Hunter Defeats Correia, Lyles in 76th-District Race

In a race that drew national attention as a referendum on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent abortion ruling, Tricia Hunter, a pro-choice Republican, won a special state Assembly contest that could provide a prelude to the 1990 elections.

Final unofficial vote totals showed that Hunter, a 37-year-old Bonita nurse whose pro-choice stance attracted traditional Democratic support in the heavily Republican 76th District, received 49% of the vote to defeat Democrat Jeannine Correia and two write-in candidates--one of them fellow Republican Dick Lyles, a Poway businessman who ran a close second in the August primary.

With nearly 15,000 write-in votes remaining to be counted, Hunter’s lead was insurmountable, even if Lyles receives all of those ballots in the conservative San Diego-Riverside County district.

According to the final figures, Hunter received 25,302 votes, while Lyles apparently finished second with about 19,800 votes, assuming he received most of the write-in ballots cast Tuesday--votes that will not be verified until today. Correia finished third with 6,587 votes, while the race’s other write-in candidate, Republican Kirby Bowser, finished a distant fourth in the election to fill the vacancy created by the June death of Assemblyman Bill Bradley (R-Escondido).

The turnout in the election was 21%, slightly higher than officials had anticipated.

Victory Was Hailed

Though Lyles’ write-in status, with its attendant political difficulties, skews interpretations of the abortion issue’s impact on Tuesday’s vote, the outcome was hailed in advance as a harbinger of the emotional topic’s enhanced political import as a result of the states’ new court-approved powers to limit the circumstances under which abortions are available.

“If we can win in this district, we can win anywhere,” Robin Schneider, director of the California Abortion Rights Action League’s Southern California chapter, said during the primary.

Although anti-abortion activists resisted framing the contest as an up or down vote on abortion, they nevertheless aggressively backed Lyles, recognizing that a Hunter victory not only would be politically embarrassing but could alter the Legislature’s philosophical balance on abortion rights.

The 76th District campaign’s framework was constructed early in the primary when the U. S. Supreme Court, scaling back the pro-choice latitude established by its landmark Roe vs. Wade decision, issued its controversial ruling giving states new authority to restrict abortions.

With Hunter’s pro-choice position setting up a compelling ideological showdown in an eight-candidate field filled with anti-abortion Republicans, the otherwise obscure race attracted extensive national news coverage as one of the first tests of the political fallout from the court’s July decision.

Drawing support that typically goes to Democrats--much of it from pro-choice activists hoping to capitalize on a rare opportunity to gain an ally in a solidly conservative district--Hunter narrowly edged Lyles in the August primary, 14,885 votes to 14,688. Although Democrat Correia finished fifth, the primary’s unorthodox format--in which all candidates of all parties appeared on a single ballot--allowed her to qualify for the runoff by outpolling the only other Democrat in the race to complete Bradley’s unexpired term, which runs through the end of 1990.

Under normal circumstances, Hunter’s 197-vote victory would have caused the runoff in the heavily Republican district to loom as little more than an electoral formality. With Republicans holding a 55%-32% registration edge, victory in the GOP primary historically is tantamount to election in the district, which stretches from the South Bay to northeastern San Diego County and into the desert communities of Riverside County.

Lyles’ decision to continue his campaign despite his primary loss, however, created at least some uncertainty about the outcome, consequently raising concern among Republican leaders who feared that his write-in candidacy could split the GOP vote, giving at least a glint of hope to Correia, whose chances normally would be negligible.

Dismissively treating Lyles as a sore loser who failed to accept defeat, Hunter largely ignored her erstwhile primary opponent in the runoff campaign, refusing to participate in any forum to which he had been invited in a strategically shrewd move to curtail his visibility.

But Hunter’s campaign advisers, determined to avoid overconfidence born of the formidable obstacles facing any write-in, regarded Lyles as a serious threat. Several Hunter mailers singled out Lyles for caustic criticism, including one that described him as “the choice of the gun lobby, anti-choice extremists and the Sacramento Cavemen,” with the last phrase referring to arch-conservatives in the Republican Assembly caucus.

Throughout the runoff, the campaign reflected an inherent irony: Hunter, who owed her very presence to the abortion issue’s ascendancy in the primary, consistently sought to minimize its significance, terming it “only one of many issues--and not even one of the top ones--people are concerned about.” Meanwhile, Lyles, who was victimized by the issue in August, fought to maintain its preeminence in the runoff.

“In the time it takes you to vote, four babies will die from abortion,” warned a Lyles brochure, distributed outside churches last weekend. The same pamphlet, which contrasted Lyles’ staunch anti-abortion position with the pro-choice advocacy of both Hunter and Correia, featured a photo of a baby, with a caption saying: “This little guy wants YOU to vote Oct. 3.”

In part, the paradoxical manner in which Hunter and Lyles addressed the volatile issue stemmed from their recognition of how the political equation governing its impact had changed dramatically from the primary to the runoff.

As the sole pro-choice Republican in the primary, Hunter benefitted from saturation coverage that allowed her to catapult from the middle of the pack. In the runoff, however, Hunter realized that she had nothing to gain from a one-on-one confrontation with Lyles and that her interests would be better served by a quiet campaign that dampened passions on all sides.

Conversely, Lyles, who was forced to carve up the anti-abortion vote with four other Republicans in the primary, saw an obvious numerical advantage in carrying that banner alone in the runoff. More importantly, Lyles and his strategists recognized the intense emotion generated by the issue as an essential ingredient in their uphill bid to win a race in which his name was not even on the ballot.

“Abortion is the kind of issue that motivates people to turn out and take that extra step to write in a candidate’s name,” said Lyles, a 42-year-old management consultant. “I think it’s going to be a major factor--maybe the factor--in the election.”

Correia, meanwhile, acknowledged that her admittedly slim chances hinged on a badly divided GOP vote.

Election Results

76th Assembly District

336 of 336 Precincts Reporting

Votes % Tricia Hunter 25,302 48.9 Jeannine Correia 6,587 12.7 Dick Lyles 4,988 9.6 Kirby Bowser 2 0.0 Uncounted write-ins 14,888 28.8