Cries of Foul Fill Political Air as Slate Mailers Arrive : Campaigns: Ballot-style leaflets, called deceptive by some observers, are money-makers for organizers.

Shortly before last June’s Democratic primary, state attorney general candidate Arlo Smith’s name appeared on a mailer distributed by an organization called the Democratic Vote by Mail Project.

This week, Smith’s name appears on a mailer of the Republican Vote by Mail Project. Despite the impressive titles of the two organizations, neither is affiliated with the two mainstream political parties. In fact, both are money-making enterprises that have been marketed by the same Los Angeles businessman, according to state and Smith campaign records.

Smith’s Republican foe, Dan Lungren, is incensed, saying the new mass mailing is a sleazy attempt to deceive Republican voters into thinking that he has not been endorsed by the Republican Party. Smith is not repentant: “Anybody who wants to put me on a mailer, I’ll go on it. . . . It’s advertising. Simple as that.”

It’s the final weekend before Election Day and slate mailer season has arrived again.

Just as surely as tens of millions of ballot-style leaflets clutter mailboxes throughout the state, the campaign trail is filled with cries of confusion, deception and foul play.

“These slate mailers use deceptive techniques to secure the voters’ trust,” said Margo Feinberg of the Coalition for Reproductive Freedom. “Voters must be told that these slate mailers do not represent the views of any one group or party, rather they represent those with the biggest war chest, as they are sold line by line.”

More than 60 active slate mailer organizations are registered with the state--ranging from the Official Women’s Voter Guide to Citizens to Preserve the Reagan Revolution. Many deal with statewide races while others are purely provincial contests, involving everything from local school boards to judgeships.

Although their content is left entirely to their producers, slate mailers that collect $500 or more and either support or oppose four or more candidates or ballot measures must be registered with the state. These official slate mail organizations also must disclose their sources of income.

Their content spans the political spectrum, but in most cases the bottom line is the same: To make money.

One influential mailer alone, Voter Guide, has collected more than $3.6 million from candidates and campaign committees this year. Despite complaints that many have deceptive formats, candidates often see slate mailers as a necessity, buying space in them to keep a rival from doing so or because they are cheaper than direct mail for reaching large groups of voters.

“You need the slates,” says Democrat Brad Sherman, who is running for a relatively obscure post on the State Board of Equalization. “(Particularly in my race) because of the very low visibility of the office.”

Sherman sold three condos and moved into a $600-a-month apartment in order to pay the Voter Guide organization $225,000 to be included on its pre-primary mailer last spring. He won the race easily and attributed his victory in large part to the Voter Guide mailer.

Slate mail organizations are required to reveal payments such as Sherman’s in statements filed with the secretary of state, and state law forces them to disclose on the mailer if they have been paid to endorse a candidate or ballot measure.

Producers of the mass mailings say the requirements protect voters from misunderstandings, but critics say they do not do enough. At election time, their differences inevitably spill into public.

Los Angeles school board President Jackie Goldberg complains that the most recent Voter Guide mailer, carrying what can be mistaken for official party symbols, tricks voters into believing the recommendations come from the Democratic Party. She pointed in particular to the mailer’s positions on the two alcohol tax initiatives.

While the state Democratic Party has taken no position on the measures, the Voter Guide supports the alcohol industry-backed Proposition 126 and opposes the so-called nickel-a-drink initiative, Proposition 134. Voter Guide was recently paid $750,000 to make its recommendations by Taxpayers for Common Sense, which is supported largely by the alcohol industry.

“When something comes in the mail and has the pictures of Presidents Kennedy, Truman and Roosevelt on it,” Goldberg says, “and when it comes with my name and address and tells me my voting and polling place . . . and has the donkey symbol of the Democratic Party and ‘Vote Democratic!’ on it, I need to be able to trust that it comes from the Democratic Party.

“And it does not.”

Jay Ziegler, spokesman for Berman & D’Agostino campaigns, which produces Voter Guide, defended the mailer as an educational tool that “is completely consistent” with the positions of the state Democratic Party.

“There is not one position on our slate that runs contrary to the Democratic Party,” he said.

Sherman’s listing on a non-Democratic slate mailer sent out in recent weeks has drawn the ire of his Republican foe, Claude Parrish.

Democrat Sherman recently paid the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. $20,000 for a listing on its mailer--even though he never supported Jarvis’ landmark Proposition 13 and Parrish did.

“Howard Jarvis must be spinning in his grave,” claims Parrish, whose campaign literature includes a 1986 endorsement letter from the since-deceased tax-cutting champion. “I guess this shows that money talks.”

Jarvis organization head Joel Fox disagrees. “We think Sherman is the most capable candidate,” he says.

In the attorney general’s race, the California Republican Party Thursday filed an official complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission on behalf of former five-term congressman Lungren.

The complaint charges that the Republican Vote by Mail Project mailer “is a clear violation of state laws designed to protect the voting public from deception in political campaign endorsements.”

Campaign finance reports filed with the secretary of state reveal that the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, one of Smith’s leading law enforcement backers, paid the slate mailer organization $5,500 last month to, in part, withhold an endorsement from Lungren.

The mailer, whose president is Fred Huebscher of Los Angeles, endorses Republicans in all other statewide races besides attorney general.

Huebscher could not be reached for comment. But last spring, the Smith campaign acknowledged it paid Huebscher $1,500 to be listed on the other slate mailer he helped market, the Democratic Vote by Mail Project. And in July, the Smith campaign paid the Democratic Project another $2,000, which Smith campaign manager Marc Dann says was a bonus for having won the Democratic primary.

Smith, who in the past has prosecuted campaign consultants over election mailer fraud charges, says he does not understand the current fuss. “It’s known as free press,” asserted the San Francisco district attorney.

Many, however, are fed up with business-as-usual mailers.

In Los Angeles, a group of about 100 nonprofit organizations came together this fall to create an alternative pamphlet, known as Vote 90, that was produced without paid endorsements. In unveiling its slate card, the coalition pledged to educate voters rather than deceive them. But even the Vote 90 coalition, composed of self-described progressive groups, found it difficult to rise above politics. The guide outlines the positions of the “major candidates for governor,” identified as Democrat Dianne Feinstein, Republican Pete Wilson--and Maria Elizabeth Munoz, whose Peace and Freedom Party accounts for .39% of the electorate.

Why Munoz and not the Libertarian and American Independent candidates?

“You have to draw the line somewhere,” said Jill Ratner, who heads Vote 90.