ELECTIONS ’88 ORANGE COUNTY : Tough Tactics in Local Contests : Hit Mail Cranked Up as Races Wind Down

At first glance, the headlines look like ads for horror films:

“Watch Out for This Man!”

“Feces on the Bay.”

“What Could This Criminal Do to Her in 13 Minutes?”

“He’s Connected to Some Very Sleazy People.”

If that’s your idea of entertainment, you’ll love the array of end-of-the-campaign political mailers--adorned with those headlines and others--being generated by some of Orange County’s city council races.

In Yorba Linda, two City Council candidates have suffered what, according to one of them, was the worst form of political hit mail: They were identified as Democrats.

While candidates and the public annually decry “hit mail” political advertising--in which candidates over the years have been accused of everything from mental illness to thievery to fraud--political experts acknowledge that it often registers with voters.

On Friday in Newport Beach, council candidate Ralph Rodheim called a news conference at City Hall to attack a mailer that showed his picture with the headline: “Is This Man Above the Law?” The mailer leveled several allegations about his finances, which Rodheim referred to as “slanderous.”

Rodheim stopped short of blaming his opponent, Jean Watt, but noted that a political action committee known as Newport 2000 paid for the mailer and supports her. Later in the day, Watt issued a press release disavowing any role in the mailer.

Rodheim said the problem with hit mail is “bigger than Newport Beach. I think it’s a symptom of the society that at the national level we see so much of it happening. If it’s OK to do at the presidential level, apparently these negative reactionary people feel it’s OK at the local levels, and it does need to be stopped.”

Santa Ana Examples

Some of the more graphic ads this election season have popped up in Santa Ana, a hotbed of political activity. One mailer, paid for by Friends of George Hanna, attempts to discredit Mayor Dan Young, Hanna’s opponent in the mayoral race, by driving home a point about the Police Department’s average response time of 13 minutes in emergency situations. The mailer linked that 13-minute period to the city’s crime rate.

A photograph on the mailer shows a woman, mouth agape, apparently trying to phone police. Standing in her doorway is a hooded man with a machine gun. Beneath the picture: “What Could This Criminal Do to Her in 13 Minutes?”

Hanna said that crime in Santa Ana has been the theme of his campaign and that the 13-minute mailer was just one of many pitches on the subject.

“We took a survey before we entered the race and found out what the main concerns were,” Hanna said. “It wasn’t traffic; it wasn’t swap meets; it wasn’t chickens. It was crime, crime, crime. That piece sort of dramatizes what’s taking place.”

Young said he considered the flyer both an insult and a lie.

“I’m insulted by the mailer, and I’m sure our police officers are insulted because anyone who calls the police and says there’s someone with a gun in the house as the picture suggests will get an abundance of police response within 2 minutes or less.”

He Cries Foul

Young said the mailer is reflective of “the lowest of political traditions in Orange County” and added that the category of crimes included in the 13-minute average response time range down to false alarms and burglar alarms in industrial buildings.

Ron Shenkman, a Huntington Beach consultant and public relations executive, believes that there should be more accountability for the content of hit mailers.

Shenkman, a former councilman in Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach, said the county needs a reconstituted commission to mete out punishment for inappropriate ads. Shenkman is a member of the county’s Fair Political Practices Commission but concedes that it has no power to regulate campaigning. Its only real function, Shenkman and others said, is to listen to complaints about alleged unfair practices.

Currently, candidates in city races have to take complaints to the state Fair Political Practices Commission, Shenkman said, adding, “You know what that’s like--it’s expensive, time-consuming and by the time anything happens, the race is over.” Shenkman said he favors some kind of fine for an unfair campaign practice.

In Newport Beach, Mayor John C. Cox Jr. and Councilwoman Ruthelyn Plummer were the targets of a flyer headlined “Feces on the Bay,” a reference to pollution in Newport Harbor. The brochure was one of several paid for by Newport 2000, a slow-growth group founded by current candidate and former Newport Beach Mayor Paul Ryckoff.

He Supports It

Ryckoff said he did not know the mailer was coming out but supports it. “If a person is a little tender-hearted, I suppose it would get at you,” Ryckoff said. “But if it stirs up some interest and action in water quality, then I think it would have served a purpose.”

Ryckoff said he might have worded the mailer differently had he written it but added that Cox had sent out some unflattering ads about him, in which Cox suggested Ryckoff had a difficult personality.

Cox conceded that pollution in the bay is a problem but said his administration has improved the situation since Ryckoff was mayor.

“He and his buddies have always been notorious for this kind of slanderous attack,” Cox said. “I come out of the advertising industry. Within any kind of product category, you’re prohibited about making claims without having sound substantiation. That’s not the case in the political arena. In politics, it’s a free-for-all (as to) what can be said.”

In Yorba Linda, three-term Councilman Irwin M. Fried said that what appeared to be a mailgram inaccurately portrayed him as a Democrat. The mailer identified various Democrats, including presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis and U.S. Senate candidate Leo T. McCarthy, and then identified Fried and fellow Republican and council candidate William E. (Gene) Wisner as Democrats.

The ‘D’ Word

“We don’t know who paid to have our names there, but in the context of this election, it’s a dirty trick to characterize me as a liberal Democrat in this city,” Fried said. “I intend, win or lose, to find the identity of the individual who caused this to be done.”

Asked if being identified as a Democrat would be politically unhealthy in Yorba Linda, Fried replied, “If not refuted and corrected, it could be fatal.”

In Santa Ana, the party affiliation of Councilman Dan Griset became the grist for a slightly different kind of mailer, with the headline, “Watch Out for This Man!” The ad says Griset “took your money, your faith and your trust. . . . He paid you back by changing parties.”

Griset changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in July.

The ad was paid for by council candidate Rick Norton, apparently operating on the political commandment that it is better to give negative advertising than to receive. And Norton contends that he also has been the target of such advertising.

One anti-Norton mailer shows two jack-o’-lanterns with carved faces and a third with Norton’s face in the center. When the flyer is opened, the headline inside reads: “Rick Norton is the one community leaders fear most.”

$10-Million Libel Suit

Norton was so outraged by allegations in the Griset mailer that he filed a $10-million libel suit last Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court. “He (Griset) started throwing mud, and I explained that was not the right thing to do and that it was a pack of lies,” Norton said. “He’s been singing the same song all the way through the campaign, but he won’t face me.”

Norton said he challenged Griset to meet him on the 50-yard line of Santa Ana Stadium to discuss campaign charges--a potential meeting that Norton was billing as “Showdown for the Truth at High Noon.”

Griset did not show up.

Griset said Norton’s lawsuit is a “campaign stunt” that he is not worried about. As for Santa Ana campaigns, Griset said, “I’ve learned to put up with this when campaigning for public office in Santa Ana. It’s a very tough town.”

Political consultant Lois Lundberg agrees.

“Santa Ana takes the cake” for this year’s negative advertising,” she said, calling some of the ads “sleazy.”

A Republican, Lundberg said she has been unhappy even with some of the national advertising of her own party. Among her clients this fall are candidates in Anaheim city races, and she said that, so far, the campaigns there have been clean. But she added: “I’m quaking in my boots that something is going to come out.”

Lundberg, a former county Republican Party chairman, said negative advertising will survive as long as it serves candidates. “We may hate it, but we’re still at the point that until such time as the public says, ‘I don’t want this anymore, I won’t take it, I reject it,’ I’m afraid it’s here to stay.”