Rough, Raw Politics of Kern County : 2 Square Off in Fight for State Senate Seat

Like the good Kern County politicians they are, the Republican and Democratic candidates for an open state Senate seat give the impression they would just as soon chuck their expensive television ads and settle the Nov. 4 election with six-shooters at high noon.

Republican Assemblyman Don Rogers of Bakersfield and Kern Community College District Chancellor Jim Young, both of whom cultivate folksy country-boy images that go over well with voters here, clearly don’t like each other’s politics, or each other generally, for that matter.

Rogers, an archconservative four-term assemblyman, considers Young too liberal, supported by “ultra-liberals” from Hollywood and Beverly Hills, places that he makes sound like different planets located on the other side of the Tehachapis.

Characterizes Opposition

“My gosh, these are the same people who support (California Chief Justice) Rose Bird and oppose the death penalty,” Rogers declared during a recent debate at California State College, Bakersfield, where he called Young “another big spender, big taxer.”

Young, a career educator, doesn’t like the way Rogers has voted against major education financing bills and indicates he might not have run if the candidate were anyone but the GOP assemblyman. “I can tell you, he is not a supporter of public education,” Young told the group of about 100 voters who attended the debate, explaining why he decided to run against Rogers.

Spending Heavily

Since six-shooters are not considered appropriate ways of settling political disagreements anymore, even in Bakersfield, where rough, raw politics is a tradition, Rogers and Young are doing it the modern way: by spending lots of money on radio and television ads and public opinion polls.

Young, who had never run for public office before winning a hotly contested Democratic primary in June, expects to spend at least $1 million, counting both the primary and general election campaigns. Rogers, who ran unopposed in June, expects to spend at least as much as Young on the November election.

Help From Roberti

More than $400,000 of Young’s money has come from Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti, a Democrat who represents Hollywood and is one of the “ultra-liberals” that Rogers refers to in his speeches.

At stake is the seat being vacated by Democratic state Sen. Walter Stiern, the dean of the Legislature, who is stepping down after serving in the upper house since 1959.

Stiern is endorsing Young, along with Roberti and a host of other Democrats who need to hold on to the 16th Senate District seat in order to maintain their current 26-14 majority in the upper house.

Republicans likewise have made the 16th District seat a top priority this year, believing it offers them their best chance to cut into the majority party’s strength, even though the last official voter registration numbers showed Democrats with 53.8% of the voters, compared to 37.1% for Republicans.

That’s because Rogers is a proven vote-getter who has shown he can win elections by attracting conservative Democratic votes in Bakersfield. His Assembly district has just about the same ratio of Democrats to Republicans.

Point to Polls

Both sides consider the election close. Though Rogers claims he has polls showing him well ahead, Young has his own poll, taken by the firm of Fairbank, Bregman & Maullin, that gives him a two-point lead, largely on the basis of Democratic support in precincts outside Kern County.

Legislative boundaries of the four-county district, created in the Democratic gerrymander that followed the 1980 census, generally follow an L-shape, running from the Kings County farming community of Hanford on the north, south through Bakersfield, snaking down to Pasadena and Altadena in Los Angeles County, then out to the desert community of Barstow in San Bernardino County on the east. About 70% of the voters live in Kern County.

Because of its far-flung boundaries and Western flavor, the district seems made to order for a veteran pilot, like Rogers, or a country-talking, guitar-playing campaigner like Young.

Flew to Breakfast

Last week, Rogers rolled out his small single-engine plane during the pre-dawn hours and flew to a breakfast meeting with eight voters in the back room of a cafe in Mojave. From there he bucked 35- to 40-knot head-winds to keep an appointment for a tour of the U.S. Borax Co. open-pit mining operation in Boron, and lunch with an even smaller group of mining company officials.

Mark of Career

It’s that kind of determined campaigning that has been the hallmark of Rogers’ political career. An oil industry geologist, he was elected to the Assembly in 1978 after spending five years on the Bakersfield City Council. Democrats, after looking at favorable voter registration figures, made well-organized runs at Rogers in the 1982 and 1984 elections, losing the first narrowly and the second by a wide margin.

Some of the same issues that dogged Rogers in past elections are resurfacing, including his former membership in the John Birch Society and his close ties to the oil industry, which have led to claims that he has been slow in reacting to toxic waste enforcement. Rogers shrugs off the John Birch association, saying, “I was a member of many organizations, including the U.S. Marine Corps,” and has on occasion defended the right-wing group.

“You don’t get elected in 1978 and every election after that unless you have the confidence of the people,” said Rogers, author of the 1980 initiative that abolished the state inheritance tax.

Rogers’ conservative philosophy bubbles to the surface whenever he campaigns. He told voters in Mojave that he supported requirements that welfare recipients look for jobs because “we are finding if people have to get up and get out of bed to look for a job they are going to drop off the welfare rolls.” He said that placing a cap on skyrocketing insurance premiums “is the first step toward socialized insurance.”

Criticizes Liberals

Later, asked by a reporter what kept him campaigning so hard, he said, “Liberals are ruining this state. They are chipping away at it little by little. Pretty soon there will be more government than business.”

Young, with the help of volunteers from the school district, longtime friends and neighbors, claims he has telephoned 50,000 voters so far.

He said he is strongly motivated by Rogers’ politics. “He is too conservative for me,” Young said.

Young counters Rogers’ claims that he is a liberal by saying that an administrator can’t run a community college district with 800 full-time employees and a $35-million budget without a strong measure of practical business sense.