Candidates Make Most of Time Left in Races

The 1998 primary campaign hurtled Saturday toward its finish looking quintessentially Californian.

The races have featured the most money ever spent in state contests, the most appeals to a growing Latino vote, an experiment with a blanket primary ballot, another proposition or two poised for national export and an electorate that has been laid back.

Not so for the candidates. The last weekend before Tuesday’s vote was time to sweat.

Rep. Jane Harman, in her underdog bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, was sweating the pressure of a do-or-die sprint to election day. “Who offers bold leadership? Bold! Bold! Bold!” Harman exhorted about 100 chanting supporters at her Westchester headquarters Saturday. “Change that undecided vote to a Harman vote!”

Harman later left Los Angeles in a seven-seat propeller plane that touched down at more rallies in Santa Barbara, San Jose and Sacramento.

Others felt the heat of campaigning in the desert or at the beach. The normally buttoned-down Matt Fong, a Republican U.S. Senate hopeful, shucked his shoes, rolled up his khakis and trudged barefoot up to startled sunbathers in Hermosa Beach.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Darrell Issa spent Saturday in a motor home that he dubbed the “Issa-bago.” For the 48 hours remaining until election day, he plans to cruise for votes up the California spine from the southern deserts through the Central Valley.

And Al Checchi, the Democratic candidate for governor who is ending his campaign with a heartfelt appeal to California’s neediest public schools, continued to bounce along Southern California highways for a fourth and final day in his rented school bus.

“A lot of people have trouble seeing the future,” Checchi told an enthusiastic Latino audience at a Santa Ana school Saturday. “I don’t. The future is right here.”

California’s diversity was also a flash point Saturday for the two front-runners in the campaign for governor--Democrat Lt. Gov. Gray Davis and Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

Lungren told Latino business leaders in Los Angeles that he knows he will have to “overcome the stereotype of my party as unfeeling, uncaring, unconcerned.”

Davis, speaking to a convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Long Beach, tried to make that reputation stick by lumping Lungren with the “nightmare” of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and the GOP’s controversial campaign attacks on illegal immigrants in 1994.

“Wilson has been a disaster as governor,” Davis told reporters, speaking more strongly than he ever has as lieutenant governor. “He’s lucky we didn’t impeach him.”

And Davis repeated his promise to top the record of former Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., whom he served as chief of staff, in appointing women and minorities to key state positions.

An Array of Choices

Before Saturday, the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidates had already bombarded California voters with more television ads than the state has seen in recent memory--so much that some stations took the extraordinary step last week of turning away business.

But there is plenty more on the ballot than these two races. Voters also face a list of competitive statewide races, vigorous local contests and landmark policy decisions.

Proposition 227, the initiative aimed at sharply restricting bilingual education in California, appears headed for victory, according to recent polls.

And national Republican strategists are closely watching the outcome of Proposition 226, the measure that would prohibit labor organizations from using union dues for political purposes without a member’s permission. The latest polls showed that measure--strongly backed by Wilson--coming down to the wire. If it passes and survives a certain court challenge, GOP activists plan to spread the idea nationwide in hopes of reducing labor contributions to Democratic candidates.

And thanks to the state’s recent term limits law, there are several highly competitive races for constitutional offices such as lieutenant governor, attorney general and treasurer.

Nothing like this election may ever be seen again. Tuesday’s polling will be the first primary under the “blanket” rules that California voters approved two years ago in Proposition 198. The change means that every voter will be able to choose any candidate--regardless of party.

But the primary system is still being litigated; an appeal is pending.

The 1998 primary may also send a powerful message on another growing political trend--rich candidates. In 1990, when Dianne Feinstein was the Democratic nominee for governor, reporters said she spent her own money lavishly, giving almost $4 million to her campaign.

This year, four wealthy, self-financed statewide candidates--Checchi, Harman, Issa and Republican lieutenant governor hopeful Noel Irwin Hentschel--will give a combined total of at least $60 million to their own campaigns. More than half of that is from Checchi’s record-breaking gubernatorial bid.

