Rob Reiner’s Most Heartfelt Role to Date

Movie director Rob Reiner is in his element even though he’s out of his element, sitting front and center at a state hearing, preaching in a booming voice about nurturing children from conception to kindergarten.

Such stimulation “is vitamins, it is food, it is nutrition for the brain,” bellows the man best known for his role as Archie Bunker’s “Meathead” son-in-law.

His vehicle--and reason for testifying this autumn morning--is Proposition 10, the initiative on November’s ballot that would add a 50-cent tax on a pack of cigarettes, generating $700 million for counties to spend on child development programs of their choice, ranging from child care to parent education.

Millions of dollars will be spent promoting and fighting the initiative.

Reiner has turned to his entertainment buddies for backing, persuading, among others, Steven Spielberg, Robin Williams, and his own father, Carl Reiner, to join his cause. He spent $2 million getting nearly 1.2 million signatures to qualify the initiative for the Nov. 3 ballot and hopes to raise an additional $6 million, mostly for television ads.

The formal opposition, which calls itself the Committee Against Unfair Taxes, is financed by the tobacco industry, which sees the proposed tax as an unfair threat to cigarette sales.

Reiner contends that his foes plan up to $20 million in TV air time in October, though the opponents say their intended buy is closer to $2 million. The first No on Proposition 10 ads--attacking the bureaucracy that opponents say the initiative would create--were being test-marketed in Fresno last week.

At the recent state hearing, a member of the governor’s Child Development Policy Advisory Committee asked Reiner whether noncitizen children would be eligible for care under his plan.

Of course, he assured her, but he looked puzzled.

“The state regulations do not allow noncitizens to have access to these kinds of services?” he asked, unaware of the battles waged on this front in California and across the nation.

Reiner has name recognition, a persuasive delivery and deep conviction about his Children and Families Initiative. But his savoir-faire only partly obscures a narrow knowledge of existing children’s policy and programs.

His interest in early childhood development dates back more than 20 years, to when he was in therapy after a painful breakup with his ex-wife, director Penny Marshall. Locating the early roots of his problems led him to think about how children are raised and the effect that has on society.

After remarrying and starting his own family, Reiner’s concern was reignited. A few years ago, he invited experts to his home to educate him and he was appalled to find out that only 10% of all children’s funding is spent on them before they start school.

Rapid fire, he produced a prime time television special titled, “I Am Your Child,” started a private foundation with the same name and dived into the initiative process.

He’s impatient. When people remark at how quickly Reiner has moved, he responds, “Jesus, this is a snail’s pace!”

How his rush and relative naivete have helped shape the initiative is a concern even to those who would benefit the most from Proposition 10, though they are careful to say they support it. At the state hearing, Pamm Shaw rose to voice their worry.

“There are state bodies that exist to do what you’re talking about doing,” said Shaw, who has worked with children’s agencies for more than two decades. “I fear you’re going to create a secondary system that will have more funding than the [main] one.”

How the System Would Work

For the 50-cent-a-pack boost--making California the third-most-expensive state for smokers--the Reiner initiative would create an umbrella state commission, with appointees named by the governor and the Legislature.

The state commission would take 20% of the revenues to pay for statewide programs, including a tobacco education program, and a professional staff.

The remaining 80% would be given to counties based on their proportion of births in the previous year. A network of volunteer commissions would be set up in each county to distribute the wealth to new and existing programs of their choice. Options under the initiative vary from prenatal nutrition and day-care programs to filling gaps in child health care and domestic violence prevention systems.

Los Angeles County, for example, would receive about $176 million in the first year, Orange County would get about $50 million and Ventura County $12 million. In many cases, federal matching funds also would be available.

Reiner knows that fear of a bloated bureaucracy is the initiative’s greatest vulnerability. So does Ron Gray, whose Sacramento public relations firm, Stoorza, Ziegaus, Metzger & Hunt, is among those coordinating the opposition.

The firm’s $25,000-a-month fee is being paid out of a campaign kitty provided by four tobacco companies and their research wing, the Tobacco Institute.

Gray readily acknowledges that this creates a credibility problem. The way he hopes to get around that is to scout out other opponents and get them to do the talking, when they’ll return his phone calls.

“For us, it’s going to be really difficult because we have zero credibility,” he said. “We understand that and we respect that.”

So far, the campaign against Proposition 10 is not relying on tobacco’s most common defense: that taxing tobacco is regressive because the poor smoke more than the rich.

Instead, the anti-initiative campaign is focusing on the governance issue, passing out a July report on the initiative by the state Senate Office of Research.

According to the report, “it is unclear how the creation of a state commission and county commissions that are outside the control of the governor, the Legislature or county boards of supervisors would be able to create and sustain a coordinated system.”

Asked about the report’s underlying concerns, Reiner pointed out that a member of the board of supervisors will sit on each of the county commissions to provide oversight. “Look, either you believe government can do something good for people, or you don’t,” he said.

