Consultants Grope for a Theme : Anti-65 Strategy Is Born in Lively, Heated Debate

By PETER H. KING

Nov. 11, 1986 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

SACRAMENTO — In the first two parts of this series, Sal Russo and Doug Watts--Sacramento-based campaign consultants with a strong regional reputation as Republican strategists--were hired to run the campaign against Proposition 65.

The state initiative to toughen laws against dumping of toxic chemicals in drinking water was advanced by environmentalists and Democratic politicians. Russo and Watts, however, suspected the measure was the product of more mercantile motivations. They spent the spring and early summer researching toxic laws, looking for redundancies and weak points in the proposed measure, and staging a series of focus groups in major California cities to test public sentiments toward the toxics issue.

In this installment, the strategists gather to start mapping out their campaign.

This was it, the real inside stuff. The political consultants hired to knock off Proposition 65, the toxics initiative, were huddled in Doug Watts’ high-rise office, kicking around concepts for television commercials. Watts scanned a handwritten list of ideas. A crafty smile betrayed his self-delight. This next one figured to be good.

“I think,” he said, “we’ll use a talking cow.”

“What?”

“A talking cow. Really. A talking cow starting a stampede.”

“OK, uh, what is the cow saying?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe the cow will say, ‘Toxics!’ Maybe the cow will say ‘Stampede!’ I’ve got to flesh it out some more.”

A pause ensued. Thoughtful gazes were cast out the window. A throat was cleared.

“Well,” Gary Lawrence, the campaign pollster, said finally, “I’m having a little trouble seeing it, but OK. Hmmm. A talking cow.”

Saturday morning, July 19. The campaign so far had seemed a tedious and mostly subterranean exercise in research. A preliminary poll just completed by Lawrence showed voters were ready to approve Proposition 65 by a colossal 80%-11% margin. With 108 days left, it was time to get cracking.

The campaign consultants intended to conduct a second and more comprehensive poll to resolve doubts about strategy. Then they would start making commercials. Watts’ plan was to run radio spots throughout August; television is a relatively lackluster medium in the California summer, but backyard barbecues and crowded beaches make radio a terrific bargain. Television spots would be produced in August and placed on the air in early September.

This meeting was called to wrestle with the sticky but crucial matter of a campaign theme, and also to develop questions for the next poll. Watts, architect of the television campaign against Proposition 65, already was a jump ahead. He lifted from his cluttered desk top a long piece of yellow legal stationery filled with his scratchy penmanship.

“Here’s my first-cut list of ideas,” Watts said, the slightest quiver of fanfare in his voice. “The first idea is ‘Toxics!’ being yelled in a crowded theater. This guy yells it, and then a list rolls up on the movie screen of what is being done. Forty percent increase in policing staff. Budget increased 150%. Several million in fines already collected.”

Idea From Cartoon

Watts conceded happily that the concept came from a newspaper cartoon drawing of U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III shouting “AIDS!” in a movie house. Creative theft is not a crime in the world of political advertising. Consultants steal from each other, and consultants steal from themselves. The only way to prevent theft of a concept is to develop one that doesn’t fly.

In fact, it was exposure to this practice of cribbing a decade ago that convinced Watts he could make television commercials himself. In their first major campaign, the Ken Maddy gubernatorial candidacy, Watts and partner Sal Russo had subcontracted with someone else to produce television spots.

One day, this consultant--a big gun, fresh off a presidential campaign--accidentally left behind his demonstration tape, a collection of past work intended to dazzle prospective clients. Watts, curious, played the tape. A startling discovery ensued. The Maddy commercials he had deemed brilliant were copies of commercials from the consultant’s previous campaigns.

“They were the same spots as Maddy’s, with just the name changed,” Watts recalled. “So I said to myself, ‘All this genius I’ve been crediting this guy with is just a rubber stamp.’ I realized that all I had to understand was the technique.”

