Groups With Stake in State Top Wilson’s Donor List : Politics: Major corporations, organizations with an interest in legislation, regulations are prime contributors.

On a day packed with discussions of education policy and meetings with legislators, Gov. Pete Wilson found time last fall to slip away from his office for an intimate lunch with some old friends.

Down the street from the Capitol at the private Sutter Club, Wilson dined Nov. 9 with the president of Sun-Diamond Growers and the four chairmen of the big agricultural concern’s member cooperatives, representing growers of walnuts, prunes, raisins and figs.

The luncheon tab: $25,000 in contributions to Wilson’s reelection campaign, the latest in a series of big checks that make the Central Valley farming association one of the governor’s most generous political benefactors.

“Pete has had a personal relationship with the leadership of Sun-Diamond for over a decade,” Richard Douglas, the firm’s senior vice president, said in an interview. “We want to see him remain at the helm of the ship.”

Wilson will need a lot more contributions like Sun-Diamond’s if Douglas and his colleagues are to get their wish. The governor’s campaign advisers believe that to win in November, Wilson will have to spend as much as $25 million. To get there, the Republican governor will have to take in about $500,000 every week between now and Election Day.

If Wilson continues his pattern set in 1993, when he raised $5.9 million, he will collect that money at small, pricey affairs like the one with Sun-Diamond, and at large, $150-per-ticket events for longtime supporters from his days as mayor of San Diego. He will receive a few big checks from wealthy entrepreneurs and many tiny ones from retirees reached by his direct mail operation.

A review of Wilson’s campaign reports, including one filed Jan. 31, shows that most of the money Wilson is raising comes from major corporations and interest groups with a stake in legislation and regulations decided in Sacramento, often in the governor’s office.

Insurance companies, the oil industry and horse racing interests are among his largest contributors. Agriculture, health care companies and telecommunications firms also have been generous to Wilson.

This is the way the system works in Sacramento, where unlike federal races there are no limits on the size or the source of political contributions. Some donors say they give out of ideological affinity with the candidates. Some say they want better access--improved odds that their phone calls will be returned. Others say they wish they did not have to contribute but feel they must in order to protect their interests.

Wilson is on record as favoring a $1,000 limit on contributions. But for the meantime, he plays the game by the rules in effect in California. And he plays it as well as anybody.

Some critics say his zeal, particularly his habit of scheduling fund-raisers while he is considering whether to sign or veto hundreds of bills after the end of the legislative session, is unseemly.

“He’s peddling his executive powers,” said Harvey Rosenfield, who has criticized Wilson for taking money from insurance companies while signing bills to weaken Proposition 103, which Rosenfield wrote and shepherded to voter approval to impose stricter regulation of insurance rates.

Wilson is sensitive to this criticism and in a few cases has refused contributions from interests with matters before him.

Last year, he returned money that the Hollywood Park horse racing track and two Los Angeles card clubs contributed as he was considering whether to sign a bill that those interests were fighting over. Other legislation on the same subject is expected this year.

“In anticipation of the bills arriving on the governor’s desk, we believed it was in everyone’s best interest to simply return the money to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest,” said Dan Schnur, the governor’s campaign press secretary.

But in many other instances last year, Wilson accepted and kept contributions from interests that were seeking to influence him on important matters. Some examples:

* On the eve of the introduction Oct. 1 of a controversial new form of diesel fuel, Texaco picked up the $30,000 catering bill for a huge Wilson fund-raiser at Bob Hope’s desert home. Arco contributed $10,000 at the same event. Despite protests from truck drivers who said the new fuel would cost more and damage their engines, Wilson let the regulation take effect on schedule two days later.

* The state’s nursery industry raised about $53,000 for Wilson at an event held as his Administration was weighing restrictions on methyl bromide, a pesticide used widely as a fumigant in greenhouses and plant farms. Three months later, Wilson reversed an earlier decision and canceled a regulation that would have required broad public notification whenever the pesticide was used.

* The timber industry contributed to Wilson at the same time that his forestry board was considering regulations on cutting trees. Louisiana Pacific gave Wilson $50,000 in April. Two months later, Wilson, over the objections of environmentalists, ordered state officials to speed up approval of logging permits.

Schnur could offer no rationale for why Wilson returned the gambling money but kept the rest. He said the decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

“When you’re the incumbent governor, virtually any individual or interest may potentially have a stake in something under your purview,” Schnur said. “We try to do everything we can to identify and remove any potential conflicts. You have to draw the line somewhere.”

Few suggest that the contributions and Wilson’s actions are directly linked. But even many donors acknowledge that they have given money to Wilson to establish a relationship that enables them to educate the governor and get through more easily to Administration officials.

Consider Sun-Diamond Growers.

In 1982, the company plucked Wilson from relative obscurity, endorsed him in a crowded Republican primary for the U.S. Senate and helped him raise money from other Central Valley growers, according to Douglas, the senior vice president. An agricultural neophyte then, Wilson today is one of the industry’s staunchest defenders.

“We had our neck stuck out for the mayor of San Diego,” Douglas said. “We raised money for him, we went to bat for him and he won. Pete, after getting elected, came back to thank the Sun-Diamond family time and time again.”

Sun-Diamond officials have many concerns with which Wilson can help. Water provided by the State Water Project is vital to their business. The growers sell much of their product overseas and benefit from the state’s export promotion programs. And they use pesticides that are regulated by the state, which is under pressure from environmental groups to limit the use of chemicals in agriculture.

