Confusion May Be Winner of Election : Politics: April special election for the 78th Assembly District vacancy could produce a puzzling June ballot featuring two contests for the same seat.

Adding a confusing plot twist to a familiar San Diego political script, 10 candidates plan to seek the former state Assembly seat of Sen. Lucy Killea in a special election likely to produce an unorthodox June ballot featuring two races for the same seat.

The third special state legislative campaign here in six months, the 78th District’s April 10 primary stems, ironically, from another special election: Killea’s upset victory in last December’s 39th state Senate District race, a contest that drew national attention as a referendum on abortion and how far Catholic Church leaders should go in opposing it.

Consistently targeted as the most heavily Republican Assembly district in the state held by a Democrat during Killea’s four terms, the 78th District has attracted a strong, diverse field of Democratic and Republican candidates who face the daunting task of having to win probably four elections over a seven-month period to capture the electoral prize.

As if that challenge is not intimidating enough, the candidates also confront a handful of thorny questions unique to the campaign: Will “voter fatigue” over the third special race in a half year contribute to an especially low turnout? Could the confusion inherent in a likely “double election” in June cause voters to elect two different winners? And can a relatively unknown anti-abortion Democrat capitalize on that topic’s political volatility to once again make it the issue, as it was in Killea’s race and in another special legislative race here last fall?

“This race is unusual in so many ways that, from a strategy standpoint, it’s fascinating,” said Herb Williams, who is managing the campaign of Republican Jane Ramshaw. “It’s the kind of race every political consultant would love to have a shot at.”

The five Democrats and three Republicans in the campaign include a former San Diego City Councilman, a former council aide, four lawyers with widely divergent practices and backgrounds, a county probation officer and a health insurance broker. Candidates from the Libertarian and Peace and Freedom parties also have entered the race in the 78th District, which stretches along the coast from Ocean Beach to Pacific Beach, extending inland to the Miramar Naval Air Station in the north, south to downtown San Diego and east to East San Diego.

Retaining the high name-recognition developed during his two terms at City Hall, former Councilman Mike Gotch begins the race as the acknowledged front-runner--making him a common target of, in Ramshaw’s words, the “bunch of no-names” who round out the field. However, the lesser-known candidates are recognized to varying degrees within political and business circles, allowing most of them to present plausible scenarios for possible victories in a badly split April primary.

Among the Democrats, lawyer Byron Georgiou, for example, is a longtime party activist who has built up valuable political IOUs in the years since he was legal affairs secretary to then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. Through his lengthy political dues-paying service with the San Diego Democratic Central Committee, Howard Wayne, a deputy state attorney general, can make a similar claim. Both also have consultants who are coming off big wins in their corner: Larry Sheingold, who engineered Killea’s victory, is working for Georgiou, while Tom Shepard hopes to do for Wayne what he did for John Hartley in his stunning upset of Gloria McColl in last year’s San Diego City Council election.

Lawyer Judith Abeles, meanwhile, can count on strong support from the district’s politically active lesbian and gay community, and probation officer Bud Brooks could benefit from being the only anti-abortion candidate from either major party.

On the Republican side, Jeff Marston, a former aide to San Diego City Councilwoman Gloria McColl and Sen. S. I. Hayakawa (R-Calif.), has a history of party activism rivaling that of Georgiou and Wayne--a fact that has helped him compile an enviable list of 500 campaign volunteers. The two other GOP candidates--lawyer Helen Rowe and insurance broker Ramshaw--plan to evoke a common campaign theme, stressing their business success in an effort to convince voters that they could apply those same skills to state government.

The two longest shots--Libertarian Edward McWilliams and Peace and Freedom candidate Robert Bardell--are little more than political footnotes in the election. Like other candidates of their respective minor parties, they hope to use the campaign primarily as a forum to draw attention to their parties’ platforms.

Under the unusual guidelines governing special elections, all candidates of all parties will appear on the same ballot in the April primary. If no candidate achieves the 50%-plus margin needed to win election outright--a statistical, if not political, improbability in a 10-candidate race--the top vote-getters of each party will compete in a June 5 runoff for the remaining seven months in Killea’s unexpired term.

On the same June ballot, the same candidates--along with at least some of the losers from April--also will compete in the normal state legislative primary for their parties’ nomination for the two-year term that will be contested in November.

