New Director of Common Cause Targets Voter Apathy

California Common Cause, a key player in the drive for political ethics reform in the state for the past two decades, has a new executive director who said he intends to revitalize the 55,000-member organization at its grass roots.

“We must do much more to rebuild the local chapters,” said James R. Wheaton. “They are pretty moribund.” He added that he hopes to expand the organization’s appeal in minority communities.

Wheaton, 32, who for the past four years has been supervising attorney of the Northern California office of the Center for Public Interest Law, has won a reputation as an articulate legal representative of Harvey Rosenfield’s Voter Revolt organization in the struggle to implement Proposition 103.

Now, he said, he will spend all of his time directing the state Common Cause organization, which is supporting one ethics initiative on the June primary election ballot and hopes that another it is backing will qualify for the November general election.

Wheaton, in a Los Angeles interview, said that beyond these immediate priorities, his “huge goal” ultimately is to place Common Cause in the forefront of an attempt to reverse the tide of popular apathy that has seen voting in many of the nation’s elections drop to new lows.

“Given what’s happening today in Eastern Europe, in South America, even what the students have been trying to do in China, the state of democracy in America is shameful,” Wheaton said.

“The congressional representatives and legislators have districts that have been turned into personal fiefdoms,” he added. “Incumbents have guaranteed seats, and in many cases have forgotten--in Washington or Sacramento--about their home districts. Instead, they’ve become part of the club.

“Special interests can block anything in the capital cities. Change has become impossible. And the result is that voter turnout is dismal. I wouldn’t be surprised if only one in three or four voters shows up at the polls this year. If I had a huge goal, it is to try to turn that around.”

In attempting to do so, Wheaton said he will have a budget of $300,000 a year, with which he must maintain offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento employing a total staff of six. Wheaton said he is moving the state headquarters from Los Angeles to San Francisco, in part to save on soaring travel costs to Sacramento, where Common Cause does much lobbying.

Wheaton’s predecessor at Common Cause was Walter Zelman, who resigned to run for the Democratic nomination for state insurance commissioner.

Wheaton is a native of Minnesota and a graduate of Brown University and the University of California’s Boalt Hall law school. He is a past chairman and president of the National Public Interest Research Group in Washington and has been a volunteer writer, coordinator and treasurer for Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and Friends of the River.

Although in the past he worked in a number of congressional campaigns, some Democratic and some Republican, as Common Cause director he said he will avoid such commitments. As a tax-exempt organization, Common Cause does not endorse candidates.