CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS: ASSEMBLY RACES : Battlefields of '88 Quiet This Year but 63rd District May Heat Up Yet

By RICK HOLGUIN

Oct. 25, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The 1990 races for the Assembly’s 63rd and 54th district seats have little resemblance so far to the election wars of 1988, when campaign spending in each race topped $1 million and the Democratic challengers scratched and clawed to unseat the Republican incumbents.

The campaigns have been low key so far, with Bob Epple (D-Norwalk) and Willard H. Murray Jr. (D-Paramount) expecting to outspend challengers in their bids to retain Assembly seats.

Murray is heavily favored to win his second term in the 54th District, which includes Compton, Paramount, Lakewood, Bellflower and a small part of Long Beach.

Epple, more than any other local assemblyman, faces a challenge. He won his 63rd District seat two years ago by a scant 220 votes. As a result, the district has been targeted by state Republican leaders as one they may capture Nov. 6.

Despite that, Republican challenger Diane P. Boggs has drawn what she calls token support from her party. The Downey councilwoman raised $69,399, which includes $50,000 she borrowed from herself, according to the most recent campaign disclosure statements that cover fund raising through Sept. 30.

She hopes to receive enough volunteer support to erase Epple’s fund-raising advantage. Epple had raised $198,836, according to his last campaign statement.

Epple, 41, said he is campaigning hard in case the state Republican Party decides to pour resources into the Boggs campaign in the final days before the election.

The 63rd District includes Artesia, Cerritos, Downey, Hawaiian Gardens, Santa Fe Springs, almost all of Norwalk, and parts of Lakewood, southern and eastern Whittier and Long Beach.

“I want to know I won on Election Day,” said Epple, referring to his 1988 victory over Wayne Grisham, which was so close that election officials took two weeks to finish counting the ballots.

The political stakes were higher in 1988, when Republicans thought that they were making progress toward establishing a GOP majority in the Assembly. But the Republicans lost Grisham’s seat and two others that year.

In other area races, Assemblyman Dave Elder (D-San Pedro) is enjoying a giant fund-raising lead over Republican challenger Rodney Guarneri and is favored to win a seventh term in the 57th District, which stretches from Long Beach south to San Pedro.

Assemblywomen Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) and Teresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles) are running unopposed.

Roybal-Allard has held her seat since 1987. Her 56th District includes Commerce, Maywood, Bell Gardens, Vernon and part of East Los Angeles. Hughes has been in office since 1975. Her 47th District covers Huntington Park, Bell, Cudahy and parts of Los Angeles.

In the 63rd District, Epple is using his status as the incumbent to fend off the under-funded Boggs. The district’s voters are 55.7% Democrat to 36.3% Republican, but they have conservative leanings and frequently cast crossover votes.

Epple may not have dazzled his colleagues during his first term--”I still have a lot to learn,” he admits--but the assemblyman points to some legislative successes. Those include a bill that established stiffer penalties for anyone possessing, using or selling drugs near schools, and legislation that increased the amount veterans can borrow from the state to buy homes.

Epple has been opposed to aerial malathion spraying to eradicate the Medfly and he has secured $1 million in state money for a community arts and sports center in Norwalk.

“I now have the ability to talk about what I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve done the job and kept my promises.”

Epple hopes that anti-incumbent sentiment stoked by the continuing investigation of political corruption in the Capitol will not hurt him.

Epple and Boggs have been walking precincts, from the more pricey neighborhoods of Downey and Cerritos to the blue-collar residential areas in Norwalk and Hawaiian Gardens. They shake hands and pass out pamphlets and refrigerator magnets bearing their names. They are rarely asked about their positions on issues. The candidates’ lawn signs dot the district.

Epple plans to step up his mailing campaign with the election nearing.

A spokesman for the California Republican Party said a mailer would be sent on behalf of Boggs. He also said the party will funnel last-minute money to GOP candidates who have the best chance of winning.

Boggs said she would welcome such support but is not counting on it. Boggs said she is relying on six billboards and lawn signs, rather than the more expensive mailers, to get her name out to voters.

“It’s the biggest crap shoot I’ve been in,” said Boggs, an administrator of an obesity clinic.

Boggs, 58, is in her seventh year on the Downey City Council. She counts among her greatest accomplishments a city-sponsored child-care program and a reading program for adults. Boggs said one of her goals, if elected, would be to improve education in the state. She also said she would work to ensure that dangerous criminals spend more time in jail.

