Voting With Clean Slates? Not Exactly

This is the trickiest week of the primary campaign, when slate mailers and other political propaganda arrive at our homes in the last days before Tuesday’s election.

Good government critics are outraged by them, as are columnists such as me. But no matter how much we yell and rant, the mailers remain an enduring part of California politics, evidence of our peculiar culture.

The propaganda is generally produced by political consultants, who charge candidates for a place on the slate. Veteran campaign consultant Harvey Englander is selling places on three slates this year--Contract for California, which goes to Republicans; the California Senior Citizens Council, aimed at senior Democrats, and the California Pro-Choice Council, designed for Democratic women.

All three organizations originated in Englander’s fertile imagination and he, himself, could constitute a quorum of the membership if the groups ever had a meeting.

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As Englander reminded me when we talked this week, the idea of dressing up these slates with such names has long been part of California history.

The practice developed because this is a state with little political structure and an ever-changing population. In this unstable, tumultuous atmosphere, freelance campaign managers have developed a cynical but effective approach in hopes of appealing to a rootless electorate.

“The average American doesn’t want to be educated,” the late political mastermind Clem Whitaker once said. “He doesn’t want to improve his mind; he doesn’t even want to work, consciously, at being a good citizen.”

Whitaker and his wife, Leone Baxter, put this attitude to profitable work in California in the 1930s when they started America’s first political consulting firm.

Today’s slate mailers are an outgrowth of the Whitaker and Baxter mass advertising approach.

They cropped up in Los Angeles after World War II, inspired by old-fashioned party “slates” in the urban East and Midwest where lists of candidates were selected, or slated, by party bosses. Since there are no real party organizations in California, latter-day Clem Whitakers dreamed up fake ones.

Some of the operatives are secretive. One consultant, I was told, put out a slate under the name of the “California Democratic Alliance.” Another slate, “Citizens for Republican Values,” is listed at the same address.

Intrigued, I called the consultant for more information. After telling me he doesn’t discuss slates with the press, he hung up on me. When I called him back, he didn’t answer. Finally, I left a message. Your name is going to be in the paper this week, I said, playing the tough reporter. Hanging up the phone won’t prevent that. At least tell me if I spelled your name right. He hasn’t returned my call.

Others are more open, as I found when I checked into the campaign of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian, running against attorneys Charles Lindner and Ronald S. Smith.

Judgeships are a nonpartisan office, but Sohigian’s campaign manager, Joe Cerrell, knows partisan political identification means something to voters, even in a state with weak party organizations.

Hal Dash, president of Cerrell’s firm, expecting interest in the Republican presidential election, mailed GOP-oriented slates.

Among his Republican buys, Dash paid $7,500 for a spot for Sohigian on the “California Voter Guide,” put out by former Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum and political consultant Tim Carey. Slate prices vary, according to size and position of the display. Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti paid $15,000 to $20,000 for his place on the Schabarum slate, Carey said.

Carey told me that Schabarum interviews Los Angeles County candidates before selling them a spot. Once the slate is assembled, Carey said, it is sent to Republicans who have a high propensity for voting, a characteristic determined by a computer search of the county voting rolls.

Sohigian also put out $8,000 for a spot on a Democratic slate, the “Voter Information Guide for Democrats,” a title that hints at official standing. It is produced by Sherman Oaks consultant Larry Levine.

Computer-driven production gives Levine and other consultants an amazing ability to vary messages to appeal to many different groups. In the 1993 city election, Levine said, he produced 9,996 versions of his slate.

They were tailored for each of L.A.’s many ethnic groups, for the young and old, for homeowners and apartment dwellers. One, for example, went to Jewish senior citizens living in apartments.

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When I talked to consultant Englander, I raised the possibility of reform.

What about a law, I said, that would require him to put a disclaimer on his slates? It would say something like “This organization was conceived by Harvey Englander, who is the sole member.”

Englander pondered the suggestion. It probably would be constitutional, he said. But we agreed that the Legislature would never pass it. Too many of the legislators, after all, owe their elections to the slates.