Reagan Democrats returned to the fold.

After an 8-year courtship with the Republican Party, Reagan Democrats last week came home to the Democratic Party, at least in the South Bay.

Returns from Tuesday’s election show that an intensive grass-roots campaign was successful in winning back Democratic voters who abandoned the party in two previous presidential elections.

Four years ago, Ronald Reagan carried three of the South Bay’s four state Assembly districts, including two traditionally Democratic areas that swung to the Republicans.

But this time around, Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis captured three of the four local Assembly districts. The lone exception was a solid Republican bastion.

Aided by a strong get-out-the-vote effort, which targeted Reagan Democrats and occasional voters, the Democratic vote in the South Bay was between 5 and 9 percentage points greater last week than in 1984.

“I definitely think it was the Reagan Democrats who came back,” said Dan Chavez, a Carson lawyer, who headed the Democratic Party’s ground operation in the South Bay and Long Beach.

Despite the gains here, Dukakis lost California to Vice President George Bush by almost 310,000 votes, in part because of a Republican landslide in Orange County.

Tuesday’s results showed the political, racial and economic divisions in the South Bay.

Along the coast, Bush drew 64.3% of the vote in the predominantly white, upper-income 51st Assembly District. The Republican stronghold includes the beach cities, Torrance, Lomita, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. In those loyal Republican precincts, Bush nearly matched his performance in Orange County, although he ran 7 percentage points behind Reagan’s total four years ago.

In the racially diverse Assembly districts to the east, Dukakis ran far stronger than Democratic contender Walter F. Mondale did in 1984.

In the working-class communities of the 53rd Assembly District, a melting pot of whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians, the Massachusetts governor ran 9 percentage points stronger than Mondale.

Dukakis won 52.1% of the vote in that district last Tuesday, breaking a Republican lock on the area in two previous presidential contests. The Democratic candidate carried Hawthorne and Gardena by comfortable margins, unlike Mondale, who lost Hawthorne and barely won Gardena in 1984. This time, only Lawndale voted Republican.

The Democrat’s margin in the blue-collar district increased by 7 percentage points in Carson, by 9 percentage points in Gardena, and by 13 percentage points in Hawthorne over 1984. The return of Reagan Democrats to the fold also was apparent in the 57th Assembly District, a traditionally Democratic area, which Reagan won narrowly four years ago. This time, Dukakis received 56.7% of the vote in the district, which includes San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor Gateway and much of Long Beach.

From his storefront headquarters in downtown Torrance, Democratic organizer Chavez targeted 75,000 Reagan Democrats in three of the four South Bay Assembly districts.

Volunteers were assigned to 560 targeted precincts in the South Bay and Long Beach, where large numbers of Democrats deserted the party for Reagan in 1980 and 1984, but came back to vote for U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston in 1986.

The Democratic campaign attempted to reach those voters by phone or in person, a sharp departure from previous campaigns that relied principally on television advertising.

Republican Sen. Robert G. Beverly of Manhattan Beach acknowledged the effort put forward by the opposing side.

“For the first time,” he said, “we ran into a strong, working organization on the Democratic side in Manhattan Beach.” The grass-roots effort “probably did have some effect,” Beverly said.

Chavez said the Dukakis effort in the South Bay benefited from voter concerns about the economy, education and environmental issues. But that was tempered by two other issues: crime and defense.

He said Dukakis waited too long to respond to Bush’s attacks and allowed the vice president to “misdefine” his character. “Once he was defined, he was always on the defensive,” he said.

Dukakis’ closing campaign theme, “I’m on your side” came too late to reverse the tide, Chavez said.

Bush’s efforts to paint Dukakis as soft on crime “really hurt us,” Chavez said. He agreed that the Democratic campaign failed to understand “the emotion” created by the case of Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who raped a Maryland woman and assaulted her fiance while on a furlough from a Massachusetts prison.

Chavez said a Republican piece saying murderers and rapists favored Dukakis was distributed at the Del Amo Fashion Center and delivered to South Bay residents. Anti-abortionists also distributed material strongly opposing Dukakis’ pro-choice stance on abortion.

He said that Dukakis was hurt in the South Bay by concerns among aerospace workers that their jobs would be in jeopardy if the Democrat was elected. Dukakis opposed full-scale development of the Strategic Defense Initiative and Chavez said the campaign had a “hard time” trying to sell the idea that NASA’s Space Station could provide alternate jobs.

