Forward Stride for Campaign Integrity

Throughout American history, election politicking often has proved to be more like mud wrestling than civics class. The foul aftertaste seems especially strong this year. Now a timely California Supreme Court decision involving a Santa Ana municipal election in 1988 arrives to encourage efforts to hold candidates and campaign committees accountable in an increasingly nasty environment.

Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Joyce Luther Kennard upheld the constitutionality of a state political reform law requiring candidates’ campaign organizations to identify themselves in mailers. She found that voters reading literature mailed on behalf of a City Council candidate (who went on to win the race) could have been misled because at least one mailing was issued under the name of a neighborhood association, not under his name or the name of his campaign organization.

That the true sources of political mailings might not be what they appear to be is itself a commentary on the topsy-turvy state of politicking. Foul is fair and fair is foul. Perhaps the most dramatic example of confusion in California’s 1994 election cycle was the “anti-smoking” ballot measure. In backing Proposition 188 the tobacco lobby argued its case by seeming to support restrictions on smoking, and many Californians did not realize at first that tobacco companies were sponsoring the initiative and many of the ads disseminated on its behalf.

Helping voters discern what they are being sold is precisely what the court zeroed in on in the case of the municipal candidate. Daniel Griset, a former mayor, had been fined along with two campaign committees a total of $10,000 after five separate mailers against his opponent for the City Council were sent out. His lawyer says there was no intentional misrepresentation. Now, for all such cases, the court lends important support to the policing of what candidates say in hit pieces. Kennard wrote that the law requiring such disclosure will “tend to prevent smear attacks” and “will enable the voting public to appraise the source of the attacks.”

The decision effectively bolsters efforts by the Fair Political Practices Commission to serve as a watchdog over the ubiquitous flow of negative literature, especially those pieces that arrive too late in a campaign for the public to identify or for opponents to reply. Having more accountability can help Californians to know who’s who and what’s what.