Mercury Insurance may not be great to its employees (you may remember last year Mercury laid off 363 of its workers), but its campaign consultants make a mint.
No wonder Kathy Fairbanks — the spokeswoman for Cal-FAIR — the Mercury Insurance ballot initiative (Prop 17) mouthpiece — keeps at it for Mercury Insurance. In fact, looks like her firm, Bicker, Castillo & Fairbanks has raked in almost $200,000 since last August. Not a bad chunk of change for six months work. But, she’s not the only one.
Jim Conran in his latest incarnation as head of Consumers First, Inc. has not done too badly working for Mercury’s execs. I mean its not Fairbank’s kind of money, but $5,000 a month for helping out George Joseph, the billionaire chairman of Mercury Insurance, is nothing to sniff at in these tough times. Especially since Mr. Conran, much like Ms. Fairbanks, has worked on or continues to work on all sorts of front group projects:
Mr. Conran is listed as the executive director for Consumers for Cable Choice. His partner in this and other front groups is Bob Johnson, an Indiana lawyer who apparently represents nearly two-dozen telecom firms. Leveraging clients at the expense of consumers, clever;
Mr. Conran is listed as the executive director for Consumers for Competitive Choice;
Mr. Conran is listed at the co-chair for Californians for Fair Auto Insurance Rates (Cal-FAIR) coalition. (He is working overtime for Mercury);
Mr. Conran is listed as the, you guessed it, executive director of the Child Safety TaskForce with again, his friend, Bob Johnson. (This is one of my favorite of his front groups. It is particularly craven. I will have more on that in my upcoming posts);
Mr. Conran also runs Credit Card Con, a project of Consumers for Competitive Choice;
Mr. Conran also heads up the Citizens to Stop the Power Grab Coalition (the website has been pulled down, but its goal is stated as: “Stop Eminent Domain Abuse in Manteca, Ripon and Escalon”) and;
Mr. Conran also helps out Truth About Splenda.
Now, we can’t know what Mr. Conran is being paid for all of these altruistic activities, but if he is cashing in from the industry folks that fund his other work, anything like Mercury’s monthly checks to him, he is doing a-okay in this economy.