The headquarters of Russo, Watts + Rollins Inc. occupies half the ninth floor of a new, squat structure downtown. From Watts’ office one can look directly out--and down--on the state Capitol. Pictures of Watts with Reagan, Bush and other Republican luminaries decorate the walls.

Watts sat with his feet on his desk. He was wearing deck shoes, no socks. Lawrence occupied a small chair, brief case balanced on his knees. On a couch pushed against the window was Michael Gagan, the day-to-day campaign manager. He wore shorts. Russo would arrive a little later with a sack of supermarket doughnuts.

Discussion of television concepts continued. Watts offered up the talking cow. Admittedly, this was not a creative breakthrough. A bovine had spoken on television in a Montana senatorial race four years ago, creating a sensation among political professionals. Now, there’s an idea!

Watts dismissed the general lukewarm reaction to the cow concept with a shrug. “It’s only supposed to be an attention getter,” he said, and moved on enthusiastically to what he called his “bounty hunter idea.”

It stemmed from a provision of Proposition 65 permitting citizens who report polluters to keep a percentage of the collected fines. Eyes trained on center space, gestures animated, Watts rolled out the idea:

“Main street. Sam’s Dry Cleaners and Bill’s Dry Cleaners. Sam’s doing great business, a big line of customers. ‘Thanks, Mr. Jones. Thanks, Mr. Smith.’

“Camera dissolves across the street to Bill’s Dry Cleaners. Bill and son are scratching their heads.

“Bill says, ‘Why is Sam doing so good?’

“Son says, ‘Gee, I don’t know.’

“Bill says, ‘We have to do something. We can’t go on like this.’

“‘Well, Dad, there’s this brand new law. It allows businesses to turn each other in.’

“ ‘That’s a great idea, son, but we use toxic material, too.’

“Then the boy says (here Watts snarls), ‘Yeah, but we are turning them in first !’ ”

Lawrence chuckled. “I love that. I want to be Sam.”

Imagination at Work

There were several more. Watts imagined a spot in which Ronnie Shell, a comedian perhaps best known for his work in funny Pacific Southwest Airlines commercials, ticks off a list of inconsistent exemptions--UCLA is exempt, USC is not; UC Berkeley is exempt, Stanford not; Candlestick Park is exempt, but not Dodger Stadium. That none of these entities was a likely source of chemical pollution in drinking water was a point left unexplored.

Other concepts scrawled on the legal pad included “farmer’s slice of life,” with slice of life underlined, and “farmer’s wife,” and “Rancho Seco” and “defense exemptions example--nerve gas stockpile--just one more example.” They all consisted of just a few words but in Watts’ mind’s eye each entry could be translated into 30 seconds of magic.

Tacked on the bottom of the list was a reminder for something to be explored in the next poll: “Need to test exemption vs. exception for language I.D.”

Although the ballot summary would read “allows exceptions,” Watts thought “exemptions” was a stronger word. Also, Congress was debating tax reform. It promised to be a long debate and Watts surmised, “exemptions is going to be in a lot of headlines, and with a negative connotation. I want to piggyback a little on that.”

“Loopholes,” another option, was out--tried, true, but tired from a lifetime of overwork in campaign after campaign. In focus groups, “exemptions” and “exceptions” had been interchanged with no discernable effect. But the comprehensive poll would make sure.

By now the ballot wording had been established by the state, and it received a mixed review from Watts and Gagan. They were happy that the title did not contain the words “clean water,” but the short label next to where voters would punch in their decision was disturbing.

“Prohibits discharge of toxic chemicals into drinking water and requires warnings of toxics chemicals exposure,” it said. There was more about minimal fiscal impact, but not a word about exemptions.

This meant voters who came into the booth uninformed and undecided most likely would base their decision on that one sentence, and from the perspective of the opposition this prospect was not good.

Watts also had some fresh artwork to show around, a design for billboards and the closing of commercials. Black lettering, white background, slashes of red for emphasis: No on 65, the Toxics Initiative.