But none of these subjects, according to Douglas, were discussed at the luncheon with Wilson.

“We don’t need to lobby the governor in that setting,” he said. “We don’t discuss business. We talk about the world. We talk about families, the state. This is kind of like a group of old friends getting together.”

When he does need to talk business, Douglas calls Henry Voss, Wilson’s agriculture secretary, or Ira Goldman, the governor’s trade representative. The calls, Douglas said, are swiftly returned.

“Certainly your phone calls are going to get answered quicker than the calls from someone who didn’t toil in the vineyards to bring in the harvest,” he said.

In Sacramento, as in other capitals, this is called access.

Tom Burns, a former legislative aide and now a lobbyist for G. D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceuticals firm, said access is what the drug industry was looking for when it held a $2,500-per-person fund-raiser for Wilson in Sacramento last year. The event raised more than $30,000 for the governor.

Attending with Wilson were his wife, Gayle, one of his political aides, Joe Shumate, and Kim Belshe, then the deputy secretary of health and welfare and now director of the Department of Health Services.

“It was very low-key,” Burns said. “There were three companies represented at each table, and the governor and his wife and Shumate and Kim rotated from table to table. Everybody got face time with the governor.”

At his table, Burns recalled, the main topic of conversation was the fact that his boss grew up near Gayle Wilson in Arizona, where her father ran a bakery and the father of Burns’ boss sold bread for the competition. Despite the small talk, Burns said he considered the event a good investment.

“The next time I pick up the phone and call someone in the governor’s office, they’ll know who I am,” he said.

The same motivation drove the California Ski Industry Assn. to host a lunch for Wilson in October, said Bob Roberts, the group’s executive director. Wilson brought with him the directors of Caltrans and the Highway Patrol, and the secretaries of resources and trade and commerce. Representative of nine resorts attended, raising $23,900 for the governor.

Ski resorts, Roberts said, tend to be located in rural areas where few voters live. They cannot very well threaten to move out of state if they’re unhappy. So they have had trouble getting the ear of state officials for years.

They need to talk to Caltrans and the Highway Patrol about keeping mountain roads open on snowy days, to the resources agency about air and water quality issues, and to the trade and commerce agency about the promotion of tourism.

“We have found that by getting more involved in the political process we have been able to at least find an audience of people to listen,” Roberts said.

Asked if he thought his industry could get a meeting with four top state officials without holding a fund-raiser for the governor, Roberts replied:

“Realistically, no.”

The ski industry event is reminiscent of a Wilson fund-raiser a year ago to which the governor brought members of the state Waste Management Board to help him raise money from the waste handling and hauling industry. Wilson called that a mistake and vowed not to do it again.

But Schnur, Wilson’s campaign spokesman, said that although officials with regulatory powers no longer attend fund-raisers, Cabinet officials do. It makes sense for these experts to be present to help the governor spell out his agenda to contributors like the ski resort operators, he said.

A spokesman for the Wilson Administration said that contributions to the governor gain no special favors from these Cabinet officials. “To the extent that you can work with anybody, you try and do so,” Kevin Eckery said. “But you certainly don’t accommodate people based on whether you met with them at a fund-raiser, for God’s sake.”

Schnur said there is no pressure on companies or interest groups to contribute to Wilson, either to obtain access or influence policy. The governor, he said, often takes actions against the wishes of his donors. He cited a 1992 bill Wilson vetoed even though it was sponsored by the state’s prison guard union, which is a frequent contributor to the governor and waged a $1-million independent campaign to help him win election in 1990.

The perception among the interest groups, however, is that contributions are a cost of doing business in the Capitol.

Dennis Mangers, a former assemblyman who now lobbies for the California Cable Television Assn., said his industry makes contributions because it does not want to stand out from the competition, particularly the telephone companies, which are big contributors.

Last year, nine cable companies contributed more than $50,000 to Wilson at an event in San Francisco.

“We would just as soon inform, try to persuade and educate people of the complexities of ours and other interests,” Mangers said, “and not have money play any role at all.”

Mangers said he is sure that Wilson would not punish his industry if it stopped contributing to his campaigns. But he’s not taking any chances.

“Under the current law and the current rules, it’s expected that one will participate in the political lives of those who are elected,” he said.

Future stories will examine the fund raising of gubernatorial candidates Kathleen Brown and John Garamendi.

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Wilson Fund Raising

California Gov. Pete Wilson has been raising large amounts of money to finance his reelection campaign. The governor’s campaign advisers believe that to win in November, Wilson will have to spend as much as $25 million.

The top contributors in 1993 to Wilson’s reelection campaign committee were:

* Sam Bamieh, president American Intertrade Group, a Bay Area import-export firm, $85,000.

* Pacific Telesis, telecommunications, $56,500.

* Paramount Pictures, $50,000.

* Louisiana Pacific, lumber company, $50,000.

* Assn. of California Insurance Cos., $47,256.

* Arco, oil company, $39,850.

* Albert Broccoli, television producer, $25,000.

* Sun-Diamond Growers, agriculture, $25,000.

* Bank of Stockton, $25,000.

* John Rosekrans Jr., Kransco of San Francisco, a toy manufacturer, $25,000.

* Irvine Co., real estate developer, $25,000.

* Otis Spunkmeyer, cookie maker, $25,000.