Candidates’ Ads Twist Facts in Bashing Rivals

Three of the major candidates for governor have relied on misleading or inaccurate charges against their rivals in a growing, multimillion-dollar onslaught of television attack ads.

Gov. Gray Davis and two of his potential Republican challengers have trashed one another in at least a dozen commercials shown to millions of viewers statewide. Eerie music and flashes of negative headlines have heightened the impression that unworthy candidates endanger California’s future.

But in order to cast their opponents in the worst possible light, the Democratic incumbent and Republicans Richard Riordan and Bill Jones have distorted facts, consultants unaffiliated with the campaign say.

The candidates themselves also have engaged in heated rhetoric. On Sunday, for instance, Davis called Riordan “a walking contradiction” and accused him of reversing himself on numerous issues. Riordan, who on Saturday had accused Davis of subverting English-only instruction, on Sunday returned to his frequent charge that the governor has mishandled the state’s energy crisis.

Their ads are at least as vitriolic and oftentimes selective or distorted. The candidates, for example, define “Enron” one way when on the attack and another way when under attack. The bankrupt energy giant has become a potent symbol of dishonesty in business and politics, and thus fodder for ads. But to campaign ad producers, the definition of “Enron” includes executives and subsidiaries only when it suits the candidate’s needs.

The squabbling over what “Enron” means reflects the widespread use in political ads of “facts taken out of context--or misleading facts where you know that including the truth would negate the point you’re making,” said Barbara O’Connor, director of Cal State Sacramento’s Institute for the Study of Politics and Media.

“It is a window, I think, into the soul of the candidate,” she said. “The desire to win is stronger than the desire for veracity.”

As the March 5 primary approaches, viewers are seeing more and more of the negative ads. Riordan, Jones and Los Angeles businessman Bill Simon Jr. are competing for the Republican nomination to challenge Davis in November. Simon began airing an ad critical of Riordan on Thursday, but Riordan’s campaign has not disputed the facts in the ad.

So far, Davis has mounted the most aggressive ad campaign, putting up six spots bashing Riordan on crime, energy, abortion, the death penalty and other issues.

“You have 30 seconds to make your case,” said Garry South, chief strategist of the Davis reelection campaign. “It’s not our responsibility to get all the mitigating circumstances in there. . . . There’s a little leeway here in terms of how you state the case.”

Indeed, Davis takes some leeway in a spot that depicts the former Los Angeles mayor as soft on crime.

The ad blames Riordan for a 9.2% rise in homicides in Los Angeles and says “gangs are taking back the streets.”

In fact, homicides in Los Angeles dropped more than 50% when Riordan was mayor from 1993 to 2001. The “9.2%” statistic ignores the first 7 1/2 years of Riordan’s tenure in office. Instead, it covers the last six months of Riordan’s final term and the first six months of Mayor James K. Hahn’s term.

“It’s a blatant misrepresentation of an overall pattern of dramatically declining crime in L.A. and elsewhere,” said Cheryl Maxson, an associate professor of criminology at UC Irvine.

South defended the statistics used in the ad. “It’s absolutely fair,” he said. “Those statistics are undeniable.”

More broadly, South said the governor’s ads against Riordan are justified because the former mayor has called Davis “the enemy of the state” and criticized him at every turn.

“Our allegations against Dick Riordan and the ads we’ve put on the air are a hell of a lot more documented and factual than the crap that comes out of his mouth every day about the governor of California--if you want to apply that as a standard,” South said.

The Riordan campaign has denounced the crime spot and other Davis ads as dishonest.

“He has chosen a scorched-earth strategy vis-a-vis Riordan to beat him in the Republican primary, because he knows Riordan is probably the only Republican who can beat him in November,” said Don Sipple, Riordan’s chief strategist. “It’s a cynical, callous approach, but I think that’s Gray Davis.”

But the accuracy of Riordan’s ads also is in dispute. In two commercials, Riordan charges that Davis took more campaign money from Enron “than any other politician in America”--$119,500.

In fact, Enron has given more than $735,000 to President Bush, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign money. Records show Enron’s political action committees and its executives gave $113,800 to the Bush presidential campaign, $300,000 to his inaugural fund, $10,500 to his Florida recount fund, and $312,500 to his 1994 and 1998 campaigns for governor of Texas.

