Ex-Assemblyman E. R. Barnes Dies : Represented San Diego County District From 1963 to 1973

Former state Assemblyman E. Richard Barnes, an ultraconservative whose opposition to liberalization of marijuana and obscenity laws contributed to his surprise defeat in what had been considered a safe Republican district, has died at age 79.

Barnes died of natural causes Wednesday at his El Cajon home.

A career Navy chaplain before entering politics, Barnes represented the 78th Assembly District in the Legislature between 1963 to 1973.

He favored capital punishment and abolition of federal income taxes and opposed school busing to achieve integration in public schools, normally popular positions in the district, which ran from Coronado north to La Jolla and then inland to Mission Valley.

His chances of defeat were considered so minimal (he had won 62% of the vote in 1970) that most Democrats refused to finance the campaign of his opponent, Lawrence Kapiloff.

A combination of heavy student registration and Kapiloff’s well-designed campaign (which featured a former chief of Navy chaplains endorsing him), gave the Democrat a 3,000 plurality in the November vote, however. Kapiloff had also taken positions against capital punishment and in favor of a proposition that would have eased penalties for marijuana possession.

Also not helping Barnes were his complacent campaign and his 1971 denunciation of then-President Richard M. Nixon’s trip to China, which thawed the chill in relations between the United States and mainland China. Barnes called it “suicidal idiocy.”

Barnes served in the Navy from 1941 to 1961 and was on the staffs of admirals and Marine Corps generals during World War II and the Korean War.

After his retirement, he worked as a pastor in Methodist churches and directed the San Diego office of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade before getting into politics.

He is survived by two sons and two daughters.