GOP Foes Try to Get Attention Amid Fuss Over Fiedler, Davis

As the old wheeze has it, there are only two things you can do running for office. You can go somewhere, or you can say something. And these limited options do not seem to change even when a juicy criminal indictment lands smack in the middle of a political race--as it has in the Republican U.S. Senate campaign.

The several Republican candidates not caught up in the legal hurly-burly between Rep. Bobbi Fiedler and her accuser, state Sen. Ed Davis, are scurrying from place to place and talking their hearts out, hoping to attract attention in a race more focused on court wars than “Star Wars.”

Ever since Davis complained to authorities that Fiedler was trying to bribe him out of the race, the two have grown so bitter and ceaseless in their exchange of words that Fiedler could no longer even trade a simple handshake at a recent joint appearance. And there were stories within the story, such as Davis establishing a special telephone “hot line” to expedite dissemination of his views and Fiedler’s casual announcement along the way that she will marry her campaign manager and co-indictee, Paul Clarke.

‘Nothing to Do With Issues’

“We can compare their fight with the scenario of two scorpions in a glass bottle with the entire state of California peering in. This fight has nothing to do with the issues facing the nation or the state,” grumped Robert W. Naylor, a Menlo Park assemblyman who is not at all happy about his dark-horse Senate candidacy being overshadowed.

A judge is expected to rule Wednesday on motions for dismissal of grand jury charges that Fiedler and Clarke offered Davis $100,000 in campaign contributions to get him out of the Senate race. Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner announced this week that his office will urge dismissal of the charges against the Northridge congresswoman but will go forward with the prosecution of Clarke. By the day of the hearing, the Senate race will have been dominated for more than a month by the Fiedler-Davis dispute.

Nevertheless, at least five other candidates are striving to prove that there is a Republican race to defeat three-term Democratic incumbent Alan Cranston.

And you can find it as far away as the Caribbean where Arthur B. Laffer of Laffer Curve economic fame worked the cocktail-party/fund-raising circuit.

Rode With Border Patrol

And at the Mexico-U.S. border, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich recently rode with the U. S. Border Patrol to intercept unlawful immigrants.

Closer at hand, in Orange County, broadcasting commentator Bruce Herschensohn fired up conservative backers with an in-person endorsement by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

The boldest effort to break out of the crowded field is being mounted by Rep. Ed Zschau of Los Altos. He goes on the air Monday with a two-week blitz of television commercials that will cost him $538,000--the first major advertising effort in the Senate primary campaign.

Virtually unknown outside his Silicon Valley congressional district, Zschau (pronounced like “shout “ without the “t”) will offer viewers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego a quick biography of him in 30- and 60-second spots.

Ed Gillespie of Media Buying Services Inc. in Santa Monica estimated that “approximately 92% of adults 18 and over will see Ed’s commercials an average of 11 times over the next two weeks.”

The media blitz is “to tell people who I am,” said Zschau, a former professor, businessman and lobbyist for lower capital gains taxes. To pay for all of his TV time, Zschau thinks that he will have to raise $4 million in the primary, by far the highest figure quoted by any of the Republican candidates.

Zschau, who has raised $1 million, went into the 1986 campaign year with $668,000 in the bank, the most of any Republican candidate. Much of that was raised from high-tech entrepreneurs.

Building Credibility

And while Fiedler and Davis dominated news reports, Zschau spent his time building credibility among political contributors and insiders.

This paid off when he signed up two professional fund-raisers who had been heavily courted by rival candidates, especially Fiedler and Antonovich. The two new Zschau backers are Joyce Valdez of Los Angeles and Karolyn Dorcee of San Diego, who together raised more than $4 million for Pete Wilson in his victorious Senate race in 1982.

Herschensohn, who will formally enter the Republican Senate race in early March, does not join the fray with Zschau’s cash on hand. But he has another advantage that anyone could envy--he is well known in vote-rich Southern California because of his eight years as commentator on KABC television and radio in Los Angeles.

Herschensohn wasted no time after leaving the air on Jan. 23 before trying to stake out his position in the race as the conservative’s conservative. And to demonstrate it, Herschensohn welcomed the endorsement of Helms, one of the nation’s strongest symbols of unyielding conservatism.

