Election update: in California, the GOP's high hopes are in races for low posts

National Review, Oct 5, 1992 by Robert Stutzman, Lance Izumi

WITH POLLS showing George Bush trailing in California, it is natural to think Republican candidates for Congress and the legislature are in for a drubbing. In any other year that might be so, but one factor gives GOP candidates a fighting momentum: reapportionment.

Today, under gerrymandered district lines, Democrats enjoy a 47 to 33 advantage in the California Assembly. But the new boundaries drawn by the state Supreme Court reflect population growth in inland areas, increasing the number of conservative-leaning suburban constituencies. This encouraged conservative candidates to enter the June primary. What emerged are mostly conservative nominees who have become the nucleus of the Republican drive to achieve an Assembly majority for the first time in decades.

The race for the open seat in the 44th District in Pasadena was typical. Eleven Republican candidates vied for the nomination. The battle finally turned into a showdown between conservative Bill Hoge and liberal Barbara Pieper, who was backed by Governor Wilson. As happened in most such confrontations on June 2, the conservative won, and, in a largely Republican district, Hoge is looking like a winner in November.

Mrs. Pieper's loss, however, doesn't mean the "Year of the Woman" has no resonance for Republicans. Although largely ignored by the media, three of the GOP's strongest Assembly nominees are conservative women. In the newly created 25th District in the Central Valley, Barbara Keating-Edh, former president of the anti-Nader Consumer Alert organization, is the GOP standard bearer. A Vietnam widow who once ran for U.S. Senate in New York on the Conservative Party ticket, Miss Keating-Edh has drawn comparisons to former Assemblyman Carol Hallet, a savvy conservative who served as Assembly GOP leader in the early 1980s. Her Democratic opponent, Modesto school-district employee Margaret Snyder, was tapped early by Willie Brown, who steered $50,000 to her for the primary. Miss Snyder is said to have visited a plant site where she made a point of boasting to a company executive that her chief aide was a former EPA regulator. The executive promptly called Miss Keating-Edh and offered to host a fund raiser.

To the south lies the less strongly Republican 64th District. Hesperia businessman Kathleen Honeycutt won the primary. Asked by a reporter for her position on gun control, she replied: "I carry a .38 undercover special with hollow points and I've hunted deer from horseback." Yes, the NRA has endorsed her.

In a mainly blue-collar district around Santa Ana, Jo Ellen Allen, a former college political-science instructor and president of Eagle Forum in California, is challenging one of the legislature's premier chameleons, Assemblyman Tom Umberg. As the only legislative Democrat left in Orange County (in a marginal district where reapportionment gave the GOP several crucial additional percentage points) Umberg has a history of bobbing and weaving on the issues, so as to do right by his political patron, Willie Brown, without alienating his largely conservative constituents. He recently abstained, for instance, on a resolution that would have declared the Boy Scouts a "private,' organization whose rules can't be second-guessed by the courts. Mrs. Allen, articulate, energetic, and well-funded by the Orange County Republican machine, is positioned to pounce.

While estimates differ over how large the Assembly Republican Caucus will be after November 3, everyone looks for gains, possibly to as many as 39 seats. Gaining an outright majority in the 80-member Assembly, it's generally agreed, must wait one more election, although there is brave talk that enough conservative Democrats can be found to form a Republican-led conservative majority.

One important result of any sizable GOP gain could be the toppling of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Many Democrats hold Brown responsible for inciting the voter anger that led to the enactment of term limits. Brown also failed to fracture the Republican Assembly Caucus during the reapportionment fight, allowing Governor Wilson to throw the issue to the state Supreme Court. And the governor's victory over Brown in the state budget stalemate has weakened the speaker even more.

On to the House

ALTHOUGH reapportionment created more Republican-leaning congressional districts, the result has included frustrations for the Right. In several primary races--in the Pomona and Riverside districts, for instance--the conservative vote was divided among a number of candidates, allowing liberals to squeak by.

In the 24th District, stretching from the San Fernando Valley to Malibu Beach, Republican Tom McClintock, the Assembly's leading budget whiz and watchdog, is challenging veteran Congressman Anthony Beilenson, one of the biggest spenders in the House.

"Just the bills Beilenson has sponsored this session would cost tax-payers $261 billion," says McClintock. Beilenson has also been an enthusiastic supporter of tax hikes, including a proposed 52-cent-pergallon increase on gas. Don't count Beilenson out, however, becaue he has formidable weapons at his dis- posal. Though the district is new territory for him (he moved into it rather than face a stiff primary in his old district), he is backed by the powerful machine run by Congressmen Henry Waxman and Howard Berman.