Zeroing In : Direct Mail Is Helping Candidates Isolate Key Interest Groups

A political mailer distributed in Long Beach attacks an Assembly candidate for his ties with controversial Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Republicans in white conservative districts do that to Democrats all the time.

But in this case, Democrat Betty Karnette attacked her Republican foe, incumbent Gerald Felando, for his allegedly cozy relationship with Democrat Brown. Karnette mailed the attack piece to Republican and independent voters only--and did not identify herself as a Democrat anywhere in the four-page leaflet.

In an interview with The Times, she said that she has no personal beef with Brown. Felando, who readily admits his friendship with Brown, responded this week with his own anti-Brown mailer, warning that “a vote for Betty Karnette is a vote for Willie Brown.”

Surprising? In the final, critical days of a campaign, it seems as though nothing is surprising when it comes to political mailings. And in a high-tech era in which consultants are increasingly targeting voters based on computer-generated data ranging from their party registrations to their ethnic backgrounds and even sexual orientations, different--and sometimes contradictory messages--are sent to different voters.

“Machine politics is now a machine that sits on somebody’s desk,” said Richard Armstrong, a Washington-based expert on political direct mail. “There may be 60 or 70 different interest groups with their own hot buttons and the mailings are designed to push those buttons.”

“(The computer) gives you the power to fire back information at voters which is exactly what they want to hear.”

A case in point: Die-hard Republican Deane Dana, running for reelection as a Los Angeles County supervisor in a nonpartisan race, has sent letters to Democrats touting his endorsement by former state Democratic Party Chairman Peter Kelly. Dana has also sent a mailer to Republican households attacking his opponent, fellow Republican Gordana Swanson, for receiving endorsements from leading Democrats.

If that’s not enough, a flood of so-called slate mailers are about to arrive shortly before Election Day.

Tens of thousands of voters have received a mailer called the Official Absentee Voter Guide that, without identifying the candidates by their party affiliation, endorses Democrat Barbara Boxer and Republican John Seymour for the two open U.S. Senate seats. The reason: They each paid to be included in the guide, prepared by a pair of private political consultants who view the venture strictly as a moneymaking enterprise.

Slate mailers with political party names do not necessarily mean anything either. One Los Angeles consultant--Fred Huebscher--is responsible for the contents of the California Democratic Alliance and Citizens for Republican Values slates, according to California Common Cause officials, who held a San Francisco news conference Wednesday to warn voters against deceptive slate mailers.

Staunch Republicans, including Assemblywomen Cathie Wright of Simi Valley and Paula Boland of Granada Hills, are endorsed on the Democratic Alliance’s “Your Democratic Voter Guide.” And Democratic Assembly candidate Roz McGrath of Camarillo has paid to be included on the Democratic Alliance and Republican Values slate mailers.

“These slates are no more than a cynical attempt to deceive voters,” said Ruth Holton, state Common Cause acting executive director. “There is no guarantee that the candidates and ballot measures listed have any relationship to the political party or issue the slate purports to represent. The only certainty is that the candidates and positions with asterisks next to them paid to be on the slate.”

With less than a week remaining before the election, Californians are also facing a deluge of slick, last-minute mailers. For most candidates locked in county supervisorial, state legislative and congressional races, the mailbox is the main conduit for reaching the public.

“It’s especially important in California,” said Armstrong, author of “The Next Hurrah,” a book on direct mail. “These guys realistically can’t afford to get on TV, so direct mail becomes extremely important.”

Political mailers have been standard fare for decades and were traditionally employed to familiarize voters with the qualifications and political positions of candidates.

These days, however, those posed photos of smiling candidates flanked by their families and pets have largely fallen by the wayside as campaigns turn increasingly nasty and computer technology provides consultants the wherewithal to quickly target key voting blocs.

“You think of what the old-time machines did, like Mayor Richard Daley’s in Chicago. Here was a man who knew everything about politics in Chicago,” Armstrong said. “All this stuff was in his head. That’s exactly what the computer re-creates for you.”

In the Los Angeles County supervisor’s race between Diane Watson and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, mailers stressing endorsements by black community leaders have been targeted to neighborhoods that computer data shows are most densely populated by black voters.

