71st District : Democrat to Challenge Doris Allen

A 33-year-old Democrat from Garden Grove announced Friday that he is challenging two-term Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) in the November, 1986, election for the 71st Assembly District.

Attorney Mark S. Rosen, speaking at a press conference, contended that Allen has failed to address key problems in her district, including gang violence and improving the local climate for manufacturing.

Also, Rosen contended, Allen recently used taxpayer funds for an out-of-district newsletter attacking Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, one of five state Supreme Court justices on the ballot for confirmation next November.

Allegations Denied

Allen, 48, and her aides called Rosen’s allegations “ridiculous.” She said she had worked hard for her district, securing additional money for its schools, supporting an anti-truancy bill and “working successfully with both sides of the aisle” to see 17 of 30 bills she introduced this year become law.

As for the mailing, Allen was adamant that she had done nothing wrong.

In brief comments for a recent newsletter, Allen had criticized “the revolving door of Rose Bird and her liberal allies on the Supreme Court.”

But “I’ve never done a newsletter that said ‘Defeat Rose Bird,’ ” Allen said Friday.

The newsletter, called Capitol Comments and distributed monthly to about 600 people around the state who asked to be on Allen’s mailing list, was mailed in accordance with Assembly Rules Committee procedures, Allen said.

Issue No. 2, released in early November, reprinted a newspaper editorial criticizing the Bird court and included an introduction by Allen on “Rose Bird and her liberal allies on the Supreme Court.”

Allen also supplied a closing comment: “I call on the California Supreme Court to implement the death penalty. And if a majority of the current Supreme Court won’t heed the wishes of the people or the dictates of justice, then we need a Supreme Court that will.”

At Rosen’s press conference Friday, the attorney contended that by sending the newsletter outside her district, instead of to constituents like himself, Allen “doesn’t communicate to people within the district.”

He also criticized Allen for sitting on Assembly subcommittees on timber and fisheries--issues, he said, that are irrelevant to her inland, suburban district.

Rosen, a member of the county and state Democratic Central Committee, vowed to spend $130,000 on the primary race and $250,000 by next November to unseat Allen. About $15,000 of that would come from his own money, he said.

The challenger said he expected strong support from labor and teachers’ unions and from the recently established Democratic Foundation of Orange County. Gene Crawford, president of the Central Labor Council for Orange County, appeared at the press conference to support Rosen but said the council had not endorsed him.

Republicans hold a narrow edge in the 71st Assembly District, which includes parts of Garden Grove, Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, La Palma, Los Alamitos and Westminster. Currently 45.3%, or 70,438 voters, have registered as Republicans; 44.8%, or 60,601 voters, have registered as Democrats; and 9.9%, or 15,370, did not state a preference. Rosen promised a drive to register more Democrats in the district.

Meanwhile, key Republican leaders said they had never heard of Rosen and are confident that Allen will win.

“It sounds to me like a Don Quixote run,” Thomas Fuentes, chairman of the Republican Central Committee of Orange County, said of Rosen’s candidacy.

Fuentes noted that Republican registration in the district has grown steadily since Allen first ran for the Assembly in 1978. At that time, only 33% of the voters were registered Republican. Fuentes promised that Republicans would continue their own registration drives up to the election.

Allen, a conservative Republican, won election to the Assembly in 1982 after two previous tries. In doing so, she defied the heavily Democratic registration at the time to oust three-term incumbent Chet Wray, a Democrat and a self-described “good ol’ boy,” from the seat by 47,455 votes to 41,222.