Busing--Fiedler’s Vehicle in ’86 GOP Senate Race?

Candidates in a crowded primary look for the issue that breaks them out of the pack. Republican Rep. Bobbi Fiedler of Northridge, who says she will run for the Senate in 1986, may have found one.

It is busing, the same issue that transformed Fiedler from a San Fernando Valley housewife and businesswoman into a tough politician now in her third term in Congress.

Attempts to desegregate schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District through forced busing ended in March, 1981, when the state Supreme Court let stand an appellate court ruling upholding Proposition 1, the anti-busing ballot initiative.

But on Monday, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling opened the possibility that busing may again become an issue in Los Angeles, and perhaps in much of Southern California. The high court ruled that the NAACP can now pursue the Los Angeles school desegregation case in federal courts.

By Tuesday, Fiedler was on the phone to Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, asking the Justice Department to assist the anti-busing forces if the Los Angeles case goes to the federal courts. And by Wednesday, Fiedler was making the anti-busing case on the “Michael Jackson Show” on KABC talk radio in Los Angeles.

“Obviously I am enormously disappointed over the fact that we have to go through this all over again,” Fiedler said in an interview Wednesday, repeating what she had said on the radio program.

“When I first got involved in the busing case in 1976, my children were in junior high school,” Fiedler continued. “Now I have two grandchildren who are facing the potential threat of busing in Los Angeles.” Fiedler’s role in the anti-busing movement helped her win a seat on the Los Angeles school board, and the publicity she got in that job led to her upset victory in a San Fernando Valley congressional race in 1980.

Jerry F. Halverson, counsel to the Los Angeles Board of Education, said Monday that because the 579,000-pupil district is now 81% minority, “it would be very hard to establish any kind of busing program that would be meaningful.”

But Fiedler said, “Some recent cases show that the federal courts are ordering inter-district busing more casually than they might have at one time.” She pointed to a 1984 federal court ruling consolidating the predominantly black Little Rock, Ark., school district with two largely white districts nearby.

Four-County Busing?

To Fiedler, that raises the possibility of busing students among school districts in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

It may be years before Fiedler will know if her fears are realized. But, for now, just the possibilities raised in Monday’s court ruling has given Fiedler an issue to make noise about.

Right now Fiedler is one of 10 Republicans either actively seeking the Republican Senate nomination next year or exploring the race. No one has pulled away from the pack at this point.

“I think the busing issue gives her (Fiedler) a tremendous leg up in the free media area,” said Orange County political consultant Harvey Englander. “Suddenly busing is no longer an issue of the past and she is there as the one who talks about it most knowledgeably. Even if everybody else in the Republican pack is also opposed to busing, Fiedler is the one most people identify with the issue.”

Republican political consultant George Young of Los Angeles agreed. “I think this is an opportunity for Fiedler. It’s awfully hard to find something newsworthy in this race and she does have strong credentials on this issue.”

Republican state Sen. Ed Davis, one of Fiedler’s rivals for the Republican Senate nomination, put it more simply: “That court ruling is a new wave coming in and I’m sure Bobbi’s got her surfboard out.”