It was an inspirational moment, even for a roomful of lawyers.
Richard Wooley recalls the moment when he and about 1,200 fellow attorneys, all of whom make their living representing injured workers, jumped to their feet during a luncheon at Rancho Mirage last month as celebrity political strategist James Carville called them to action in his trademark Louisiana drawl.
Carville urged the buttoned-down members of the California Applicants' Attorneys Assn. to "do whatever it takes" to fight Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and business allies who want to reduce workers' compensation insurance premiums paid by companies.
"Don't let the powerful take away medical care and benefits for people hurt on the job," the onetime advisor to President Clinton told the crowd, according to Wooley and others who were there. "Take out the envelopes. Where it says 'Pledge,' mark 'Yes.' Don't write three figures, but four or more."
Carville's speech, for which he was paid $20,000, yielded about $2.4 million in checks and pledges for donations, Wooley said. For the lawyers in the room, it was "a good investment."
The reason: Schwarzenegger is asking the Legislature, which passed a workers' comp reform package last fall, to clamp down harder on the rising costs and skyrocketing insurance premiums bedeviling the $29-billion-a-year system. The governor wants, among other things, claims handling to be streamlined and barriers erected to make lawsuits more difficult to file.
Time is of the essence, Schwarzenegger says -- to save jobs, to keep firms from fleeing the state and to rebuild the recession-racked economy. The Republican governor has vowed to take his proposal "directly to the people" through a November ballot initiative if the Democratic-controlled Legislature doesn't act by March 1.
For their part, labor leaders and the lawyers who help workers' comp applicants navigate the system's bureaucracy are determined to protect what they contend are important worker rights; lawyers also may be motivated by the prospect of losing fees if reforms lighten their caseloads. Wooley, immediate past president of the attorneys group, hopes Carville's cheerleading will spur members to bankroll the opening round of what may turn into a classic California initiative fight.
"We have to prepare ourselves now," Wooley said, "because if we wait until [the initiative] is coming down our throat, it will be too late."
