Zschau Braves Tenderloin District in S.F. to Rap Foe

Staging a media event where the action is has its risk.

You’ve got to cope with the action.

Rep. Ed Zschau, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, came to the sin capital of Northern California on Monday--San Francisco’s bawdy and decaying Tenderloin--and stirred up unexpected street action when he attacked his Democratic opponent as a “noncombatant in the war on drugs.”

Standing in front of a parlor that dispenses 25-cent peep shows and raunchy lingerie, Zschau was heckled so loudly and profanely for most of his appearance that his nervous staff members ran into the street to seek police assistance.

The heckler, the most persistent of two who seemed to object to the intrusion into their neighborhood, said he thought that he had a right to issue graphic insults as he pleased. The authorities, who included a California Highway Patrol officer and two San Francisco police officers, felt differently and arrested the man.

If that was not enough of a distraction, one rubber-necking motorist collided with another directly in front of the Zschau press conference as they gawked at the sight of so many neckties and cameras in the tawdry neighborhood, where nearly 700 drug arrests have occurred so far this year. The accident caused little damage and both motorists quickly drove off.

Through it all, the Los Altos congressman remained intently focused on his charges that Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston “voted against or missed virtually every tough drug law put before the U.S. Senate in nearly two decades.”

In particular, Zschau said Cranston voted against two bills with anti-drug implications, and over the years was recorded as absent on seven others. In three cases, Cranston was not absent from the Capitol but merely abstained, Zschau said.

In the war on drugs, Zschau said, “The people of California want leadership, or at least participation.”

The congressman listed eight votes of his own over the past two years that he said showed his commitment to the battle. Among them were bills to stiffen penalties for drug traffickers and measures to allow the U.S. military to assist in drug enforcement.

Responding for Cranston, campaign press secretary Kam Kuwata said the senator “is providing leadership. . . . Alan Cranston is not looking at the past but at the present and the future.”

Kuwata said Cranston was a member of two Senate anti-drug task forces, and was co-author of legislation to increase penalties for the sale of the crystalline form of cocaine known as “crack” and for trafficking in so-called designer drugs. Another bill is about to be introduced, Kuwata said, to increase penalties for pharmacists involved in illegal drug trade.

Kuwata acknowledged that many of these actions were taken only recently, at a time when politicians are racing to outdo one another in the now-fashionable crusade against illicit drugs.

When informed that his heckler had been handcuffed and taken away in a police car, Zschau registered an objection and later called police to appeal for his release. “I don’t want anyone arrested for speaking their mind,” he said.

Police turned Zschau down, saying the man was arrested for being drunk in public, not for simple heckling.

When questioned, the congressman said he strongly supported the symbolic acts of the President, vice president and White House senior staff members to submit to urinalysis tests for drugs.

Zschau was asked by a reporter if he would submit a sample.

“Yes,” he said.

When? “When I get somebody who will take it.”