Tobacco Lobby Works Smoke-Filled Rooms : Politics: The industry fights anti-smoking legislation in Sacramento not with high-profile campaigns but by cajoling lawmakers. Contributions and junkets for legislators are a key tool.

SACRAMENTO — Assemblyman Lloyd Connelly wanted to snuff out Joe Camel.

The legislator argued that the chain-smoking cartoon character, featured in an R. J. Reynolds ad campaign, was part of a cleverly designed and successful attempt to make cigarettes attractive to kids under 18, who cannot legally purchase tobacco products.

To put an end to “Old Joe,” Connelly, a Sacramento Democrat, introduced a bill to bar the use of cartoons in ads pitching tobacco.

But getting the votes needed would prove extraordinarily difficult, even for a lawmaker with a reputation for dogged persistence.

Connelly was taking on the tobacco lobby--the Stealth bomber of California’s special interest politics. Heavily armed but scarcely visible, the lobby has been able to kill or weaken bill after bill that would curtail smoking in public places, raise excise taxes on tobacco products, or in any way hurt the sale of cigarettes.

No tobacco lobbyist testified against the Connelly bill. Nor did the industry write a single letter of opposition to the legislative committee considering the matter. Instead, as is the pattern on much of the legislation tobacco companies care about, the lobbyists worked the Capitol, grabbing legislators in the corridors or making their pitch in lawmakers’ private offices rather than in hearing rooms that are open to the public.

The measure died on the Assembly floor this spring when an unusual number of members who were present declined to vote either for or against it.

In an era when the ill effects of tobacco products have been thoroughly documented, the industry finds itself on the defensive and has responded aggressively.

In addition to battling particular pieces of anti-smoking legislation, the tobacco companies have been pushing an agenda of their own--backing bills to make smoking during non-working hours a civil right for all employees and to stop local governments from passing anti-smoking ordinances.

“One either decides to walk away from a conflict or mount a vigorous defense,” said Walker Merryman, a spokesman for the industry-financed Tobacco Institute in Washington. “It seems to me there is no middle ground, especially when we are dealing with issues which by their very nature generate so much emotionalism.”

Because of its poor public image, the industry lobbies state government intensely but--to the extent possible--privately, spending more than $2 million so far this session to hire well-paid, big-name lobbyists, including former employees of the governor and of legislative leaders. These lobbyists like to work out of public view, and they refused to discuss their activity on behalf of their clients.

“They have inexhaustible resources, and they have a small agenda with one motive: to sell the maximum number of cigarettes in the state of California and to kill anything that inhibits that,” Connelly said in a recent interview.

Quietly, the companies have also funded legislative conferences and meetings and provided free meals and entertainment for lawmakers and their aides, not just in Sacramento but around the country.

Last December, for example, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris were among 20 businesses contributing $3,000 each to the Pacific Conference, a tax-exempt foundation that played host to 30 state legislators, including six from California, at a meeting in Hawaii. Lawmakers could bring along their spouses and children for the six-day session.

This year, the Smokeless Tobacco Council gave $2,000 to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) to help subsidize a dinner in his honor in Washington, D.C., and the California Assn. of Tobacco and Candy Distributors paid a $1,700 wine bill for the occasion.

More than other cigarette manufacturers, Philip Morris frequently treats lawmakers and legislative aides to ballet performances, professional sports events, meals and golf tournaments.

Most importantly, tobacco companies and their subsidiaries contribute generously to state election campaigns--more than $650,000 in the last 18 months.

The largest amounts have gone to key legislators, particularly Brown. The Democratic leader can affect the fate of any bill through his control of Assembly privileges and committees, where most anti-smoking measures are killed. Even though Brown has voted against the tobacco lobby on those few measures that reach the Assembly floor, the industry has given him $128,000 since the current two-year legislative session began in 1991. In total, the tobacco interests have donated $250,000 to Brown over the past four years.

Although Gov. Pete Wilson shunned tobacco industry money in his 1990 election campaign, he accepted a $25,000 contribution from Philip Morris U.S.A. for parties after his inauguration. And tobacco companies have contributed at least $50,000 in two years to the state Republican Party, which has aided Wilson’s initiative to reduce welfare benefits and increase the governor’s budgetary power. Philip Morris sponsored a $5,000-per-couple fund-raiser for Wilson and Republican legislative leaders a year ago, and this year the tobacco companies supported Wilson-backed legislative candidates in contested GOP primaries.

One of the main beneficiaries of industry donations is Democratic Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd of Carson, who chairs the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee. The panel is known as a killing field for anti-tobacco legislation.

Connelly and others say they specifically craft their anti-smoking bills in ways that are intended to avoid referral to Floyd’s committee.

It was Floyd, a chain-smoker, who led the fight against Connelly’s anti-Joe Camel bill. During the Assembly floor debate, he made it clear that the measure would have been killed if it had gone to his committee.

“This bill should have been in a proper committee where it would have had a fair hearing and not been here,” he declared.

