SAG Faces Another Divisive Election

A divisive vote featuring celebrity candidates may be unusual for California.

For the Screen Actors Guild, election brawls come around as often as Hollywood sequels.

Hollywood’s largest performers union is electing a president, for the third time in two years, and the mail-in vote that ends Tuesday underscores the deep philosophical tug of war splitting the 118,000-member guild.

On one side is incumbent Melissa Gilbert and her running mate, James Cromwell, who want the union to appear less strident than in the past. They believe it needs to move quickly to adapt to an industry in which technology is changing entertainment and media giants are merging into even larger behemoths.

Facing off against them is a more activist wing led by presidential candidate Kent McCord and his running mate, secretary-treasurer candidate Esai Morales. They believe that SAG shouldn’t be reluctant to flex its muscle and that changes Gilbert and Cromwell support would undermine it.

Also running is independent Gordon Drake, a longtime SAG board member who sees himself as an alternative who can mend the current split.

At stake is an unpaid job and Hollywood’s highest-profile union office, one that has been held in the past by the likes of Ronald Reagan, James Cagney, Charlton Heston, Ed Asner and Patty Duke. In recent years, the office has been a storm of controversy, with control seesawing between different factions for the last four years.

Compared with past elections -- in which animosities spilled over into talk radio shows and public name-calling -- the latest campaign has been relatively quiet. Several theories for this abound among Hollywood union experts, from the election’s being overshadowed by the gubernatorial recall to burnout by members in the wake of four nasty votes at SAG in the last two years.

In addition to two hotly contested presidential elections, SAG members also recently voted to reject new rules governing the union’s relationship with agents and rejected a proposal to combine SAG with its sister union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

“Both sides are getting tired of the rhetoric,” said Alan Brunswick, a labor lawyer with Los Angeles law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. “The feelings absolutely persist, but they seem to be tired of the fights.”

Gone also this time is the “Half Pint vs. Rhoda” news hook that captured media attention in the last election. That’s when Gilbert, who starred as Laura “Half Pint” Ingalls in the series “Little House on the Prairie,” defeated former “Rhoda” star Valerie Harper in two bitter elections, the second coming after Harper supporters overturned Gilbert’s first victory because of voting procedural problems.

Although the noise has been turned down, bad feelings remain. “Much of the rancor is online in e-mails, chat rooms and on Web pages,” candidate Drake said.

The latest election comes as SAG faces upcoming negotiations on two major contracts, one this fall with advertisers and the other next year with studios. In addition, media consolidation continues, with Vivendi Universal consummating a deal to be acquired by NBC parent General Electric Co. Health-care costs for members are soaring. And producers continue to seek ways to cut costs, often by taking productions to cheaper foreign locations.

The contest is expected to be a showdown between Gilbert and McCord, although Drake, one of the leaders of SAG’s 2000 strike against advertisers, is trying to convince members that he is a viable alternative. Drake, 46, acts in commercials and has appeared in such films as “Bugsy.”

“The members are sick and tired of the infighting,” he said. “I’m the moderate voice in all this.”

Gilbert, 39, best known for “Little House,” lately has specialized in TV movies. Some have been shot in Canada, a fact she says frustrates her as head of a union trying to fight to keep production in the United States. Despite its title, her most recent film, “Hollywood Wives: The New Generation,” was shot in Calgary.

McCord, who turns 61 this week, is best known for starring in the police drama “Adam-12” in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. He joined the union after working as an actor on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in the 1960s. Morales, 40, stars in “NYPD Blue” and also is known for major roles in such films as “La Bamba.”

Gilbert said she ran for SAG president the first time believing she could bridge the divisions underscored by the latest election. She now acknowledges that it was much more difficult than she realized.

“I was going to be the unifying president,” Gilbert said, “and it was extraordinarily idealistic on my part.”

Being president also subjected an actress known best for playing a sweet pioneer girl to criticisms she had never heard before. “I’ve been called a traitor and a Nazi,” Gilbert said.

Chief among Gilbert’s critics has been McCord, who insists it’s nothing personal, calling her “a sweet person.”

McCord’s principal beef with Gilbert is over the failed attempt in July to merge SAG and AFTRA.

Gilbert had led the push to fold the two into a new union on the theory it could better negotiate with today’s media giants and end jurisdictional squabbles over which union will represent actors in the growing digital TV arena. SAG represents actors in films and on prime-time TV shows. AFTRA represents such groups as soap opera actors, game show hosts, broadcasters and recording artists.

Gilbert considered the vote a referendum on herself. Had fewer than 50% voted in favor, Gilbert said, she would not have run for reelection. McCord led the fight to defeat the measure.

AFTRA members voted overwhelmingly to approve it, and more than 57% of SAG’s members voted in favor. Nonetheless, the proposal failed because 60% of SAG’s members needed to approve it.

“Anywhere else that’s a landslide victory,” Gilbert said.

After the vote, the actress teamed with Cromwell. The actor, 63, earned an Oscar nomination for “Babe,” has a recurring role in “Six Feet Under” and has had parts in such major films as “The Sum of All Fears” and the upcoming “I, Robot,” starring Will Smith.

Both Gilbert and Cromwell vow to push again to consolidate the two performers unions if they win, and they are confident the merger can pass. Cromwell says he believes that opponents in the past vote were more interested in showing up Gilbert in an effort to undermine her and seize control of the union, rather than in voting on the issue itself.

“If we had come up with a cure for cancer,” Cromwell said, “they would have voted against it.”

McCord and Morales dispute that, accusing Gilbert and her supporters of trying to force the plan onto members without answering key questions about how it would affect the union’s pension and health plans.

They also question whether actors would have had adequate clout in a combined union, which also would have represented recording artists and broadcasters under one umbrella, the Alliance of International Media Artists.

Both McCord and Morales say they support the concept of a combined union but argue that the rejected proposal as drafted would have diluted SAG’s autonomy by turning over power to a new bureaucracy.

“You don’t give up the sovereignty of a 70-year-old union started by the likes of James Cagney for this concept,” Morales said. “It was being pushed down our throats.”

McCord and Morales also reject arguments that the two unions must combine to fight big media companies. McCord said that, relatively speaking, today’s media giants such as Viacom Inc. and Walt Disney Co. have no more clout with performers than early studio bosses such as Louis B. Mayer, who had actors under strict contracts and could end careers with a single telephone call.

They also argue that joining with AFTRA wouldn’t end jurisdictional squabbles. They note that 44,000 actors, themselves included, are members of both unions, so the two organizations should have no trouble working out any differences.

“I’m not going to point a gun at myself and pull the trigger,” McCord said.

But Gilbert believes that the union has to change with the industry to survive as a vibrant representative for actors. It isn’t easy to do, she acknowledges, in an insecure profession where actors far outnumber available parts and rejection is often the norm.

“I hear, ‘The status quo is fine, so let’s stick with the status quo,’ ” Gilbert said. “There is no status quo, because the industry is constantly changing around us. If we keep lumbering along like a big old dinosaur we’re never going to catch up.”