WATCHING THE California Elections : LEGISLATURE: A BATTLE FOR THE LEADERSHIP

With stringent new campaign fund-raising limits on the horizon, moneyed special interests have teamed up with top Republicans and Democrats in a last binge of unfettered campaign giving concentrated on a handful of critically important legislative races.

In contests for three pivotal Assembly seats alone, opposing candidates have raised about $5 million, more than $1 million of which was contributed in the past two weeks. The outcome of the three contests, all in Southern California, could well determine the political futures of Democratic Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco and Republican floor leader Pat Nolan of Glendale.

But the most expensive single contest is in the Senate, where freshman Democrat Cecil Green of Norwalk faces Republican Don Knabe, an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana. Thus far, both candidates have raised a combined total of $2.56 million, nearly $1 million of which came in the last two weeks. That nears the record $2.9 million collected and spent in 1982 when Santa Monica Democrat Tom Hayden first won his seat in the Assembly.

Races Very Tight

On the basis of money alone, campaign analysts are reluctant to determine any clear-cut favorites. They say all the contests are extremely tight.

As a result, both sides have launched a massive volunteer effort in the final days, relying in part on an army of legislative staffers using “time off” to canvass targeted districts and to get voters sympathetic to their party to the polls. They have teamed up with volunteers recruited by the presidential campaigns.

“This place is going to look like a ghost town,” one legislative aide said as he prepared to leave the Capitol and take up the role of precinct worker in a Southern California legislative campaign.

This is the last time that campaigns for local, legislative or statewide office will be able to raise unlimited amounts of money. Approved by voters last June as Proposition 73, the new campaign law, which takes effect Jan. 1, limits the size of campaign contributions to $1,000 annually from individuals and up to $5,000 for political action committees with large memberships.

The law also prohibits transferring campaign contributions from one candidate to another--a device frequently used by the Legislature’s leaders to reward their friends and punish their enemies.

The most generous contributors, as always, were the economic interests with the most to gain or lose at the hands of the Legislature--doctors, labor unions, builders, business owners, lawyers and manufacturers.

But a new twist was added by past supporters of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. After a long exile from politics, Brown has indicated he would return to public life and announced recently that he wants to run for state Democratic Party chairman.

Among other recipients, the USA Committee, which consists of past Brown supporters, gave $10,000 to Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti of Los Angeles and parceled out contributions of $2,000 each to several Democrats in tight races.

Donations Roll In

Even the special interests deeply involved in their own multimillion-dollar ballot initiative fights are continuing to contribute to legislative candidates, knowing that regardless of the outcome of the ballot measures, the Legislature still must resolve many issues affecting their interests.

Nancy S. Drabble, lobbyist for the California Trial Lawyers Assn., said it has been more difficult to raise money for legislative races because of the heavy burden of financing Proposition 100, one of five insurance-related propositions on Tuesday’s ballot. But despite the reluctance of some lawyers, she added, the association’s contributions will be at about the same level as in previous years.

“Obviously the fallout from the initiative battles will be in the Legislature next year and the battle will continue there,” Drabble said.

Speaker Brown, who has faced an insurrection from five members of his own party, must gain at least three seats to have the clear majority of loyalists needed to assure his retention of the top Assembly post. Presently, Brown counts 38 of the 43 Democrats as loyalists, excluding the rebel “Gang of Five.” It takes 41 votes in the 80-member house to elect a Speaker. There are 35 Republicans and two vacancies because of deaths.

GOP leader Nolan, who is implicated in an ongoing FBI probe of suspected Capitol corruption, has been under pressure from a dissident element in his own party and could be ousted from his leadership post if the GOP fails to make any significant gains.

With the exception of a handful of tight races, most of the 80 Assembly and 20 Senate seats at stake in Tuesday’s election are considered safe for the incumbents.

Critical Races

The three critical races for Brown and Nolan are in Los Angeles and Orange counties and involve Democratic challenger Robert E. Epple of Cerritos against incumbent Republican Wayne Grisham of Norwalk, Democrat Willard H. Murray against freshman Republican Paul E. Zeltner of Lakewood and Democrat Christian F. Thierbach of Anaheim against Republican Curt Pringle, a Garden Grove planning commissioner.

In the 63rd District, Grisham faces a well-financed assault by Epple, an attorney and member of the Cerritos College Board of Trustees. Brown and the Democrats targeted Grisham for defeat following his upset loss last year in a Senate special election. Epple has received more than $1.3 million, a sum Grisham likely will match. District voters are being deluged with mailers that question Grisham’s voting record and dedication to the job and others that attack Epple’s integrity and ties to Speaker Brown.

In the 54th District, a campaign fueled by about $1 million in contributions from both sides has produced a blizzard of mailers attacking Zeltner for allegedly wanting to “reward drug dealers, street thugs and murderers.” Meantime, Zeltner calls Murray the “merry wanderer” and sends voters pictures of several places Murray has used as addresses in the district. Murray has lived in Baldwin Hills for years but is registered to vote in the 54th District, which encompasses Bellflower, Compton, Lakewood and Long Beach.

Late last week, Zeltner accused Murray of “deluging my district with garbage”--a reference to a barrage of Democratic campaign mail that Zeltner says includes lies and distortions.

Cranston Disapproves Letter

In one piece, a letter with Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston’s signature accuses Zeltner of voting for a credit card interest rate bill that Zeltner said he did not vote for. Cranston’s chief of staff, Roy Greenaway, said that while Cranston has endorsed Murray, the senator did not authorize the letter and, in fact, disapproved of it when contacted by Murray’s campaign.

In another piece, a letter bearing the signature of Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner accuses Zeltner of waging a “smear campaign” against Murray and implies--erroneously--that Zeltner’s campaign was fined two years ago for violating campaign laws. Reiner’s office confirmed that the district attorney authorized the letter but said Reiner was unavailable to elaborate.

The 72nd District contest in Orange County is among the costliest of all of this year’s legislative races, pitting Thierbach, a prosecutor who commutes to work in Riverside, against Pringle, whose family operates a custom drapery business. About $1.7 million has been spent by the two candidates to fill the seat left vacant by the death on June 7 of Assemblyman Richard E. Longshore (R-Santa Ana) one day after he won the GOP primary. Thierbach has been criticized for taking contributions from legislators allied with Speaker Brown while Pringle has been assailed for accepting a $10,000 campaign loan from Assemblyman Frank Hill (R-Whittier), a figure in the FBI investigation.

Republicans, sensing a conservative shift in certain districts, have fixed their sights on several veteran Democrats in the Assembly and have pumped substantial amounts of campaign dollars into those races. The Democratic incumbents include Richard E. Floyd of Hawthorne, Gerald R. Eaves of Rialto, Steve Clute of Riverside, Phillip Isenberg of Sacramento and Norman Waters of Plymouth.

In the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats have mounted an all-out effort for the seat occupied by freshman Green in the 33rd District, which spreads across southeast Los Angeles County and northwest Orange County. Green captured the seat in a 1987 special election that Republicans had confidently expected to win. Once again, the GOP sees this as the most vulnerable of all the Democrat-held Senate seats. Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Virginia Ellis in Sacramento, Michele Fuetsch, Rick Holguin, Mary Lou Fulton, Dean Murphy and Sebastian Rotella in Los Angeles, and Claudia Luther and Steven R. Churm in Orange County.