Race in 76th Has Been Far From Ordinary

Under normal circumstances, her victory in August’s special primary in the heavily Republican 76th Assembly District would have left GOP candidate Tricia Hunter with little to be concerned about as next week’s runoff approaches--except, perhaps, finding an apartment in Sacramento.

The consensus in political circles is that Hunter--whose pro-choice stance on abortion drew national attention to the race after last summer’s U. S. Supreme Court ruling on the volatile issue--will, indeed, need to turn her attention to such domestic matters after Tuesday’s runoff against Democrat Jeannine Correia and two write-in candidates.

However, the fact that there is any doubt about the outcome of the election in the conservative San Diego-Riverside County district reflects the peculiar nature of a race that has been anything but routine since its inception.

Though Hunter is widely viewed as a prohibitive favorite to win the seat vacated by the June death of Assemblyman Bill Bradley (R-Escondido), many Republicans are discomforted by the write-in candidacy of Dick Lyles, a longtime GOP activist who finished a close second behind Hunter in the eight-candidate primary.

‘Very Divisive Thing’

In particular, Republican leaders lament that Lyles’ write-in bid--and its potential for splintering the GOP vote--gives at least a glint of hope to Democrat Correia, whose chances normally would be negligible. The other write-in candidate, Lakeside accountant Kirby Bowser, also is a Republican, but he is a political unknown expected to have little impact on the outcome.

“This is a very divisive thing for the party,” said San Diego County Republican Chairman Bettie Kujawa. “The 76th is so strongly Republican that I don’t think we have to seriously worry about keeping the seat. But what Lyles has done is create a little doubt where there should be none. I can’t help but feeling that Dick’s just a sore loser.”

The infighting within the Republican ranks escalated last Thursday when Hunter accused the National Rifle Assn. and the National Right to Life Committee of spending $163,000 between them in a series of last-minute “political hit pieces” that were scheduled to blanket the district on Lyles’ behalf this weekend.

Source of Hunter’s consternation was a purported schedule of 11 mailings, listed under the letterhead of the National Right to Life Committee. Spokesmen for the two organizations said they planned no such last-minute mailings, and the right-to-life group said the schedule was a fraudulent use of its letterhead.

For his part, Lyles said he welcomed that level of support, but knew nothing of it and doubted it would materialize. If it did, Lyles said laughingly, it would be nothing short of a miracle in what had otherwise been a “grass-roots campaign.”

‘Still Very Confident’

Like Kujawa, Hunter attributes Lyles’ write-in candidacy to electoral sour grapes and his refusal to accept defeat in a race that he began as the clear front-runner after having spent nearly four years preparing for it.

“I’m still very confident, but by putting himself above the voters, Mr. Lyles is hurting the district and his own party,” said Hunter, a 37-year-old Bonita nurse. “It’s a small problem as far as I’m concerned. But it’s a situation that shouldn’t even exist. He claims to be a loyal Republican activist. But loyal Republicans don’t do what he’s doing.”

Refusing to be put on the defensive by Hunter’s characterization of his candidacy, Lyles argues that he decided to continue his race beyond his primary loss in part because Hunter is “less the nominee of the Republican Party than she is the favorite” of pro-choice activists, many of them Democrats.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt I got more Republican votes than she did,” said Lyles, a 42-year-old management consultant from Poway. “When you figure in the other Republicans in the primary, you see that Hunter actually received a rather small minority of the (GOP) vote.”

The district’s demographics, combined with several other factors--notably, the primary’s unusual format and the abortion issue’s skewing of typical political alliances--support that interpretation of Hunter’s narrow 197-vote victory over Lyles, 14,885 votes to 14,688.

Though the district has a 55%-32% Republican registration edge, the primary vote was divided among six Republicans and two Democrats, as well as two other GOP candidates who withdrew but whose names remained on the ballot. Moreover, with Hunter’s pro-choice stance attracting traditional Democratic support, she was able to draw crossover votes because of unorthodox procedures governing special elections, in which all candidates of all parties appear on a single ballot.

Hunter, however, has little patience with such analyses, saying simply, “All that matters is that I ran in the primary. I got the most votes. I won. Period. It’s time to move on.”

Modest Local Coverage

Emboldened by the Hunter-Lyles split, Correia optimistically argues that Democrats have reason to regard her campaign as more than just the “usual lost cause.” Conceding that Lyles’ write-in bid is a boon to her own candidacy, Correia added: “I guess this is one time I’m rooting for a Republican--up to a point!”

During the frenetic primary, the 76th District contest drew extensive national news coverage as one of the first tests of the political fallout from the Supreme Court’s July ruling giving states new powers to regulate abortions.

In contrast, the runoff has been rather somnolent, generating only modest local coverage as Lyles’ longshot write-in candidacy--combined with Hunter’s and Correia’s pro-choice agreement--downplayed the philosophical split on abortion that made the primary so compelling.

As a result, there have been few forums or other public events in the two months since the primary, a fact that has done nothing to enhance voter interest in an election expected to draw a turnout even lower than the primary’s dismal 20% figure.

Perhaps the person least bothered by the race’s diminished public profile is Hunter, who contributed to that shift by refusing to participate in any forum to which Lyles was invited. Faced with Hunter’s intransigence, a number of community groups scrapped plans for debates, with one notable exception being a KPBS-TV forum whose producers proceeded with the three other candidates.