Yet not one of those millionaire candidates was leading in the latest polls, contrasting with pundits’ early predictions that money would be the major influence on the outcome.

Apparent Lack of Interest

Still, for all the spending and stumping, most of the candidates complain that there is an apparent lack of interest in this race.

Media coverage from television and newspapers has fallen from previous campaigns, leaving the U.S. Senate race nearly invisible until the two Republican candidates--Issa and Fong--began attacking each other on personal issues recently. (Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer, who has been campaigning in the Bay Area for several days, has little competition in the primary.)

But scant coverage is not all that’s keeping the volume down. With California’s economy humming along, candidates have been searching for issues with which to grab attention from a rather content population.

Secretary of State Bill Jones predicted last week that the turnout in this primary might reach 42%, up sharply from the record low of 33% in 1994 but not much better than the 41% turnout of 1986 that until then had been the record low.

In some races, turnout will be key.

In the governor’s race, businessman Checchi is counting on a high turnout especially from Latino, African American, young and lower-income voters--the base he has reached out to in his campaign.

On the other hand, GOP Senate candidate Issa suggested that he would benefit even with a low turnout because his fellow conservatives are traditionally the most reliable voters.

Fong had a slight lead over Issa in the latest Field poll, but the race is considered a dead heat. Still, Issa on Saturday was confidently predicting an easy victory. “This is not going to be a squeaker,” he said.

Reaching Out Wherever Possible

Issa spoke to small gatherings in about a dozen cities Saturday from Chico down through the Central Valley and then in Orange and San Diego counties. He stressed themes designed to inspire conservatives--opposition to legalized abortion, looser gun laws, antipathy toward the United Nations, and a zeal for wholesale cuts in the federal government.

Fong, meanwhile, was trolling for votes on the sand. In Hermosa Beach, he cut into a girls’ volleyball tournament and stopped for some chili-cheese fries and a lemonade at Fat Face Fenner’s Saloon.

Not all of his pitches went well.

An Asian American woman lunching on a restaurant patio responded enthusiastically at first, telling the Chinese American candidate, “It’s about time we had some representation.” But things deteriorated when Fong said his priority was abolishing the IRS--which turned out to be the woman’s employer.

“Uh-oh, you just lost a vote,” she told him.

Fong laughed it off. “After they say, ‘We’re going to support you,’ you’re supposed to walk away,” he said.

In the governor’s race, Davis and Lungren were not the only major candidates appealing to Latino voters Saturday.

Harman was at the Mexican American Community Services Youth Agency in a low-income neighborhood of San Jose. Checchi toured Santa Ana schools with the city’s mayor, Miguel Pulido.

“He’s the only candidate who has ever come around here,” said Estella Montenegro, who promised him her vote in San Bernardino. “That’s important in itself. We have hard times getting our councilwoman down here.”

Checchi, loosening his tie and rolling up his shirt sleeves, got rousing ovations from the school audiences of students, parents, faculty and administrators. And he repeated themes that he had stressed at similar stops all week.

“I come from a world where you don’t get something for nothing,” he said. “And I don’t know who we are trying to kid here in California . . . that we can continue to under-fund these schools and expect good results.”

Finally, Lungren, in his appearance in Los Angeles, was accompanied by Republican state controller hopeful Ruben Barrales. He told the audience that Republicans share many values with the Latino community--on family, education, abortion, crime and patriotism.

But he also said he feels a responsibility to demonstrate that the GOP is not insensitive to Latino concerns based on the controversial anti-illegal immigration and anti-affirmative action campaigns that he also supported.

“I know the burden of truth is on my shoulders,” he said.

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Cathleen Decker, Faye Fiore, Amy Pyle and Jodi Wilgoren.

DECISION ‘98: A Guide to the State Primary

* Decision ’98 offers a guide to the major candidates in contested races in Tuesday’s primary, along with a look at ballot propositions. B1

* The growing phenomenon of voting by mail is changing the dynamics of elections. A3

* Leading candidates for governor point to managed health care as a key issue. A3