"I think I ought to have the right to lie to you if I think it will help me win."
--Dolphin Group Founder Bill Roberts, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 13, 1982

1966--Republican political consultants Bill Roberts and Stu Spencer elect Ronald Reagan governor of California

1972--Roberts qualifies for the ballot and manages the campaign for Proposition 22, an initiative for California's fall statewide election. Prop. 22 would have outlawed strikes and boycotts by farm workers. Before the election, then-Secretary of State Jerry Brown asks a Sacramento Superior Court judge to remove the measure from the ballot because of widespread fraud involved in collecting signatures. Signature gatherers for the grower-financed initiative falsely tell petition signers that Prop. 22 is supported by Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers. Pro-grower Prop. 22 is decisively rejected by the voters.

1976--The Dolphin Group, which is founded by Roberts in 1974, runs the campaign against Proposition 14, a statewide initiative on the November ballot sponsored by the UFW that would have protected the state's landmark 1975 farm labor law from being weakened by agribusiness. Roberts defeats Prop. 14 with misleading TV ads that portray opponents as small family farmers (nearly all his money comes from corporate agribusiness groups) and suggest people will see their property rights trampled by intruders coming into their backyards.

1979--California's lettuce and vegetable industry hires the Dolphin Group after thousands of UFW members walk out on strike in January demanding pay and benefit increases. The Dolphin Group supplies PR agents who act as spokesmen for the growers, especially after a UFW lettuce striker is shot to death on the picketline by grower foremen. The PR firm places full-paid ads in major daily newspapers across the nation attacking the strikers and falsely claiming their pay demands exceed President Carter's mandatory wage-price guidelines, which specifically exempt agriculture.

1980s & '90s--California table grape growers hire the Dolphin Group to oppose the UFW's grape boycott. The industry forms the "Grape Workers and Farmers Coalition" out of the PR firm's West Los Angeles offices. Coalition spokesmen repeatedly tell elected officials, reporters and community groups across the country that their's is a legitimate organization representing both grape workers and farmers. Coalition spokesman Adam Ortega admits under oath on April 2 and 6, 1992 that his group has no officers or independent offices outside the Dolphin Group and that he is exclusively supervised by executives of the PR agency. Ortega also could not name a single farm worker member of the Grape Workers and Farmers Coalition.

1996--The "Strawberry Workers and Farmers Alliance" is formed to handle public relations against a major organizing campaign among strawberry workers by the UFW and the AFL-CIO. A UFW supporter in L.A. reports that Gary Calarosa, the account executive representing the Strawberry Workers and Farmers Alliance, also speaks for the Grape Workers and Farmers Coalition-all out of the Dolphin Group's West L.A. offices. At one point, the Strawberry Workers and Farmers Alliance demands that the San Francisco Chronicle issue a correction of an unattributed statement in one of its articles describing the Alliance as "anti-union."

The Dolphin Group becomes a member of the staunchly anti-union Western Growers Assn., sponsored by WGA's lobbyist in Sacramento. WGA attorneys represent the strawberry grower that has plowed under crops, reduced workers' hours and shut down the operation in retaliation for voting for the UFW in state-conducted union elections.

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In addition to its PR work against farm workers for agribusiness clients, the Dolphin Group has become a major political consulting firm for Republican candidates. Bill Roberts and the Dolphin Group were forced to quit running GOP gubernatorial candidate George Deukmejian's successful 1982 campaign over a "racial remark" he made concerning Democrat candidate Tom Bradley.