Both campaigns stressed environmental issues in areas along the coast. Republican volunteers distributed a Bush brochure about protecting the environment that featured pictures of the vice president fishing and enjoying the outdoors.

The Democrats’ get-out-the-vote efforts in the South Bay was also hurt by the television network projections that Bush had captured the White House two hours before the polls closed in California.

At 5 o’clock, Chavez said there was a “loss of enthusiasm” as early returns from the East showed a Bush victory in the making. By 6 o’clock, volunteers working the phones at the Democratic headquarters in Torrance reported a large number of Dukakis supporters who said they weren’t going to the polls because the election was over.

“A lot of them told us, ‘He’s going to lose,”’ Chavez said. “People weren’t interested anymore.”

Although the network projections also could have prevented Republicans from going to the polls, Chavez said he believes that some GOP voters still cast ballots because they wanted to vote for a winner.

Credit where credit is due . . . The South Bay’s newly elected Republican congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, has a fresh view of his landslide win in last Tuesday’s election.

“I owe the victory to the Democrats in California who decided to put so many Republicans in one district,” he said.

The 42nd Congressional District, which runs from Torrance to Huntington Beach, is a Republican stronghold because Democratic-dominated Legislature drew the district lines.

With help from President Reagan and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North, Rohrabacher, a former White House speech writer, won the congressional seat with almost 70,000 votes to spare.

On both sides of an issue . . . Voters in the South Bay part of the city of Los Angeles--where oil wells are not uncommon--split down the middle over the emotion-packed issue of oil drilling in Pacific Palisades.

A multimillion-dollar media battle between Occidental Petroleum and environmentalists seemed to confuse voters from Harbor Gateway to Wilmington and San Pedro. They apparently didn’t want to stop Occidental from drilling, but they didn’t want to allow it, either.

Voters in the area, who are represented by Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, bucked the citywide outcome by voting against Measure O, the environmentalists’ effort to prevent Occidental Petroleum from drilling across Pacific Coast Highway from Will Rogers State Beach.

The anti-oil Measure O--which won citywide--went down to defeat, 53.9% to 46.1%, in Flores’ district, which includes several refineries.

But residents of the area also opposed Measure P, a rival plan put forth by Occidental in an effort to defend the drilling project and provide increased funding for police and schools. That measure was rejected, 64.1% to 35.9%, in the South Bay, and lost citywide.

RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN THE SOUTH BAY 50th Assembly District ( Inglewood, El Segundo, Westchester, South-Central Los Angeles ) Voter Registration 1988: 147,520; 77% Democratic; 16% Republican 1984 Vote for Mondale: 69.3% 1988 Vote for Dukakis: 74.4% 53rd Assembly District ( Hawthorne, Gardena, Lawndale, Carson ) Voter Registration 1988: 146,639; 60% Democratic; 29% Republican 1984 Vote for Mondale: 43.1% 1988 Vote for Dukakis: 52.1% 57th Assembly District ( San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City, Long Beach ) Voter Registration 1988: 130,066; 61% Democratic; 28% Republican 1984 Vote for Mondale: 48.6% 1988 Vote for Dukakis: 56.7% Voter Registration 1988: 51st Assembly District ( Torrance, Lomita, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Beach Cities ) Voter Registration 1988: 190,671; 37% Democratic; 52% Republican 1984 Vote for Mondale: 26.7% 1988 Vote for Dukakis: 34.5%

Semiofficial returns; absentee ballots included

Sources: California secretary of state, Los Angeles County registrar-recorder

1988 SOUTH BAY PRESIDENTIAL VOTE

Republican Democrat George Michael Bush Dukakis Carson 8,752 16,510 El Segundo 4,454 2,222 Gardena 5,163 7,668 Hawthorne 7,793 8,445 Hermosa Beach 5,021 4,112 Inglewood 4,083 20,803 Lawndale 3,395 2,563 Lomita 3,889 2,489 Manhattan Beach 10,300 6,804 Palos Verdes Estates 5,034 1,729 Rancho Palos Verdes 13,175 5,897 Redondo Beach 14,941 9,939 Rolling Hills 784 157 Rolling Hills Estates 2,858 944 Torrance 33,759 18,011

Semiofficial returns; absentee ballots not included

Source: Los Angeles County registrar-recorder