“I would walk across this country for Bruce Herschensohn,” Helms told a cheering audience of about 200 people in Costa Mesa.

In an interview, Helms said he had nothing bad to say about any of the other Republicans in the Senate race, but he had decided to help Herschensohn because he believes the Senate does not just need more Republicans, it needs more members who are as “proudly conservative” as Herschensohn.

Caution From Helms

Helms noted that he too had been a television and radio commentator before he ran for the Senate in 1972, and he warned Herschensohn’s supporters against assuming that their man is known by everyone.

“I was under that illusion when I entered my Senate race,” Helms said, “but we took a poll and we found out only 19% of the people in North Carolina knew who I was.”

A polished speaker with a special passion for foreign affairs, Herschensohn often attacks the Soviet Union and communism in his speeches.

Herschensohn’s chief adviser is Angela (Bay) Buchanan Jackson, former U.S. treasurer and treasurer of the Reagan-Bush presidential campaign in 1984. Jackson said she could not discuss her candidate’s campaign finances until he formally declares his candidacy.

If any contender seems to be benefiting, at least now, from the Fiedler-Davis clash, it is Antonovich, who shares the same San Fernando Valley political base. The Los Angeles Times Poll earlier this month found him the strongest of the candidates when lined up against Cranston.

“All it’s meant to me is that I’ve begun to break out of the pack four to eight weeks sooner than I planned,” Antonovich insisted.

During the weeks that the indictment dominated the race, Antonovich stuck with his mainstream strategy of telephoning for endorsements, working the dinner party circuit for contributions and building an elaborate organization of volunteers.

He also has made a couple of forays into Northern California, where he acknowledges that he is not as well known. And he also worked an eight-hour shift last month with the Border Patrol.

Funds Transfer Challenged

Antonovich so far has raised $149,000 and transferred in $461,000 from his county supervisor’s war chest, entering the election year with a balance on hand of $472,000. However, the $461,000 transfer from his local political treasury to his current campaign has been challenged by Fiedler on grounds that the money was not raised under federal election rules, which limit individual donations to $1,000 and prohibit corporate contributions. The Federal Elections Commission acknowledged that it is reviewing the complaint.

Naylor, more than any other candidate, has been provoked to action by the Fiedler-Davis controversy.

Not only has he repeatedly urged the two to step out of the race for the good of the Republican Party, but Naylor also acknowledged making some “preliminary” calls to try to poach Davis and Fiedler contributors.

Naylor has raised about $500,000 so far, but he entered 1986 with only $14,670 on hand.

Fiedler reported amassing a total of $739,000, of which an aide said more than $300,000 was transferred from her congressional campaign committee. She began 1986 with $458,000 on hand.

Davis, who had spent the $455,000 he had raised, was in the red $14,000 at the start of 1986.

Even the recent entry into the Republican race of two black candidates went virtually unnoticed in the tumult over the Fiedler-Davis dispute.

But Harvey Mudd College Prof. Bill Allen and former black militant-turned-conservative Eldridge Cleaver were more than objects of curiosity at a candidate forum Friday night at the exclusive Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach. Each held his own in the wide-ranging discussion of issues.

National Speaking Schedule

All but ignoring the Fiedler-Davis wars, Laffer has been following his own unorthodox drummer for months. He has followed a national speaking schedule as an economist, doubling up on his stops with campaign fund-raisers built around a small army of former university students and followers who are intently loyal to him.

It is a high-overhead, far-from-home strategy that has caused some friction with his professional handlers and dissatisfaction among supporters who see little improvement in his low standing in the polls.

Laffer has raised $675,000 but spent himself into a beginning-of-the-year debt of $46,000. But he defended the investment as what it takes “to get a new business off the ground.”

“This is what I know how to do,” Laffer said during a speaking and fund-raising tour that went as far as Puerto Rico and will take him during two weeks to Palm Springs; San Francisco; Minneapolis; Oakland; Nashville, Tenn.; Phoenix; Los Angeles; Houston; Chicago; Tampa, Fla., and Cincinnati, among other places.