He had toyed with not putting any label on the artwork, leaving it simply “No on 65.” But this, Watts decided, would invite confusion with the controversy over the maximum highway speed limit.

“I guess,” Gagan quipped, “our little jingle, ‘Stay Alive, Vote No on 65’ won’t work either, then.”

Russo arrived, and the discussion turned quickly to strategy. Political campaigns are not conducted in a vacuum. Before the consultants could establish their own course, they needed to consider the potential impact of other races, public attitudes toward the toxics issue, and their adversaries’ most likely strategy.

And so, for the next two hours, Russo, Watts, Gagan and Lawrence toured the labyrinth of California politics. There was no strict agenda. The conversation bounced back and forth and all around. Telephone interruptions were frequent. A baseball game between the Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals flickered on a television in the corner. Close-ups of Tommy Lasorda would distract the political plotters; they liked to read the manager’s lips and admire the way he cussed.

Lawrence played his familiar moderator role, trying with limited success to keep the conversation on track. He would continually solicit questions for the comprehensive poll. His view is that a quality poll is distinguished from a poor poll by the precision and timeliness of the questions. Obtaining accurate answers is the easy part.

“What else do we need to know?” Lawrence would ask. “What do we need to confirm about what the public knows, or think they know, about toxics? Are we convinced we know enough about what they know or think they know?

“How do you see the campaign unfolding?”

Everyone agreed that Gov. George Deukmejian and Mayor Tom Bradley would create the most outside noise about Proposition 65. Deukmejian would come out against the measure; Bradley would support it. And already, the Los Angeles mayor was accusing the governor of going soft on toxics enforcement to protect political allies. Watts figured that it was only a matter of time before Deukmejian began battling back.

“Deukmejian,” Watts said, “is probably going to do something stupid and respond to the Bradley crap.”

Argues Against Defense

He said he had tried to persuade the governor’s advisers not even to produce positive spots about Deukmejian’s record on toxics: “How can that be anything but defensive,” Watts said he told them. “I don’t care if you’re right. I don’t care if you got the facts on your side, if your argument has got merit. It’s a response. You don’t go head-to-head. They say toxics, you say Rose Bird.”

Watts pondered the new math of politics: “We spend 5 million dollars; they spend 3 million dollars. Deukmejian spends 1 million dollars with ads about toxics, Bradley spends three. Cranston spends 1 million on toxics; Zschau spends 1 million. And Richie Ross, (Assembly leader Willie Brown’s political attache) with all his legislative races, spends 1 1/2 million dollars. You got the making of a Chrysler comeback through commercials about toxics.

” . . . If Zschau allows Cranston to make it a single-issue campaign, or if Deukmejian allows Bradley to make it a single-issue campaign, then we are talking about toxics and not Proposition 65 and we don’t stand a chance. I think it could get out of hand. I think it could be a nuclear reaction.”

Russo was not convinced that Bradley could find much traction with Proposition 65.

“I think Bradley is in an awkward position,” he said. “He can’t be a big proponent of Proposition 65 and still say Deukmejian isn’t enforcing the current laws. What do we need a new law for if the trouble is that Deukmejian isn’t supporting existing law? And if we need this new law so much how can Deukmejian be blamed for not doing anything yet?

“Bradley eventually is going to have to take a fork in the road.”

Credibility Crucial

Watts leaped forward to the last week of the campaign and imagined the toxics rhetoric pouring out of television sets. It would be crucial to establish a credible voice.

“You are sitting in your living room and there is a debate on television on the toxics issue,” he said. “Deukmejian-Bradley. Cranston-Zschau. Your local legislator and his opponent. An environmental activist and scientists. Who are you going to believe? That’s what they are going to get. Ten spots in a row talking about toxics. Now it helps when you have talking cows to get their attention, but. . . .

