A LOOK AHEAD * The 36th Congressional District, which stretches from Venice to San Pedro, is the essence of American suburbia. It’s also coveted by both parties as they jockey for control of the next Congress and has become . . . A Bellwether District That’s a Top Election Prize

The South Bay congressional seat that Jane Harman is giving up to run for governor is quintessential California.

It’s got style--some of the best surfing beaches in America. It’s got substance--the economic engines of Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles Air Force Base and, coming soon, one of Hollywood’s largest independent production facilities, 14 sound stages scheduled to open in a few weeks in Manhattan Beach.

Stretching from Venice to the beach cities and Torrance and then around the Palos Verdes peninsula to San Pedro, it’s also the essence of American suburbia. Voters, four in five of them white, are fiscally conservative but socially moderate--and decidedly in favor of abortion rights.

Analysts call it a bellwether district and, now that it’s up for grabs, one of the prizes in the 1998 elections, a seat coveted by both parties as they jockey for control of the next Congress.

“A major priority,” said a spokesman for the Democratic congressional campaign. “We want it badly,” added a Republican counterpart.

The June 2 primary has drawn a field of 10. Four are considered serious contenders.

On the Democratic side: Janice Hahn, daughter of one of the legends of Los Angeles politics, former county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

For the Republicans: former Rancho Palos Verdes Councilwoman Susan Brooks, making her third bid for the 36th District seat; state Assemblyman Steve Kuykendall; and Los Angeles City Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr.

Brooks has substantial money at hand, according to campaign finance reports, and an edge in name identification because of campaigns against Harman in 1994 and 1996.

But Svorinich’s poll shows him in the lead. Kuykendall’s poll, meanwhile, says he’s the front-runner. Not surprisingly, just last week Brooks’ survey of 400 likely voters put her in front, according to one of her campaign aides.

Asked about her campaign strengths, Brooks summed up: “I live here, I work here, I raised my family here, I know where the potholes are and how to get them fixed.”

Political analysts--and Kuykendall and Svorinich, as well--say that they expect Brooks, who has portrayed herself as the most conservative of the three leading Republicans, to shift into attack mode in the final two weeks before the primary.

But analysts--both Republican and Democrat--also say that they don’t believe Brooks can win in November, even if she does prevail in June.

“If Susan Brooks is the nominee, Hahn has a damn good chance of winning,” said Dick Rosengarten, editor of California Political Week. He said he believes many voters would simply not be interested in voting for a two-time loser.

But, he said, “It’s a dogfight, a real dogfight, if it’s either of the other two.”

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As late as January, virtually none of the 10 candidates were figuring on running for Congress.

Then U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein opted out of the race for governor. And Harman opted in.

And then the line began to form to take Harman’s place. Among those who got themselves on the ballot are Green candidate Robin Barrett, Libertarian Kerry Welsh and Reform candidate John R. Konopka--and Robert Klein, who chose to take a flier on running for Congress on the grounds that, heck, the seat was open.

After 16 years of U.S. Army service--a mere four years from full retirement perks--Klein, 49, of Torrance, resigned his active-duty commission to run for the seat. It wasn’t until after he filed that he learned he’d be facing Brooks, Kuykendall and Svorinich--as well as an abortion opponent, Robert Pegram--in the Republican primary.

Klein does not have a campaign manager or spokesman. His advertising consists primarily of door-hangers featuring his name as well as emergency telephone numbers. “So you can cut my name off and they’re still usable,” Klein said.

He said he’s an idealistic believer in public service but has perhaps $10,000 in campaign funds in the bank, adding: “I’m new to this stuff.”

In a way, so is Hahn, who is making her first run for national office.

Already, however, Hahn is a player. Of course, she grew up around politics. She actually has been elected to something--last year, to the panel trying to reform Los Angeles’ city charter. She has Harman’s endorsement. She was recruited by prominent Democrats and then personally urged by President Clinton to run for the seat.

And, most important in the short term, she has a free pass in the primary.

The only other Democrat, Nilo Michelin, a deputy Hawthorne city prosecutor, remains on the ballot but has dropped out and endorsed Hahn.

Come November, said Hahn, “We’ll see how this name does. My dad used to say it was worth a million bucks.”

In June, the action is focused on the Republican side, in which the most familiar name in the district, Brooks, said it’s a relief not to be facing Harman and her “open checkbook.”

Brooks remains convinced that the only reason she lost to Harman--by 812 votes in 1994, by 53% to 44% in 1996--is the immense wealth of Harman’s husband, an audio equipment manufacturer. The money--”Harman’s billions,” Brooks calls it--bought immense blocks of time on TV for Harman commercials.

In a recent interview, Brooks mentioned Harman’s name at least a dozen times. Reminded that Harman was no longer running against her and asked if she was bitter about the previous campaigns, Brooks insisted she is not.