As intriguing as it is perplexing, the prospect of a rare double election in June creates the possibility of a split decision, with one candidate winning the special election but losing the normal primary. Under similar circumstances, that is exactly what happened in Hawaii in 1986, as the Democratic victor in a special congressional race lost his party’s nomination for a full term, which in turn was eventually won by a Republican.

Though the candidates regard that possibility as remote in the 78th District, the fact that the two contests will be waged before markedly different constituencies--all voters would cast ballots in the special runoff, while partisan electorates will decide the primaries--increases the slim chance that the two races will have different victors.

In particular, the major candidates are concerned that the juxtaposition of a special runoff and a routine primary on the same ballot may, understandably, confuse voters, prompting some to think that they must vote for different candidates in the two contests.

“I could see a lot of people saying, ‘Gee, I already voted for this guy on this page, so I guess I have to pick somebody else over here,”’ said Evonne Schulze, Gotch’s campaign manager. “It’s going to be a real headache.”

Determined to prevent that unusual win-one, lose-one happenstance from occurring, the major Democratic candidates have accepted Wayne’s suggestion that they unite behind the April primary victor in order that he “not be forced to fight a war on two fronts” in June. With Democrats holding only a narrow 45.3%-41.2% advantage in voter registration, party leaders realize that any dilution of financial or manpower resources could endanger the party’s 18-year hold on the seat.

The Republicans, however, have not embraced the same concept, and appear likely to refight the primary even as the runoff is settled in June. Describing the special primary as “more like a poll than an election,” Rowe consultant Jack Templeton said he believes that the Republican candidates will “hang in there for the big one” in June regardless of the outcome in April.

Typical of special elections, the April primary is expected to draw a turnout of only about 20% of the district’s 193,548 voters. One factor that could drive the turnout even lower, some candidates believe, is that the 78th District election will be the county’s third special state legislative race since October, when Republican Tricia Hunter won a special contest in the 76th District.

Another possible disincentive to voters, consultant Templeton theorizes, is that the election falls in the same week that San Diegans must pay both their property and income taxes. “This is not a time when people are feeling especially civic-minded,” he noted wryly.

The potential low turnout, however, will do nothing to hold down the cost of the election. With several of the leading candidates planning to spend about $200,000 in April alone, the special primary’s price tag will easily top $1 million, and the race’s final cost likely will be two to three times that amount.

During the campaign’s early stages, the 42-year-old Gotch has come to be viewed as the candidate to beat, in large measure because his name-recognition far outdistances that of any of his opponents. Like any front-runner, Gotch makes an inviting target for his lesser-known challengers, and has found himself under attack for everything from his handsome looks--”Too much like Robert Redford in ‘The Candidate,”’ says Wayne strategist Shepard--to his voting and job record.

Within the Wayne and Georgiou campaigns, the thinking--backed by polling--is that Gotch’s edge will quickly dissipate when they remind voters that he voted for the controversial Belmont Park development and went to work for developer Doug Manchester after leaving the Council in 1987.

“These are not the things that someone who is much of an environmentalist as Mike Gotch would like to have people believe he would do,” Shepard said. (The consultant’s message was far different in 1983, when he trumpeted Gotch’s solid environmental record while managing the council reelection campaign in which he drew a landslide 87% of the vote.)

Perhaps Gotch’s most effective rebuttal to criticism of his environmental credentials is his endorsement by the Sierra Club.

In addition, Gotch notes that the Belmont Park commercial development, while opposed by many of his former 6th City Council District constituents, not only cleaned up a “dilapidated, crime-ridden area,” but also helped to save the Mission Beach roller coaster and Plunge and generates $75,000 annually for beach-area projects. Similarly, Gotch describes his post-council job as community liaison officer at Manchester’s Torrey Enterprises as a “mutually beneficial experience” that helped him gain needed business experience while enhancing the developer’s sensitivity to neighborhood concerns.

“I suppose I find all the attention flattering,” Gotch jokes of the sniping from his opponents. “But what a lot of it really shows is that I’m the only one in this race with a track record, the only one who’s had to make the decisions and the tough choices.”

Not surprisingly, the other first-time candidates offer a markedly different interpretation, denigrating Gotch as a “career politician” in contrast to their own self-styled citizen-politician images.

That tack poses a special challenge for both Georgiou and Marston, both of whom have worked for politicians--a fact that their opponents are quick to seize upon in an effort to paint them with the same brush as Gotch. Both, though, just as quickly argue that their public service provided insights into the legislative process and enabled them to help shape critical programs and policies.

