Gallegly Challenger Running on Near-Empty : Elections: With $900 in funds, an Agoura attorney campaigns for Congress despite a harsh political lesson on the power of money.

As a first-time candidate for Congress, Agoura TV writer and attorney Richard David Freiman could barely contain his excitement last March as he departed for a two-day “candidates’ school” sponsored by the Democratic Party in Washington.

He savored the prospect of high-minded seminars on national defense policy, foreign affairs and other great issues of the day. He envisioned tips from party leaders on how to act with wisdom and idealism once elected to Congress.

Instead, Freiman, 42, got a different kind of political education.

“All they talked about was money,” he said, shaking his head in dismay during a recent interview. “Money, money, money.”

But Freiman, like many neophyte candidates, is finding out just how crucial money is in politics. Due largely to his meager finances, he faces odds that are long--if not impossible--in his race against Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley).

Although Gallegly has more than $200,000 on hand for the Nov. 6 election, Freiman has less than $900.

His campaign headquarters is his house and his campaign manager is a free-lance court reporter who draws no salary and has no previous election experience. Instead of pouring tens of thousands of dollars into slick, self-promoting brochures to mail to voters, Freiman passes out handbills.

He knows he can’t afford cable television commercials, and he’ll be lucky if he has enough money to buy a handful of radio spots near the end of the campaign. His tiny budget prohibits him from acquiring even such basic campaign equipment as a fax machine.

Political observers give Freiman virtually no chance of winning in the heavily Republican 21st Congressional District, which covers the suburbs of northwestern Los Angeles County and southeastern Ventura County and where Gallegly easily defeated Democratic opponents in the last two general elections.

Yet Freiman, a self-described political junkie who as a boy thrilled to speeches by John F. Kennedy, is having a wonderful time on the campaign trail.

“I love this. I’ve wanted to do this all my life, ever since I read ‘The Making of the President, 1960,’ ” he said. “I’m enjoying every minute of it.”

Gallegly, for his part, has largely ignored Freiman’s candidacy. With just five weeks remaining before the election, the two-term congressman has yet to hire a full-time campaign manager. Like many incumbents who see no reason to give an opponent a platform, he declined a challenge to debate Freiman.

That, however, hasn’t stopped Freiman from attacking the conservative Gallegly, 46, at every opportunity, taking his low-budget campaign before senior citizens groups, college government classes and gatherings of environmentalists.

“I still think I’ve got a shot,” Freiman said over lunch this week at a Northridge health food restaurant. “As crazy as it seems, I’ve believed this since the day I got into this, because there’s such a clear-cut choice between us.”

Freiman has made his advocacy of abortion rights a centerpiece of his campaign, criticizing Gallegly for his anti-abortion stance.

He also promotes himself as an environmentalist. He favors Proposition 128 on the November ballot, the so-called “Big Green” initiative that seeks to phase out cancer-causing pesticides and ozone-depleting chemicals.

Freiman has repeatedly attacked Gallegly for not taking a position on the controversial proposed land swap involving entertainer Bob Hope’s Jordan Ranch in Ventura County.

Under the deal, the National Park Service would exchange 59 acres in Cheeseboro Canyon in southeastern Ventura County for about 1,100 acres of the ranch, and park agencies would be allowed to buy an additional 4,600 acres of Hope’s land in the Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountains for $10 million. Freiman opposes the swap.

Gallegly said he thinks it is inappropriate for a federal official to take a position on the swap until environmental impact reports on it are completed and until local officials including the Ventura County Board of Supervisors hold public hearings on the matter.

But Freiman noted that Gallegly asked National Park Service chief James M. Ridenour in a June, 1989, letter for an expeditious ruling on the swap, a request that came long before the reports were finished earlier this year. Freiman pointed out that Gallegly has accepted $4,300 in contributions since 1987 from a developer who hopes to build luxury homes on Jordan Ranch.

Gallegly denied that he was influenced by the donations, citing his continued neutrality on the issue as proof. He added that he sent the letter to Ridenour because constituents were eager to know the Park Service’s position on the much-debated exchange.

Freiman also is trying to make an issue of Gallegly’s vote against legislation that would have granted workers up to three months of unpaid leave per year for childbirth or to care for sick family members.

Gallegly said he voted against the legislation, which was vetoed by President Bush, because it would cost thousands of jobs and damage the ability of the United States to compete economically with other nations.

Despite his lack of campaign cash, Freiman, a native of the Bronx in New York, has thrown himself into the fray with a commitment unusual for many under-financed political neophytes.

Last spring, he quit his job as a tax attorney with a Camarillo firm after his bosses told him to choose between working or campaigning full time.

Despite the financial sacrifice, Freiman left the firm and returned to his previous vocation as a TV writer. Though he graduated from New York University Law School with an advanced degree in 1975, Freiman spent most of the past 15 years writing for various comedy and action series. He took up lawyering, in fact, only after the 1988 Hollywood writers’ strike.

His credits include scripts for “Sanford and Son” and “Good Times.” He also worked for a short-lived ABC show about a police robot called “Holmes and Yo-Yo.”

“We had important discussions such as what does a robot eat?” Freiman said with a smile.

To make ends meet during the campaign, Freiman, who is married and has two young sons, is acting as a story consultant for the daytime soap opera “Santa Barbara.” He also authored a script about Zorro for cable television and is collecting residuals from past shows.

But as the campaign wears on, Freiman has lost many of his illusions about the nobility of politics.

He described the Washington candidates’ school as being more like a trade show, as political consultants acting as instructors hammered away at the need for candidates to spend heavily on polling, television commercials, debate coaching and other services--which, for a price, the consultants would provide.

Freiman described a breakfast held during the school at which he and other first-time candidates met with directors of political action committees, the powerful campaign arms of corporations and unions that provide large chunks of money to many congressional incumbents.

The meeting, however, made Freiman feel more like a courtesan being paraded before potential customers than a candidate stating his deepest political principles, he said.

“In my naivete, I thought that, if you agreed with issues that political action committees espouse, that the PACs would provide you with support,” he said.

“But what it turned out to be for them was an investment in stock. They are only looking for stocks that are going to win. And the safest stock is an incumbent or a challenger for an open seat,” he said.

That kind of cynicism among political professionals, however, has been more than offset by the devotion of people in his district who have volunteered as campaign workers, Freiman said.

“You just have incredible gratitude for people who give up their time to help you out,” he said. “It just makes you feel so good about the process.”

Ever the writer with an eye out for material, Freiman is keeping a campaign diary and plans to write a book about his experiences.

“It’s either going to be titled, ‘How I Got Elected to Congress on $10,000 or Less,’ or ‘How I Ran for Congress on $10,000 or Less,’ ” he said.