“I’m pretty sweet, actually,” she said, calling herself a “real person” who had a benign cranial nerve tumor removed eight years ago, likes to listen to radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger, has a passion for national security issues and recently visited Disneyland with some friends from Congress: “Mary Bono, Newt [Gingrich] and Dana Rohrabacher and his wife.”

The losses in 1994 and 1996 have made her “stronger, more determined,” Brooks said, rejecting the notion that she’s a loser. “It took many important leaders three [tries] to get elected--Lincoln, Reagan, Newt (hopefully me),” she wrote in a note to a reporter.

In 1996, Harman hammered Brooks repeatedly for her links with the conservative Gingrich. This time around, Brooks says the House speaker, hit by a House panel in 1997 with a $300,000 penalty for ethics lapses, has “made some mistakes.” But, she insists, “he truly is a visionary.”

She calls herself a “bleeding-heart conservative.” In a letter sent earlier this year to supporters, she said she would “fight for conservative, common-sense reforms in education, health care and our menacing tax code.”

She added in an interview: “This is not, and I would repeat not, a moderate district.”

Analysts demur, pointing out that registration in the district is split: Democrats 42%, Republicans 41%. They also noted that Democrat Clinton won this district in 1992 and 1996, that Republican Pete Wilson carried it handily in the 1994 governor’s race, and that Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot measure permitting cancer and AIDS patients to smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes, passed with 58% of the vote.

Undeterred, Brooks has secured the endorsements of leading California conservatives in the House, including Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), Chris Cox (R-Newport Beach) and Frank Riggs (R-Windsor).

All three are opponents of abortion.

Brooks said she is “personally opposed” to abortion. Nevertheless, she said she favors abortion rights when it comes to other women but opposes federal funding for abortions and supports a third-trimester ban on the so-called “partial-birth abortion.”

She declared, “This procedure called partial-birth abortion only came into effect since Bill Clinton was elected in 1992,” and said it “amounts to nothing less than murder, infanticide.”

In an April 4 fund-raising letter, Brooks--who says repeatedly that she favors abortion rights--nonetheless asserted that Kuykendall and Svorinich “support abortion-on-demand and even partial-birth abortions.”

Kuykendall and Svorinich countered that Brooks’ assertions are misleading--but about what they expected as the campaign has intensified.

“Susan--and you can mark my words--in the last few days of the campaign, will make Lizzie Borden look like a Girl Scout in regards to the hatchet job she will attempt to do on both Mr. Kuykendall and myself,” Svorinich said.

He said he favors abortion rights and would permit the late-term procedure only to save the mother’s life or prevent her from suffering permanent disability.

Kuykendall said that he also supports abortion rights. “I don’t think this late-term abortion procedure should be done except to save the life of the mother,” he said. Besides, both candidates said, they’re focused elsewhere.

Kuykendall, a businessman and former U.S. Marine Corps officer, was elected to the Assembly in 1994 in a district that stretches from his hometown of Rancho Palos Verdes through San Pedro and into Long Beach.

He touts with pride a bill he authored that made fatal child abuse punishable as if it was first-degree murder.

Analysts generally give his Assembly tenure high marks, and Kuykendall’s endorsement list includes dozens of local officials--even some Democrats.

If elected to Congress, he said, his goals would be to “continue to try to improve education in this state,” be “extraordinarily tough on the criminal element,” expand the area’s economic base and “hold government accountable.”

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Meanwhile, Svorinich--who has the endorsement of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, among others--said he is the only candidate with a “proven track record” of “job creation and retention,” which he called a congressman’s “priority No. 1.”

Svorinich, whose council seat includes the city’s southern reaches, said he has been intimately involved in City Council committees with oversight of the Port of Los Angeles, the Alameda Corridor and the airport.

He said he has lobbied to keep Los Angeles Air Force Base (actually located in El Segundo) up and running. He also said he has provided key help in the conversion of defense-related businesses.

For Svorinich and Kuykendall, the challenge is what kind of support each can draw from the northern reaches of the 36th District, from the beach cities up to Venice, where neither is particularly well-known, political experts said.

Svorinich and Kuykendall, meanwhile, have long been friends. Not so Svorinich and Brooks. She supported Joan Milke Flores, the longtime incumbent Svorinich defeated when he was first elected in 1993 to the City Council; in turn, he supported the Democratic Harman’s campaigns in 1994 and 1996.

Svorinich said he expects to win. But should Kuykendall prevail, he said he would endorse him.

If Brooks wins, however, Svorinich said, “I have left the option open that she would have to pick up the phone, dial my number, come to San Pedro and talk to me.”

He added: “I don’t consider that unreasonable.”