Wright Pulls Away From Idea of Challenging Davis

After months of consideration, Assemblywoman Cathie Wright says she is leaning away from challenging state Sen. Ed Davis in a costly, divisive Republican primary next year.

Wright, of Simi Valley said a poll recently conducted for her indicated that the 19th Senate District race was politically doable, but she remains concerned that a free-spending intraparty battle would siphon off more than $1 million from other Republican general election races.

“I’m basically leaning against only because I see the bigger picture,” Wright said. “I’m 75% in one direction.”

The bigger picture, she said, is the GOP effort to make inroads in the Democrat-controlled Senate and Assembly before legislative redistricting in 1990, when the Legislature and governor will redraw the congressional boundaries for the next decade.

Wright, who said she had agonized over the decision, said she plans to meet with those who have urged her to run, to give them a last chance to persuade her to oppose Davis. They include former supporters of ex-Rep. Bobbi Fiedler of Northridge, who was involved in a nasty spat with Davis during last year’s U.S. Senate GOP primary campaign.

Wright, a Fiedler ally, said she would make a final decision by Jan. 1. Unless she does an 11th-hour about-face, she said, she will seek reelection to a fifth term in her heavily Republican 37th Assembly District seat in November.

A decision to challenge Davis would mean Wright would have to give up her politically safe Assembly seat, the primary source of her income.

Davis, 71, of Valencia has gone to considerable lengths in a bid to convince Wright that he is definitely seeking reelection to a third term and that she would be politically foolish to oppose him. He announced his 1988 reelection bid in May--nine months before candidates must inform the state that they intend to run--and has engaged in aggressive early campaign fund raising.

Aides said the former Los Angeles police chief sought to head off an expensive, bitter primary tussle in a district so overwhelmingly Republican that the GOP nominee rarely faces a serious Democratic challenge in the fall.

Wright has speculated for months that Davis is perpetrating an elaborate ruse: ostensibly collecting money for a reelection campaign that he ultimately plans to use to pay the remaining debt from his unsuccessful 1986 U.S. Senate primary bid. Wright believed that Davis would announce his retirement early next year and then back his ally, Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge), to succeed him--with no organized opposition on the horizon.

But Wright said in a recent interview that Davis’ higher-than-usual political profile in recent months has convinced her that he is going to run.

She insisted that her disinclination to run was not based on either discouraging poll numbers or the prospect that she could not raise sufficient campaign funds. She said both candidates would raise and spend $500,000 to $600,000 if she joins the race.

Wright reiterated that Davis is vulnerable because he has not adequately represented the district’s concerns, has supported a bill prohibiting job discrimination against homosexuals and suffers residual ill will among GOP activists from his altercation with Fiedler.

During the Senate campaign, Davis charged that Fiedler tried to buy him out of the race by promising to help him raise $100,000 to pay off his campaign debt. Fiedler and her campaign manager, Paul Clarke, were subsequently indicted on that allegation.

Although a judge later dismissed the indictments as groundless, Fiedler’s campaign was crippled. Wright said the incident “cost the Republicans the U.S. Senate race” because it turned off voters. GOP nominee Ed Zschau of Los Altos narrowly lost to Democratic incumbent Alan Cranston.

Davis’ sprawling Senate district extends across the West San Fernando Valley, the western Antelope Valley, the northern and noncoastal sections of Ventura County and most of Santa Barbara County.