CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / 24th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Beilenson’s Toughest Challenge Attracts National Attention : The nine-term congressman must contend with a well-funded GOP opponent, Richard Sybert, at a time of strong anti-incumbent sentiment.

As he faces voters this November, veteran U.S. Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) is struggling against a mighty anti-incumbent riptide and a well-financed GOP foe in Richard Sybert, a former top aide to Gov. Pete Wilson.

These perils have thrust the 61-year-old Beilenson’s bid for a 10th term into the national limelight. National media have focused on Beilenson’s plight, as have a slew of political pundits. All insist they smell blood in the 24th District, which takes in Sherman Oaks, Malibu and the Conejo Valley.

But Beilenson, a senior member of the House Rules Committee, is far from defenseless as he enters what is likely to be the toughest battle of his career.

The emerging outlines of Beilenson’s strategy are classic: He is not your average politician, Beilenson maintains, not a Beltway insider, not a slavish poll-watcher, not a special-interest tool. In other words, not an incumbent bum who should be thrown out of office.

The strategy is not new to Beilenson. The congressman, who served in the Legislature before going to Washington in 1976, used it in 1992 to stymie another foe, former GOP Assemblyman Tom McClintock (who is now running for state controller).

With potent effect, Beilenson boasted that he took no special interest campaign contributions from political action committees, but that McClintock did.

And if that wasn’t enough to establish himself as a different kind of politician, Beilenson in April, 1992, also split dramatically with his liberal roots to support a constitutional amendment to prohibit children of illegal aliens from automatically becoming U.S. citizens just because they were born in the United States.

When the election votes were tallied, Beilenson scored a lopsided 56%-38% victory.

But analogies can be dangerous.

This is not 1992. In 1992, the collapse of the Bush-Quayle campaign caused shock waves throughout the California GOP ticket. In 1994, after two years of Democratic hegemony in the White House and Congress, the undertow pulling at incumbent Democrats is powerful.

Nor is Sybert, who is president of a Santa Barbara-based toy design firm, another McClintock. Sybert, 42, is a moderate while the rightward-leaning McClintock had his flanks easily turned by Beilenson in the bid for the district’s centrist vote.

“It’s going to be very difficult for Tony Beilenson to paint me with the same brush he used on McClintock,” Sybert said in a recent interview.

“Tony Beilenson is a classic liberal,” Sybert said the night he won the Republican nomination. “He’s soft on crime, weak on defense and tough on taxpayers.”

Voters of the 24th District should be outraged, Sybert said, that Beilenson voted for Clinton’s deficit reduction plan, which resulted in a hefty tax boost that hit the district’s large upper-middle class hardest.

Beilenson admits Sybert is a formidable foe. “It’s a competitive district,” he said in an interview. “It’s a district the Republicans are targeting, and it’s different than it was in 1992. McClintock was very conservative, and 1992 was a very big year for Democrats.”

But the Beilenson team is loading up on Sybert ammunition, pointing out the challenger’s appetite for political action committee contributions and noting that he is a 24th District newcomer. “Raw ambition is what Richard Sybert is all about,” said Craig Miller, Beilenson’s campaign consultant.

As head of the governor’s Office of Planning and Research, the Harvard Law School-educated Sybert was a top policy wonk in the Wilson Administration from 1991 to 1993 after spending 13 years as a lawyer in a major Downtown Los Angeles law firm.

Sybert jump-started his bid for the 24th District GOP nomination by loaning his campaign more than $420,000 of his own money. He swamped his four Republican opponents and was quickly dubbed a rising star by the Republican national party.

In recent days, the 24th District has hosted a parade of GOP luminaries who have stopped by to laud Sybert and help him raise money, the latest being House GOP leader Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia).

On the issues, Sybert backs Proposition 187, the statewide ballot initiative to deny key public services to illegal immigrants; has signed the GOP’s so-called “contract with America,” a pledge to back a balanced budget amendment and congressional term limits, and has advocated tougher criminal laws. But although his rhetoric is often hot, Sybert is a moderate on the hot-button topics of gun control and abortion.

The recent Gingrich visit only further demonstrated how deeply the Sybert campaign is indebted to Republican outsiders and the money they can attract, said Miller, Beilenson’s campaign aide. That this would be the case, Miller contended, is not surprising: After all, Sybert is a newcomer to the west San Fernando Valley. “Rich Sybert has no inherent support in the community,” Miller said. “He’s totally dependent on Republican powerbrokers and PACs for his support.”

In fact, records show that Sybert did not establish his residency in the 24th District until Oct. 4, 1993, and that he has assiduously courted business PAC funding. On Sept. 24, he held a fund-raiser in Washington just for PAC donors.

Meanwhile, Beilenson points with pride to his deep, longtime involvement with measures to protect the Santa Monica Mountains; his success in amending this year’s federal crime bill to provide $1.8 billion to reimburse states hit hardest by the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants in state prisons, and his vote to support Clinton’s deficit reduction plan.

This summer, Beilenson also decided to oppose Proposition 187, perhaps the most controversial measure on the November ballot.