Orange County Elections : 5 Democrats Hope to Challenge 2 Entrenched GOP Assemblymen

If nothing else, the quantities of cash the two veteran Republican assemblymen had in the bank this spring might have been an intimidation. Ross Johnson of La Habra had hauled in more than $127,000 since January alone. Dennis L. Brown, a fellow conservative from Signal Hill, had $170,000 in the bank and took in another $65,000 between March and May.

And neither of them had any opponent in the June primary. It was enough to make any Democrat in these comfortably Republican Orange County districts think twice--which they did, all five of them, before taking out papers for yet another run at two of the county’s longest-term assemblymen.

Johnson, who has represented the 64th Assembly District since 1978, and Dennis Brown, a four-term representative of the 58th District, are two of the Legislature’s most conservative members and two of Orange County’s most firmly entrenched incumbents. Yet both are on the firing line this spring from a field of Democratic contenders who say that Brown’s and Johnson’s conservative views don’t mesh with the needs of their constituents.

Brown, 36, drew statewide attention only last year when his bills became the target of a two-day boycott by legislators voicing their irritation over Brown’s consistent “no” votes on virtually all spending bills. That reputation earned him the nickname of “Dr. No” a few years ago when he voted against a program to stamp out bubonic plague in rats, a program partially targeted to help his own district.

His Democratic opponents--and one candidate from the Peace and Freedom Party--have said that Brown’s no votes mean Brown isn’t bringing home the kinds of benefits that residents from districts represented by his more free-spending colleagues enjoy.

Says Brown: “We have a Legislature heavily dominated by liberal Democrats, and quite frankly, I have been one of the leaders in trying to stop a lot of bad legislation from being passed. . . . We need to get government back to the basics, really doing those types of projects that people can’t do for themselves, instead of having a government that tries to do everything for everybody.”

Johnson, 46, known for his statewide ballot initiatives two years ago that sought campaign reforms and welfare cuts so severe that even some Republicans labeled the proposals “Draconian,” has attracted new attention in Sacramento this year as a result of some unlikely alliances with his liberal colleagues.

It was Johnson, for example, who was appointed to an Assembly elections committee by liberal Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr. (D-San Francisco) earlier this month to help push through Brown’s legislation to place limits on campaign finance--an issue long close to Johnson’s heart.

Johnson recently agreed to become principal co-author--along with one of the Assembly’s most liberal members, Lloyd G. Connelly of Sacramento--on legislation to put teeth into the state’s open meetings law.

And the La Habra assemblyman found himself in an unexpected alliance with consumer and public interest groups in his bid to abolish the state agency that licenses California’s dry-cleaning industry.

But Democratic opponents believe Johnson’s focus on statewide philosophical issues has been at the expense of paying attention to issues in his own district, like cleaning up the McColl hazardous waste dump in Fullerton. They contend that he neglects issues like child care for working mothers in his district.

Johnson counters by cataloguing a long history of his “terribly frustrating” efforts to spur cleanup work at McColl, legislation to acquire a new state park in the Chino Hills and a bill he recently co-authored to impose stricter sentencing on criminals previously convicted of serious crimes. Johnson said the latter bill is an outgrowth of his work as Orange County chairman of the 1982 “victims’ bill of rights” ballot initiative.

Seeking the Democratic nomination on the June 3 ballot to run against Johnson in November are college student and restaurant manager Peter Dimopoulos of Fullerton and Jo Marie Lisa of Placentia, a researcher with an El Segundo aerospace firm.

Dimopoulos, 24, a supporter of three-time presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche and his philosophies about global conspiracies that affect American politics, said he is stressing three issues in his campaign.

Would Repeal Gramm-Rudman

He proposes to declare acquired immune deficiency syndrome a communicable disease, allowing for quarantine of AIDS victims when necessary. He also supports repeal of the federal Gramm-Rudman budget-cutting measure “because it takes the power of making a budget away from the Congress and gives it to an arbitrary individual, such as a controller.” Finally, he is promoting rapid development of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which he said “will be a tremendous boon to the American and world economies because of the technological spinoffs.”

Lisa, 36, says LaRouche followers are “a bizarre cult, and they are a danger . . . people will not vote for a LaRouche supporter, they’re going to vote for a moderate, rational candidate.”

Lisa said she decided to run because Johnson “is out of touch with the voters of the district. . . . I’m not sure that he’s aware of what some of the real problems are.”