“I’ve worked bills, developed coalitions, crafted compromises,” said the 41-year-old Georgiou, whose law clients include the San Diego Convention Center Corp., labor organizations and abortion clinics. “I’ve already delivered for San Diego and want to do more.”

Most of the other candidates, though, treat their political newcomer status almost as a badge of honor, hoping to tap into the public’s general disdain toward politics.

“I see going to Sacramento, not as just a chance to run for another office, but to implement the solutions I’ve been working on in the community for years,” said Wayne, a 41-year-old deputy state attorney general.

“The problems we have in politics are like those you get when windows get broken in a building,” Wayne added. “If you don’t make repairs, that’s a sign of lack of concern, and more windows get broken and graffiti starts to appear. Well, I’m someone who’s been trying to fix the broken windows in San Diego for the past 16 years.”

As to which windows are broken or how he proposes to repair them, however, Wayne, as well as most of the other candidates, offers comments long on generalities but short on specifics. Protect the environment, improve education, reduce crime and drug problems, gain more state funding for San Diego--these and other broad, generally non-controversial goals have marked the campaign dialogue to date.

One issue that conceivably could change the tone of the campaign, however, is the always emotional topic of abortion. Before the entry of Brooks--a member of Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion group that regularly stages protests outside abortion clinics--the issue was largely ignored, given that the other Republicans and Democrats hold pro-choice positions.

While determined not to allow the abortion issue to overshadow all others as it did in the special 39th Senatorial and 76th Assembly district races, the other candidates acknowledge that the sensitivity surrounding it could give it an impact beyond their control.

The focal point of that concern, Brooks, a 48-year-old county probation officer, complains that he has been unfairly cast as a “one-issue, one-dimensional” candidate, thereby obscuring his interest in topics ranging from migrant worker assistance programs to what he sees as a need to overhaul the criminal justice system.

But Brooks’ strident anti-abortion rhetoric has led the other candidates to conclude that that issue is his political raison d’etre . “Why does it take 11 years to execute a convicted murderer but only a few weeks to kill an innocent unborn child?” he asks. His position, Brooks adds, is founded on the premise that “women conceive human beings from the moment of the sexual act.”

Asked whether he would have run were it not for the abortion issue, Brooks replied: “All I can say is, this is where God wants me.” Higher authorities, however, apparently did not want Brooks in the 78th District before this race, because he moved to Serra Mesa in order to run.

Expressing a sentiment shared by the other candidates, Democratic lawyer Abeles said she intends to focus on other issues--notably, her support for free prenatal care for any woman needing it, stricter education standards and tougher anti-discrimination laws.

As a Jewish lesbian, Abeles says, “I understand how it feels to be discriminated against.” The 52-year-old Abeles, a former ACLU staff attorney and a member of the Utility Consumers Action Network, said she expects to draw strong support not only from the gay community, but also from women and seniors because of her blend of public activism and the myriad causes she has represented in court.

Republican Marston’s campaign theme is “Working Together for a Change”--a phrase consciously chosen for its multiple possible meanings. One of his preferred nuances would have voters view Marston, 34, as someone whose low-key, conciliatory style--developed during his years as a council and congressional aide--would be “a welcome change from the us-versus-them hostility so common” in politics.

A central theme in the campaign of the 40-year-old Ramshaw will be that building a health insurance brokerage firm from scratch has provided her with the “self-drive, motivation and real-world attitude” lacking in politicians “who’ve never had to meet a payroll.”

Similarly, Rowe, a 50-year-old mother of five whose law practice focuses on small-business affairs, argues that her own background offers a “moderate and mature” contrast to that of most of the other candidates. If elected, Rowe said that she would “add one more voice to the cry for fairness” in San Diego’s allocation of state funding, a reference to a recent state report showing that the county ranks next to last among California’s 58 counties in per capita revenue received from Sacramento.

Whatever partisan or other differences separate the candidates, most concur on one critical question: what prompted them to seek the 78th District seat. The recent series of special elections notwithstanding, “open” legislative races--ones with no incumbent--still are so rare in politics as to act as a magnet for candidates.

“When statistics show that more than 90% of incumbents get elected, you have to jump at a chance like this when it comes,” Ramshaw concluded. “This is a window of opportunity that might not be there again for a long time.”