Ads Turn to Reeve, Criticize Wal-Mart

Locked in close races, the campaigns of two high-profile healthcare propositions on the November ballot are turning to provocative symbols to try to attract votes: the late actor Christopher Reeve and giant retailer Wal-Mart.

A television advertisement featuring Reeve, who became a prominent activist for the disabled after a 1995 horseback-riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, began running statewide Friday. In the spot, Reeve asks voters to support a ballot measure -- Proposition 71 -- that would provide $3 billion in state bond money for embryonic stem cell research.

Shown from the chest up in his wheelchair, Reeve speaks directly to the camera, asking voters to “stand up for those who can’t.” He filmed the message Oct. 4, six days before his death.

Meanwhile, hoping to harness hostility to Wal-Mart, a new ad from supporters of Proposition 72 attacks the company’s treatment of its workers. The measure would require businesses with 50 or more employees to provide health insurance.

The ad, scheduled to start airing today, says that although Wal-Mart is “one of the world’s most profitable corporations,” California taxpayers paid “over $32 million for the healthcare of Wal-Mart employees who went to public clinics because the company won’t provide affordable health insurance.”

“Healthcare for workers, not handouts for Wal-Mart,” the ad says.

Wal-Mart disputes both the $32-million figure and the study on which it was based, which was conducted by UC Berkeley researchers.

The proposition’s supporters say they are spending $3 million on the ad and plan to ramp up the effort next week with current and former Wal-Mart employees speaking out against the company, which they say actively encourages employees to apply for Medi-Cal and food stamps.

“The other side has been trying to paint this about small restaurants that have 12 people,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a Sacramento-based nonprofit supporting the proposition. “The purpose of our ad is to really focus on those large corporations that are less likely to provide health coverage to their workers.”

That focus could address a continued weakness in support for the proposition: a large number of self-identified Democrats and liberals who remain undecided on it. In the most recent Times Poll, released this week, Proposition 72 was ahead 46% to 29%. But with 25% of likely voters uncertain of their position, the measure remains vulnerable. More than a quarter of Democrats and a third of liberals said they were undecided.

Jordan Rasmussen, spokeswoman for the California Restaurant Assn., said the new ads did not address smaller employers that would be burdened if the proposition passes.

“You just can’t put the cost of providing insurance on small businesses, nonprofits, school districts, charities and the hundreds of other organizations that this is going to affect,” she said. The association has contributed $3.5 million to fight the proposition.

In attacking Wal-Mart, the proposition’s strategists bypassed other corporations -- including McDonald’s, Macy’s, Sears and Target -- that have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight Proposition 72.

Wal-Mart has not made any donations to the campaign, though it did fight the employee mandate law when the Legislature approved it last year. Business groups opposed to the law got Proposition 72 on the ballot as a referendum. A “no” vote would abolish the requirement that companies provide health insurance law and a “yes” vote would keep it intact.

“Wal-Mart is not alone; they’re just the biggest and the easiest example to make,” said Dr. Richard Corlin, a past president of the California Medical Assn. and a supporter of Proposition 72.

The measure’s supporters said their focus groups discovered a particularly strong antipathy among Californians to the way the giant retailer conducts business. A number of participants said they had friends or relatives who, on hiring, were given applications to apply for public health benefits, according to David Binder, a San Francisco political consultant who ran the focus groups.

Bob McAdam, a Wal-Mart executive, said it was “totally false” that the company encouraged workers to apply for public benefits. “There’s no proof that any of our associates are on public assistance,” he said. “I defy anyone to prove it.”

McAdam said the company pays two-thirds of the healthcare premiums of any full-time employee who wants it and has been working at least six months. Part-timers are eligible after two years. There are 60,000 people working in California Wal-Marts, he said, and half of them have their insurance provided through the company.

“It’s disappointing that the proponents of this would try to demonize a single company to try to get their political ends,” he said. “The people who work at our company seem relatively satisfied with the opportunities and the benefits they have.”

The Reeve commercial backing Proposition 71 is unusual in that political campaigns seldom use ads featuring people who have died recently, for fear of making viewers uncomfortable.

The ad airs with the strong backing of Reeve’s widow and family. Reeve had campaigned until his death in favor of research using embryonic stem cells. Viewers see a message stating that the family “wanted the people of California to see this recently recorded message.”

“He and our foundation were one of the first endorsers,” said Michael Manganiello, a senior vice president of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation. “Chris always loved that Californians were on the cutting edge when it came to things like the environment, and he thought they could be again with stem cells.”

Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, who is not involved in the stem cell campaign, said seeing someone speaking about the condition that killed him is not unprecedented. In 1985, ads filmed by actor Yul Brynner months before his death from lung cancer led to concessions from the tobacco industry when Congress threatened to ban all tobacco advertising. In those ads, Brynner said: “Now that I’m gone, I tell you: Don’t smoke. Whatever you do, don’t smoke.”

In the stem cell ad, Reeve makes a claim that many scientists in the field consider premature: that “stem cells have already cured paralysis in animals.”

The reference is to research on rats that has been done by UC Irvine professor Hans Keirstead. The results of the research are scheduled to be published soon.

In an e-mail Friday, Keirstead said: “Although none of the treatments currently being developed could be called a cure for spinal cord injury, several have been shown to confer tremendous benefit.”

Marcy Darnovksy, an associate director of the Center for Science and Genetics and an opponent of Proposition 71, said it was “too early to know” if such experiments can be replicated.

“I don’t think that California ought to make a $6-billion decision on the basis of work that’s so preliminary that other scientists haven’t even had the chance to look at it yet,” she said, referring to the estimated cost of the state bonds over the 30-year course of the loan.

“This is a case where that emotion that we all share -- that hope -- can’t substitute for a careful look and analysis of a very high-priced and very complicated initiative,” she said.

But Manganiello said Reeve saw the benefits of stem cell therapies “with his own eyes,” and had been careful during his life not to over-promise on the research.