California Elections : 3 Incumbents Confident of Reelection in Congressional Races

Rep. William E. Dannemeyer arrived early at Cal State Fullerton for a debate with Democrat David Vest last week and searched for the authors of a scathing editorial that attacked him in the Daily Titan, the campus newspaper.

The controversial, combative, four-term Republican congressman from Fullerton strode over to some student journalists and grinned. “If you find the guy who wrote it,” Dannemeyer said, “please give him my thanks, will you? He spelled my name right.”

Earlier in the week, Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach) showed up at public television station KOCE for the taping of a debate with Democrat Michael Blackburn, an attorney, and Peace and Freedom Party candidate Kate McClatchy. Ignoring the Democrat for a while, Lungren said, “Gee, I’ve never run against a published poet before,” referring to McClatchy. “This could be interesting.”

And after a similar KOCE taping, Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) said he wished reapportionment had not made his seat so safe. Despite opposition from Democrat Joseph Chirra, Packard said, “this election is the least exciting I’ve been in. . . . Each one seems to be less so than the preceding contest.”

Underfinanced Opposition

If these three congressmen sound nonchalant about the upcoming election, it is because they are expected to coast to easy victories Tuesday. They have only token, underfinanced opposition, partly because the 1981-82 reapportionment made most districts safe for incumbents of both major political parties.

Also, President Reagan’s personal popularity has helped fuel GOP registration gains, which have given Republican incumbents even more lopsided registration margins. And neither the Democrats nor the Republicans pour lots of money into defeating such well-established incumbents unless constituents are clamoring for change.

So Dannemeyer, who abandoned an ill-fated U.S. Senate bid earlier this year, spends much of his time promoting Proposition 64, the controversial AIDS initiative sponsored by political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. and opposed by most public health officials. His Democratic opponent, David Vest, a county health contract administrator, attacks the incumbent as a LaRouche-style ideologue who has become an “embarrassment,” hoping to persuade some GOP voters to abandon a man who has racked up higher vote percentages than Reagan in north Orange County’s conservative 39th District.

And Lungren, who also abandoned a U.S. Senate bid earlier, talks about the landmark immigration reform bill he helped guide through Congress, confident that his Republican, affluent district is pretty happy with the Republican administration in Washington. Democrat Blackburn, a Vietnam veteran, positions himself as a conservative in favor of a strong military but who believes that U. S. allies could pay more of the bill, alleviating some of the need for U. S. troops overseas.

McClatchy argues for drastic cuts in military spending and an end to U. S. aid to the rebels in Nicaragua, relying more on her moral convictions than on the political practicality of attacking Lungren on such issues.

Meanwhile, Packard dwells on district projects for which he helped obtain federal funding, such as the $1.2-billion Santa Ana River Flood Control plan, while Chirra claims that Packard is getting too much credit for projects initiated by others and has actually done little for his constituents.

But Dannemeyer, Lungren and Packard almost never mention their opponents.

Still, Vest believes that Dannemeyer should be held accountable for his actions, including what he terms Dannemeyer’s “bizarre” views favoring Proposition 64, a return to the gold standard for U. S. currency and oil drilling off the Orange County coast, claiming that they are “not mainstream political positions” acceptable to most voters in the district.

At the Cal State Fullerton debate, for example, Vest tried to link Dannemeyer directly to LaRouche through Dannemeyer’s support of the AIDS initiative.

Dannemeyer countered that he has never met or talked to LaRouche. But he added: “Even a stopped clock is right two times a day.”

The 39th District includes La Habra, Brea, Yorba Linda, Fullerton, Placentia, Orange, Villa Park, the Tustin foothills and part of Anaheim. Also running in the district is Peace and Freedom Party candidate Frank Boeheim of Tustin.

Unlike Vest, Blackburn, running against Lungren, does not have a controversial, fire-and-brimstone incumbent like Dannemeyer to attack. Instead, Blackburn used a recent KOCE taping to portray himself as a conservative who would better prepare the 42nd District--heavily dependent on aerospace firms for jobs--for the day when Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, known as “Star Wars,” reduces the demand for weapons.

Lungren countered that his constituents told him frequently that he should do something about immigration reform and crime, and he said that is what he has done in Washington on the House Judiciary Committee, where he has attracted media attention as a rising star.

The 42nd District includes the northern half of Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, parts of Westminster and Los Alamitos, a narrow coastal strip of Long Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

In the 43rd District, which includes El Toro, Mission Viejo, Coto de Caza, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and a large area of north San Diego County, Democrat Chirra takes serious umbrage when someone writes off his race. For example, he bristled when a Sacramento-based political magazine suggested that Packard’s historic November, 1982, write-in victory over Republican Johnnie Crean and Democrat Pat Archer would be the last interesting congressional race in his San Diego County-Orange County district “for many, many years.”

“I’m going to make them eat their words,” said Chirra, who was much more pleased with an editorial in an Oceanside newspaper that congratulated him on making a significant and interesting challenge--even though the publication endorsed Packard.

The challengers’ low-budget campaigns, including that of Libertarian Phyllis Avery of Oceanside in the 43rd District, have been issue-oriented, pointing to very real philosophical differences among themselves and the three conservative congressmen.

That there were enough Republican votes for Packard to win in 1982--although he was not even on the ballot and was outspent 3 to 1 by Crean, the party’s nominee--is evidence to observers that a Democrat is wasting his time to run for office in the district.

“I hope that is true,” said Packard, 55. “I fully expect to serve for a long time, the people willing.”

If his 85,000-vote Republican registration edge--the highest in California--seems almost unfair, Packard said, Democrats, led by the late U. S. Rep. Phillip Burton of San Francisco, “created the beast” themselves. In their zeal to map out safe Democratic districts around the state, he said, they carved out a few safe ones for Republicans too.

“Now, they have to live with it,” he said.

Demographics ‘Constantly Changing’

But Chirra said that “the demographics in the district are constantly changing” and that “I think I have a great chance of winning.”

“I would consider myself a moderate, and a lot of the views I have are held by Republicans and Democrats alike,” he said. “The real issue in this race is Packard. . . . I hear Republicans saying he hasn’t done anything.”

As evidence of his ability to cut into traditionally conservative areas of support, Chirra points to his endorsement by the major rank-and-file police officer organizations--a reaction, no doubt, to Packard’s votes this year in favor of legislation that weakened federal controls on transporting firearms. The legislation was supported by the National Rifle Assn.

But for the most part, conservative organizations strongly support all three incumbent congressmen--Dannemeyer, Lungren and Packard. And their Democratic opponents face an uphill struggle to convince voters that the incumbents’ conservatism does not translate into the proper votes in Congress.