ELECTIONS ’88 SOUTHEAST / LONG BEACH : Parties Pour Thousands Into High-Stakes 63rd Dist. Race : GOP Incumbent Fights for Seat That Party Wants to Keep in Redistricting

Things have changed for Assemblyman Wayne Grisham since he last ran for reelection to his 63rd District Assembly seat, a race he won by a margin of 17 percentage points. An unexpected defeat in his bid for a state Senate seat last year has left the Norwalk Republican vulnerable but determined.

“I should be getting 70% of the vote” in the Nov. 8 election, Grisham said at his campaign headquarters, a small storefront in a Norwalk shopping center. “Now I hope to get 55%.”

At 65, Grisham is fighting to retain a seat that state Republicans desperately want to keep, pointing toward the reapportionment of legislative districts that the majority party will engineer in 1990.

State Republican officials are pumping tens of thousands of dollars into Grisham’s campaign, which is relying on a barrage of mailers and scads of lawn signs to promote him and attack the well-financed Democratic challenger, Robert D. Epple, a lawyer and a member of the Cerritos Community College District Board of Trustees.

Grisham and his wife, Millie, and volunteers have been walking precincts, which according to local political observers, is the type of grass-roots campaigning the assemblyman did not do nearly enough of in his unsuccessful bid for the state Senate.

The assemblyman said he is relying mostly on his record and experience as a veteran politician to keep his seat. Grisham, a former congressman, was elected to the Assembly in 1984 and won reelection two years later.

But Epple is describing the incumbent as a legislator who has done little for his district and does not take well to hard work.

Grisham responded: “I know I’m doing a good job in my district. I think the people know I am too.”

Grisham presents an affable, grandfatherly image with his white hair and a quick smile. Around the capital, he is known as a legislator who gets along with both Republicans and Democats. But he does not have the reputation of a driven assemblyman, a leader who can usher into law controversial or important bills. Generally, Grisham likes to avoid controversy.

“He’s basically a nice guy,” said one legislative insider, who asked not to be identified. “Legislatively speaking, if he were gone you might not notice it.”

But the assemblyman has had his successes.

Grisham pointed with pride to a bill he sponsored in response to a constituent whose abused 5-year-old granddaughter had been placed in a foster home, even though the grandmother wanted custody. The bill, which was signed into law in 1986, gave relatives preference for custody in child abandonment and abuse cases.

“It’s a hell of a good bill,” Grisham said. “It came right out of my casework.”

Contaminated Water

Another of his legislative achievements is a law that, beginning Jan. 1, will require water companies to notify local officials as well as state officials if a well is contaminated or has been closed because of contamination.

Grisham also assisted in passing legislation to provide money for public works projects, such as a soon-to-be-built community swimming pool at Downey High School and freeway anti-noise barriers in his district.

Grisham considers himself an independent Republican who will break ranks with party leadership when it will benefit his constituents.

To make his point, Grisham notes that he was one of three Republicans who joined Democrats last year to reject a proposal by Gov. George Deukmejian that would have cut $300 million from the state Medi-Cal program. Grisham was also among seven GOP legislators who once sided with Democrats to save the state’s worker safety program; Deukmejian abolished the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration last year.

Deukmejian “made a mistake when he cut out Cal/OSHA,” Grisham said.

A June survey by the California Journal, a nonpartisan journal of state politics, indicates Grisham has become more moderate. In 1987, Grisham voted for conservative postions 86% of the time on 45 key bills, according to the survey. In 1988, he voted conservatively 73% of the time.

Crime and auto insurance rates are two issues Grisham said he will tackle if reelected. Epple has also identified those two issues as legislative priorities.

Drive-By Bill Failed

Grisham would like to see a law requiring a 20-year prison sentence for anyone riding with a person who commits a drive-by shooting. “I want to penalize that person so he doesn’t get in the car,” Grisham said.

Grisham said he would work to lower auto insurance rates. The assemblyman is not enthusiastic about any of the auto insurance measures on the June ballot, but he said he likes Proposition 101 better than the rest.

The measure would require insurance companies to reduce rates for bodily injury liability and uninsured-motorist coverage. It would also limit victim claims for noneconomic losses, such as pain and suffering, and attorney contingency fees.

Ideally, Grisham said, he would like to see a cap on what a victim could receive for a bodily injury and a ceiling on the percentage of an award an attorney could collect. He also would raise deductibles to $700 and mandate a 50% cut in insurance premiums.

“Wouldn’t that make the guy on the streets happy?” he asked.

Grisham introduced a bill to guarantee low-cost, minimum-coverage automobile insurance during the last legislative session, but it failed. Other unsuccessful Grisham bills would have protected senior citizens from losing their homes during bankruptcy proceedings and would have provided tax cuts for seniors who volunteer for nonprofit work. A Grisham bill that would have stiffened penalties for people convicted of selling drugs in or near schools also died.

Epple is attacking Grisham as a legislator with few accomplishments. He said Grisham does not care enough about his job and district. And to make his point, Epple pointed to the number of committee votes Grisham has missed.

From December, 1986, to the end of last month, Grisham missed 24% of his committee votes, according to Legi-Tech, a computerized information service. That ranks him among the 10 most-absent Assembly members for committee votes.

But once a bill got to the Senate floor, Grisham voted 97% of the time, according to Legi-Tech.

Missed Vote on Quake Aid

Epple’s literature also attacks Grisham for missing a November, 1987, vote on emergency legislation to aid victims of the Oct. 1 Whittier Narrows earthquake. Minutes show that Grisham was present the first day of the 2-day special session. The assemblyman said he decided to go to a family reunion the second day when it became clear that the legislation would easily pass. The major points of the bills were hammered out the first day, but lawmakers finished the legislation the second day.

