The Real Issue in the Race for U.S. Senate

SACRAMENTO —  Cut through all the attack ads and twisted facts, the egos and riches, the spirituality and triviality, and California’s U.S. Senate race gets down to this: One candidate believes in government, the other doesn’t.

It’s more than insider vs. outsider. That’s sloganeering, created by strategists for the Republican candidate, Rep. Mike Huffington. It’s a lot more than New Age narcissism or Huffington’s supposed ties through his wife to a religious cult, as gurus for Sen. Dianne Feinstein would have voters think.

This even has little to do with whether a recent Texas transplant-- a carpetbagger --is trying to buy himself a California Senate seat with a fortune acquired from the sale of his father’s oil and gas company. Although that, indeed, would turn the political world on its head.

And it absolutely has nothing to do with whether an aide-- a taxpayer-paid chauffeur --drives the senator to work. Huffington drives himself. That enlightenment can be found in one of his latest TV ads.

The driver tip is a gimmick to remind voters that Feinstein is a “career politician.” She is and she’s proud of it. “Basically, my life is government,” she once told The Times.

Huffington calls himself a “citizen politician,” as did another handsome, neophyte California candidate, Ronald Reagan. Huffington talks about his election “sending a tidal wave across this country.” Reagan talked of “lighting a prairie fire.”

I asked Huffington last February whether he aspired to follow in Reagan’s footsteps to the White House. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “I wouldn’t exclude any options.”

*

Like Reagan, Huffington has little regard for government. “I’m not going to the Senate to offer a lot of legislation,” he says. “I’m going there to cut programs (especially welfare). . . . Feinstein believes in the power of government to solve problems. I don’t.”

True, Feinstein is from the old school of senators who believe in delivering for their states. Call it bacon, call it pork. But without it, California wouldn’t have gotten freeways, ports and water systems--plus a lot of defense contracts.

The Raytheon case is a good illustration of these candidates’ contrasting philosophies. Last year, Raytheon officials in Santa Barbara asked Huffington, their new congressman, to help them obtain a State Department waiver so they could bid on a Taiwan defense contract. It meant $100 million and roughly 250 jobs. He rejected them. “I’m not here to be your lobbyist,” he said. “Companies should compete against each other.”

Huffington thought it “inappropriate” for a congressman to interfere with a foreign treaty. If an Administration wants to change a treaty, “fine,” he said, “but for all companies--not just Raytheon.”

So Raytheon went to Sen. Feinstein. No problem, she replied. It got the waiver.

That’s the sort of thing that prompted super rancher John Harris to endorse Feinstein and help raise $100,000 for her campaign last Friday at his Coalinga restaurant. One hundred farmers showed up with checks in what normally is Republican country.

“It’s kind of a gut shot deal,” said Harris, who in the last two elections raised money for Feinstein’s GOP opponents. “We’re confident when push comes to shove, she’s going to do the right thing (for agriculture). . . . She has a lot of experience in government and knows how to be effective. Once she decides something needs to be fixed, she’s real tenacious.”

*

Feinstein’s philosophy was illustrated recently at a Pasadena civic luncheon, where she bragged of the bacon-- pork --she helped deliver to California with the crime bill. Pasadena should get $3.9 million to hire 40 new cops, she said. There’ll be $2.5 million for jails and boot camps, $518,000 for the drug court program, $448,000 to fight domestic violence. . . .

“The bottom line,” she said, “is I’ve produced as much or more for my state in two years as any senator in history.”

At a GOP state convention in San Diego on Saturday, Huffington explained to reporters his attitude about delivering for constituents.

He’d seek federal funding if the program “was something I believed in,” he said. “If I really didn’t think it was a good use of money, I wouldn’t ask for it. . . . I’ve obviously been willing to say ‘no’ before.”

But would he help California get its fair share? “I’d like to cut back (on) money going to Washington so we didn’t have money to give away for ‘fair shares,’ ” he replied. “People are ready for a sea change. And this election is all about that: The person who wants to bring home the bacon vs. the one who wants to shrink the government.”

Indeed, that’s what is on the voters’ menu.