“We are going to have to find somebody that cuts through it all. We have to find a source of information that cuts through it all. . . . I’m going to assume that everybody else does the stupid thing, and everybody else doing the stupid thing means we have to be the most credible voice out of that pack.”

“We could get Judge Wapner,” Gagan said, joshing.

“Judge Wapner would be great,” Watts said, scribbling a note to himself.

The preliminary poll had tested the perceived credibility of certain celebrities the consultants thought might enter the debate, on one side or the other.

Potential Spokesmen

Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, whom the Proposition 65 opponents lusted after as a potential spokesman, rated highest on the credibility scale. Mark Harmon, UCLA quarterback turned actor turned highly visible television pitchman for Coors beer, scored high. So did Jane Fonda, to the consultants’ surprise.

Gagan: “I guess our idea of having farm women picket her exercise studios won’t work.”

Watts: “The trouble is that Jane would convince a few of those farm gals to come in and shed a few pounds. . . .”

He went on: “It’s 80-10. We are not going to be able to snatch the agenda here. And we can count on Standard Oil to have a couple of oil spills and refinery fires and shut down a couple of towns.”

Gagan: “And you know Ira Reiner (a big Proposition 65 advocate) is going to arrest a midnight dumper two days before the election. And you know he is going to be Armenian.”

Focus groups had provided a window into public attitudes, and Russo and Watts apparently had heard nothing to shake their contention that the toxics issue was a function of unfounded hysteria--produced by media, manipulated by politicians.

Russo likened the phenomenon of ballot issues to a wave. Proposition 13, the Jarvis-Gann initiative, had been timed perfectly to ride a mounting surge of public frustration with high property taxes. Similarly, the coastal initiative of 1972 coincided with the crest of concern over shoreline development. Conversely, proponents of a proposition to restrict smoking in public places probably had hopped on their board a mite too early, and they fell.

“Part of discussion,” Russo would say of Proposition 65, “is where is this thing on the wave? Is the public at a point now where they feel nothing is being done about toxics . . . and they are tired about listening to all this baloney from the politicians . . . and so they say, ‘This proposition isn’t perfect, but God damn it, if we pass it at least we have done something ?’

“I don’t think so. I don’t think it is there at all.”

The overwhelming support of Proposition 65 in polls, according to the Russo and Watts hypothesis, was merely a reflection of the measure’s attractive title and the desire of survey respondents to deliver “fashionable” answers.

An Eloquent Stand

Here Gagan, the only Democrat in the discussion, made an eloquent stand.

A gaunt, almost elfin figure, Gagan is something of a political throwback. He will take a drink at lunch and roll dice in taverns at night. And he knows how to slap a back. He also is considered by those who know him as brilliant.

Gagan had left government to start his own consulting firm when Russo and Watts approached him. Eyebrows were raised when Gagan signed on as campaign manager. What’s a nice Democrat like you doing in a race like that? His response was that he rejected the measure’s underlying assumption--that all previous legislative work on toxics had been lacking. Gagan said he was proud of toxics laws he had helped draft.

Now he told Russo and Watts that they were wrong to underestimate concern about toxics among voters: “I agree it may be somewhat fashionable, but it is also true that the number of dumps and the toxic spills has increased. These things are happening with greater frequency. What we have now is an accelerated effort to make up for decades when no one gave a damn.

“The more bad water that is found . . . the more we look for similar situations elsewhere. And the more we discover. And the more we publicize. It’s not an issue that is fashionable because it’s a cause celebre.

“It’s fashionable because there is truth to it.”

A comma of quiet punctuated the soliloquy, and then Russo persisted: “All I’m saying is that if you ask people about toxics, you get the Gucci answer.”

The June, 1985, edition of Discover magazine contained an article about a theory developed by two eminent psychologists. The psychologists hypothesized that seemingly irrational human decision-making actually is built on outside criteria that can be consistently measured and perhaps manipulated.

