Statewide Interest : Grisham-Green State Senate Race Watched Far Outside 33rd District

To an outsider, the top contenders in the special 33rd state Senate District election would appear to be cut from the same cloth.

Both Assemblyman Wayne Grisham and City Councilman Cecil N. Green are from Norwalk and both go to great lengths to embrace the same suburban values held dear by the district’s largely conservative blue-collar constituency.

Republican Grisham, 64, and Democrat Green, 63, both support the death penalty, oppose Medi-Cal cuts and talk of protecting and strengthening the family unit.

But the similarities end there, especially when it comes to education, transportation and the implementation of Proposition 65, the anti-toxics initiative approved by Californians last November.

On education and the anti-toxics law, the differences fall along party lines, with Grisham endorsing Gov. George Deukmejian’s handling of both issues. Green, however, has denounced the governor’s proposed cuts in special school programs for minority, handicapped and gifted children, and he said Deukmejian has been “dragging his feet” on putting Proposition 65 into practice.

In the end, however, Tuesday’s race to replace former Sen. Paul Carpenter (D-Cypress) may hinge more on the reputations, personalities and campaign tactics of Grisham and Green than the two men’s viewpoints.

Although eight candidates are in the race, Grisham and Green are regarded as the front-runners. If none of the challengers wins a majority of the votes cast, then the top vote-getters from each party will compete in a May 12 runoff.

The issues in recent weeks have been overshadowed by charges on both sides.

Carpenter, who vacated the Senate seat after his election to the state Board of Equalization, accused Grisham of making sexual advances to a secretary and then firing her when she rebuffed him. Grisham denied the accusation.

And Green has alleged that Grisham distorted the councilman’s record in mailers sent to many of the district’s 285,290 registered voters in northwest Orange and Southeast Los Angeles counties.

Green was so unnerved by what he called “falsehoods” in Grisham’s literature, that he labled the Assemblyman “a liar” at a Cerritos candidates’ forum. Visibly angry, Green stared long and hard at Grisham as he said, “I thought you were a better man than that.”

Grisham has since said he did not see some of the mailers prepared by a Sacramento consultant before they were sent out. Also, several campaign aides said Grisham was “very upset” that some of the allegations about Green in the flyers may not have been true. One mailer said Green had not supported Proposition 51, the so-called “deep pockets” initiative limiting cities’ liability, and had not taken a stand on Proposition 13, the property tax cutting measure approved by voters in 1978. Green said he has proved both allegations are false.

Another letter sent to voters by state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Northridge) has also drawn fire from Green--and an apology from Davis. In the letter, which endorses Grisham, Davis says that Green failed to publicly oppose the reconfirmation of then-Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other state Supreme Court justices. But Green is listed on a March, 1985, press release as one of several hundred people working with Davis’ own committee, Californians to Defeat Rose Bird.

Called to Apologize

Davis called Green personally on Tuesday to apologize for the mistake. Hunt Braly, the senator’s administrative assistant, said Davis agreed to sign the letter after receiving assurances from Grisham’s political consultants, Tony Marsh and Associates, that the allegations in it were true. “The senator (Davis) certainly regrets that he was misinformed as to the accuracy of the research,” Braly said.

Green said the letter was another example of the “cheap, low-blow campaigning that my opponent is engaging in. He has challenged my integrity . . . and he will be held accountable.”

Because this is the only state Senate race this year, it has significance well beyond district boundaries. Both candidates have received money and endorsements from around the state. And the leadership of each party--including Deukmejian and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles)--have placed a premium on winning the vacant seat.

As of Monday, Grisham said his polls showed him leading Green by a margin of 37% to 25%. But he said the same poll revealed that more than 30% of the district’s voters were still undecided.

Both candidates are better known in Los Angeles County, where three-quarters of the district’s voters live in Downey, Norwalk, Lakewood, Cerritos, Bellflower, Santa Fe Springs, South Whittier and Hawaiian Gardens. Aides say Grisham and Green are both virtually unknown in the Orange County portion of the district, and they expect voters in Buena Park, La Palma, Cypress and Los Alamitos to cast ballots along party lines.

Owned Muffler Shops

Green was elected to the Norwalk council in 1972, and owned a chain of muffler shops in the area until the mid-1970s when he sold the business, later becoming a private planning and zoning consultant. Grisham, a former Norwalk-La Mirada real estate agent, served two terms in Congress before he was defeated in 1982. Two years later, he beat Cerritos school board member Dianne Xitco to win the 63rd Assembly seat, and he easily won reelection last November.

To win, both men say they must carry the heart of the district--Norwalk, Downey, Bellflower and Cerritos.

Chief among voters’ concerns in the district, Green said, is education, specifically those programs targeted for cuts in the governor’s new budget. Deukmejian wants to phase out the gifted education program, as well as five other special programs for needy and underachieving children in order to finance a class-size reduction effort in public school grades 1, 2 and 3. About 200,000 of the nearly 5 million students in California public schools have been identified as gifted by means of IQ tests.

“Eliminating those programs is a disgrace,” Green said at his Norwalk campaign headquarters, a converted automobile showroom on Firestone Boulevard. “I’m all in favor of reducing class size, but not this way. . . .”

Green, who has been endorsed by the California Teachers Assn. and several other large labor groups, said the governor should dip into the state’s $1-billion surplus to hire more teachers and build new classrooms.

