Old Feud Could Boil Again in Senate Race : Politics: Cathie Wright and Marian La Follette are already trading barbs-- something they’ve done before. They are vying for state’s 19th District seat.

Cathie Wright and Marian W. La Follette are conservative Republicans with a history of taking political shots at each other while neighboring assemblywomen during the 1980s.

Now they are matched again in the race for the state’s 19th Senate District, which stretches from Oxnard into the San Fernando Valley. And by all accounts, the friction between them will dominate the primary campaign.

“They cordially detest each other,” said one high-placed source in the governor’s office. “It may get ugly.”

Wright of Simi Valley and La Follette, who recently moved to Thousand Oaks, agree that their conservative philosophies and voting records are substantially the same.

Both are women in their 60s who have become widows since they were first elected to the Assembly in 1980, although La Follette took a hiatus from politics last year to grieve for her late husband.

But their similarities end there. Each is aligned with a different side in the split between state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita) and former Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge) that pervades Republican alliances in eastern Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley.

In 1986, Davis accused Fiedler of offering him $100,000 to get out of the U.S. Senate race. Fielder and her campaign manager were indicted for attempted bribery, although a judge later dismissed the charges.

Some members of each faction delight in the Wright-La Follette battle over the seat being vacated by Davis, who announced his retirement in January. They hope the battle may help settle old scores.

“We will finally get this out in the open,” said Steve Frank of Simi Valley, a longtime supporter of Fiedler and Wright. “Cathie will win dramatically against a carpetbagger like this.”

Although the campaign does not begin officially until Friday, the two rivals have already begun to trade barbs that may bring on an intraparty blood bath before GOP voters cast the ballots in the June 2 primary.

La Follette has opened with an attack on Wright’s efforts to intervene with authorities on behalf of her daughter, who received 27 traffic tickets over seven years. She also criticizes Wright’s special alliance with the man Republicans love to hate: Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

“She owes Willie Brown a big debt for his attempt to help her daughter with traffic tickets,” La Follette said. “There are enough Democrats who owe Willie Brown. We don’t need a Republican who is under Willie Brown’s thumb.”

Wright dismisses it as an old line of personal attack left over from her 1990 reelection campaign.

“Dead issue. Dead issue. Dead issue,” she said.

In turn, Wright skewers La Follette as a political opportunist for recently moving to Thousand Oaks so she could jump into the race, after she had been living in Orange County.

“Why should she want to travel across two counties to get involved in this race, when there are opportunities for her to run in her own area?” Wright asked. “There must be some animosity on her part.

“I’ve lived in the district 26 years. I’ve never moved.”

In defense of her move, La Follette said she has lived nearly all of her life in the San Fernando Valley and represented portions of the 19th Senate District from 1980 to 1990 in the Assembly.

“The people remember me and are welcoming me back. That’s why Cathie Wright is so upset.”

During her first two years as an assemblywoman, La Follette’s district included Thousand Oaks as well as portions of Los Angeles County. Redistricting in the early 1980s shifted the district northward to the San Fernando Valley, including areas now covered by the new 19th Senate District. The new district also includes the Ventura County cities of Simi Valley, Fillmore, Moorpark, Camarillo, Oxnard and Port Hueneme.

Furthermore, La Follette said she retired from the Assembly and left the San Fernando Valley only 14 months ago to be closer to the Newport Beach hospital where her late husband, John, was receiving chemotherapy for cancer. He died in December, 1990.

She sold their Northridge house because it had been badly damaged by a garage fire, and later bought a house in Corona del Mar so that her two sons, who live in Newport Beach, would be nearby to comfort her in her grief.

“My life has had a lot of catastrophes recently,” said La Follette, who gets teary-eyed when she speaks of her husband. She said she has re-entered politics to give herself a sense of purpose, by contributing as a public servant.

“It is a way to show me that my life has some value.”

But Wright said La Follette will get no sympathy from her. Wright said her husband died during her 1982 reelection campaign, after spending 120 days in an intensive-care ward, and she still got slammed by an opponent.

