LOCAL ELECTIONS DEBATES : Face-to-Face Encounters Getting Rarer

A month ago, Republican congressional candidate Jim Salomon staged a carefully planned--and highly telegenic--ambush of Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson outside a Beverly Hills fund-raiser for the popular San Fernando Valley-Westside Democrat.

Frustrated with Beilenson’s unwillingness to debate him, Salomon--a trade consultant whom Beilenson trounced in 1988--showed up accompanied by a bearded, top-hatted man posing as Abraham Lincoln. The man held a sign reading, “If Douglas Would Debate Lincoln, Why Won’t Beilenson Debate Salomon?”

The media stunt fizzled, however. The lone television station that filmed it didn’t air the footage and no other reporters showed up. Beilenson, the cerebral chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, didn’t walk into the trap. He was in marathon federal budget talks that day in Washington.

But Salomon’s predicament illustrates what many political observers say is a disturbing trend in local election races in the Valley. Although almost everybody in politics--candidates and consultants, voters and reporters--agrees in theory that open, free-flowing debates are important to the democratic process, debates have become as rare here as snowfall.

For example, none of the seven congressmen representing the Valley met their major-party opponents in head-to-head debate this fall. Incumbents cited pressing business in Washington related to the deficit-reduction talks and Persian Gulf crisis.

For a variety of reasons, analysts say, front-runners in local elections in the Valley and elsewhere usually forgo the drama--and high political risks--of Nixon-Kennedy-style clashes. They rely instead on the far more controlled vehicles of TV commercials and direct mail to get their messages to voters.

“It’s what I call avoidance politics, where incumbents are more and more playing it safe,” said Sheldon Kamieniecki, a USC political science professor who specializes in elections, voting behavior and public opinion.

Indeed, on the few occasions nowadays when front-runners do appear with challengers in the Valley, it is not in classic, one-on-one debates but at candidate forums, in which a dozen or more candidates make brief opening statements and answer a handful of audience questions.

Although candidates for President, governor and U.S. Senate often clash in two or more full-blown, televised debates during a campaign, front-runners in Valley legislative and congressional contests routinely turn down invitations to appear at such events from religious organizations, senior citizens groups and media outlets.

Challengers say that incumbents use their congressional duties as an excuse. They say that incumbents fear the public exposure of debates and forums, where they must absorb pointed questions and defend their records before the press and public.

Like most other moves in the ceaseless chess game of politics, debate challenges have their political objectives. Weaker candidates know that debates provide them with higher public visibility, more prestige and the chance to force a flub that may damage or destroy a front-runner’s campaign.

“As a general rule, debates serve the purposes of the candidate who’s behind in the polls. Historically, their purpose is to make the person in the lead make a fatal mistake that the person who’s behind can then exploit,” said Carlos Rodriguez, a Sacramento-based political consultant who has worked for Valley Republican candidates.

Some front-runners say that although they recognize the importance of extensive, free-swinging discussions of the issues, that’s often not what takes place in candidate forums.

In many forums, sponsoring organizations invite a dozen or more candidates for a wide variety of offices, ensuring that no one candidate can speak for more than a few minutes. Campaign managers acknowledge that they routinely pack such forums with shills, directing them to cheer their candidate and boo the opponent.

“I hate forums for that reason,” said Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley). “I get myself all fired up and then I go in and I see that group is for so-and-so and that group is for so-and-so. And you find there’s about 10 people there to actually listen.”

Many of those involved in politics also say that while everyone pays lip service to the merits of debates and forums, when candidates show up for them they frequently find only 20 or 30 people in the audience--an indication of general disinterest in politics.

Valley congressmen said they have had little time to worry about forums or debates with the crush of serious business that faced them in recent months. The past congressional session adjourned only last weekend, making it the longest since the end of World War II.

“My first priority is to do the things I was elected to do,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who has not debated Democratic nominee Richard Freiman, an Agoura TV writer and tax attorney.

Gallegly and other incumbents also noted that if they did take time to debate, their opponents would probably make a campaign issue of that, charging that they were ignoring their official business.

But observers say some congressmen have managed to take vacations and fly between Washington and their districts several times since last June’s primary elections--all the while saying that they have no time for debates.

“The bottom line is, where there’s a will there’s a way,” said Republican political consultant Eric Rose.

To call media attention to their opponent’s unwillingness to debate, underdogs will resort to almost any gimmick short of turning a flock of chickens loose in the front-runner’s campaign office.

Besides staging his Abe Lincoln routine at the Beverly Hills fund-raiser and later at Beilenson’s district office in Tarzana, Salomon offered to pay the cost of a satellite hookup so the incumbent could debate from Washington. Salomon also offered to buy time on three local cable TV systems to air the debate.

Beilenson aide Craig Miller said the congressman has a long history of debating opponents, but he had an unusually busy fall in Washington. Uncertainty over when Congress would adjourn, he said, made it very difficult to schedule any appointment, much less a debate.

Although Beilenson returned from Washington last Tuesday, President Bush asked him to remain on-call last week to return to the capital in case the gulf crisis flared up, Miller said. Beilenson turned down the offer of a satellite debate because it would not have forced Salomon to “defend himself in front of a live audience, with the congressman present,” Miller said.

Political observers blame a number of factors for the decline of debates in the Valley, which they say has happened over the past 10 or 15 years.

For one thing, unlike small towns where political debates are an important part of community life, the Valley’s sprawling size and increasingly fragmented residential areas have left it with few central venues for debates.

For another, local candidates are hiring expensive consultants more often and taking their advice not to stick their political necks out in debates. In addition, media coverage of local races is often spotty, allowing front-runners to dodge debate challenges with little fear of public embarrassment.

But some media outlets refuse to let a no-show front-runner kill a debate. Last month, Oxnard-based television station KADY broadcast an empty chair when Gallegly declined to appear for a question-and-answer session at their studios with his opponent, Freiman.

Gallegly said his Washington schedule did not permit an appearance.

When GOP candidate Paula Boland, the front-runner for an open seat in the 38th Assembly District, canceled a scheduled appearance on a radio talk show two weeks ago, the show’s host let her Democratic opponent, Irene Allert, speak during her allotted half hour and Boland’s too.

Boland’s campaign manager, Mark Thompson, said she had dropped out “for personal family reasons,” but he declined to say what they were.