A former Downey Chamber of Commerce president, Boggs criticized Epple for not supporting statewide business concerns as much as she would; Boggs cited a California Chamber of Commerce report card showing Epple that voted in opposition to the chamber’s position on 13 of 16 bills in 1989. Boggs said she opposed the chamber’s position on just two items.

“You need a healthy economy to support everybody,” Boggs said.

But Epple countered that the needs of business and the average citizen may not always coincide.

For example, Epple said, he supported legislation that would have required businesses with at least 25 employees to give four months of unpaid leave to care for a sick family member. The state Chamber of Commerce opposed the legislation, as does Boggs.

Boggs “wants to respond to business before she wants to respond to consumers, to the people of this district,” Epple said. “There are a lot of things that the chamber doesn’t like that people of this district want and need.”

Boggs said family leave should be worked out between employer and employee, not mandated.

She also said Epple was not responding to the desires of his constituents when he voted in March, 1989, against legislation to outlaw assault weapons. Boggs said that she supports a right to bear arms but that citizens do not need such high-powered weapons.

She also said Epple has caved in to the National Rifle Assn. Epple, an NRA member, said that he voted against the bill because he is ideologically opposed to such a ban and that he thinks criminals would be able to obtain assault rifles despite the law.

“People are entitled to use (assault rifles) as long as they’re using them for legitimate purposes,” Epple said.

The 54th District race has drawn hardly a glance from the leaders of either party. The Republican candidate, Emily Hart-Holifield of Compton, is the only person insisting that she will upset Murray.

Murray, a 59-year-old political consultant, ousted GOP Assemblyman Paul Zeltner of Lakewood two years ago with heavy financial support from state Democratic leaders. Zeltner won the heavily Democratic district in 1986 after a bruising primary split Democrats.

Democrats account for 64.1% of the registered voters in the 54th, and Republicans represent 28%.

Until recently, the plucky Hart-Holifield, a Compton College trustee and a special education teacher in the Compton schools, was a Democrat. Now she rails against what she calls a Democratic machine that for years has controlled the district.

“There has never been an alternative,” said Hart-Holifield, 49. “I am that alternative.”

She complains that Murray does not live in the district, so he cannot understand its problems, especially crime. Murray said he has lived in the district for four years and worked there many more years as an assistant to Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton). Murray has an apartment in Paramount; he owns a house in Windsor Hills.

Hart-Holifield took strong issue with Murray over malathion spraying, which he vigorously supported as needed to eradicate the Medfly. She considers the substance hazardous to health.

Murray said the fruit fly is hazardous to the thousands of urban jobs in such areas as packaging and shipping that depend on the good health of the state’s agricultural business.

Murray said education and crime are the two most important district issues.

Murray has raised $68,703, to Hart-Holifield’s $13,469, according to their campaign disclosure statements.

Also running are Arthur C. Olivier, 33, a Libertarian resident of Bellflower and project manager for Douglas Aircraft Corp., and Norman E. Lynn of the Peace and Freedom Party. Olivier and Lynn said they will spend less than $1,000 on their campaigns.

In the 57th District, longtime incumbent Elder is facing a weak challenge from Guarneri, a welfare case worker from Long Beach who is poorly funded and not well-known.

According to the most recent campaign finance reports, Guarneri raised less than $1,000 in the first nine months of the year. Elder, by contrast, collected nearly $90,000.

Also aiding Elder is the Democrats’ 2-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans in the largely blue-collar 57th District, which covers San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City and much of Long Beach.

Guarneri is trying to draw attention to news reports that Elder came under the scrutiny of state prosecutors in 1988 for allegedly allowing a legislative aide to raise campaign money for Controller Gray Davis during working hours.

The reports said state officials decided against investigating the matter formally because a key informant’s assertions could not be confirmed.

Published in May, the reports did not appear to damage Elder in the June 5 primary; he beat fellow Democrat Ed Musgrave with 85% of the vote.

Times staff writers Michele Fuetsch and George Hatch contributed to this report.

54TH ASSEMBLY DISTRICT

The district: Bellflower, Compton, Lakewood, Long Beach, Paramount. Candidate: Party Willard H. Murray Jr. (inc.): Democrat Emily Hart-Holifield: Republican Norman E. Lynn: Peace and Freedom Arthur C. Olivier: Libertarian

Voter Registration Registered Percent Democrats 88,266 64.1% Republicans 38,578 28.0 Declined to State 7,895 5.7 Minor Parties* 2,896 2.1 Total 137,635