Questions also have been raised about the initiative’s underpinnings, what Reiner calls its “immutable truth”: that what happens to a child from birth to age 3 will profoundly affect that child’s ability to learn and function in society.

That research is still considered mere theory by some. Just a few weeks ago, “The Nurture Assumption,” a new book written by a previously unknown textbook author, landed on the cover of Newsweek. It asserts that children may learn more from other children--whom they instinctively emulate--than from adults.

Reiner laughs that off, too: “Show me the peer pressure a child has at 8 months!”

Caring for young children is Dee Cuney’s life. Yet she opposes Reiner’s initiative.

As president of a Napa Valley advocacy group called the Private Child Care Network and director of a family day-care program, Cuney worries that increased subsidies for public preschools through the initiative will put the private ones out of business.

“We want parents to have a true choice . . . [and] in private child care, we do the best practices,” she told Reiner at the child development meeting.

At a recent meeting of the Assn. of Republican Women near San Jose, other concerns were voiced.

There, Kathleen O’Connell-Sundaram asked: Doesn’t Proposition 10 expand the social engineering that many Republicans believe infringes on their ability to teach their own morals and values to their children?

“This is the type of program that if we say yes to it in the name of mom and apple pie, we’re really going to shove mom and apple pie out of the way,” she said.

As president of the Santa Clara County Taxpayers Assn., O’Connell-Sundaram gave a more standard anti-tax critique as well: What happens to all these new and newly enriched children’s programs when funds dry up because smokers can’t afford as many cigarettes?

Seeing the same scenario from the opposite perspective, Reiner says funding drying up would be the best of all possible results from his initiative, because that would mean fewer people are smoking.

Of course, at that point government funds would be sought to continue the programs, Reiner said, and they’ll probably be awarded because, thanks to the initiative, “for the first time, child-care people will be at the [negotiating] table.”

Before launching the initiative drive, Reiner managed to get several federal legislators interested in his issue and persuaded them to carry a bill that would have poured billions into early childhood programs. The measure was linked to the proposed $368-billion federal tobacco lawsuit settlement. When that pact disintegrated in Congress, so did Reiner’s hopes of starting at the national level.

Former Democratic Assemblyman Mike Roos of Los Angeles saw Reiner on CNN speaking to the National Governors’ Assn. Roos, president of the Los Angeles school reform effort known as LEARN, couldn’t wait to call him. Let’s do it this way, he said.

Reiner jumped at the chance. He and Roos agreed almost immediately that a tobacco tax would be their easiest target--an unsympathetic enemy, albeit with lots of money to mount a defense.

Reiner appointed Roos campaign manager, agreeing to pay him $25,000 a month, then started dialing for dollars himself.

Winning Support

Though the connection between use of the initiative’s revenues and tobacco use are tenuous--there is no money specifically earmarked for anti-tobacco education--that matters little to organizations such as the American Lung Assn. and the American Cancer Society, both of which have endorsed it.

Besides those natural enemies of tobacco, Reiner has attracted support from conservatives with interest in education, such as Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and former U.S. Senate hopeful Michael Huffington.

He and Huffington traveled to Washington this week to film a commercial with former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Cliff Einstein, the commercial’s director, gave the director of “When Harry Met Sally” some acting tips: “I want intensity and a little kindness. . . . You’re Uncle Rob,” Einstein instructed.

Reiner furrowed his brow, stared into the camera and began: “A child’s first few years are the foundation for success in school and in life.”

As Reiner travels around California stumping for his initiative, he asks people to trust that his system will be better than the piecemeal approach he believes exists now. If there are problems, he promises to personally see they are swiftly corrected.

“The best thing about this initiative is that I’m involved,” he told one concerned child-care expert at the recent state hearing. “I have access to the media if it’s not being implemented correctly; you’ll call me and then I’ll call them.”

Times staff writer Ann Kim in Washington contributed to this story.

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Taking Sides on Proposition 10

What it would do: Raise cigarette taxes by 50 cents a pack to fund child development programs including child care and parent education.

Arguments for: Would help more children arrive at kindergarten ready and able to learn, and in many counties would attract federal matching dollars for historically underfunded programs. Because 80% of Proposition 10 money would be spent locally by appointed volunteer commissions, programs would be tailored to community needs.

Arguments against: Creates a shadow government of 58 county commissions and a statewide commission that would spend up to $700 million without direct oversight by elected officials. Tobacco taxes are regressive because the poor smoke more than the wealthy.

Supporters: Filmmaker Rob Reiner, LEARN CEO Mike Roos, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, former Rep. Michael Huffington, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Assn., the American Lung Assn., California Child Development Administrators’ Assn., California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., Los Angeles Unified School District.

Opponents: Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.; Lorillard Tobacco Co.; Philip Morris Inc.; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.; The Tobacco Institute; Alliance of California Taxpayers and Involved Voters; Coalition of California Taxpayers; California Chamber of Commerce; Parents in Education; Private Child Care Network; Concerned Women for America; California Manufacturers Assn.