And in recent weeks, dozens of candidates across California have mailed out absentee ballot applications to likely supporters who, according to computer data, have voted by mail in the last two general elections.

With state-of-the-art technology, campaign strategists also run computer surname programs to locate likely Jewish, Latino, Polish or Chinese voters and can make educated guesses at whether a voter is likely to be a homosexual.

Targeted mailings are most useful in low-turnout elections in which the results can turn on efforts to isolate specific age, ethnic and interest groups likely to vote.

Yet this fall, with a large turnout expected, targeting remains important because of the lingering recession. Because many candidates have less campaign funds to spend, consultants say they are trying to stretch their dollars by isolating and appealing to key interest groups.

Karnette in Long Beach is running a “small-dollar . . . guerrilla-type campaign” against incumbent Felando, said Jefrey Adler, her political consultant. Rather than spend limited resources on her natural support base--Democrats--the schoolteacher is attempting to chip away at Felando’s base with the Brown-Felando mailer.

“We didn’t have the resources, so we decided to take it to the people most affected by it,” Adler said. “We found in our polling the Speaker was particularly weak with Republican men.”

In the Dana-Swanson race, Dana’s political consultant, Harvey Englander, uses computer technology to derive a swift impact in mailings.

“We do what we call a mock poll, or a telemarketing program, where we find out that someone’s main concern is jobs,” said the Orange County-based consultant. “That (information) is then downloaded overnight into our computer, and we put letters out the next day” identifying the candidate’s top priority as jobs.

To attract the attention of wary voters, mailers tend to be creative, colorful and eye-catching.

Dana this week distributed a bright yellow and blue mailer with a drawing of a double cheeseburger on the cover to illustrate Swanson’s “whoppers.” Riverside Assembly candidate Jane Carney published a slick 16-page brochure that resembles a glossy magazine. And Palos Verdes-area congressional candidate Jane Harman sent out a booklet of children’s stick drawings to call attention to opponent Joan Milke Flores’ foibles.

Other candidates are distributing campaign mailers in the guise of community newspapers.

Rep. Carlos Moorhead (R-Glendale) set out a publication called the California Statesman. The lead article of the California Statesman declares that Moorhead will be “overwhelmingly reelected Nov. 3 by broad-based support from both Republican and Democrats . . . according to public opinion polls conducted by the California Statesman.”

Dave Gilliard, a Sacramento-based political consultant, said more campaigns appear to be turning to newspaper formats this year because they may seem more credible than slick mailers.

A survey of mailings in the past few weeks also reveals several issue-related themes.

As is often the case, some Republican Assembly candidates seem to be running against Speaker Brown as much as against their opponents.

A mailer was sent out on behalf of GOP candidate Brad Parton to voters in a district stretching along the Los Angeles coastline with a large photo of Brown, who is black, on the cover. Inside, the mailer contends that Democratic opponent Debra Bowen would support the “iron-fisted rule” of the Speaker who directs debate “from his throne in the Assembly’s chambers.”

The new wrinkle this year are the Democratic attacks on Brown.

Democratic Assemblyman Terry Friedman of Encino has sent a letter to his environmentally conscious constituents in which he condemns Brown’s “cynical decision to stack the environmentally crucial Coastal Commission with political allies closely tied to developers.”

Indeed, in a year of disenchantment with politics as usual, many candidates--including incumbents--are no longer identifying their political affiliation on their mailers.

Candidates are also trying to make political hay this fall by focusing on voters’ fears.

In the Burke-Watson race, Burke has mailed voters a card containing two “bullet holes.” The card calls attention to Burke’s loss of two cousins to street violence and her pledge to “work in their memory to help as many people as I can to avoid the pain my family has felt.”

In a Pasadena-area Assembly race, Republican candidate Bill Hoge has distributed a stark mailer with photos of waves of illegal Mexican immigrants dashing across the border into the United States.

“Invasion U.S.A.” screams the headline on the cover.

Then there are those that are just plain beside the point.

Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) has sent out mailers that declare in large red print that he has “NO bounced checks.” However, it is the Congress, not the state Assembly, that has been the subject of a major check-bouncing scandal this year.