Unseen Side of Voter Guide

Backers of a March ballot initiative to limit lawyers’ fees went far to find someone with consumer credentials to tout their measure--1,500 miles, in fact, to Spencer, Iowa, and the home of Garry DeLoss.

In California’s official voter pamphlet, DeLoss signed the ballot argument endorsing Proposition 202, one of three anti-lawyer initiatives headed for a vote March 26. He is identified as “Former Executive Director, California Consumer Organization.”

In fact, no group with that name exists. DeLoss lived in California when he was director of a San Diego consumer group in 1984 and 1985, but he returned to his hometown in Iowa a decade ago.

Although DeLoss says he remains a consumer advocate, he also says he has spent most of the past 10 years working for a family construction and rental business.

Nothing in California law precludes people who are not registered to vote in California from signing ballot arguments affecting the laws of this state, said secretary of state spokeswoman Beth Miller. And other signers of ballot arguments for and against the initiatives live outside the state.

But the story of how DeLoss came to sign the ballot argument says much about the proponents’ campaign, and something about the initiative process itself.

Supporters of Propositions 200, 201 and 202 hope to convince Californians that all three measures have at least some consumer support. To this end, they need people with credentials as consumer advocates to endorse them. For the most part, however, organized consumer groups, along with trial lawyers, are against all three propositions.

Enter DeLoss. When he saw an article about the California measures in the Wall Street Journal last year, he called the campaign offering help. Michael Johnson, who is involved in the campaign, said DeLoss “virtually echoed our message,” that liberal consumer groups’ “knee-jerk anti-business attitudes hurt consumers.”

“Could we have found other people if we had searched around? I’m sure we could,” Johnson said. “But here’s a guy who’s more for-real than most professionals. Here’s an ex-[Ralph] Naderite who felt exactly the way I do.”

In his younger days, DeLoss, 53, a Democrat, worked for a consumer group founded by Nader, the well-known consumer advocate. Now, DeLoss said, he is an “ex-liberal” who believes that the interests of business and consumers often coincide.

“[Proposition backers] have plenty of people on the business side,” DeLoss said. “They wanted diversity, somebody who had a background in the consumer activist community.

“This is a large issue with political implications for the nation and for the state. We might see the California model replicated in other states.”

When he agreed to lend his name to the ballot argument, DeLoss used the more accurate title, “Former Director, Utility Consumers’ Action Network.” From June 1984 until he was ousted in September 1985, DeLoss ran the group in San Diego.

But after learning that the proponents were using their name, the current leaders of Utility Consumers’ Action Network, which opposes the measures, sued. Johnson, hoping to settle the matter, suggested a compromise: DeLoss would be called simply “former executive director, California Consumer Organization.”

Michael Shames, director of the San Diego group, agreed, but asked that the generic name not be written in capital letters, lest people think such an organization exists. Johnson consented.

However, in the process of faxing the agreement back and forth, multiple copies circulated. As it turned out, Shames’ lawyer sent the agreement, with the name written in capital letters, to Sacramento Superior Court Judge James T. Ford.

Ford, assuming the parties had agreed to the designation, signed it, and sent it to the secretary of state’s office, which printed 12 million voter pamphlets designating DeLoss as former director of the nonexistent California Consumer Organization.

But DeLoss is not an aberration. One signer of the ballot argument against Proposition 202, former Californian Candace Lightner, founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, now lives in Virginia, where she is a lobbyist for various groups including trial lawyers.

Author Andrew Tobias, who signed the ballot argument supporting Proposition 200, to create a no-fault auto insurance system, lives in Florida and New York.