CAMPAIGN ’88 : Fonda an Issue in N.J.

A continent away from their Santa Monica home, actress Jane Fonda and her husband, Democratic Assemblyman Tom Hayden, have become an issue in a contentious New Jersey Senate campaign.

For nearly a week, Republican challenger Pete Dawkins, a retired Army general and Vietnam War veteran, has been attacking his opponent, Democratic Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, for accepting a $5,000 campaign contribution from a Hollywood political group to which Fonda belongs. Among other things, Dawkins said Lautenberg’s acceptance of the contribution was “offensive” in light of Fonda’s “radical leftist politics.”

After a few days of abuse on the matter, Lautenberg produced a two-page statement from Hayden that said he and Dawkins have had a friendly relationship for years. It noted that they grew up in the same Detroit suburb, have met for breakfast in New York and, last June, chatted at length during a memorial for the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at the Virginia home of his widow, Ethel.

Over the years, Hayden’s statement said, Dawkins “has acted like a family friend . . . . It just doesn’t seem very honorable that Pete is now making these false attacks on me and my wife.”