Challengers Hope to Upset Campbell, Green in Legislature

With Tuesday’s primaries out of the way, Orange County’s state legislators and their opponents turned their sights Wednesday toward the fall campaign, when several challengers will be hoping to pull off upsets.

Final results released early Wednesday showed that Republican Assemblymen Gil Ferguson of Newport Beach and Ross Johnson of La Habra--the only two incumbents to face primary election challenges this year--had dispatched their opponents with ease.

Ferguson collected 60.2% of the vote in the 70th Assembly District, with Newport Beach Councilwoman Evelyn R. Hart getting 33.3% and Laguna Beach environmentalist Michael Mang, 6.3%. Ferguson will face Democrat Michael K. Gallups, a San Juan Capistrano schoolteacher, in the general election.

Johnson received 83.3% of the vote in the 64th District GOP primary, with Hughes Aircraft administrator Ron Newton getting 16.2%. Johnson will be challenged in the fall by Democrat Donald Heuer, a Fullerton carpenter.

In two other contested primaries, a veteran politico and a novice won spots on the November ballot against incumbent Sens. Cecil Green (D-Norwalk) and William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights).

Facing Green in the 33rd District will be Don Knabe, an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana. Knabe, who considered running for the seat in a special election last year but backed out under pressure from GOP leaders, defeated Hawaiian Gardens businesswoman Margaret J. Vineyard, 73.2% to 26.8%.

Campbell’s 31st District opponent will be Janice Lynn Graham of Laguna Hills, who has lived in California for a year and says she was an educator and businesswoman in New York and North Carolina. Graham won the Democratic nomination by beating political science instructor Stan Caress of West Covina, 59.9% to 40.1%.

The two most hotly contested races in the fall will likely be the Green-Knabe battle and the 72nd Assembly District race between Deputy Dist. Atty Christian (Rick) Thierbach and the person the Republican Central Committee chooses to replace Assemblyman Richard E. Longshore (R-Santa Ana), who died Wednesday, less than a day after winning the GOP nomination in an uncontested primary.

Knabe said the key to his Senate race will be his ability to keep pace with Green in campaign fund raising.

“If we can maintain and hold our own in fund raising, I think that with the local team we were able to put together we will be able to do very well,” Knabe said. “He’ll definitely know he’s been in a race.”

Knabe said he intends to hit Green on the “independence” issue--accusing him of being a tool of the Senate Democratic leadership that poured thousands of dollars into his 1987 special election campaign.

“People in this area are pretty fed up, on both sides of the aisle, with people from Sacramento coming in and dictating who their candidate is going to be,” Knabe said.

Green could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Graham said she intends to campaign vigorously against Campbell, despite a voter registration edge of 54% to 37% in the Republicans’ favor.

Graham said Campbell is vulnerable because, as co-chairman of Vice President George Bush’s presidential campaign in California, he is spending too much time out of the capital. She also criticizes Campbell’s use of Small Business Administration funds for his annual women’s conference, which she charges is a purely political event.

‘Nail His Hide’

“I intend to nail his hide to the wall,” she said.

Campbell aide Jerry Haleva said Campbell is “proud of his co-chairmanship” of the Bush campaign.

“He will continue to be very active to ensure not only that Bill Campbell carries his district, as he has strongly in the past, but that the vice president carries that district as well,” Haleva said. “He is equally proud of the success of the women’s conference and looks forward to future conferences.”

Ferguson, reflecting on his primary campaign against Hart and Mang, said that as a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, he found it difficult to respond to campaign criticism from Hart because she is a woman.

“I’m an officer and a gentleman,” Ferguson said. “You’re not supposed to say bad things about a woman--you’re supposed to open doors for them. But when somebody attacks your integrity, it’s the same as getting wounded on the battlefield.”

Hart said she will now support Ferguson because the voters chose him over her in a fair contest. She said she has respect for the voters of the 70th District. And if they chose Ferguson, she added, “I have respect for that.”

Although GOP leaders had criticized Hart for challenging Ferguson when they believed that he should have been concentrating his money and energy on defeating Democrats in other parts of the state, Ferguson and Assembly Republican leader Pat Nolan of Glendale said Hart will be welcomed back into the party’s fold.

“Life is too short to stay mad at people,” Ferguson said.

Nolan, at a post-election news conference Wednesday at the Doubletree Hotel in Orange, said Hart might make a good candidate if another seat opens up in the county when district lines are redrawn after the 1990 census.

“After reapportionment, there are going to be plenty of seats in Orange County for people like Mrs. Hart to run for,” Nolan said. “She’d be a good member of the Legislature.”

Times staff writers Jess Bravin and David Reyes contributed to this article.