarely does a ghost vote decide an issue as it did Thursday.

Floyd, a strong supporter of smokers rights, is one of the few Assembly members who regularly smokes cigarettes on the Assembly floor--a violation of the Assembly rules.

Floyd, completing his last term in the Assembly after his losing reelection bid in June, could not be reached, either in Sacramento or at his office in Gardena.

Tucker insisted that the bill is not a smoking bill. He said it merely protects people who use legal substances such as tobacco and alcohol in their homes from job discrimination.

But opposition groups include the American Lung Assn., American Heart Assn. and American Cancer Society. They contend that the measure is part of a systematic campaign by tobacco interests to create a new civil right for off-the-job smoking.

The bill initially received a bare majority 41 votes needed for passage in the 80-member house. It won support from Republicans and Democrats. After the initial vote but before the Assembly adjourned, other members added their votes to the tally, bringing the final count to 48-23. Assembly rules permit so-called add-on voting.

Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) led the opposition, charging that the measure amounted to “an attempt by a very unpopular industry to cloak itself in the garb of civil rights.”

He declared that it would do a “grave injustice” to California’s main civil rights law, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, by giving smokers the same anti-discrimination rights afforded to racial, ethnic and religious minorities.

The bill, authored by Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside), is one of a series of measures that has been signed into law or imposed by executive order in 27 states over the last three years, according to the industry’s lobbying arm, the Tobacco Institute.

A spokesman for Craven said that the bill was suggested to the senator by lobbyists for the Tobacco Industry Labor Management Committee. The group is financed by the Tobacco Institute and five labor unions representing workers in the industry, according to records filed with the secretary of state.

“The opponents, Terry Friedman, wanted to make this an anti-smoking bill,” Tucker said. “He thinks smokers should be lined up and shot. He wants to be able to violate their civil rights.”