Floyd received substantial contributions from the industry for his hotly contested and ultimately unsuccessful campaign for reelection this year. With no legal limits on contributions to legislative races since a federal court overturned Proposition 73 two years ago, the companies, their trade groups and subsidiaries gave him $38,500 this year--including $28,000 in the weeks before the crucial Assembly vote on Joe Camel and another $5,000 four days later.

In an interview, Floyd denied that the money influenced his position on tobacco legislation. “I had a tough race,” he said. “A lot of people gave me over $30,000.”

For Floyd, tobacco is a personal issue. “I smoke and I feel I’m one of the minority getting beat over the head because I smoke,” he said. “When I’m standing there, fighting for smokers’ rights, I’m fighting for myself.”

When Connelly’s bill finally came up for its decisive vote in late May, 15 tobacco lobbyists huddled in front of a television monitor by an obscure side entrance to the Assembly chamber to watch the debate.

Still, Connelly believed he had a chance. Soon after he introduced the measure, he had persuaded the Speaker to sign on as a co-author. Although supporters say that Brown did not work to gain votes for the bill, Brown’s name at the top of the measure was symbolic: it would be OK to vote for the bill.

But the lobbyists had urged lawmakers who did not want to vote against Connelly or Brown simply to abstain--the parliamentary equivalent of voting “no,” since 41 votes were needed for passage.

And that strategy paid off. The final vote was 33 against and 31 in favor, with 14 members present but not voting.

The Connelly bill was one of several anti-tobacco measures defeated in the 1991-92 session. Most did not even get out of their initial committees, including:

* A bill by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) to ban smoking in the workplace--a prohibition that would also have ended smoking in all California restaurants. He argued that secondhand smoke is the third-leading preventable cause of death in the country (after smoking itself and alcohol use). Friedman said that he drafted the bill so “it could only go to my committee”--the Assembly Labor Committee, which he chairs.

But the committee killed its chairman’s bill on a 6-4 vote.

* Legislation proposed by Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto) that would have restored the ability of Californians to sue tobacco companies for damages after an injury or death, if it could be shown that the firms deliberately misrepresented their products or concealed information about the health hazards of smoking.

Recently, the measure was able to muster only four yes votes from the 11-member Assembly Judiciary Committee.

* A proposal to ban smoking in all buildings owned or leased by the state. The measure, by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-S. San Francisco), went before Assemblyman Floyd’s committee last year. Lobbyists lined the back of the room near the exits, but no one testified against the measure, Speier said. Only three of 18 members on the committee voted for the measure.

Legislators who oppose anti-smoking measures say there are competing interests to consider.

“Although I’m a nonsmoker myself, many of my constituents are smokers and enjoy smoking. Others don’t want to be endangered by secondary smoke inhalation,” said Assemblyman Paul Horcher (R-Hacienda Heights), who has voted against several anti-tobacco measures, including Friedman’s workplace smoking ban.

Horcher said he worried that Friedman’s bill would place new burdens on business at a time when the economy was wobbly. “I was tempted to vote for it,” he said. “It was a close call.”

Anti-smoking forces claim a few successes in the Legislature, such as a 1991 bill by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) that ended the free distribution of tobacco products--a promotional device widely used by manufacturers of cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

But even that modest blow to the industry--Connelly described it as “a peanut”--required a monumental lobbying effort by anti-smoking forces, led by the California Medical Assn., a special interest with considerable clout in the Capitol.

When the tobacco lobby has a measure of its own to put forward, it often works through other groups that have a better public image.

The industry, for example, has backed a bill that would prevent employers in California from firing or refusing to hire individuals because of their use of “a lawful consumer product.” Similar measures have succeeded in 27 states over the past three years, according to the Tobacco Institute.

Opponents--including the American Lung Assn.--argue that the measure is part of a tobacco industry strategy to grant smokers the same civil rights protections as those who suffer discrimination because of their race, religion or gender.

An aide to Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside), the bill’s author, said the bill was suggested by lobbyists for the Tobacco Industry Labor Management Committee--a group financed by the Tobacco Institute and five unions representing tobacco workers.

The group hired labor lobbyists Art Carter and Joe Pasquilini to fight for the measure. Carter, who once headed occupational safety programs under former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., said the issue was “whether or not workers have the right on their own time to do what they wish.”

A former consultant to the tobacco industry, who asked that he not be named, said the labor-management group was formed “to create an entity which had access to and was acceptable to the liberal community, using labor credentials.”

The measure passed the Legislature and now goes to the governor for his approval or veto.

On some issues, more than 20 professional lobbyists have been hired to represent tobacco interests in the Capitol.

The lobbyists themselves declined to discuss their activities on the record.

Phillip M. Dowd, a former aide to Speaker Brown and now the Tobacco Institute’s Sacramento lobbyist, was typical of those who responded: “It’s best if I not comment.”

One tobacco lobbyist, who spoke only after being promised anonymity, explained the industry philosophy this way: “There’s a gag order.”

Among those representing tobacco interests in the Capitol are Terrance Flanigan, who was Wilson’s appointments secretary and now represents R. J. Reynolds, and Kathleen Snodgrass, former legal counsel to Speaker Brown, who lobbies for several tobacco companies on product liability issues.

On one occasion the industry’s lobbying tactics became public, to its embarrassment.

