System Itself on Trial in Lobbyist Case : Corruption: The indictment of Clayton R. Jackson raises issues central to the way money influences legislation. When is a campaign contribution a bribe?

SACRAMENTO — Lobbyist Clayton R. Jackson’s indictment on political corruption charges has jolted members of the Capitol lobbying corps, causing many to ask whether his alleged conduct is different from what they do every day.

Some believe that there is little difference.

One of the most successful Sacramento lobbyists, Jackson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of offering payments to former Sen. Alan Robbins in return for the lawmaker’s help on bills benefiting Jackson’s clients.

Like Jackson, many lobbyists direct campaign contributions to legislators for their clients as part of a multi-pronged strategy to woo lawmakers and win favorable treatment for legislation. Now some worry that those checks could be viewed as bribes and that they could be prosecuted.

“I don’t see any difference at all,” said one veteran lobbyist, who asked not to be identified. “We all make contributions.”

Others contend that lobbyists and public officials refuse to recognize that the illegal exchange of contributions for legislative action remains commonplace in Sacramento.

“The people around this town don’t get it,” said a former state official, who asked that he not be identified. “They don’t understand they are corrupt. . . . To some extent, the lobbying corps, the way the traditional lobbying corps does business, is on trial here.”

Another lobbyist, former Fresno lawmaker and Appellate Judge George N. Zenovich, defends lobbyists and is sympathetic to Jackson: “Everybody and his brother (lawmakers) is raising money right now, so what does a lobbyist do? Do you just reject everybody or give?”

Zenovich said prosecutors are using the Jackson case to put the whole political system on trial for its dependence on sizable campaign contributions. “If (Jackson’s) convicted, he’ll be convicted because he’s a lobbyist,” he said.

However, other lobbyists said they are dismayed by recently released government transcripts of discussions between Jackson and Robbins, showing that the two men talked almost interchangeably about money and legislation.

The conversations were secretly recorded by Robbins, who in 1991 turned FBI informant as he went about his duties as the powerful chairman of the Senate Insurance, Claims and Corpora tions Committee. Late that year, Robbins resigned from office and pleaded guilty to racketeering and tax evasion charges.

At one August, 1991, dinner meeting, Robbins and Jackson discussed moving workers’ compensation legislation to what the lobbyist called “the friendly confines” of Robbins’ committee. The talk turned to $250,000 that Jackson had promised to raise for Robbins from clients who stood to benefit.

“I hear everything completely,” Jackson declared. “We’ve been working together for too long . . . not for me to understand all the nuances.”

Jackson is a practicing attorney whose client list has included insurance companies; GTECH, the state’s primary lottery contractor, and beer maker Anheuser-Busch.

Jackson’s attorney, Donald H. Heller, has argued that it was Robbins, seeking to reduce his sentence, who repeatedly turned the conversations to cash. Unless Jackson wanted to hurt his clients, he had little choice but to appear to go along, Heller said.

“I’ve used the analogy of sexual harassment,” Heller said. “A woman is the sole support of her family. She doesn’t accede to the demands (of her boss), but puts him off.”

Many Capitol lobbyists have rallied to Jackson’s support. Almost 50 lobbyists--many from Sacramento’s largest and most financially successful firms--have signed on to the Clay Jackson Legal Rights & Defense Committee. The group has raised about $100,000 toward Jackson’s legal fees, said one of the group’s organizers, Peter B. Necarsulmer, a public relations consultant and Jackson’s longtime friend.

Supporters range “from Clay’s old friends, who know him as an honest, good friend and who can’t believe this, to those who have a very, very clear recognition of the implications for the advocacy profession and political contributions,” Necarsulmer said.

One of Jackson’s most outspoken backers is lobbyist Donald C. Burns, who often worked with Jackson promoting legislation for various insurance clients. Both inevitably got to know Robbins, who chaired the insurance committee.

Burns said that Robbins often mixed discussion of legislation with talk of campaign fund-raising.

“Alan Robbins has asked me for money in the same conversation with bills,” Burns said. “I said: ‘Alan, don’t do that.’ (But) Alan had a habit of doing that. He’d say: ‘It’s convenient. Don’t make me work any harder than I have to.’ ”

However, Burns said that once Robbins agreed to support a bill it did not matter whether clients delivered campaign contributions or not. “I could tell Alan no, and for me there was never a quid pro quo ,” Burns said.

Since 1974, when Californians overwhelmingly approved the state political reform act, lobbyists and lawmakers have agreed on an unwritten code of conduct on how to deliver campaign contributions without breaking the law.

As long as the contributions were properly disclosed, as long as money and legislation were not discussed in the same conversation, lobbyists and lawmakers thought they were safe. The purpose of the money might be to influence a lawmaker’s action, but as long as the aim stayed unspoken, lobbyists and legislators believed that there was no problem.

Attempts to divorce discussion of a bill from talk of an upcoming fund-raiser are sometimes ludicrously transparent. One former lawmaker was known to stand up and turn 360 degrees before changing a discussion of legislation to “a completely unrelated matter”--the purchase of tickets to a campaign fund-raiser, according to a source familiar with the federal investigation.

The complacency was shattered in August, 1988, when the FBI raided several Capitol offices. The raid ended a two-year sting operation in which undercover agents posed as businessmen and spent money freely to win support for legislation to help their bogus companies. In the next three years, three former state senators--Democrats Joseph B. Montoya, Paul B. Carpenter and Robbins--were found guilty of corruption charges. Carpenter’s conviction was overturned on appeal, and he awaits a retrial. He has also been named a defendant in the Jackson case.

Meanwhile, urged on by groups such as California Common Cause, the Legislature barred its members from taking sizable gifts and honorariums from those seeking legislation. And, for the first time, lobbyists and lawmakers were required to sit through sessions on ethics and the law.

In April, 1991, lobbyist Jackson sat through one such ethics course, in which he was handed an outline of the federal racketeering statute. It was two years later that a federal grand jury indicted him for allegedly violating that law.

During one of those dry, almost scholarly sessions, deputy Atty. Gen. W. Scott Thorpe warned lobbyists that prosecutors have “great discretion in determining what is a bribe as opposed to a legal campaign contribution.”

Thorpe told the lobbyists: “It is frustrating to many of you that there are no black-white lines.”

But U.S. Atty. George L. O’Connell said recently that the line separating a campaign contribution and a bribe is clear enough.

“This isn’t rocket scientist stuff,” O’Connell said. “You cannot connect campaign contributions to specific legislation.” He said that if there is “a clear and unambiguous understanding” that money donated to legislators is in exchange for official action, “then the money given them is a bribe.”

The difference between a bribe and a legitimate campaign contribution can be subtle.

One lobbyist said: “If a bill is coming up next week and there’s a fund-raiser tonight, and the legislator knows I’m going to the fund-raiser, everybody knows there could be a connection. The lobbyist knows that, the legislator knows that and the client knows that.”

UCLA law professor Daniel H. Lowenstein said that state law defines a bribe very broadly as “anything of value or advantage” given with “corrupt intent” to influence a public official “unlawfully.”

“The law of bribery is surprisingly broad and inclusive,” Lowenstein said, “and, therefore, it’s probably the case that a large number of routine campaign contributions from special interest groups could fit within the definition of bribery.”