Getting a Busy Signal on the Party Line

This year, the Democratic Party plans to play a serious game of political catch-up.

According to a plan being evolved by the Democratic National Committee and the nonpartisan Citizen Action organization, when the phone rings at the homes of several hundred thousand voters registered as Democrats, it will be signaling a direct pitch for the Democratic presidential candidate. Ira Arlook, executive director of Citizen Action, said the phone call will be designed to touch the issues the individual voters believe are crucial to the country.

It’s a significant step out of the rear for the DNC, which has lagged considerably behind the Republican National Committee and state GOP parties in its ability to have close touch with its registered voters and to build from that contact with a significant small-donor base.

The plan, within weeks of being formalized, would have Citizen Action (that’s the umbrella group of citizen-issue organizations in 24 states) organize a massive phone canvass of its members, including a fund-raising operation. That would all begin after the July Democratic Convention in Atlanta.

Citizen Action is nonpartisan, Arloff stressed, and it and its individual components (like Campaign California here) get involved in electoral politics only when two conditions are operating: that there are issues at stake in the election that are on the organization’s agenda and that there is a significant difference between the candidates on these issues. Because of its stance on issues, Arlook said, it would be unlikely that the organization would support the sure-shot Republican nominee, Vice President George Bush.

The kinds of issues that Citizen Action and its affiliates stress and organize around are toxic hazards, nuclear power, health care, jobs, insurance rates and a wide range of pocketbook consumer issues.

The organizations, which got under way in the mid-1970s, have flourished. Now, the combined membership of the federation of state Citizen Action organizations is well over 1.75 million--and, according to Arlook, growing at a rate of 250,000 people a year. Arlook stressed that many of the members of Citizen Action are people whose concern about specific issues has propelled them into an organizational involvement for the first time. Most of the Citizen Action members, Arlook said, are not strongly partisan, and so are not people who would be targeted or touched by most political party efforts.

CROWD THOSE CALENDARS--Get out those dancing shoes. May 3, the Joffrey Ballet opens its 1988 spring season with the first of three patron nights (and guaranteed good parties). The honorary chair of the Spring Patron nights is First Lady Nancy Reagan, with benefit co-chairs to be Joan Burns, Marilyn Lynch, Noelle Siart and Marjorie Lord Volk. Look for some of the newest Patrons, like “Fatal Attraction” star Ann Archer with Terry Jastrow, Emily and Doc Severinsen, returning board members Timothy and Terri Childs, new board members Michael and Phyllis Hennigan, and Sid and Nancy Petersen. . . .

That great group out at Claremont University Center and Graduate School has done it again. On May 13, it’s the seventh annual President’s Forum, featuring Radcliffe College president Matina S. Horner, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Claremont Prof. Daniel A. Mazmanian. The forum’s topic of discussion, “Power: Ambivalence, Ambiguities, Alternatives,” will be moderated by Claremont president John David Maguire. . . .

Nine new members will be welcomed into the Los Angeles Fashion Group Saturday--the first men to ever gain membership. Those spotlighted at the black-tie party in the Cary Grant Pavilion at Hollywood Park are Philip Hawley, chair and CEO of Carter Hawley Hale Stores; designer David Hayes; designer James Galanos; Giorgio’s Fred Hayman; Jim Watterson, May Co.’s very special vice president of public relations and special events; California Mart’s Sidney Morse; Federated’s Allen Questrom; the delightful designer Nolan Miller; the County Museum of Art’s Edward Maeder; and, posthumously, designer Rudi Gernreich. The evening benefits the Rudi Gernreich Scholarship Fund. . . .

Happy Birthday, to the senior former Gov. Brown. That’s right, time flies when you’re having fun, and it is Pat Brown’s 83rd birthday, to be celebrated at the Beverly Hilton May 2 with a speech by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The event will also inaugurate the new Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.