Can That Much Dough Be Ignored? : Quackenbush campaign shows need for reform

In the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake, homeowner’s insurance has been growing both scarcer and more expensive. After the Nov. 8 election it may suddenly grow more expensive still.

Allstate will request approval for a 100% increase in earthquake and homeowner’s rates from the newly elected state insurance commissioner. Farmer’s will ask for an increase of 174% in the same category.

Insurance companies are required by law to offer earthquake coverage, and everyone knows that some incurred enormous losses in the Jan. 17 temblor. Most customers accept that the increased risk predicted by some scientists will mean increased cost, but many also wonder whether the insurance companies are not using the occasion to raise their rates far beyond what real risk would require.

Here, obviously, is where close, honest regulation of what is, after all, a regulated industry comes in. But here, disturbingly, is where big-time political contributions also come in.

In the race for insurance commissioner, Assemblyman Charles W. Quackenbush (R-Cupertino) raised $1.12 million last month, 80% of it from the very industry he seeks to regulate. On the other hand, state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), whom The Times has endorsed for commissioner, raised only 10% from the insurance industry, or $42,500 of his $437,000 total for October.

Quackenbush is free to insist, as the recipients of big political contributions always do, that the money creates no debts to be paid off in access and influence after the election, but voters worried about the family insurance bill will rightfully be dubious.

Quackenbush’s and Torres’ different approaches to the duties of commissioner may be debated on the merits, but the prima facie case is strong that money is not going to the one candidate over the other for purely philosophical reasons.

Californians, by an overwhelming majority, regret the almost sickening sums spent on our elections. The amount spent on either the gubernatorial or the senatorial race could endow a good-sized university.

The Senate and the Assembly in the last legislative session approved a bill that would have placed significant campaign finance reform before the voters as a ballot initiative in 1996. The lawmakers were not attempting to impose a decision in the matter: The voters were to have the final say. Unfortunately, Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed that bill.

In selecting the next insurance commissioner, voters are faced with a contest in which one candidate, Quackenbush, is the recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the very people he would be expected to regulate if elected. It’s not a good situation. It’s a situation of the sort that can only be remedied through campaign finance reform.