GOP Whiz Kid Battling Liberal Democrat in Bay Area Race

Of the nine San Francisco Bay Area members of Congress, all but one are Democrats. The lone Republican hails from the moneyed hills around Stanford University and the suburbs around sprawling San Jose, and he was turned out by his own party while trying for reelection in the June primary.

In place of Rep. Ernest L. Konnyu (R-San Jose), a conservative who lasted just one term in what has been called the nation’s highest-educated congressional district, voters will choose Tuesday between a Republican whiz kid with doctorates in law and economics--who advocates $22 billion a year in tax increases--and an unabashed liberal Democrat who campaigns with videotapes that link her opponent with Judge Robert Bork, President Reagan’s rejected Supreme Court nominee.

The pressure is on the Republican, Stanford law professor Thomas J. Campbell, to keep the seat from falling into Democratic hands for the first time in more than two decades. Campbell took on Konnyu in the GOP primary, the political equivalent of civil war, and won by persuading voters that Konnyu’s strident conservativism was too unpolished for the Washington representative of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Stanford academic pioneers.

Guru of Free Trade

In Campbell, the Republicans have a guru of free trade economics who was editor of the Harvard Law Review and who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White. He then returned to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, and earned a Ph.D. in economics at age 27 while studying with Milton Friedman. Campbell, now 36, joined the Stanford faculty in 1983 as the school’s youngest law professor.

Democrat Anna Eshoo, 45, a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, does not come out well in a match of academic records. Her only degree is an associate of arts from a community college. But Eshoo, a member of the Democratic National Committee since 1980, says her experience in real life is far superior.

“I know what I know because of what I’ve done,” Eshoo says in a videotape handed out to voters. “Tom knows because he read it in books.”

Both parties believe they can win the seat and are piling on help from Washington and elsewhere. Although they differ as to who is leading, both camps agreed this week that Eshoo is gaining in the polls.

Last week, Vice President George Bush, former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and former Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Hanford Dole all gave Campbell help. Sens. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) have come to the district to stump for Eshoo.

Even Konnyu, who vowed to never support Campbell after the bitter primary campaign, has gotten involved and hosted a fund-raising luncheon for Campbell.

Deficit Biggest Issue

Campbell, sounding like the economist that he is, campaigns by calling the federal budget deficit the nation’s biggest issue. His plan for erasing the deficit includes across-the-board cuts in federal spending of $22 billion a year, giving the President the power to veto line items from the federal budget and passing a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.

In a sharp departure from the national Republican view, Campbell also called for doubling the federal taxes on cigarettes and alcohol and imposing a 12-cents-per gallon tax on gasoline. He said the $44-billion combination of higher “consumption taxes” and budget cuts could balance the budget in five years.

Eshoo agrees that the deficit is pressing and goes along with the higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco. But she would also eliminate the MX missile, the Trident II submarine missile and President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” plan.

She favors using more “sunset clauses” on federal programs, giving the President a limited right to veto budget items and requiring competitive bidding before the Pentagon purchases supplies and parts.

On many issues, such as the Equal Rights Amendment, offshore oil drilling and refusing aid to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, the two agree. Both were endorsed by the Sierra Club and the California League of Conservation Voters.

Democratic Edge

But Eshoo has attacked Campbell as a conservative packaged to look like a moderate to suit the district, which has a slight majority of Democratic voters but has previously elected moderate Republicans such as Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey and Ed Zschau.

Eshoo jumped on his testimony on behalf of Bork before the Senate Judiciary Committee as evidence that Campbell is more conservative than he has portrayed himself. She contends that Bork’s controversial views of women’s equality are notorious in the Bay Area, and she sent women voters a potholder with a message about Campbell’s support for Bork.

Campbell responded that the potholders were offensive because they suggested that women belong in the kitchen. He also denied that he testified in favor of Bork, but Campbell has said during the campaign that Bork got a bad rap and should have been confirmed.

Campbell was a member of the White House task force on women while in the Reagan Administration, and the visits by Kirkpatrick and Dole at fund-raising breakfasts seemed to be aimed at the attacks on the women’s issue. Campbell opposes the concept of making salaries comparable between traditionally male and female jobs and using federal funds to pay for abortions.

Eshoo favors comparable worth laws and federal money for abortions for low-income mothers.

Believes in Free Market

They have also clashed over Campbell’s tenure, from 1981 to 1983, as director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition, the lead agency on anti-trust policy in the Reagan Administration. Campbell is a strong advocate of the economics school that believes that the free market will regulate itself, and during those early Reagan years, corporate mergers were rampant and anti-trust enforcement of some kinds of mergers was cut back.

Last week, while Eshoo and an army of volunteers delivered 90,000 of her videotapes to homes in the district, Campbell campaigned with an extra personal burden. His father died suddenly and Campbell spent the weekend in Florida.

“I believe that my father is in heaven, so why not be joyful,” Campbell said at a fund-raising breakfast when he returned, joking that his father was now in a “jurisdiction” to influence the race.