Even though Johnson helped pass legislation two years ago to promote a cleanup of the McColl dump, she complained, “it’s still not cleaned up. As the Assembly representative, I feel that he has an obligation to work very diligently with the Department of Health Services to speed up the process. This has been ongoing for eight years now.”

Support for Day Care

Lisa also said she supports additional day care services for working mothers, either through public- or private-financing efforts.

Lisa has raised about $1,300, but Dimopoulos so far has not collected the $500 needed to file state campaign reports. Both have scheduled a number of public and private appearances on behalf of their campaigns, but after the primary, it will be an even steeper uphill march for the Democratic nominee.

Republicans hold 53.4% of the registration in the 64th District--taking in the north Orange County suburban communities of La Habra, Brea, Placentia and Fullerton--compared to only 36.9% for the Democrats.

Brown has less of a registration spread in the 58th District, with only 48.4% registered Republicans compared to 40.7% for the Democrats. And most of the Republican Party’s edge is in the Orange County communities of Seal Beach and Huntington Harbour. Democrats have an almost even foothold where the district spreads into south Long Beach.

Leading the fund raising among the three Democrats seeking to challenge Brown is Michael Ferrall, a 10-year Wisconsin state legislator (until 1980) who recently quit his government relations job with the Los Angeles Port Authority to campaign full time.

Ferrall, with $1,136 in contributions so far, said he was persuaded to run by Long Beach Democratic Assemblyman Dave Elder and members of the Long Beach Democratic Club, “realizing as we both do the difficulty of taking on an incumbent who has an awful lot of money.”

But Ferrall says he believes that he will be able to capitalize on Brown’s “performance as a legislator, what we would regard as a rather pathetic performance at that. He has made himself all but ineffective as a legislator, his credibility with his colleagues is about zero, and he’s unable to have any significant impact on the formation of public policy or any major legislation.”

Ferrall, 48, of Long Beach said the tremendous population growth forecast for the Los Angeles and Orange County areas over the next two decades will put “tremendous pressure” on local communities to provide such services as health care, roads, education and recreation facilities. “What is tragic about it is that Mr. Brown has approached these problems in an ostrich-like manner. He sticks his head in the sand and says no, no, no, and ignores all these problems that we face.”

East Long Beach real estate broker Andrew Kinkaid, 39, is only a few dollars behind Ferrall, with $1,013 in contributions. He, too, blasts Brown for what he sees as a lack of attention to education in California.

‘Not Doing Job’ in Education

“We’ve dropped to one of the lowest positions in the country in teacher-student ratios; our expenditures per student are 47th or 48th in the country; we’re simply not doing the job,” he said. A strong educational system will be critical in coming years to maintaining the nation’s competitive edge with other Pacific Rim nations, Kinkaid said.

“Every time we talk about private production, it’s a great and wonderful thing, but when we talk about social production, things like keeping the streets clean, it’s like it doesn’t count. But if we don’t do those kinds of things, we’re not going to be in the position in our private production to challenge what’s happening in the Pacific Rim. We’re going to be left behind.”

Peggy Staggs, 54, a history teacher at Golden West College, said that as a teacher she is also concerned about the decline in the quality of public education. “The vast majority of my students are woefully ill-prepared to deal with college-level communication, especially in reading and writing,” she said.

Staggs, of Huntington Beach, said one of the reasons she decided to run was her concern that the 58th District has been “orphaned” because of its split between Los Angeles and Orange counties and because Brown “is incompetent and disinterested in the district; he has been allowed to continuously get reelected because of this neglect on the part of the two parties,” she said.

Tourism Called Crucial

Staggs said she is also committed to spending the money needed to preserve recreational and tourist facilities, an area she views as crucial for the district’s coastal communities.

She has raised less than the $500 needed to file a campaign report, but noted that Assemblyman MikeRoos (D-Los Angeles) attended a recent fund-raiser of hers “and indicated that I was the kind of person they needed in the state Legislature.”

Running on the Peace and Freedom ticket is Paul Haak of Long Beach, who describes his occupation as “peace activist,” based on years of work on the issues of nuclear weapons, nuclear technology and American involvement in Central America.

“Basically, my contribution to party politics is to have the name of the party on the ballot,” said Haak, who also challenged Brown in 1982.

“Dennis Brown’s record is one of saying no to almost everything imaginable. I feel that is no way to represent a constituency of 100,000 or so. A lot of his positions are non-positions,” Haak said. “While I’m obviously intent on unseating him, since he’s unbeatable at this point, I am providing people an opportunity to vote for an opposing point of view.”