A year ago, anti-smoking interests distributed a detailed memo from the director of the Smokeless Tobacco Council, describing a telephone strategy session held by industry lobbyists and executives. The memo reported that Speaker Brown and Floyd had visited a cigarette manufacturer the previous fall and discussed possible legislation to stop cities and counties from barring smoking in restaurants and other public places.

The company, Philip Morris, reported spending $13,926 to cover food, lodging and transportation to New York City in 1990 for Brown and Floyd, as well as two other lawmakers, three Brown aides and guests. The company also reported paying Floyd a $1,000 honorarium the month before the trip.

Such lavish gift-giving--legal at the time--is prohibited by a new California ethics law.

On the Philip Morris-subsidized trip, Brown and Floyd advised the company in its battle to stop local smoking control laws, according to the memo, which was written by Michael J. Kerrigan, president of the Smokeless Tobacco Council.

“The Speaker believes the trick to doing this would be that such an act would have to have the ‘appearance’ of a comprehensive scheme,” Kerrigan wrote.

Kerrigan quoted Roger Mozingo, a Reynolds vice president, as saying that industry strategy would be to appear to oppose the bill.

Within weeks of the memo in June, 1991, a statute similar to the one described was inserted into a bill by Sen. Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) and was quickly approved by Floyd’s committee.

But in September, after the industry memo was leaked, the bill died unceremoniously--receiving approval from only four of 23 members on the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

Sen. Bergeson and others believe that the furor the memo created helped secure passage of her ban on the free distribution of tobacco. But the backlash has not carried over this year and anti-tobacco legislation is faring poorly.

Still, Connelly, who is leaving the Legislature this year to assume a Superior Court judgeship, said he had no regrets about his losing battle against Joe Camel.

“There comes a point where you say that some of these things are so outrageous,” the assemblyman said. “Sometimes you try, although you are consciously aware that your chances are remote. If nothing else, it is a chance to educate the public.”

Tobacco Industry Contributions

Between January , 1991, when the current legislative session began, and the June primary election, tobacco firms, their subsidiaries and trade organizations contributed $650,732 to candidates for state office and to the major political parties.

Below are the top beneficiaries of the industry’s largess.

RECIPIENT: AMOUNT

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco): $128,000

Although he sometimes votes against tobacco interests, Brown is in a position to influence the outcome of any bill. Before the practice was outlawed, Brown traveled at tobacco companies’ expense to such places as New York City and the Kentucky Derby. An attorney who maintains an outside legal practice, Brown listed Batus Inc. as a client in 1988 and 1989. Batus is the U.S. subsidiary of BAT Industries, parent of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.

Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson): $45,000

Floyd heads the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee, which anti-smoking lobbyists describe as the graveyard of anti-tobacco legislation. He has consistently voted with the industry on matters affecting smoking. He was appointed chairman by Brown, who has the power to replace him.

Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno: $37,500

One of the most influential lawmakers in the Capitol, Maddy has voted with the industry on several bills, voting against proposals to license cigarette sellers and to ban the free distribution of tobacco products.

Assemblywoman Carol Bentley (R-El Cajon): $28,994

Bentley is vice chairwoman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, which has been the battleground for several issues affecting tobacco. She was favored to win reelection against fellow GOP incumbent Dave Kelley. Advising her campaign was lobbyist Jerry Zanelli, whose firm, Governmental Advocates, represents Philip Morris in the Capitol. In the final days of the campaign, the tobacco company set up a phone bank that called more than 20,000 Republican voters on Bentley’s behalf. Despite the help, she lost the race.

SOURCE: Capitol Online, a computerized data service, and the California secretary of state.

The ‘Joe Camel’ Bill

Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson), serving his last term after being defeated in the June Democratic primary, led the opposition to the “Joe Camel” bill that would have stopped the use of cartoon characters to promote the sale of tobacco products. Listed here are key votes on the bill, which was strongly opposed by the tobacco lobby, and contributions Floyd received from tobacco-related sources.

* May 4: Campaigning for reelection, Floyd receives contributions of $5,000 from R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., which created the Joe Camel ads, and $1,000 from the Smokeless Tobacco Council.

* May 6: With Floyd voting with the majority, the bill to ban Joe Camel-type ads is defeated in the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

* May 7: Philip Morris U.S.A. donates $5,000 to Floyd’s campaign. United States Tobacco Co. contributes $1,000.

* May 13: The Assembly Judiciary Committee reconsiders the anti-Joe Camel measure. This time it is approved, with Floyd still voting against it.

* May 15: The Floyd campaign receives $5,000 from the Tobacco Institute and $6,000 from two Philip Morris subsidiaries, Kraft General Foods and Miller Brewing Co.

* May 28: Scoffing at charges that the cigarette cartoon ads are aimed at children, Floyd leads the Assembly floor fight against the bill to banish Joe Camel. The measure is defeated; the use of cartoons in tobacco product advertising remains legal in California.

* June 1: Floyd receives an additional $5,000 from R. J. Reynolds, manufacturer of Camels.

* June 2: In a three-way contest in the Democratic primary, Floyd far outspends his opponents but comes in second, losing to Juanita M. McDonald, a Carson councilwoman.