“Dick Lyles doesn’t deserve to be up there with the Republican and Democratic nominees,” Hunter said. “I already beat him. There’s no point to continuing that part of the race. Besides, we debated often in the primary, and on 99% of the issues, we stand exactly the same.”

Though Hunter has drawn criticism for what some see as an undemocratic posture, her stance appears strategically unassailable in a district that stretches from the South Bay to northeastern San Diego County and into the desert communities of Riverside County. Having benefited from the saturation publicity that allowed her to catapult out of the middle of the pack in the primary, Hunter now stands to benefit more from a quiet runoff that dampens passions on all sides and by dismissing Lyles as an insignificant interloper.

But, even as Hunter tries publicly to ignore Lyles, her campaign strategists have clearly treated him as a serious threat. A recent Hunter mailer harshly attacks Lyles, describing him as “the choice of the gun lobby, anti-choice extremists and the Sacramento Cavemen,” with the last phrase applying to arch-conservatives in the Assembly Republican caucus. Another Hunter brochure pointedly reminds voters that Lyles was accused in the primary of overstating his educational and professional background, and concludes: “Don’t be fooled by what Dick Lyles and his extremist supporters are trying to tell you.”

Core of 200 Volunteers

“What Hunter is saying and what her people are doing are two different things,” said Lyles aide Doug Perkins. “You bet they’re worried. It’s a horse race.”

Lyles himself, who began his write-in campaign by declaring his readiness “to climb a political mountain,” professes to believe that “the summit is in sight” as the race enters its final days.

“It’s still going to be very tough, and a write-in campaign is always sort of a wild card,” Lyles said. “But I think it’s clearly do-able.”

As of Sept. 16, Lyles had outspent Hunter, $288,888 to $244,391, although most of his money was spent in the primary, and Hunter also benefited from a $100,000 independent expenditure by the California Nurses Assn. Hunter is president of the state Nursing Board, a body to which she was appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian in 1983.

Since the primary, Lyles has focused almost exclusively on the grass-roots organizational work that, although always essential, is even more critical to the hopes of a candidate whose name does not even appear on the ballot. Backed by a core of about 200 volunteers, Lyles’ strategists, patterning their campaign after the historic 1982 write-in victory of Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), have directed an extensive telephone and mail blitz aimed at reminding voters that Lyles is still in the race and how to write in his name on Oct. 3.

Like Hunter, Lyles concedes that the two Republicans hold similar positions on most issues, with abortion and Hunter’s support for a ban on assault rifles marking their two major ideological distinctions. However, Lyles also has sought to expand the abortion question into a “family values” issue that he argues crystallizes the candidates’ differences.

“While the family values I represent begin with my pro-life position, what I’d like to do in areas such as drugs and crime and education reinforce that,” Lyles said. Among his proposals are ones calling for restructuring of school financing and withholding drivers’ licenses from teen-agers convicted of drug-related offenses.

Noting that she and Lyles hold “overlapping positions” on most such issues, Hunter says: “I’d gladly measure my values against his anytime. How can someone who likes to talk about fighting crime and respect for life reconcile that with selling assault weapons?”

Largely because of her isolated liberal positions on high-profile issues, Hunter has been forced to fend off accusations that she is, as the conservative Young Americans for Freedom puts it, “a liberal wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Last summer, Republican Assembly Leader Ross Johnson, who sent out a primary fund-raising letter on Lyles behalf to GOP contributors, implied that Hunter was linked to “liberal special-interest groups and labor unions with close ties” to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos.

Solid GOP Credentials

In fact, with the exception of abortion and the assault weapons issue, Hunter hews to fairly mainstream conservative Republican positions, as illustrated by her support of the death penalty, opposition to public employee strikes and backing of a constitutional amendment outlawing the burning of the American flag. Since her primary victory, most local elected Republicans have endorsed Hunter, including even Johnson and others who opposed her or kept her at arm’s length in the August race.

Although Hunter may have had trouble convincing some of her fellow Republicans of her solid GOP credentials, Democrat Correia, a 46-year-old instructor of the retarded, is gladly willing to concede the point.

“Tricia and I agree on two things--pro-choice and banning assault weapons,” said Correia, a Poway resident who finished fifth in the primary behind four Republicans but, because of the race’s peculiar format, nevertheless qualified for the runoff.

“Otherwise, on social, economic and other issues, she’s a solid Republican,” Correia added. “One advantage I’d have is that I could go to Sacramento and work with the Democratic majority in a much more effective manner.”

Acknowledging that her slim chances hinge on a badly divided GOP vote, Correia has been unable to get Democratic leaders to share her perception that Tuesday’s election represents “probably the best chance we’re ever going to have in this district.” With the party unwilling to commit scarce financial resources to what most regard as a long shot even with multiple Republicans in the race--if not on the ballot--Correia expects to spend only about $10,000 in her campaign.

The fourth candidate in the race, write-in Bowser, is a 29-year-old accountant who ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate in Washington but was unknown to local Republican officials before his surprising entry in the runoff.

Arguing that the primary’s low turnout reflects voters’ dissatisfaction with the three other candidates, Bowser, who describes himself as a “progressive conservative,” says he hopes to “get people interested by giving them a choice they didn’t have” in August.