Grisham backs Deukmejian’s education cuts, but believes the savings should be pumped into teacher salaries.

“What good will it do to reduce the class size by two students? Nothing. A good teacher can handle 29 students just as easily as 27,” Grisham said as he paced in an upstairs office at his Downey election headquarters. “The problem is we can’t attract enough good teachers because they are getting better offers to go into private industry. . . . We’ve got to pay them more.”

Gifted students, Grisham said, will continue to excel even if special programs catering to their needs are phased out. He believes that more attention should be focused on borderline students who are in jeopardy of not finishing school.

“I’m not worried about the extremely smart child,” he said. “He is going to succeed in spite of how we screw him up and in spite of the teacher. I don’t have to have a special class for him because he’s already smarter than most teachers.”

Both candidates agree that Southern California is in the midst of a transportation crisis with gridlock on freeways and major surface streets a real possibility.

One solution, Grisham said, is increasing the sales tax on gasoline a penny or two to pay for highway improvements and new roads. Green contends that the money for roads is already in state and local coffers, “it’s just badly managed and poorly spent.”

Raising the sales tax on gas, Green said, would hit truck drivers hardest. “And in turn they will pass it along to consumers in the form of higher prices at the store,” Green said. “I’m flatly against raising any taxes.”

Generally opposed to any tax increases, Grisham said the state has no choice if it wants to build new roads to ease freeway congestion.

“Sometimes,” he said, “there’s just no way around it. . . . This would be a user fee, and I support that.”

Green is sharply critical of the governor’s handling of Proposition 65, the anti-toxics initiative. Last week, Deukmejian released a list of 29 chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects in humans. By November, warnings about the harmful effects of the toxic substances must be issued by businesses that produce, sell or use the chemicals. Green, like a number of labor and environmental groups, believes that the governor’s list should be expanded to include more chemicals.

“Right now, the ground water in this district is OK,” Green said. “But upstream, in the San Gabriel Valley, they’ve got problems, and unless we go after these substances aggressively we could, too.”

Grisham praised the governor for approaching the toxics issue “with some good old-fashioned common sense.” Grisham said it is unrealistic to expand the governor’s list, as some have suggested, to include several hundred potentially dangerous substances.

“We have to focus on the most harmful, and then go from there,” Grisham said. “I want a safe environment just like the next guy . . . but who’s going to pay for all of this?”

To spread his message, Grisham said he is relying largely on mailers and phone calling. Green is going a step further, walking many of the precincts in this district of tract homes, shopping malls and small businesses. Both have sprinkled signs throughout the district, and Green has billboards along several area freeways carrying his campaign slogan: “Good neighbor, great senator.”

Pitching Folksy Image

Green is pitching his folksy image at every turn in the campaign.

“If I wanted to be a millionaire, I would have worked a lot harder in my life,” Green said. “I just wanted a good, comfortable living and a chance to go fishing once in a while. . . . I’m just like the rest of the guys in the neighborhood.”

Not anymore. He’s in the high-rent district when it comes to campaign spending. Roberti estimates that Green will spend close to $800,000 before Tuesday, much of it coming from party bank accounts.

Grisham estimates that he will spend about $400,000 and he, too, is receiving ample financial support from the party faithful, particularly Republicans in the state Senate.

In the Assembly, Grisham is considered by most to be a team player, although political observers say he is not part of the Republicans’ inner-circle in Sacramento. In the 1985-86 Assembly session, he introduced 43 bills, 19 of which were signed into law, about average for a Republican lawmaker, according to groups who monitor the activities of state lawmakers.

Grisham has said he does not introduce many bills because people in the 63rd District are “typical Californians who don’t have special needs that require such legislation.”

Among the other candidates in the race, South Whittier Democrat David Hayes, 37, and Cypress Republican Verner S. Waite, 58, are the most visible. The two said they will spend about $24,000 each, and both said one reason they are in the race is to test the political waters.

Hayes is a trustee of the South Whittier School District and was a deputy Los Angeles County Sheriff until he retired because of an injury last fall. He said police officers should be allowed to switch from revolvers to automatic weapons. “We must take the handcuffs off our officers,” he said, “and allow them to adequately defend themselves.”

Waite, a member of the Lynwood Unified School District in the early 1970s, said the medical profession is being overrun with government regulations. “Hospitals are so bogged down in paper work that efficiency has never been worse,” he said.

The other four candidates--Libertarian Lee Connelly, 34, a photojournalist; Democrat R.O. Davis, 50, a building contractor; Peace and Freedom Party member Ed Evans, 39, a court services officer, and Republican David Shapiro, 18, a Cypress College student--all said they will spend less than $1,000.

Connelly, a Buena Park resident, said he wants to return the state Legislature to a six-month-a-year job, which would allow business people to keep their careers and yet serve the public. Davis, also of Buena Park, said government must find a way to keep violent criminals in prison and institutions longer.

Evans said elementary and high school classes sizes should be cut in half, with teacher-student ratios of 15 to 1. “For teachers today, it’s not teaching,” he said, “it’s behavioral control.”

Shapiro said he is running to gain experience for a possible try at the Cypress City Council in 1988. He said private banks could run the Social Security system far more effectively than the government.