CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS INSURANCE COMMISSIONER : Garamendi Accepts Funds From Wives of Insurers

Democratic Insurance Commissioner candidate John Garamendi has said for months he will not take campaign contributions from insurance companies or their executives. But, Garamendi said Thursday, the rule does not extend to donations from the wives of insurance executives.

Garamendi acknowledged that following an Oct. 16 fund-raising event in Orange County, some wives of executives of the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. had sent him checks for $500 or $1,000. Unlike checks from avowed employees of various insurers, these checks would not be returned, Garamendi said.

As far as he knows, the wives were acting on their own behalf and had their own interests, not linked to the insurance company for which their husbands worked, Garamendi said.

Dale Debber, an aide to the Republican candidate for insurance commissioner, Wes Bannister, said, however, that he has been told by people who attended the fund-raiser at the Pacific Club in Newport Beach that both Garamendi and a staff member had suggested that the wives give as a way of getting around his no-insurer rule. Bannister has openly stated that he would take whatever insurer contributions his campaign can get.

Garamendi flatly denied he had made such a suggestion and refused to say where the staff member could be reached.

The Democratic candidate’s comments came after an insurance industry representative who studied the contribution reports and is familiar with executives at Pacific Mutual told The Times that in the three days after the fund-raiser as many as 26 wives of Pacific Mutual employees gave Garamendi $500 to $1,000.

Garamendi and a spokesman for Pacific Mutual denied in separate interviews that the contributions came from 26 women. Both said they could not give a precise number.

Among those listed as giving on Garamendi’s contribution report were Marilyn Phyllis Sutton, wife of Pacific Mutual Chairman Thomas Sutton; Darlene A. Gerken, wife of Pacific Mutual President Walter Gerken, and Burdel Bubb, wife of retired Pacific Mutual Chairman Harry Bubb. Each of the three gave $1,000, the report shows.

A spokesman for Pacific Mutual, Bob Haskell, quoted Thomas Sutton as saying he saw only four other Pacific Mutual people at Garamendi’s fund-raiser. Haskell said it was unfair “to lump in husbands with wives” in assessing such contributions, because “the implication is that these wives are not individuals in their own right.” Garamendi agreed. He said the wives had “made their own decisions” and it was not a violation of the spirit of his personal rule against accepting insurers’ contributions to accept their checks.