“The idea that Gray Davis got more money from Enron than anybody else . . . it’s just not true,” said Larry Makinson, senior fellow at the center.

Moreover, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has taken $237,000 from Enron’s PAC and executives, and Texas Atty. Gen. John Cornyn has accepted $193,000 from them, according to Texans for Public Justice, a nonpartisan group that tracks Texas campaign money.

Andrew Wheat, the group’s research director, said Riordan’s ad “sounds like poppycock.”

Riordan advisors insisted their ads were fair and accurate, because they counted only direct contributions from the Enron corporation.

“We didn’t say Enron and its PAC,” Sipple said. “We didn’t say Enron and its executives. We didn’t say Enron and [former company Chairman] Ken Lay. We said Enron.”

But direct contributions from corporations to candidates for federal office are illegal. Corporate donations to candidates for public office in Texas are also illegal. So by the Riordan campaign’s criteria, “George W. Bush received zero from Enron, and that’s absurd,” Makinson said.

The Davis campaign calls the Riordan ad “a lie.” Yet the governor uses an equally loose definition of Enron in a spot that goes after Riordan for his role in California’s energy crisis.

Davis has run the ad mainly in Northern California--as in the crime spot playing on regional hostilities to tarnish Riordan’s image outside Los Angeles. A narrator tells viewers that Los Angeles had surplus electricity to sell to the rest of the state last year at the height of the blackout threats. But Riordan, it says, “gouged” the rest of the state and charged “more than Enron.”

But state records show that an Enron subsidiary, Portland General Electric, charged an average of $670 per megawatt of power--more than double the $292 average charged by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power during the first three months of 2001.

The Davis ad is based on the $181 average price charged by another Enron subsidiary, Enron Power Marketing Inc.

“The ad says Enron,” South said. “That’s a certifiable fact.”

The other candidate whose advertising has raised accuracy questions is Jones, the California secretary of state. The only ad that Jones has put on the air--at minimal levels--is a spot that features former Gov. George Deukmejian criticizing Riordan and Simon.

Riordan, Deukmejian says in the ad, “has given millions of dollars to Democrats”--an accusation aimed at undermining the former mayor among GOP primary voters. It’s true that Riordan has given more than $1 million to Democrats, as well as roughly $600,000 to Republicans.

But Deukmejian’s claim that Riordan gave “millions” is based on an additional $1 million that Riordan gave to LA Convention 2000, a nonpartisan nonprofit corporation that promoted Los Angeles when the city hosted the Democratic National Convention in 2000.

“It’s an abject lie, and it’s a falsehood manufactured out of nothing,” said Ben Austin, who was spokesman for the nonprofit and later became one of Riordan’s deputy mayors.

Jones spokeswoman Beth Pendexter insisted the ad was accurate.

Another ad with facts in dispute is Riordan’s spot against Simon. It cites “mismanagement” of a collapsed savings and loan, Western Federal, and “accounting irregularities at a Texas energy company,” Hanover Compressor Co.

Simon was a Western Federal board member who says he was “monitoring” his family’s investment in the S&L; but played no management role. He says federal regulators prematurely took over Western Federal and prevented management from returning it to profitability. The allegation is the subject of a pending lawsuit by Western Federal investors against federal regulators. His campaign does not dispute the ad’s contention that the S&L; bailout cost taxpayers $92 million.

Hanover is mired in controversy over its accounting practices and its ties to Enron, but Simon’s tenure on its board predated the period under scrutiny.

“It’s a classic political hit job that takes the tiniest kernel of truth and blows it into a complete falsehood,” said Jeff Flint, a Simon consultant.

Riordan spokeswoman Kim Serafin stood by the ad, saying Simon “doesn’t want to accept responsibility for his failures.”

The Riordan ad also says Simon failed to vote in 13 of the last 20 local, state and federal elections. Simon acknowledges he did not vote in 11 elections since he moved to California, but says county records fail to reflect that he actually voted in nine others, not seven.

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Times staff writers Scott Glover, Matt Lait and Nancy Vogel contributed to this report.

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