State Senate Race Is a GOP Slugfest

Next month’s special election in coastal Orange County to fill a vacant state Senate seat looks like a classic David vs. Goliath battle between two Republicans.

A small-city councilwoman just 15 months into her first term is taking on a three-term state assemblyman who was also a big-city mayor.

The race for the most Republican Senate district in California has thrown conventional politics on its ear, with the sole Democrat in the race hoping the GOP candidates for the April 11 election will rip each other to shreds.

Assemblyman Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach), with six years in the Legislature and six on the Huntington Beach City Council, has found himself on the defensive. He has fewer endorsements, less campaign money and a third as many voter mail-outs as those produced by his Republican opponent, Dana Point Councilwoman Diane Harkey.

At several candidate events, Harman’s frustration has been evident.

“Why would we want to send a rookie with one year experience on the Dana Point City Council?” Harman asked about 75 people at a recent forum sponsored by a Huntington Beach Republican women’s group. “Sacramento is tough enough when you’re a member of the minority party.”

Harman, 64, argued that his experience was far more important than Harkey’s money and support from the local GOP establishment. The party also opposed his election in 2000 after labeling him too liberal for the district. Harman, an attorney, had a reputation as an environmentalist while serving as councilman and mayor in Huntington Beach.

Harkey, 54, acknowledged she was a political neophyte but said Harman’s record prodded her into running.

“He has very lackluster support because there’s been no progress on his part on issues that people care about,” said Harkey, a retired banker who has put about $500,000 in the race and raised an additional $200,000. Harman has raised about $400,000.

The April election precedes the statewide primary in June. The 35th state Senate District has about 510,000 voters -- half of them Republican -- and stretches from Seal Beach and Cypress south to Dana Point.

The two Republicans and one Democrat are all on the same ballot. If anyone gets more than 50% of the vote, that candidate is declared the winner. If not, the top Republican vote-getter will face the Democrat in a June 6 runoff.

The rapid timetable for the race -- launched in December after the election of Sen. John Campbell (R-Irvine) to Congress -- left the GOP candidates scrambling to lock up voter support.

Harkey has sent out 20 mailers introducing herself to voters and announcing her endorsements, including that of Campbell, most of the county’s congressional and legislative representatives, and some conservative favorites -- state Sen. Tom McClintock and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Harman said he had endorsements from 11 Republican Assembly colleagues and several state senators, none of them from Orange County, plus Huntington Beach Mayor David Sullivan.

Six of the mailers criticized Harman for supporting bills that would have taxed disposable diapers, added $3,500 in smog fees to the cost of SUVs, increased the gas tax and eroded the two-thirds vote requirement for raising taxes.

Other mailers have focused on Harman’s support for several bills to assist immigrants in the country illegally. In one vote, Harman supported a controversial -- and successful -- bill that granted state-resident college fee status for some illegal immigrants who graduated from California high schools.

Harman defended that vote by saying other Republicans, including Campbell, also favored the bill.

Harman has hit back with half a dozen brochures of his own, saying Harkey supported fee increases while on the City Council and suggested her anti-illegal immigration credentials were “bought” with donations to activist groups.

Last week, Harman began airing a cable TV ad faulting Harkey for having had unpaid tax liens. She blamed the liens on setbacks from the 1990s recession that hurt her husband’s business. She said all the liens were paid.

In recent weeks, Harkey also found herself dealing with unhappy Dana Point residents furious over the city’s consideration of a plan to buy the historic Doheny House, home to the city’s founding family, and transform it into a rental house for weddings and other events.

The plan, which included possibly condemning nearby homes for parking, was scuttled last week. But that decision came after Harkey took the most heat for having held a recent fundraiser at the house, which some called a conflict of interest.

The two Republicans will be joined on the April 11 ballot by Democrat Larry Caballero of La Palma. Caballero, a northern Orange County Democratic activist, is banking on none of the candidates winning outright next month, which would automatically place him in the runoff.

A public school teacher for 38 years, Caballero said he hopes to attract Democrats, minor-party candidates and independents by providing an alternative to the two Republicans. He said he would stress the importance of education funding in Sacramento and wouldn’t demonize illegal immigrants, as he said both his opponents had.

“I am running in this race as an alternative to the mean-spiritedness of the other two candidates and to give voters an opportunity to vote for someone who understands their issues and philosophy,” he said.

The race also generated mailers by a group calling itself the Alliance for Orange County Taxpayers, which criticized Harman for allegedly misrepresenting his voting record on taxes.

Harman said he’d been targeted by conservatives precisely because he’d been effective in Sacramento by working with Democrats, producing the most bills signed into law by any Orange County legislator.

“I have a good, solid, business-friendly Republican voting record,” he said. “We’re the minority party, and the Democrats block bills from getting to the floor. That’s the kind of liberal, stick-in-your-eye politics you get up there in the Legislature.”

Harkey said she wouldn’t play nice in Sacramento to get the Republican message across. “What you have to do is bang your gong,” she said. “You have to trim at the edges or bring it to the people for a vote. If you bring attention to it, things change.”