Lungren Assailed for Tying Mailer to ‘Three Strikes’ Measure : Politics: Critics say attorney general’s fund-raising bid is deceptive. But campaign aides defend it as a ‘win-win’ situation.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren was assailed Tuesday by political watchdogs and Democratic opponents for a campaign mailer that solicits support for the “three strikes” anti-crime initiative, but asks that checks be made payable to his reelection campaign.

Critics contend the mailer is an opportunistic effort by Lungren to tap broad public backing for “three strikes” in an effort to raise campaign funds.

“There’s nothing illegal with what he’s done, but it’s troublesome,” said Ruth Holton, executive director of California Common Cause, a political watchdog group. “I think it’s deceptive. The average voter may not be tuned into the fact that the attorney general can use this money for his own purposes.”

Lungren’s recent campaign mailer included an initiative petition and a two-page letter outlining his support for the “three strikes” effort. The letter tells voters that they can help “by signing and returning the enclosed petition along with your most generous contribution.” The mailer asks in small italics that all checks be made payable to Lungren for Attorney General.

Officials with the Lungren campaign said the mailer, which was distributed to 19,000 households around the state, was a straightforward pitch asking for contributions to the attorney general and signatures to qualify the “three strikes” initiative for the November ballot.

Joanne Stabler, Lungren’s campaign manager, said the mailer was “absolutely clear” that contributions were going to the attorney general’s campaign for reelection. She said it was effectively a joint effort between the attorney general’s reelection team and “three strikes” initiative proponent Mike Reynolds, the Fresno photographer whose daughter was killed by a repeat felon in 1992.

“The whole thing is kind of a non-story,” Stabler said, adding that the mailer “went to Dan Lungren’s donors, his friends. It was educating them, telling them that he was trying to help the ‘three strikes’ people.” Stabler had no estimate how much money the mailer raised but called it a “win-win situation” for both campaigns.

Although the governor signed a “three strikes” bill into law earlier this week, Reynolds and his backers have pushed ahead with efforts to qualify their initiative for the state ballot in November. They turned in their signatures Monday, saying that the statewide vote is needed to prevent the Legislature from tampering with the measure, which puts three-time felons behind bars for a minimum of 25 years to life.

Charles Cavalier, campaign manager for the initiative drive, said Lungren was an early and ardent supporter of the proposal and has helped immensely with efforts to get signatures to qualify it for the ballot. He said backers of the initiative had no expectation that money generated by the mailer would be handed over to the “three strikes” campaign.

“Given the petitions that came in as a result of that mailer, we were very pleased that he did it,” Cavalier said. “As far as we were concerned, it was nice to get the petitions printed by somebody else and get those signatures in to help us qualify.”

But spokesmen for the two Democrats vying to run against Lungren in November suggested that the mailer is at best misleading.

“I think it’s pretty deceiving,” said George Urch, campaign manager for Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), who hopes to challenge Lungren in November. “He’s obviously using the measure to raise money for his own political purposes. It’s definitely unethical.”

A campaign spokesman for Arlo Smith, the San Francisco district attorney who lost to Lungren by a scant margin in 1990, said they plan to file a complaint about the mailer with the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

“It just stinks,” said Dennis Collins, Smith’s campaign manager. “Dan Lungren is the top cop in the state, the guy who is supposed to be in charge of ethics, and here he’s doing something that reeks of duplicity, of not being straightforward.”