Slate Mailer Sleaze in L.A.

Dan Walters, veteran political columnist for the Sacramento Bee, says most publishers of slate mailers are more mercenary than Levine or Kaptain. "Everybody knows, but nobody will say publicly, that much of it is a shakedown," Walters says. Slate-card publishers "go to a campaign and say, 'Pay us X dollars, or we'll endorse your opponent for free!' "

Selling spots on slate mailers is thought to be unique to Californian, the product of a purposely designed weak-party system from Progressive-era reformers who wanted to bar the parties from setting up handpicked candidates to run in purely local races such as mayor.

ILLUSTRATION BY FRED NOLAND

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More About

• Tom Kaptain
• Larry Levine
• Allan Hoffenblum
• Politics
• Local Politics

Because the parties were banned from paying for election mailers, local candidates and their strategists banded together to create joint campaign mail and split the mailing costs. For years, Levine says, "It was just doing 'joint mail' to save money."

But in the 1970s, Democratic consultants Michael Berman and Carl D'Agostino, who ran Berman & D'Agostino — or BAD — began turning it into a far crasser industry, albeit almost by accident.

"They used to send out three mailers" promoting all the candidates who had hired them as consultants, says Allan Hoffenblum, a veteran consultant, and those mailers were carefully designed to look "like [they were from] three different sources."

The Berman and D'Agostino sleight-of-hand was so effective that other Democrats started begging for spots on the mailers — so BAD started charging money for ad space while giving its own candidate-clients free space.

Soon Hoffenblum, Levine and others started imitating them, and the next wave of consultants flat-out sold the spots for profit.

"When consultants saw how much money we were making, every consultant said, 'I want a slate card!' " Hoffenblum says.

Los Angeles voters never really caught on to the deception.

Mike Shimpock, a political consultant with SG&A Campaigns, openly admits that it's "involuntary marketing" to voters. "You have to market to people that aren't willing — and the way that's done is repetition," sending out piles of mailers with the same politician hopefuls listed again and again.

Jackie Lacey, L.A. County's first female and first black district attorney, spent most of her campaign cash during the 2012 primary — more than $700,000 — buying space on 24 different slate mailers.

Many of her "endorsers" had inventive names: "California Latino Voters' Guide," "Democrats for a Better California," "Republican Voter Checklist" and "Independent Voters League." These weren't legit organizations. Just bite-size ads.

Her primary victory over rival Alan Jackson was "living proof that slate mailers work," insists Fred Huebscher, a slate-mailer publisher. "She had much less money [than Jackson] but was on almost every piece of slate mail."

Kaptain, who is openly ambivalent about his industry, says, "You get a little nervous. ... You wish [voters] followed this stuff closely."

Reach the writer at hillelaron@mac.com.