ELECTION 23rd CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Candidate Has Image of Success but Lives on Financial Edge

In campaign literature and on the stump, Republican congressional candidate Jim Salomon is the very model of a Westside yuppie: a successful, pin-striped businessman, a “recognized leader in the field of foreign trade,” a resident of a Beverly Hills apartment and the driver of a $60,000 Cadillac Allante convertible.

In his mid-30s, Jewish and handsome, he seems like a candidate from central casting, ideally suited to the wealthy, largely Jewish, Westside-San Fernando Valley district now represented by veteran Democrat Anthony C. Beilenson, 57.

His challenge to Beilenson has attracted the backing of top corporate executives. The district’s most famous Republican resident, Ronald Reagan, not only endorsed Salomon, he also starred at a fund-raising reception for the candidate in Century City.

Behind the campaign image, however, is a man living on the financial edge. The Allante is leased. Salomon has had no income for more than a year and says he is living on credit. He is involved in a dispute with his ex-wife over child support and has been sued by a former business partner who alleges that Salomon failed to repay $50,000 in promissory notes.

“I have had no income whatsoever since June of 1989,” Salomon declared in court papers filed little more than a week ago in connection with the dispute with his ex-wife. “I have no assets except personal property . . . I am living solely upon credit.”

Salomon made the statements in response to his ex-wife’s request for a contempt order against him for failure to pay $1,200 in child support and $3,000 in attorney’s fees arising from a child custody dispute.

Angela Bromstad contended that her ex-husband “spends much money on his campaign while ignoring court-ordered obligations to his family.”

In court papers, Salomon replied that he inadvertently bounced a check for $600 of the child support payments in August, because he failed to reconcile his bank statements and was unaware he was over his credit limit. He said he withheld another $300 payment because he was denied custody of his daughter during spring vacation.

In a lengthy interview last week at the apartment that doubles as his campaign headquarters, Salomon said he has now made good on all of his late child support payments. He pledged that he will continue to meet his child support obligations in the future. Payment of the attorney’s fees, ordered by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge last year, gets a “very low priority” given his financial situation, he said.

Once the election is over, Salomon faces a February court date on a lawsuit filed by a former partner in a firm called International Financial Associates. Salomon has countersued for $200,000, arguing that his associate breached an agreement by not providing him leads on clients seeking financing and foreign markets.

To support himself while a candidate, Salomon said he has been liquidating his assets “to the point where literally I have no net worth except for personal property.

“I have no stock . . . no bonds, no savings accounts,” he said. “All of that kind of stuff is gone, sold, cashed out and used to pay living expenses.”

In financial disclosure statements to the clerk of the House of Representatives, Salomon reported that he earned $75,000 as an international trade consultant in 1987 and $60,000 in 1988. His income from the work, which he said involved helping American businesses establish foreign markets for their products, declined to $25,000 last year. Since mid-1989, he said, he has been campaigning full time and so has been making no money.

Salomon said he is now living on unsecured lines of credit. He suggested that such a sacrifice is a measure of his dedication to defeating Beilenson.

“What you are looking at is a candidate who is absolutely doing everything he can to the limit of his own abilities to win this thing and make people feel I’m giving 100%,” Salomon said.

“I don’t like what’s going on, and I don’t like what our congressman is doing. And I’m willing to stand up and be counted.”

It will be an uphill fight--just as it was two years ago when Beilenson crushed Salomon’s first challenge.

The oddly shaped 23rd Congressional District, which runs from Beverly Hills to Malibu and Encino to Reseda is solidly Democratic and liberal, notwithstanding a pocket of conservative Republican voters in the upper reaches of its San Fernando Valley portion.

With the exception of the Reagan presidential landslide of 1984, the area has been safe Democratic turf for years. So safe that Salomon fails to mention in his billboards and campaign signs that he’s a Republican. His campaign brochure mentions the Republican allegiance only obliquely at the end of a long biography.

“I hate this party prejudice,” Salomon said.

Failing to mention that he’s a Republican “forces people to be curious about me before they close their mind to the party label,” he said.

Salomon’s second challenge to Beilenson--a congressman since 1976 who, before that, represented much of the district in the state Legislature--has attracted hundreds of well-heeled contributors. The reception last month featuring Reagan raised $40,000.

The challenger’s aggressive pursuit of campaign cash last year also forced Beilenson to abandon his own self-imposed moratorium on off-year fund-raising.

Salomon’s campaign chairman, Irving Mitchell Felt, is indicative of the kind of support the candidate has been able to attract.

Felt, a developer whose projects included the rebuilding of New York’s Madison Square Garden in the 1960s, has long been active in Jewish and civic organizations.

“Ifind Jim to be a very forthright, knowledgeable, honorable young man who . . . has determined he would like to devote time to public service,” Felt said.

The fact that Salomon is not working, except on the campaign, did not deter Felt from supporting the candidate. “Jim gave up an awful lot to go into the public arena,” he said. “It’s hard not to have an income or much of an income and to be after political office.”

Despite having raised more than twice as much money for his campaign as Beilenson, Salomon said he has only about $30,000 on hand as the campaign enters its final stretch. Heavy spending on campaign consultants, billboards, phone banks, and a direct mail campaign to Republicans has depleted his resources.