Spotlight Is Cast on Paid Endorsements

Slate mailers, an increasingly popular form of political communication in California, are giving candidates new opportunities to reach the electorate--but are also undermining campaign finance rules and, according to critics, handing out endorsements to the highest bidder.

The multimillion-dollar business produces pamphlets sent to millions of voters. The pamphlets purport to list candidates endorsed by public service organizations but, in reality, candidates pay political consultants to appear on the mailings, bartering for the cost of an endorsement.

Normally, slate mailers operate in the background of the state’s political campaigns, churning out mail but otherwise attracting little attention. This week, however, one of the groups was thrust into the limelight when the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Bill Simon Jr., charged that Gov. Gray Davis had accepted campaign contributions on government property--which, if true, would have been illegal. The contribution, Simon alleged, had come from a law enforcement group known as the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs, which operates one of the slates.

In the aftermath of those charges, which were quickly disproved, campaign disclosure reports revealed that Simon had paid $300,000 for a position on the group’s mailings. The police group has given Davis its support in the past, but endorsed Simon over Davis this year after the GOP candidate bought a slot on its slate. Davis, a Democrat who ran essentially unopposed during the primary, refused to buy one.

The police group has received more than $750,000 in contributions to its slate mail committee during the first nine months of this year. Kelley Moran, the group’s political director, was paid $175,000 in 2000, the last full election cycle.

A largely California phenomenon, slates allow little-known candidates who cannot normally afford television advertising a chance to get their name before the state’s massive, diffuse electorate. Their backers say they give underdogs a chance against well-funded opponents and give the electorate what it wants.

Appealing to Voters

“If you find an electorate that is interested in reading political debate along the lines of the Federalist Papers, you will see consultants turning out literature along the lines of the Federalist Papers,” said Daniel Lowenstein, a law professor at UCLA who represents slate mailers. “You turn out an electorate where it’s hard to get their attention,” he continued, and voters will find slate cards.

Slates must publicly disclose the money that they are paid for endorsements in campaign reports, but efforts to impose additional regulations have been mixed.

The mailers are required to include an asterisk next to the names of candidates or initiatives that they endorse in return for payment. The 1998 campaign finance initiative, Proposition 208, would have required that marking to become a dollar sign. The slates successfully challenged that provision in court.

Several slates also use the names of the state’s major political parties in their titles, but can make endorsements contrary to the party line for a fee. Legislators have tried to force mailers to disclose when they contradict party endorsements, but a federal court last month overturned the regulation, ruling that it interfered with the slates’ 1st Amendment rights.

“It tells you how difficult it is to have ‘election reform,’ ” said the author of the measure, Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco). Of slate makers, he added: “They ain’t ... in it for good government; they’re in it to make money.”

Slates rose to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, at first under the control of partisan organizations such as the Westside Democratic Berman-Waxman machine. But the slate business has evolved since then, with many of the mailers representing themselves as nonpartisan interest groups.

California’s Secretary of State lists 220 slate mailer groups, compared with the roughly 60 that were registered 12 years ago. They range from small neighborhood lists focused on local city council races to massive statewide mailings that churn through hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees every election season.

“Instead of getting your two or three pieces of mail from Berman-Waxman, now everybody gets tons of them,” said a veteran Democratic political consultant, Bill Carrick. “You have public officials hustling a slate. You have people doing it around issues, or in some cases pseudo-issues.”

Medical Slate Mailer

A couple of years ago, political consultant Rob Katherman was having a drink with an advisor to the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. when the two hit on an idea: How about starting a slate that endorses candidates who are good for health care? From that came Californians for Quality Health Care.

Katherman, who also publishes a larger slate called Republican Voter Checklist, which is not affiliated with the Republican Party, said that he relies on medical advisors to say which candidates are “green-lighted, yellow-lighted or red-lighted.” He requires candidates to at least get a “yellow light” before he offers them spots on the slate, but said he is open about what he does.

“We’re a business and we certainly will make no bones about it,” Katherman said. “What we are trying to do, besides make some money, is to get candidates that are reasonably disposed to our position.”

Mary Toman, a candidate for the GOP nomination for state treasurer, in January agreed to pay Katherman’s company $5,000 to appear on the Republican Voter Checklist in the March primary, according to court papers. But four weeks, later a representative of the mailer called Toman and told her it would list her rival, Greg Conlon, because he had paid $10,000.

Toman sued to stop the slate from backing her rival, alleging breach of contract. A Los Angeles judge granted the injunction and forced the slate to go out to 800,000 voters with Toman’s name on it.

Katherman said money was not the issue--it was his longtime friendship with one of Conlon’s consultants, Ron Rogers. In court papers, Katherman’s attorney said that Rogers’ firm had made a payment for “the right of first refusal” on the slate. Katherman did not recall that money had changed hands but said that he had reserved the space and that an employee erroneously sold the spot to Toman.

