Campaign On to Limit Election Spending : Newport Executive Leads Effort to Revise State Financing Laws

As a corporate and personal contributor to political candidates, Newport Beach insurance executive Walter B. Gerken has watched the demands for campaign funding grow by leaps and bounds.

“I made the observation at one point that whenever I was gone from the office for a week, my secretary had separate piles for my mail. And the requests for contributions always seemed to be a bigger pile than those having to do with business,” Gerken said recently.

But last week Gerken, the board chairman and chief executive of Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co., took a step that could make a significant cut in those endless campaign solicitations.

He was listed as the chief proponent of an initiative filed in Sacramento Jan. 15 that would drastically revise the state’s campaign financing laws. It is aimed at slowing “the gold rush” in campaign spending.

The measure, also sponsored by California Common Cause and intended for this November’s ballot, would set strict spending limits in state legislative campaigns and permit some public funding of those races.

Currently there are no restrictions on the amount of money that candidates for state office can receive or spend. Under the 1974 Political Reform Act, the only requirement is that all contributions and expenditures be disclosed.

As Gerken sees it, changes are overdue.

With limits on campaign spending, candidates for state office will no longer have to spend most of their time raising money, he said. Instead, they could spend more time discussing the issues with their constituents.

The 63-year-old executive became involved in the initiative after serving 18 months on the California Commission on Campaign Financing, a bipartisan group that investigated--and sharply criticized--campaign spending.

“I like to think of myself as a good citizen who’s interested in the conduct of our government,” he said. “I was concerned, along with all my colleagues on the commission, that there’s been a rather geometric rise in the cost of financing legislative campaigns.

“Back in 1958, for example, the aggregate cost of all legislative races was $1.4 million. In 1984, those same races cost $44.8 million. And a lot of us think that number could be doubling again in the next few years.

“This (initiative) will rectify that.”

The initiative, called the Campaign Spending Act of 1986, is an outgrowth of the campaign financing commission’s final report. A detailed, 23-page document, it sets precise limits on contributions and expenditures by individuals, corporations and political action committees in state elections.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Robert Burton says it appears to be one of the most comprehensive efforts to date at reforming campaign spending; he cautioned, however, that he needs to study it further.

A key provision is a limit on campaign expenditures--no more than $375,000 in an Assembly race, $600,000 in a race for the state Senate.

By contrast, in 1984 the average legislative election cost $448,000, according to “The New Gold Rush: Financing California’s Legislative Campaigns,” the campaign financing commission’s 1985 report. And a legislative race can cost much more. In 1982, Tom Hayden spent $2 million to win his Assembly seat, the report noted.

In addition to limiting campaign spending, the initiative would prohibit legislators from raising money during non-election years and would prohibit candidates from giving money raised for their campaigns to some other candidate.

Along with many prohibitions on spending, the initiative offers what Gerken termed “a carrot”--first-time-ever public financing of statewide campaigns.

Under the proposal, voters could allocate $3 from their state income tax for legislative races. That amount would be matched by public funds, probably totaling about $4.6 million a year, Gerken said.

Gerken admitted that his personal experience in electoral politics has been limited, although 20 years ago he did win election to the Milwaukee, Wis., school board.

Still, over the next 10 months--when he isn’t running his company or serving as a director on the boards of more than a dozen companies and organizations, including the Automobile Club of Southern California, Times Mirror Co. (corporate parent of The Times) and the Orange County Performing Arts Center--Gerken said he intends to spend as much time as he can discussing the initiative and raising about $1.2 million to pay for gathering signatures and mounting an advertising campaign about it.

Gerken conceded that some powerful interests, notably statewide political action committees that donate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to legislative campaigns, probably will not like the initiative. But individual voters should benefit, he said.

“This would restore democracy--take the large element of money which is escalating at geometric rates (out of the legislative races) and not have money be an undue factor” in state elections, he said.