No Fighting Yet in 75th District : Mojonnier Keeps Odds on Her Side by Avoiding Lasky

Michael Lasky began the 75th Assembly District race last spring as an idealist, determined to wage a campaign that he knew he could not win in order to drive home his guiding political tenet that “no incumbent should get a free ride back to office.”

Six months later, Lasky is a political realist, distressed that, while the race has exacted a high personal toll through embarrassing disclosures about his background, he has been a virtual nonentity in Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier’s (R-Encinitas) all-but-certain bid for a third term.

“Some people certainly might think that this was more trouble than it’s worth,” said Lasky, 44, a UC San Diego doctoral candidate. “But I don’t feel that way. I’m frustrated, but not out of any personal considerations. The disappointment I feel is for the political process itself.”

Lasky had to overcome considerable odds simply to earn the dubious honor of being the Democratic nominee in a district in which the Republicans hold a commanding 52%-33% edge among registered voters. After no Democrat filed to run in the June primary, Lasky launched a write-in campaign in the 75th District, which stretches along the coastline from Imperial Beach through Encinitas, extending inland to Rancho Bernardo, Penasquitos, Mira Mesa and Miramar. He ultimately drew nearly 1,400 votes, becoming the first state Assembly write-in candidate to qualify for the ballot in San Diego in at least a decade.

Since then, Lasky has been frustrated by what he views as Mojonnier’s “stonewalling” of his repeated requests for a series of debates--a common complaint among long shots running against “safe” incumbents with little to gain by doing anything that might increase their challengers’ visibility or credibility.

To date, their only scheduled joint appearance--one to be shared with two minor candidates, Libertarian John Murphy and Peace and Freedom Party candidate Arnie Schoenberg--is a 20-minute television forum that will be broadcast two days before the Nov. 4 election.

A leading anti-war activist at UCLA in the 1960s, Lasky is a skillful orator whose speeches easily eclipse those of Mojonnier, a 43-year-old Encinitas businesswoman, in both style and content. Lasky insists, however, that he wants to debate Mojonnier not because he seriously entertains notions of an upset, but because “it’s important for the voters and important for the process.”

“Like any incumbent, Sunny Mojonnier should have to, at the very least, stand up and defend her record,” Lasky said. “If that doesn’t happen, where does that leave us? Democracy demands that voters have a choice. But if well-known, well-financed officeholders in gerrymandered districts continually duck any kind of an adversarial setting with their opponents, what choice is there?”

Mojonnier contends that she has not been “consciously avoiding” Lasky, arguing that the lengthy legislative session, not campaign strategy, has been the major obstacle to potential debates. Mojonnier, who plans to spend about $50,000 in the campaign--compared to Lasky’s likely total of less than $500--added that she expects to meet her Democratic opponent in several forums during the race’s closing weeks.

“I haven’t known what my schedule is going to be from one day to the next,” said Mojonnier, who co-owns a flower-growing business and travel agency with her husband. “But I’m not someone who ducks. I don’t have anything to duck.”

Labeled “a lightweight” by her 1982 opponent, former Del Mar Mayor Richard Roe, Mojonnier continues to be viewed as such by many local politicians, who attribute the security of her seat more to her district’s strong Republican slant than to her own abilities.

Throughout her four years in Sacramento, Mojonnier has focused on children’s issues, highlighted by her sponsorship of a package of six bills dealing with child abuse and aimed at making court appearances less intimidating for youngsters by, for example, allowing them to testify via closed-circuit television.

Equating such laws with “motherhood and the flag,” Lasky argues that “it’s impossible to be against” Mojonnier’s child-protection bills at the same time that he dismisses them as “preoccupation with a safe, false issue.”

“The question is, is this the most important issue facing the 75th District?” Lasky said. “I’d argue that it clearly is not.”

Environmental issues, the liability insurance dilemma and North County development problems deserve more attention, Lasky said. But the lack of debates has left Lasky with few public opportunities to draw the policy contrasts between himself and Mojonnier.

In his public speeches, Lasky often describes Mojonnier as “a phantom representative who does little for the district, a filler for various special interests,” including developers and fellow growers. Mojonnier counters by noting that she spends most weekends in the district and that her voting record demonstrates her independence.

“I’m not a predictable vote,” said Mojonnier, who once lost an Assembly GOP caucus post when she angered party conservatives by voting, against their wishes, to close certain tax loopholes.

While Lasky’s campaign perhaps has been inconsequential in terms of its impact, the two minor candidates in the race have been practically invisible. Libertarian candidate Murphy is a 46-year-old marketing executive who characterizes Mojonnier as “a philosophically rootless, typical politician.” The focus of his campaign, however, is his party’s basic theme that government intrusion in the lives of individuals should be reduced, in this case by “reversing the flow of power away from Sacramento and back to the citizens.” Peace and Freedom candidate Schoenberg, who received 41 votes in the June primary, also is on the November ballot.

Meanwhile, Lasky’s attempts to, in his words, “put Sunny Mojonnier’s record under the spotlight” have been undercut by major image problems of his own. Shortly after he qualified for the November ballot, Lasky, his hand forced by anonymous telephone calls to reporters, revealed that his background includes a prison sentence stemming from a 23-count felony conviction on mail fraud in the 1970s, leftist activism and reported membership in the Communist Party in the 1960s, arrests on rioting and other charges, and an incident in which he was kidnaped and shot by two black militants in 1969.

While those disclosures prompted some Democrats who earlier had boasted about Lasky’s write-in triumph to distance themselves from him, Lasky says that the incident caused others “to rally to my side and say, ‘Just wear those thick-heeled boots and trudge through this thing.’ ”

Far from causing him to have second thoughts about the wisdom of going to considerable trouble to run in a race that he realistically could not even hope to win, Lasky said that he is thankful that the publicity about his colorful background “has lifted a great burden from my shoulders.”

“I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done, but since most people weren’t familiar with my past, it was a source of constant pressure,” Lasky explained. “Now, I can live a much freer and happier life, because this can never be used to attack me in the future. In that sense, I feel like I’ve already won something important.”