South Bay Politics : Mailboxes getting muddy in heated Assembly race between Felando and Dana.

The high-stakes Republican primary battle between Assemblyman Gerald N. Felando and challenger Deane Dana III has turned ugly in the past week as the two candidates slug it out in slick “hit piece” mailers that slam each other’s record and character.

In the past week alone, Republican households have been blitzed by no fewer than three mailers each from the Felando and Dana campaigns, filled with charges and countercharges and shrill accusations of lies and distortions by the other side. And the battle of the mailboxes will very likely intensify in the 16 days left before the June 7 primary.

The barrage of sharply worded mailers is being accompanied by telephone calls relaying additional charges. Both sides have set up phone banks to target Republican households in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance and around the Palos Verdes Peninsula to San Pedro.

The fierceness of the battle reflects genuine concern that Felando could fall to the well-financed Dana challenge. Assembly Republican leader Pat Nolan of Glendale held a press conference in Torrance on Friday to announce an 11th-hour assault in the 51st Assembly District to save the San Pedro Republican, a close Nolan ally.

A few days earlier, at a gathering of Assembly Republicans in Gov. George Deukmejian’s Capitol office, Nolan said Felando is fighting for his political life and will need financial and personal assistance from GOP lawmakers to beat Dana.

Lawmakers said Nolan demanded that the 36 Assembly Republicans contribute $5,000 apiece to help Felando turn back the challenge from the son of Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana.

For more than three months, the younger Dana has been attacking Felando’s record on environmental issues, accusing him of supporting offshore oil drilling and dragging his feet on toxic cleanup--charges that Felando has denied. And Dana has repeatedly asserted that Felando has a “cozy relationship” with the Legislature’s most powerful Democrat, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco.

Felando failed to respond to more than two months of Dana mailers until last weekend, when he sent out a slick green attack piece accusing Supervisor Dana of “trying to buy his son a job.” The mailer charged that the elder Dana is running a $1-million “smear campaign” against Felando, financed with money donated to his campaign for supervisor. (The extent of Dana’s financial support for his son’s campaign--which is not illegal--will not be known until the end of this week, when finance reports are due.)

That was quickly followed by another colorful mailer titled “Lies” that sought to dismiss Dana’s charges.

And at week’s end Felando was back with a glossy, blue-and-yellow mailer titled “The Truth” that contained a rhetorical broadside from Nolan blasting the supervisor for mounting “a smear campaign” and making “false and absurd” accusations about Felando support for Brown.

Dana fired back with two mailers, one attacking Felando’s record and another recounting the lawmaker’s “long and notorious record of last-minute smear tactics against his opponents.”

A third, titled “Gerald Felando Is at It Again,” features a cartoon figure preparing to throw mud. It reminds voters that, unlike Dana, Felando has refused to sign the county GOP’s campaign code of ethics.

The intensity of the political struggle between Felando and Dana was evident Friday when the lawmaker called Alice J. Gonzales, director of the state Department of Aging, shortly before the mid-morning press conference at his Torrance campaign headquarters. Gonzales had told Felando two weeks earlier that he could use her name as a supporter on a campaign mailer. On Friday, Felando demanded that Gonzales write a letter endorsing his candidacy.

Gonzales’ endorsement of Felando is an acute embarrassment for Dana. Gonzales was his boss during Dana’s four-year stint as assistant director of the department. He resigned last March to run for the Assembly.

Five hours after Felando told reporters that Gonzales had agreed to write the letter, the department’s chief deputy director, Chris Arnold, told The Times that “we have not endorsed either candidate and we will not.”

But by Friday night, Gonzales said she backed Felando but would not write a letter. “I had hoped I would not have to take a position,” she said. “I had hoped that I would never be asked to take part in it.”

So when’s the debate? A nationally televised debate in Torrance between the Democratic presidential contenders, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, may be moved up.

A conflict in Dukakis’ campaign schedule may force the debate, originally scheduled for June 5 at El Camino College, to be held a week earlier. The event is being sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

“The Dukakis campaign has let us know that they want to do the debate, but they have a problem” with June 5, said Vicky Harian, the league’s presidential debates director in Washington.

Dukakis, the Democratic front-runner, plans to be in New Jersey campaigning with Sen. Bill Bradley on the last Sunday before the June 7 New Jersey and California primaries and has asked that the debate be held on another date, Harian said.

“Jackson has been committed to the (June 5) debate for a while,” she added.

The two campaigns and the league had not reached agreement on another date by week’s end.

A Torrance debate between Republican presidential candidates was scratched after Vice President George Bush took a commanding lead over his GOP rivals.