Initiative Backers Duel for Dollars

As the 1996 campaign heats up, initiative promoters are making ever more desperate appeals for cash needed to wage their campaigns.

From well-known measures, such as the anti-affirmative action California Civil Rights Initiative, to the more arcane, such as a proposal to expand recycling, the fight over dollars is in full swing.

Already there is criticism about the tactics used by some, of appeals for money that come off as threats. It is, to be sure, a bare-knuckles world with few restrictions and almost no rules over what people can say.

With so much at stake in California’s initiative wars, as special interests vie to set public policy and bypass a gridlocked Legislature, the pressure to raise money is great.

Consider a plea for money sent out earlier this month by Californians Against Waste, a group attempting to place an initiative on the November ballot to expand recycling to include wine and liquor bottles and increase recycling subsidies to local government and waste haulers.

Mark Murray, the group’s director, sent a letter asking garbage companies for 25 cents for each household they serve--an amount that totals more than $100,000 for some firms--so he can finance a signature-gathering drive.

In a statement that critics say is threatening, the letter tells the companies he will inform local officials if they don’t pay. Local governments, which stand to benefit through higher subsidies if the measure wins at the polls, control garbage hauling contracts.

“Please let us know if we can count on your support,” the letter says. “If we cannot, please let us know that as well, so we can inform our local government allies that you will not be with us--and them--in this fight.”

Murray’s letter went to 17 firms, with an explanation of the amounts they are expected to donate, ranging from a low of $2,200 to more than $135,000. If the measure makes it onto the ballot, the letter says, Californians Against Waste hopes the companies will double their donations for the campaign itself.

If the measure wins voter approval, the letter says, the new law would provide “permanent increased supplemental payments to curbside providers, direct revenues to local governments to reimburse them for recycling costs, thus easing pressure on you during contract negotiation.”

“Surely this is not too much to ask you to contribute--especially when you consider that it is really a contribution you are making to yourself,” the letter says.

In an interview, Murray acknowledged that the appeal is “definitely heavy-handed.” But he defended it, saying opponents, such as the wine and liquor industries, are pressuring haulers to stay out of the campaign.

Ruth Holton of California Common Cause, which will have an initiative on the November ballot to cap campaign contributions and spending, criticized Murray’s appeal, saying: “It doesn’t just say, ‘Please support this because this is a worthwhile cause.’ It says, ‘We’ll hurt you if you don’t.’ Unfortunately, that’s threatening and unnecessary.”

Appeals such as Murray’s underscore an essential fact about California’s politics. In this state, initiative promoters are a breed apart. They propose changes in law that often are far more sweeping than any bill that makes it through the Legislature, but they are also private citizens. So laws that restrict elected officials don’t apply to them, legal experts say.

“There is nothing in the Political Reform Act that governs what people say,” said Gary Huckabee, spokesman for the Fair Political Practices Commission, noting that the agency’s lawyers reviewed Murray’s letter and found no violations. “The whole area is a 1st Amendment issue. You can’t legislate against the 1st Amendment.”

Murray said he sent the letters only to firms that had made commitments to contribute.

“They said we could count on them. We have put Californians Against Waste’s credibility on the line,” Murray said, adding that he has received no complaints from the haulers. “They understand what we’re doing.”

Indeed, several recipients who regularly are hit up for campaign donations shrugged off Murray’s letter as a mere variation on campaign fund-raising.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” said Kent Stoddard, a vice president of Waste Management, the state’s largest garbage company and one that should, according to Murray, pay $135,641 to help qualify the initiative. “Maybe I’ve been in this business too long” to consider this as a problem.

Few Californians would notice if the recycling initiative fails to qualify for a November vote. But if backers of the California Civil Rights Initiative fail to get their measure on the ballot, its supporters would be shocked, and its champions, including Gov. Pete Wilson, would be embarrassed.

The proposal to end affirmative action in state hiring, contracting and college admissions has been generating national debate for a year, and many Republican politicians plan to use the initiative as the foundation of their campaigns.

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Proponents of the measure, though, have been struggling to gather the million signatures of registered voters needed to place their initiative on the November ballot. They recently tapped Wilson and GOP lawmakers to send urgent pleas to their supporters for money and for signatures.

Wilson responded with a letter that is to be mailed this week to at least 150,000 supporters saying the measure “desperately needs your help.” The letter includes petitions and urges supporters to gather at least 10 signatures of registered voters. At three points in the letter, the governor also makes a plea for money.

“There is no time to lose,” Wilson’s letter says, noting that backers have a month to gather a final 300,000 signatures to ensure that the measure will be on the November ballot.

Ward Connerly, a UC regent and a friend of Wilson who was installed as campaign chairman during a campaign shake-up, said the campaign has since raised $500,000.

It has also increased payments to American Petition Consultants, the firm gathering the signatures, so the company can raise the bounty it pays signature gatherers for each voter they persuade to sign the petitions.

“I have no doubt that if I had not come on board and the governor had not come on board, it wouldn’t make it” onto the ballot, Connerly said.

Proponents of the anti-affirmative action initiative are not the only ones cranking up the volume on appeals for help. Consultants managing the California trial lawyers’ campaign against three anti-lawyer measures on the March 26 ballot took fund-raising a step further.

By law, attorneys must send year-end tax statements to vendors they’ve paid during the year. But campaign consultants are calling on lawyers to enclose an addition statement--a letter to the vendors, such as stenographers, expert witnesses and copy services--asking for money to fight the initiatives on the March ballot.

In a sample letter, the lawyers’ campaign consultants suggest that the attorneys thank the contractors for their work in 1995, express hope that the “relationship continues for a long time to come” and make a pitch for money to defeat the anti-lawyer initiatives.

“It’s pretty heavy-handed,” said Mike Johnson, campaign manager for the backers of the three initiatives. “It’s a suggestion to vendors that if you want to continue doing business with us, you will contribute to the political causes we tell you to.”

Replied Bill Carrick, the trial lawyers’ consultant: “Who cares what they think?”