“Nobody gave me any condolences when my husband died,” Wright said. “This thing about grieving--I don’t buy it in a political campaign. She could have stayed in the area. In a campaign, you have to stand up and take whatever comes.”

Wright and La Follette are not the only candidates in the Senate race.

Fillmore Councilman Roger Campbell, who owns an auto repair shop, is another Republican in the race. Thousand Oaks Councilman Frank Schillo, also a Republican, is considering a Senate bid, unless he is forced to defend his seat in a recall initiative that may soon qualify for the June 2 ballot.

In addition, two Democrats, Paul K. Dolan, an Oxnard advertising business owner, and Henry Phillip Starr, an attorney from Bell Canyon, have reserved spots in the race.

But Wright and La Follette are drawing the greatest attention as proven winners of legislative offices. Wright has about $100,000 to launch her campaign, and La Follette said she has had no trouble lining up $75,000 in pledges in her first two weeks of campaigning.

Furthermore, each has a base of political supporters, and each has employed a campaign consultant well-regarded in Republican circles throughout the state.

Both Wright and La Follette talked about running for the Senate seat in 1988, but decided against it when Davis ran for reelection.

It was about that time that Wright complained publicly that La Follette was trying to oust her from the powerful Assembly Rules Committee. La Follette and most other Assembly Republicans wanted to punish Wright for not joining their effort with renegade Democrats to yank the speakership from Brown.

In a pivotal vote, Wright abstained rather than vote for an alternative candidate for Brown’s job, a move that La Follette says unraveled a tenuous coalition to dump Brown as speaker.

Later, it was disclosed that Brown had called a judge on behalf of Wright’s daughter, Victoria, who was facing jail after racking up a series of speeding tickets. And Brown refused to cooperate with Republican efforts to unseat Wright from the Rules Committee, where she remains a member.

“I’m not in this race because I’m her enemy,” La Follette said. “I just think I would make a better senator. I can work well with people of various philosophies. Cathie has gotten very arrogant in the last three or four years.”

La Follette and her supporters plan to make the two women’s distinctly different styles a central campaign issue.

“Marian has an exceptional ability to deal with both sides on an issue,” said Davis, who has endorsed La Follette as his successor. “After taking a tough stand, she still has the respect of her colleagues and gets their cooperation.”

Davis said he has attempted to get along with Wright over the years and failed.

“She goes out of her way to be contentious with people,” he said. “It is just her nature. She is a contentious person.”

Wright takes issue with the characterization of her temperament. She said her personal style has not impeded her rise to the position of vice chairwoman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee or hindered her effectiveness in pushing bills through the Assembly.

“I’m honest, straightforward and don’t speak out of two sides of my mouth like some politicians,” said Wright, who attributes her direct approach to her Italian heritage and East Coast upbringing. “I’m going to tell you straight. I don’t tell people what they want to hear. I tell them the truth.”

Moreover, Wright said the Davis faction, including Hunt Braly, Davis’ chief of staff who ran against her in 1990, has always tried to make her personality an issue rather than trying to tackle her voting record.

Steve Frank and other Wright supporters say Davis recruited La Follette to run against Wright as a third choice, after Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury and Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) declined to enter the race.

“I hate to see Marian used like this by Ed Davis and his crowd,” Frank said. “It is pure power politics.”

But La Follette and Davis deny any conspiracy to find a competitor to run against Wright.

“I don’t like the malicious gossip that I’m in there to continue the Davis-Fiedler feud,” La Follette said. “It defeats the purpose of the campaign, which is to determine who will be the better senator.”

La Follette said she was encouraged to run by former Los Angeles County Supervisor Warren Dorn, adding that Davis and other friends did not want to intrude when she was mourning the loss of her husband. La Follette said she called Davis to inform him of her decision, not the other way around.

“I was utterly delighted when Marian told me she is running,” Davis said. “I didn’t engineer it. I did not think it was my role or responsibility to recruit my successor.”