California Elections : Fierce Battle Under Way for 16th District Senate Seat

With the pending retirement of veteran Democratic state Sen. Walter W. Stiern, the battle to succeed him in the 16th Senate District is shaping up as one of the fiercest and most expensive legislative races in the state. And that does not make Stiern happy.

Elected in 1958, Stiern, 72, still hasn’t gotten used to hardball partisan politics. “There’s money coming down here from members of the Senate in the Democratic Party and it’s going to people they don’t even know, “ said the dean of the upper house, sounding astonished despite his 28 years in state politics.

The 16th District is a gerrymandered four-county expanse that stretches from Hanford in Kings County on the north, through Bakersfield and Kern County, to the neighborhoods around the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and even beyond, all the way out to Barstow in San Bernardino County. Nearly two-thirds of the voters, however, reside in Kern County, which is Stiern country.

Stiern’s support would help either of the two candidates running for the Democratic nomination in the June 3 primary election. But so far, the senator has declined to endorse either Jim Young, 47, chancellor of the Kern Community College District, or George Ablin, 63, a Bakersfield neurosurgeon long active in grass-roots party politics.

“The election is something friends and neighbors, the people of Kern County, should decide among themselves,” said the white-haired Stiern.

That is unlikely.

Because of Stiern’s retirement, Senate Republican leaders see the election as their best chance this year of picking up a seat from the Democrats, who now outnumber the GOP in the upper house 26 to 14.

Senate GOP chiefs are backing four-term Republican Assemblyman Don Rogers of Bakersfield, considered the favorite to succeed Stiern by knowledgeable observers in both parties.

Shoestring Budget

Rogers has a primary election opponent: Paul Young, an agricultural consultant from Wasco who is not related to Democratic candidate Young. But GOP candidate Young, a political unknown campaigning out of his home on a shoestring budget, is given little chance by local political observers of defeating the widely known Rogers.

Well aware of Rogers’ political strength in the Bakersfield area, Democrats wanted a quiet primary, hoping to avoid a divisive election that could split the party and eat up resources they will need for the general election.

So far, the race is anything but quiet, although the two candidates for the most part have avoided name-calling.

Both Young and Ablin have already started running television ads, financed in large part by money from outside the district.

Young enjoys the backing of some of the top Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Barry Keene (D-Benecia), who has given him $15,000, and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), who paid Orange County political consultant Harvey Englander to run Young’s campaign.

Other Doctors Help

Ablin, meanwhile, has won several local school board elections. He also has been active in state medical circles and would become the second doctor in the Legislature, something he likes to point out. (The Legislature’s only doctor now is Republican Assemblyman William J. Filante of Greenbrae.) Ablin has drawn considerable financial support from other doctors.

Democrats in Kern County are divided between the two, Stiern said. As for his neutral stance, the lawmaker said he considers both men friends, though he has known Ablin longer. “I am trying to be as fair as I can, and the more I do that the hotter the water I find myself in,” Stiern said.

Young, despite never having run for office, is well-known in the Bakersfield area, and particularly so in Arvin, a community southeast of Bakersfield in which his family settled during the Great Depression after moving from Texas. It is an area where many Dust Bowl migrants settled, and Young, who takes pride in what he calls his “cotton-pickin”’ roots, is considered a local success story.

Though he holds a doctorate from USC and has risen to the top post in the local community college district, he retains the casual demeanor of a good ol’ boy, considered a political asset in an area where country music is No. 1. They call him Chancellor or Dr. Young at the office, but around Arvin he is known mostly as “Fizzer,” a nickname he got tagged with as a child because of the way he mispronounced the name of the old radio show, “Fibber McGee and Molly.”

‘Egg Suckin’ Dogs’

Gastronomically, Young is a connoisseur of buttermilk biscuits and cream gravy. He plays electric guitar with a local, part-time country band called the “Egg Suckin’ Dogs,” and is remembered as a player on a local semipro baseball team, the Independence Senators, in addition to being a three-sport athlete at Arvin High School.

“He’s Arvin’s Abraham Lincoln,” said Wally Reed, publisher of the Arvin Tiller, a weekly newspaper, referring to Young’s humble beginnings.

Since Young has never run for office, it remains to be seen whether he can survive the tough Democratic primary election fight.

Ablin, by contrast, quotes poetry and likes classical music. And where Young, as an educator, has largely stayed clear of Democratic Party politics, Ablin has entertained numerous Democrats at his home, among them U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston and Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy.

He acknowledged that Young has amassed substantial party support in Sacramento, but said, “I will spend what I have to spend to win.”

He has benefitted from the support of the California Medical Assn. At one point, a campaign source said, Ablin was receiving $1,500 a day after a fund-raising solicitation made on his behalf by the association to 30,000 physicians.

Prop. 51 Is an Issue

The letter noted that Young was receiving financial contributions from lawyers, who are opposing Proposition 51, the so-called “deep pockets” initiative on the June 3 ballot. Most physicians favor the proposition because it would limit their legal liability in lawsuits.

“You now have a first-hand opportunity to do something to counter our political enemies and detractors by doubling our physician representation in Sacramento,” the letter said.

Both Democrats recognize that whoever wins the primary election will not have an easy time defeating Rogers, but they think the Democrats have a reasonable chance of keeping the seat in their column.

For one thing, when Democrats drew new boundary lines after the 1980 census, they reached into Pasadena to pick up a sizable pocket of Democratic voters. Authors of the redistricting plan hoped that the Pasadena Democrats will balance the more conservative Kern County Democrats, who frequently vote for Republican candidates. The last official voter registration figures in the district showed that Democrats outnumber Republicans 55% to 35.7%, and Democrats say they are now up to 57%.

Won Against Odds

But Democrats twice ran strong candidates against Rogers in Assembly campaigns, believing that he was vulnerable because of lopsided Democratic voter registration. Rogers won both times, in the process strengthening his hold on the Assembly seat and acquiring something of an aura of invincibility.

Rogers, 58, said he is confident that he can defeat whomever the Democrats throw at him. The Louisiana-born assemblyman has a smooth, country style and yields nothing to Young in his ability to talk the language of the district.

“The registration is not as good as I would want it, but these people are pretty conservative and I’m not going to concede anything to anyone,” he said recently, speaking with the soft, faint drawl that is commonplace in the Bakersfield area.

Rogers’ opponent in the primary, Paul Young, 51, said he plans to spend no more than $2,000 on his campaign and will have no money for television ads. He said his campaign is stressing the need to bring down utility rates to help financially strapped farmers.