3 Candidates for Insurance Chief Set Funds Pace

Political contribution reports in the primary races for insurance commissioner Friday showed three rival Democratic candidates in the race far out-raising the rest of the field.

Through May 19, state Sen. John Garamendi, State Board of Equalization Chairman Conway Collis and television commentator Bill Press had all raised more than $600,000. But Garamendi and Collis got a majority of what they raised through loans that they made to themselves out of leftover campaign funds or from personal resources.

Garamendi reported a total of $700,000 in loans received and Collis $673,000. A fourth Democratic candidate, San Francisco attorney Ray Bourhis, reported receiving loans of $240,000.

Press, by contrast, reported nothing in loans, although a check of his filing indicated that of the $603,040 he has raised, at least $215,000 has come from lawyers, paralegals or secretaries working in their firms or members of their families, and that at least another $56,000 has come from medical practitioners, mainly chiropractors.

Press has been criticized in the campaign for taking so much money from professions with a vested interest in the current auto insurance claims system, with its high payouts to lawyers and medical practitioners.

But the heavy loans reported by Garamendi, Collis and Bourhis raise another kind of question: Will these men, if elected, try to repay their loans by raising money after the campaign is over from the lawyers, the medical practitioners or other special interest groups?

This is the first time that the insurance commissioner’s post has been an elective office. Before the passage of Proposition 103 in 1988 made it one, some critics, pointing to other states that have had such elective posts, said they feared that it would shortly become prey to all kinds of special interest contributions.

Of candidates besides Press whose reports were available Friday, Garamendi reported raising a total of $1,117,372; Collis $748,795; Bourhis $295,037; Democrat Walter Zelman $78,898; Republican Wes Bannister $67,964; Republican John L. (Jack) Harden $35,103; Democrat Michael Blanco $28,116, and Democrat Larry Murphy $4,275.

The candidates are required by law to file supplementary contribution reports on late fund-raising before the primary, so these figures may increase sharply for some candidates by Election Day.

In another development Friday, Garamendi became the latest candidate to announce that he will not be filling out consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s questionnaire of commissioner candidates. He, like Zelman and Bannister, suggested that Nader is using the questionnaire as a setup to support the Collis candidacy.

Garamendi called Nader’s 71 questions “a pseudo-examination that does not discuss the issues but instead attempts to showcase and aggrandize one candidate at the expense of others.”

Nader has called a Washington press conference for Tuesday to reveal the results of his questionnaire, along with his comparative scoring of the candidates’ answers. Several of the candidates responding to the questionnaire have added their own questions and answers or statements, and all except for Collis have complained that some of the questions are framed in such a way that only Collis could respond affirmatively.