“I was there during all the discussion and all the debate” the first day, Grisham said.

He attributed part of the missed committee votes to his three months of intensive campaigning for the 33rd Senate District seat in 1987. Democrat Cecil N. Green, then a Norwalk city councilman, scored an upset win, receiving 53.8% of the vote to Grisham’s 44.9%. The two spent a record $2.99 million.

Grisham’s loss to Green bolstered Democratic hopes for defeating him in the Assembly race and picking up another seat. There are 43 Democrats, 35 Republicans and two vacant seats in the Assembly.

The 63rd District is 57% Democrat and 35.5% Republican. It is also largely a blue-collar district with conservative leanings, a district ripe with crossover votes for a Republican candidate. The district includes Artesia, Cerritos, Downey, Hawaiian Gardens, Santa Fe Springs, almost all of Norwalk and parts of Lakewood, southern Whittier, eastern Whittier and Long Beach.

During the Senate race, Grisham had to contend with a potentially damaging allegation. At a candidate forum, former state Sen. Paul B. Carpenter accused Grisham of firing a secretary for rebuffing his advances. Carpenter is now a member of the State Board of Equalization.

Grisham denied the allegation and said the staff member was fired because she was incompetent, but local political observers said the allegation may have hurt Grisham in the 33rd Senate District, which covers almost all of the 63rd Assembly District.

Epple said at first that the allegation is not an issue in the Assembly campaign, but his camp noted the accusation earlier this week after the Grisham campaign released information on misdemeanor charges against Epple stemming from a 1970 auto accident in Long Beach.

Guilty of Public Drunkenness

After that accident, Epple pleaded guilty to public drunkenness and failing to report an accident, and paid fines.

In the primary, Grisham coasted to a win over Dale Hardeman, a former aide who helped manage his unsuccessful Senate race. But again, Grisham lost some points with at least some Republican activists.

During the primary, the district’s Republican Central Committee supported Hardeman, but he eventually dropped his campaign after it became apparent that statewide Republican leaders backed Grisham.

Mary Villegas of Cerritos, one of seven members of the district’s Central Committee, which recruits and grooms candidates, had called Grisham “almost an absentee legislator (who) doesn’t talk to anybody anymore. He doesn’t know what we want, what we feel.”

But in a recent interview, Villegas said she now supports Grisham: “The primary is over and I certainly don’t want to see a Democrat elected to that seat.”

Still, Villegas has been active in Donald R. Knabe’s campaign as he tries to wrest the 33rd Senate District seat from Green, but not in Grisham’s reelection campaign.

Meanwhile, Grisham continues to walk neighborhoods.

“Hi. I’m Assemblyman Wayne Grisham. I came by to give you a scratch pad,” the candidate said repeatedly as he walked a Norwalk precinct on a recent afternoon.

There was no time to talk of issues, just enough for a friendly smile and a handshake before moving on to the next house in the largely Democratic neighborhood.

One house sported a campaign sign for Democrat Green. The woman inside told Grisham she was not interested in his scratch pad.

“I have to get elected with the Democrats voting for me,” Grisham said while moving on to the next house.

Ties to Willie Brown Attacked

Grisham’s mailers have begun to attack Epple on his voting record as a community college trustee, but in person the assemblyman simplified matters. He noted that Epple has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the state Democratic Party and assemblymen who support Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). “There’s nothing wrong with my opponent, but my opponent is not going to vote the way I vote,” Grisham said. “The Democrats in my district are not liberal Democrats. They’re moderate, and the Democratic Assembly is controlled by liberals. That’s why I tell them (about) Willie Brown.”

The incumbent has received the endorsements of the Republican governor, Sen. Pete Wilson and Rep. Daniel E. Lungren of Long Beach. Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block has also endorsed Grisham as have the California Peace Officers Assn. and several local school board officials.

Grisham hopes to raise and spend $500,000 to $600,000. As of Sept. 30, Grisham had raised more than $208,000 in monetary and nonmonetary contributions. Epple has raised about $303,000.

The assemblyman lives in a Norwalk condominium when he is not in Sacramento. A former real estate businessman, Grisham was first elected to Congress in 1978 and served two terms. He voted for draft registration and against loan guarantees to bail out Chrysler, according to the Almanac of American Politics. He was given high ratings by conservative groups and low ratings by liberal groups.

Grisham’s congressional district was reapportioned into another district, which stretched across the San Gabriel Valley. He was forced to run in the 1982 Republican primary against another incumbent, Rep. David Dreier (R-La Verne). Grisham lost to Dreier, who reported raising five times more than his opponent in campaign contributions.

Peace Corps in Kenya

After the loss, President Reagan appointed Grisham as director of the Peace Corps in Kenya. But after nine months, Grisham returned to stage a political comeback by running for the Assembly seat of Bruce Young, who was retiring in 1984.

So far, fallout from the FBI investigation of several state legislators and officials has not entered this campaign. Grisham is an ally of Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale and Assemblyman Frank Hill (R-Whittier), who are being investigated. Hill had served on Grisham’s congressional staff.

On the Democratic side, Carpenter, Epple’s campaign manager during the primary, is being investigated in the same scandal.

The candidates noted that the investigation had not been concluded, and neither would hold the other responsible for what a political associate may have done.

When asked whether a loss next month would be the end of his political career, Grisham hesitated and recalled what Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) once told him: “A door never closes but another door opens.”