Major Conservative Consulting Firm Pushes Hotel Backed Wage Initiative

By Jorge Casuso

July 17 -- The prominent consulting firm behind some of the biggest conservative causes in recent California history quietly helped qualify a living wage initiative bankrolled by the city's luxury hotels, The Lookout has learned.

The West Los Angeles- based Dolphin Group -- which helped oust liberal State Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird and helped elect conservative Republican governors Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson -- likely will be retained to work on the campaign to pass the initiative in November.

A spokesman for the measure's sponsors confirmed that the firm is "in discussion" with hotel officials to work on the campaign, which is expected to pick up steam after the Democratic National Convention next month.

"I think the hotels are in discussion with the Dolphin Group," said Jim Sutton, an attorney with the powerful political law and lobbying firm Nielson, Merksamer, which is working on the initiative. "They did some work this summer."

"This is the hunker down phase," Sutton said in an earlier interview. "They (hotel officials) want to get some plans and some strategies. There's a very good chance that they're talking to the Dolphin Group."

The initiative, which targets businesses that receive city contracts and subsidies, is the nation's first living wage measure sponsored by business interests. Opponents of the initiative contend that the charter amendment - which would override any living wage measure the City Council might pass - would cover none of the hotel workers targeted by a union-back ordinance being studied by the council.

The Dolphin Group has a long history of pushing conservative causes - from directing Ronald Reagan's successful first campaign for California Governor in 1966 to running the unsuccessful campaign for Prop 188, a 1994 ballot initiative bankrolled by big tobacco interests.

A more than $18 million effort to water down tough local and state smoking restrictions, Prop 188 was viewed by opponents as a "Trojan Horse" initiative. Former Dem. State Assemblyman Terry Friedman called it "the most deceptive campaign in my quarter century of close observation of local politics."

In that campaign, the Dolphin Group spent an initial $8 million on direct mail and outdoor boards. Sponsored by a group calling itself Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions, the failed measure was in fact funded by the nation's top five cigarette manufacturers, including Phillip Morris, which has had a longstanding relationship with the firm.

The Dolphin Group, along with Nielson, Merksamer, also ran the 1986 campaign that resulted in the unprecedented defeat of California Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other supreme court justices, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin.

For that campaign, the Dolphin Group organized Crime Victims for Court Reform, which was comprised of parents of murdered children who opposed the liberal court. Future Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan co-chaired the group's finance committee.

The Dolphin Group was the focus of national attention when it produced a video of Willie Horton's victims describing the paroled murderer and rapist's vicious attacks. The hard-hitting attack on Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis helped bolster Vice President George Bush's presidential campaign.

The firm, which also represents an array of business interests, was less successful in 1976, when it ran Gerald Ford's unsuccessful bid for the White House. The firm also managed George Deukmejian's 1982 primary campaign for governor and was a chief handler for vice president Dan Quayle.

In 1990, the Dolphin Group was hired by the agriculture industry to quell an outcry over the use of malathion, a pesticide used to fight medfly infestations.

The Dolphin Group could replace Mark Mosher, whose San Francisco-based political consulting firm ran the campaign to qualify the initiative.

"Mark (Mosher) said, 'We'll commit through the signature-gathering phase,'" Neilsen, Merksamer's Sutton said. "The bottom line is this campaign was a lot more contentious than we anticipated."

The sponsors of the initiative, who go by the name Santa Monicans for a Living Wage, handed in nearly double the number of signatures necessary to place the initiative, which officially qualified last week, on the November ballot.

The initiative -- which follows the pattern of 32 other local living wage laws across the nation -- would require employers who receive at least $25,000 in City contracts for services to pay their workers a living wage of at least $8.32 an hour with health benefits, or $9.46 without, closely mirroring Los Angeles County's law.

Proponents of the living wage ordinance crafted by Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism (SMART) and being studied by the council have compared the proposed charter amendment to the tobacco industry running an anti-smoking initiative.

SMART is behind an unprecedented living wage proposal that targets hotels and restaurants in the city's lucrative Coastal Zone with more than 50 employees. If approved by the City Council, the proposal would make Santa Monica the nation's first municipality to require businesses with no city contracts or subsidies to pay their workers a living wage, in this case $10.69 an hour.