Consultant's e-mail raises ethical concerns

SACRAMENTO — The night Darrell Steinberg was chosen to be the next leader of the California Senate, his campaign consultant, Richie Ross, sent out a flurry of enthusiastic e-mails to people in his political network.

"I am pleased that my 10-year client and friend" has been elected the next Senate president pro tem, Ross wrote, adding that Steinberg's ascension would "be good for the issues we care about." Ross added in one e-mail: "Keep this relationship in mind and feel free to call on me if I can ever be useful."

Ross, a veteran Sacramento operative, denied that he was trading on his relationship with the newly powerful Steinberg to solicit clients.

But one of the state's leading good-government advocates said the e-mails' implications were ethically questionable.

Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause, said she was not surprised that a consultant might "try to drum up business in whatever way they can."

But after being read the contents of the e-mails, Feng said: "The idea that a consultant might be providing special access concerns me. . . . There shouldn't be a special channel to Darrell Steinberg, and it was wrong to suggest that somebody can provide that special channel."

In an interview, Ross said he had merely been trying to tell people in his circle, mostly union activists and Democratic politicians who are not familiar with the Capitol's inner workings, that Steinberg shared many of their political values.

For example, Ross said, "A lot of people didn't know Darrell did Prop. 61," the successful 2004 initiative that increased funding for mental health services.

But, he said, people who know about his relationship with Steinberg have "come to me with healthcare issues."

"There has never been a single example, not once, where I've gotten involved in influence-peddling," Ross said, adding that he personally lobbies only on farmworker legislation.

His firm, Ross Communications, is registered to lobby the Legislature for seven clients: two Indian tribes, two unions, the city of Livingston, the association of children's hospitals and the association of lawyers who represent injured workers.

Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, disputed Ross' characterization of their relationship Wednesday.

"I would say Richie's a friend," he said in an interview. "But client -- it's not technically accurate, because I have not employed a consultant since the 2006 elections."