GOP Candidates Fight to Emerge in Lt. Gov. Race : Campaign: State Sens. Marian Bergeson and John Seymour, both of Orange County, face a struggle for funds and attention.

Psssst. Here’s California’s best-kept political secret: There are a couple of people running for the Republican nomination to the second-highest office in California.

They’re both state senators from Orange County. They want to be lieutenant governor. Their names are Marian Bergeson and John Seymour. Odds are, you didn’t know that, even though both candidates have been running hard for the good part of a year now.

Bergeson is from Newport Beach. Nice woman. Former schoolteacher, school board member and assemblywoman. Likes to talk about things like regional planning and water marketing. She’s fairly conservative.

Seymour comes from Anaheim. Nice guy. Wears a Mickey Mouse watch. He was mayor when Anaheim stole the Rams from Los Angeles. Among his favorite issues: trucker safety, vocational education, infrastructure. He’s a little more moderate than Bergeson. Supports abortion rights.

But both seem to be operating in a vacuum in vying for the chance to oust Democratic Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy.

A recent Los Angeles Times Poll had Bergeson leading Seymour, but only by 8% to 5% of Republicans polled. More than four out of every five Republicans hadn’t the slightest notion whom they would vote for. Another survey, by the California Poll, had Seymour third behind a professor from Claremont who is not even running.

If this campaign were a television show, it would be “A Private Affair.”

Of course, the candidates don’t really want the race to be a covert operation. But you would never know it from what they’ve done to date.

While the candidates for governor have been sponsoring ballot initiatives, running television commercials and blasting each other in frequent press conferences, Bergeson and Seymour have been quietly soliciting support from behind-the-scenes movers and shakers.

Each must raise enough money--more than $1 million apiece--to buy the kind of television time that it takes to get known in California. The way Seymour figures it, air time on San Francisco stations around the 6 p.m. news costs $2,000 a second.

“I could give speeches all day long to groups of 500 between now and the time the campaign ended, and I wouldn’t even begin to touch the constituency that I need to reach,” Seymour said.

And raising $1 million this year, with the new limits on campaign contributions, will not be as easy as it once was. In the old days, an industrialist or real estate developer could write a check for $50,000, and many did. Now, that same person is limited to just $1,000.

So while Bergeson and Seymour have been expressing their concern on issues important to the little people, they also have been touring the corporate suites, privately courting the bankers, builders and manufacturers who make up California’s wealthy elite, the kind of people with well-heeled friends.

Bergeson’s cast includes Los Angeles lawyer and power broker Richard Riordan, Security Pacific Bank Chairman Richard Flamson, and Brooks Firestone, heir to the tire fortune. She’s also lined up a trio of Orange County businessmen--Buck Johns, Doy Henley and John Cronin--who are key fund-raisers in a county flush with political money.

Seymour’s list shows Imperial Bank Chairman George Graziadio, John Gavin, the former ambassador to Mexico, and Lodwrick Cook, the chairman of Arco. He also has support from Stephen Dart, a businessman and son of the late Justin Dart, an early confidant of Ronald Reagan.

These people can be invaluable. Security Pacific’s Flamson, a longtime friend of Bergeson, has introduced her to influential bankers in San Francisco who have, in turn, agreed to support her.

“I still have to be able to present myself acceptably, but getting through the door is very important,” she said.

Seymour explains how it works: “They will get a small group, 15 or 16 people, and they’ll say, ‘This good friend of mine, John Seymour, is running for lieutenant governor. I’d like you to come and meet him at a luncheon and let him talk to you about the issues. It won’t cost you one cent.’

“Then we break bread, and I tell them my story and say, ‘I really need your financial assistance.’ And you hope that you can bring them aboard.”

So far, Seymour has the edge. As of Dec. 31, he reported $403,000 on hand after raising $757,000 in 1989. Bergeson raised $397,000 and transferred another $200,000 that she already had in her Senate campaign fund. She had $207,000 on hand at the end of the year.

The candidates will use this money to get their message to the millions of Californians who never have heard of either of them. By June 5, each hopes to be something of a household name, or at least a familiar face, throughout the state.

When the viewing public tunes in, Bergeson, 62, will portray herself as a solid pro-family conservative, who, despite strong financial backing from industry and land developers, is concerned about the environment. She opposes abortion but sponsored a bill that greatly expanded the number of poor pregnant women eligible for state-funded prenatal care. She paints a hazy image of her “California Dream”--a land free of crime, drugs, pollution and traffic jams.

Seymour, 52, is the millionaire businessman turned pragmatic public servant. The one-time real estate broker has conservative leanings but is flexible: he changed from opposing abortion rights to supporting them after the U.S. Supreme Court gave states more power to regulate abortion. He wants to improve public schools but at the same time allow parents to send their kids to private academies and take a tax credit on the tuition.

If the state Republican Party’s spring convention in Santa Clara last weekend can be considered a preview of the campaign ahead, it might be a bitter one. Bergeson, positioning herself as a true conservative, questioned Seymour’s integrity because he changed his position on abortion. Seymour blasted Bergeson for co-sponsoring a liberal gun-control bill and then failing to vote for or against it.

To a mixture of boos and cheers from the crowd of party activists, Seymour defended his switch on abortion, declaring: “It’s OK to be pro-choice and be a conservative.”

Once Seymour and Bergeson have reached the potential voters, the candidates will need to turn out the ones they have won over. To do so, they will rely in part on volunteers. And setting up volunteer networks is another part of the invisible campaign that has been waged for the past year.

In this modern age, experts debate whether such grass-roots, get-out-the-vote efforts have much impact on a statewide race, but most candidates employ them anyway, for show if nothing else.

Seymour’s base is a network of real estate people, at least 200 statewide, who want to see one of their own in higher office. Bergeson has no single organized interest group at her side, but, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she can call on an extensive network of fellow Mormons to give her entree into almost any community in the state.

“It’s a lot of meet and greet,” Bergeson said.

Adds Seymour: “You spend a lot of time in some of the smaller parts of the state, like Eureka. I’ve been there twice. A lot of rural counties. Republican Federated Women’s groups. A lot of personal contact. But you have to put that in place before you can implement the strategies you think are going to bring you across as a winner.”

BACKGROUND

The lieutenant governor acts as the state’s chief executive when the governor is out of the state and can cast tie-breaking votes as president of the state Senate. In addition, the lieutenant governor serves as chairman of the Commission for Economic Development and is a member of the State Lands Commission. The annual salary for the post is $72,499.