Lawrence said a friend from the White House staff alerted him to the article. “He said, ‘I think this is something that you can make some progress with.’ And I said, ‘You are right!’ ”

Two sentences thrilled Lawrence like no other, and they would come to serve as the unofficial canon for strategy-making in the Proposition 65 campaign.

People tend to avoid risk when seeking gains.

But they will accept risk to avoid a sure loss.

The application was obvious: “The riskier proposition is always the yes vote,” Lawrence said. “For them to get a yes vote the voters have to be convinced they are going to suffer a sure loss. We have to convince them they will not suffer a loss, or will suffer a greater risk.”

The Big Question

By now the consultants had arrived at the largest question before them--would “exemptions” work as the dominant campaign theme? Did the fact that not every source of pollution would be included in the proposition’s sweep be enough of an inconsistency, enough of a risk, to motivate a majority of Californians to reject the initiative?

Watts thought so. Russo did not. With conviction.

The workaday dialogue and wisecracks that had flavored the meeting thus far began to give way to heated exchanges.

Lawrence played a neutral role: “We are coming down to a decision. Do we want a more aggressive posture than exemptions? Do we want to attack the motives of the other guys?”

Ask Russo and Watts privately what was wrong with Proposition 65 and they would deliver an eloquent denunciation of the proponents’ motives, suggesting that the measure was little more than political mischief-making. It was what they believed and perhaps their strongest argument.

But it was not one they thought a majority of voters would buy. It was too subtle and too much inside politics.

A Flawed Idea

Exemptions seemed a broader stroke. But it, too, had a flaw.

Lawrence: “The people who buy the exemptions argument all want a stronger law.”

Russo: “That’s where I have my problem. There already are enough laws to deal with public agencies. And the average Joe thinks Dow Chemical is the big destroyer of the environment, not the little silversmith. So the 10 or less employee exemptions doesn’t work for us.”

Watts: “Exemptions alone won’t do it, but it gets them talking about the issue. It gets them moving along the track. Then you put in existing laws and farmers and you are over the top.”

Russo argued that the electorate commonly sorts itself out during the course of a campaign, with conservatives and liberals and Republicans and Democrats all arriving at predictable destinations. He feared that liberals who initially bought the exemptions argument eventually would be led by Sierra Club types back to the other side--leaving the opponents with no constituency.

“It’ll end up with most Republicans saying no and most Democrats saying yes,” Russo said. “If our Cadillac issue is exemptions, is a liberal Democrat saying no now because he wants a tougher law going to stay with us?”

Proposes Commercial

Watts was undeterred. He proposed a commercial that would drive home the fact that Tom Bradley’s Los Angeles, source of pollution in Santa Monica Bay, was exempted from Proposition 65: “Guess what, folks? Did you know that Tom Bradley, one of the main proponents of Proposition 65, is one of the state’s biggest polluters, and is exempt from Proposition 65?”

Russo didn’t bend either: “Why do you vote no because you get half the schools and not the other half? And you get half the nuclear plants and not the other half? You certainly are getting Dow Chemical. . . .

“And the sewage in Santa Monica Bay isn’t going into drinking water.”

Watts, voice rising: “I know, Sal, but exemptions has stuck out like a sore thumb in everything we’ve seen. I don’t like it either. But give me something better?”

Russo, stubbornly: “All I’m saying is that you can’t build our constituency with people who don’t belong on our side.”

The argument wore on and on, and then it wore out. A draw. The conundrum would not be solved this day.

It would require results from the comprehensive poll, everyone agreed, to settle finally the exemptions debate. The poll would be put out in the field in a week and responses would be back July 30. Numbers would make the decision, and no one doubted it would be clear-cut and correct.

There would be time to rethink the campaign should Russo’s concerns be validated. And Watts already was prepared to move forward as soon as the poll confirmed the gut instinct toward exemptions he had been following since April.

“Now all we have to do,” Watts said, “is raise 5 1/2 measly million dollars.”