SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22—Opinion surveys indicate that Californians favor approval of a sweeping measure on the Nov. 4 ballot that would impose some of the nation’s strictest controls on toxic chemicals, a proposal that is drawing mounting fire from business and agricultural leaders.

Polls indicate that voters also support a proposal to establish English as the state’s official language but disapprove of a measure placed on the ballot by supporters of Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., the conspiracy theorist, that would require the quarantining of people suffering from the disease AIDS and another proposal that would sharply limit salaries of state and local government employees.

As the fall campaign enters its final two weeks, political candidates are embroiled in three major races in California: a battle for the governorship between George Deukmejian, the Republican incumbent, and Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, a Democrat; a tightening contest between United States Senator Alan Cranston, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Representative Ed Zschau, and a fight by Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two associate justices of the State Supreme Court to keep their jobs in the face of a well-financed effort to remove them by political conservatives and other critics of the court.

But, as is often the case in California elections, some of the most intense political warfare is occurring not between rival candidates but over proposed laws that were placed on the ballot through the voter petitions and are being debated by means of multimillion-dollar television advertising campaigns. $5.7 Million for TV Ads Spokesmen for many of the nation’s largest petroleum, chemical and large farming corporations say they expect to raise $5.7 million for a television-oriented campaign to defeat the proposed toxic chemical control measure.

If approved, the measure would make it unlawful to knowingly discharge chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects where they are likely to contaminate drinking water; severely restrict the use of more than 180 specific substances, including 10 pesticides; double penalties for unlawful dumping of toxic materials to as much as $250,000 a day, and allow private citizens to sue to enforce the law if government agencies failed to act.

Business and farm leaders contend the law would not do any more to make drinking water safer than do present laws but could add hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the cost of doing business in California.

”One day people will wake up with $3 lettuce, and they’ll wonder what happened,” a grower in the Imperial Valley said recently at a meeting of farmers who were protest the measure.

In northern California’s high technology industry belt, John A. Young, president of the Hewlett-Packard Company, warned other executives in the electronics industry that the law’s passage would ”put our industry in the untenable position of complying with provisions that are impossible to meet.”

Tom Hayden, the former antiwar activist who is now a Democratic State Assemblyman and a leader of the drive to approve the measure, contended in an interview that business leaders were ”over-reacting” and that many voters no longer trusted their word or that of leaders in government that their drinking water is safe.

Among the 54 percent of voters who were familiar with the measure when the most recent California Poll, conducted by Mervin Field, was taken Sept. 28-Oct. 2, the proposal was supported by a margin of more than 2 to 1. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

Mr. Hayden and other supporters of the proposal say they are optimistic about its approval. But the coalition of business and farm groups that opposes it has only recently started its principal television advertising campaign, and political experts in the state said they expect it to be directed at the large number of undecided voters. These voters, in typical California elections, tend to reject unfamiliar ballot measures, especially those that have been attacked in well-financed television campaigns.

An equally contentious final round of campaigning is expected for the ballot measure that would make English the state’s official language and allow any resident to bring suit against the state to seek enforcement of the law.

‘Erosion of English as Bond’

S. I. Hayakawa, who was president of San Francisco State University in the 1960’s and later represented California as a Republican United States Senator, heads a group that seeks enactment of this proposition and similar laws in other states. He argues that the California law should be passed as a symbolic expression of disapproval to what he says is increasing acceptence of ”linguistic pluralism” and ”ethnic separatiasm” and the ”erosion of English as our common bond.”

Asian and Hispanic organizations contend the proposal is racist and would result in the loss of bilingual education programs and lead to discrimination against immigrants.

Mr. Field’s recent poll indicated that an unusually large number of the state’s voters, 77 percent, were aware of the measure and that it was favored by a huge margin, 57 percent to 13 percent.

After an onslaught of attacks by public employee unions and governmental and public university employees, recent polls indicate that voters appear to be growing cold to a once more popular measure proposed by Paul Gann, co-author with the late Howard Jarvis of the ballot proposition of 1978 that limited property taxes. The latest measure would limit the Governor’s salary to $80,000 a year and that of all other public employees to $64,000.

Pollsters say reports that Mr. LaRouche is behind a ballot measure that would declare AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, an infectious and communicable disease and require quarantining of its victims, has been a major factor in voters’ disapproval of it by more than 2 to 1. The measure has been denounced by homosexual groups, the clergy and a wide range of other critics in the state.



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