5 Incumbents Retain Congress Seats : Elections: Whatever differences its members had on the federal budget deficit, the congressional delegation remains intact.

Partisan fights over the federal budget deficit did not leave the South Bay congressional delegation too bruised to prevail at the polls Tuesday, as all five incumbents overwhelmingly won reelection.

Three area lawmakers backed the five-year deficit reduction package enacted Oct. 27 that includes $164 billion in tax increases and $326 billion in spending cuts: Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), Glenn M. Anderson (D-Harbor City) and Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles). On Tuesday, that trio won by margins ranging from 59% to 73%.

The two area congressmen who opposed the package--Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach) and Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton)--received vote shares of 59% and 68%, respectively.

In the 32nd Congressional District, incumbent Anderson won a 12th two-year term with 62% of the vote, defeating Republican Sanford W. Kahn of Long Beach, a Southern California Gas. Co. engineer who collected 38%.

Kahn, who lost to Anderson by a margin of more than 2 to 1 in 1988, attacked Anderson for supporting the deficit reduction package and asserted that age and too many years in office has rendered the 77-year-old incumbent ineffective.

At a victory party Tuesday night, Anderson said voters appreciate his success in landing major transportation and port projects for his district--and have not lost confidence in his abilities.

“I think the more you serve, the better you are,” he said in a Long Beach campaign headquarters festooned with red, white and blue balloons. “I am a much better congressman now than I was 10 or 15 years ago.”

Anderson said he thinks voters accept that some type of tax increase is necessary to cut the federal deficit. “I think most people know that when we do something, we’ve got to raise money to pay for it,” he said.

In the 42nd Congressional District, freshman incumbent Rohrabacher won a second term in a 59% to 37% win over Democrat challenger Guy C. Kimbrough, a political science instructor from Huntington Beach.

Libertarian Richard Gibb Martin, the third candidate in the race, collected the remaining 4% of the vote.

Kimbrough, who lost to Rohrabacher by a 64% to 33% margin in 1988, had predicted voters would punish the incumbent for opposing abortion rights, supporting offshore oil drilling and advocating an end to federal subsidies for the arts.

But Rohrabacher said Tuesday that voters in his heavily Republican district were more interested in his steadfast opposition to tax increases--a position, he says, that led him to oppose the deficit reduction package last month.

“If I had voted the other way, I think I would have been hurt,” said Rohrabacher, celebrating his win with Orange County Republicans at a Costa Mesa hotel. “This is a Republican district that believes in low taxes and high growth, and that’s the kind of congressman I’ve been.”

Kimbrough, however, asserted that Rohrabacher’s win was due more to the incumbent’s huge advantages in fund-raising and name recognition than to gratitude for his tax stand.

Said Kimbrough: “I think what it came down to is the ability to reach voters. I’m disappointed at not being able to reach out and contact as many people as we should have.”

In other South Bay congressional races, Levine won a fifth term as representative of the 27th Congressional District by beating GOP challenger David Barrett Cohen 59% to 37%. Peace and Freedom Party candidate Edward E. Ferrer received 4%.

In the 31st Congressional District, Dymally won a sixth term by defeating Republican Eunice N. Sato, a former Long Beach city councilwoman, 68% to 32%.

And in the 28th Congressional District, Dixon prevailed in a rematch with Republican businessman George Z. Adams to win a seventh term, 73% to 22%. Libertarian Bob Weber and William R. Williams of the Peace and Freedom Party split the remaining 5%.