Some consultants involved with slates argue that a handful of questionable slates tarnishes the entire industry. “We aren’t all the same,” said Larry Levine, a San Fernando Valley consultant who runs what observers say is California’s biggest slate, the Voter Information Guide. “There are those of us who try to adhere to some ideological principle and I think do a pretty good job.”

Levine, a Democrat who works closely with unions, has three employees cranking out 1.5 million to 3.2 million mailings per election cycle. Those mailings generally promote Democratic candidates. His consulting company earned $323,000 from the operation in 2000, though Levine stressed that some of that had gone to overhead.

Working with sophisticated computer programs that sort through databases of registered voters, Levine tailors each mailing to the city council and legislative district in which the voter lives. Voters on the Eastside will find candidates for offices representing their neighborhoods; Valley voters will see an entirely different group of recommendations.

Business vs. Ideology

Levine said he tries to adhere to his Democratic ideology and gives free space to several Democratic candidates. But, he said, business demands occasionally intrude.

For example, in 1996, Levine’s slate bucked the Democratic party line and backed three ballot measures that would have limited lawsuits against a range of companies. Levine said he was originally going to oppose the measures, but had to change his position because the Democratic opponents of the initiative pulled out of a commitment to pay $90,000. Levine said he had to call the initiatives’ backers to recoup some of the money. He ultimately received $20,000.

“I was left with a huge hole in my financing and a commitment to get other pieces out, and I had to do something,” Levine said.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) for 20 years has sent a slate of recommendations to her constituents in South Los Angeles. Her endorsement has become highly prized in local elections. In last year’s city attorney’s race, the mailer, run by Waters’ daughter Karen, backed then-City Councilman Mike Feuer after receiving a $10,000 contribution. But it switched in the runoff election, endorsing then-Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo after receiving a $35,000 payment from him.

Larry Levine, Feuer’s consultant, said that Karen Waters had sought more money from the campaign in the general election--though he added that he also had known that Waters was under political pressure to change her endorsement.

Waters said the switch came because she disagreed with stances Feuer had taken on airport expansion after her initial endorsement. “My recommendations aren’t done because people can pay in,” Waters said.

Waters’ slate received money from other individuals and groups to pay for Delgadillo’s spot on the mailer, according to state records. Some of those contributions exceeded the city’s $1,000 cap on donations to citywide candidates. For example, defense lawyer Mark Geragos gave the slate $1,500 to support Delgadillo; Pedus Building Services Inc. donated $2,000 on his behalf; and Premier Building Maintenance Services gave $1,500.

This week, Davis backers have charged that Simon bought the endorsement of the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs by paying for his place on the group’s mailer. Similar accusations have been made in the past against other groups, including the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Named after the architect of the 1978 tax-limitation Proposition 13, the group supports a slate mailer that recommends candidates to the organization’s 400,000 members, mostly homeowners and high-propensity voters.

“Candidates running for office who share the same philosophy as the committee are encouraged to apply for our program with a deposit,” said a letter from the Save Proposition 13 committee, mailed to candidates and political consultants in September 2001 as the primary season heated up. The letter also urged candidates to ask about the incumbent discount.

In 1998, Bill Lord-Butcher, the Jarvis association’s political consultant who also helps run the slate, sent a letter to Timothy Draper, the multimillionaire backer of a school voucher initiative, proposing that Draper pay the slate mail group $850,000 to endorse the voucher measure. Draper refused, and the Jarvis taxpayer association backed the campaign against the measure, which paid the slate mailer $750,000.

That money, in part, goes to people who are close to the taxpayer association, though the association said none of its executives makes money from the slate. Lord-Butcher received $220,000 in payments from the slate group to his Orange County direct-mail firm in 2000. Joel Fox, who had stepped down as the Jarvis group’s president at the end of 1998, was paid $43,000.

Jarvis Executive Director Kris Vosburg said that the slate is separate from the Jarvis association and denied that payments to the slate committee would influence whether the Jarvis association endorsed a candidate or ballot measure. To get on the slate, candidates must agree to back Proposition 13; to gain the Jarvis association’s endorsement requires a more detailed interview.

In the case of the voucher initiative, Vosburg said the Jarvis group would have opposed it, even if it had bought onto the slate that the organization backs.

Vosburg said the Jarvis association endorses the Save Proposition 13 slate because it finds it one of the few honest ones in the field. “Generally speaking,” he said, “I think slates are very misleading.”

This year, a slate mailer was credited for helping unseat Orange County Supervisor Cynthia Coad, who had backed building an airport at the closed El Toro Marine Corps base. The mailer was operated by the political consultants who ran the initiative opposing an airport at the base.

It backed Coad’s opponent, Chris Norby, and gave most of its space over to attacking Coad.

As such, the supervisor’s backers charged it amounted to a $140,000 attack ad for Norby, which would have vastly exceeded the county’s $1,000 contribution limit.

Orange County supervisors this summer approved new campaign restrictions that would essentially bar any such coordinated effort in the future by limiting candidates to $1,000 for slates and requiring them to pay for mailers that devote more than 25% to attacking an opponent.