There in the Muck, Nagging Questions

Sacramento —  Sacramento

It figures: This dreary, repulsive race for governor is nearing an end in the gutter.

An old accusation by a once-desperate political racketeer surfaces amid the campaign muck. A desperate dark-horse candidate, Bill Simon Jr., picks up the crud and tries to use it.

Standing on the beach at Malibu, behind a tacky podium and in front of cameras, Simon demands that Gov. Gray Davis come clean -- fess up how his political pay-for-play has infected the coast.

Simon may not have heard: His problem is not that voters need to be convinced Davis is a voracious money-raiser who returns favors for donors. Voters assume all politicians do that. Simon’s problem is he still hasn’t convinced voters that he is an acceptable alternative.

Polls, incidentally, consistently have shown that voters consider Davis more honest than Simon, the businessman-investor.

Anyway, the accused governor -- accused by a convicted extortionist with zero credibility -- adamantly denies the allegation that, long ago, he pushed for Coastal Commission approval of projects so he could hit up the happy applicants for campaign contributions.

“Scurrilous,” Davis says.

Some recap is needed here:

Mark L. Nathanson, a Hollywood bagman for then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and Brown’s appointee on the Coastal Commission, was convicted of extorting payments from celebrities seeking permits to build on the Southern California coast. Nathanson was one of 14 pols -- including lawmakers and lobbyists -- convicted after an FBI sting in the 1980s.

Nathanson was sent to prison for nearly five years. In 1993, he offered to rat on Davis for a lighter sentence, asserting he could prove that the then-state controller had urged him to obtain approval of coastal projects for potential donors.

This is a line I particularly enjoyed in the letter to prosecutors from Nathanson’s attorney: “Nathanson has to date been unable to recall any specific conversation with Davis about the ... matter (although recollection of one may click into his memory at any time).... “

Also: “I believe Nathanson’s memory regarding specific Davis incidents will get better the more he thinks about it.”

The next year, another Nathanson attorney wrote prosecutors: “Mark has now recalled that Davis specifically promised him four inheritance tax appraiser appointments” for a coastal deal.

Quid pro quo. That would be illegal. The other accusations -- I need a favor -- seem perfectly legal.

At any rate, the U.S. attorney didn’t bite, explaining to a judge years later that Nathanson “lied during debriefings, withheld information, described conduct which was not legal and/or provided information which could not be corroborated.”

Liberal U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton sealed the Nathanson letters, trying to shield Davis and others from “hearsay accusations.” The Sacramento Bee sued, won, and on Monday the judge was forced to unseal the letters -- eight days before the election.

The judge probably would have done Davis a favor by releasing the documents years ago. They’d be long forgotten.

Unless there’s truth to these allegations. Then the memories of other people surely will be jogged. And they might rat. But that seems highly unlikely, since the only person who has ever leveled the charges was a racketeer looking for a prison break.

Still, there are disturbing side issues here:

* Even if somebody did do what Davis was accused of, most of it would be legal. Should it be?

Should a politician be able to use the Coastal Commission or any regulatory agency as a fund-raising tool? I was happy to help. Next week I’m having a fund-raiser. It subverts the regulatory process, favoring big donors.

* The reaction this week from Democrats was that Davis didn’t do it, but, even if he did, this sort of thing happens regularly.

“Politicians call on a daily basis lobbying for their friends or supporters,” says one government insider. “It’s not at all illegal or even untoward. The appearance isn’t good.

“Politics is ugly when you look below the surface at the innards. It’s nothing we don’t walk through knee-deep every day in government.”

And this concession from a legislative insider: “You gain office through the private sector. Then once you’re elected, you’re supposed to represent the public interest without regard to how you got there.

“People who invest [money] in candidates believe they will vote their interest. You don’t break that cycle unless voters decide they want to make campaigns public activity.”

Public financing of campaigns. The public gets what it pays for.

Now it’s getting a lot of muck and ugly innards.