Cranston Missed Key Votes, Zschau Charges

Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston’s ill-fated run for the presidency has come back to haunt him only two days into his 1986 Senate reelection battle against Republican challenger Ed Zschau.

Zschau on Thursday screened a TV ad prepared for him by the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee that ridicules Cranston for missing a key vote in 1983 on Social Security reform and another vote in 1984 on reform of the federal criminal code.

“We want to remind voters that since they elected Alan Cranston the last time, they have not been getting full representation,” said Zschau at a Sacramento press conference.

“Since he was elected last time, he has missed 347 votes in the Senate. Even though he pretends to be an advocate of Social Security, he wasn’t there for the key vote on Social Security reform. The crime bill that went through the Senate--he was absent for that.

“Alan Cranston still has not taken a position on (Chief Justice) Rose Bird, although a U.S. senator not only makes recommendations for judges, he also confirms recommendations made by the President. And it is therefore important to know what kind of criteria one uses in making those recommendations.”

Cranston’s campaign secretary Kam Kuwata acknowledged Thursday that Cranston missed the votes on Social Security and the federal crime bill. But Kuwata added, “When Alan was campaigning for president, there was no vote in the Senate in which his one vote would have been a determining factor.”

The Cranston campaign also charged that Zschau could hardly criticize Cranston’s attendance record because, according to Cranston’s research, Zschau has only a 66% attendance record this year, while Cranston’s record this year has been 98%.

Zschau said in response that he would be surprised if his attendance record this year, in which he has spent much time campaigning for the Republican Senate nomination, was as low as 66%. In any case, he contended that he had missed only one key vote this year and that was on the omnibus trade bill.

Zschau’s television ad attacking Cranston is a takeoff of a widely seen commercial for wine coolers. It shows two folksy gentlemen sitting on a bench, one doing the talking while the other nods.

“We are pleased to announce elections will be held as scheduled,” says one of the gentlemen in the ad. “Alan Cranston says he works hard. Don’t think so. He’s missed 347 Senate votes since 1981. . . . Ted (the gentleman who is nodding) says a 16-year-old did that he’d still be in third grade. . . .”

Zschau’s attack on Cranston follows by one day Cranston’s attack on Zschau in a television ad, in which he charges that Zschau has been against cleaning up toxic dumps.

A two-term congressman from Los Altos, Zschau said Thursday that Cranston’s ad was a “misrepresentation. It implies that I voted against the Superfund. But I voted for the Superfund in 1984 and again in 1985.”

Although the 46-year-old Zschau has insisted that he will not make Cranston’s age, which is 71, an issue, he appeared to do just that at his Sacramento press conference when he went out of his way to point out that Cranston’s ad attacking him “uses my picture, not his.”

But when asked if he were implying that the senator looked old or infirm, Zschau hastily backed away from the point.

Zschau spent much of Thursday touring the state in a private jet, holding press conferences in San Diego and San Francisco in addition to Sacramento. He made a special effort to praise the Republican Senate candidate who came closest to him in Tuesday’s primary, Los Angeles television commentator Bruce Herschensohn. Herschensohn got 30% of the vote to Zschau’s 37%.

“I just want to underscore the leadership on unity that Bruce Herschensohn took,” Zschau said. “He came to my suite about 2 a.m. Wednesday with his campaign staff and some supporters and wanted to tell me personally that I would have his support. That in my view was a class act.”

Zschau said he had received phone calls Wednesday from President Reagan and Vice President George Bush, both of whom said they would be willing to come to California on his behalf.