CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / 72ND ASSEMBLY DISTRICT : Umberg Makes Most of Minimal Turnout

They got fistfuls of letters seemingly every day. Strangers with brochures knocked on their doors and political celebrities visited their communities. But the voters in the 72nd Assembly District looked like they couldn’t care less.

Less than half the registered voters in the district reached the polls Tuesday, far below the 56.6% turnout in the rest of Orange County, which was a mid-term low for the decade. And with so much at stake in this race--political careers, party prestige and Sacramento’s power balance--victory and defeat was decided by a relative handful of people.

The difference between Republican Assemblyman Curt Pringle’s narrow win in 1988 and Democrat Tom Umberg’s victory Tuesday was just over 2,000 voters. Turnout was so low and the resources poured into this race so great that it looks like both candidates will have spent nearly $20 for each vote they received.

Results available Wednesday showed Umberg beating Pringle by about 1,300 votes, 51% to 48%. Thousands of absentee ballots remained to be counted in Orange County, but representatives from both campaigns said they were not expecting the outcome to change.

The 72nd District, the only one in Orange County with a majority of Democratic voters, includes Stanton and parts of Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Westminster.

There were several major factors and issues in this race--abortion, a political scandal still under investigation, taxes, experience and crime. But in a race so close and so hotly contested, anything and everything counted.

“When there is so much cannon fire back and forth it’s hard to tell which shot hit him (Pringle),” said Otis Turner, aide to Assembly Minority Leader Ross Johnson (R-Anaheim).

One of the immediate impacts of 72nd District race will be decided today when the Assembly Republican caucus meets in Sacramento to vote on whether Johnson will retain his leadership position.

Some caucus members are expected to blame Johnson for Pringle’s loss since so much of the party’s firepower was aimed at this single race, including visits from Vice President Dan Quayle and former President Ronald Reagan.

Republicans also lost two other Assembly seats but gained one from Democrats in voting Tuesday.

“We’ll sit around the table and mark the spots where there are empty chairs and then say, ‘What happened here?’ ” Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) said. “The leader normally steps down if he loses a seat and here we lost three.”

Johnson, however, remained optimistic about his chances of keeping his post.

“I’m quite confident I’ll be reelected,” he said. “I think there would have been an attempted challenge regardless of the outcome of the election.”

Johnson and Pringle attributed the loss of the 72nd District seat to distortions and deceptions coming from Umberg’s campaign. They both complained about Umberg’s attempt to link Pringle with Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

Umberg sent voters one letter that claimed Pringle backed the speaker because he cast a procedural vote to reelect the Assembly leadership at the start of a special session last year.

“Their campaign was very deceptive,” said Johnson, who helped direct Pringle’s bid. “It was designed to turn reality on its head.”

Pringle, 31, was unavailable for comment Wednesday. But at the Republican gathering on election night, he called it “a very nasty campaign. The Democrats presented a distorted message to the voters. They kept trying to make it look like I had allegiances to the Speaker, which I do not.”

The total cost of the 72nd District race is expected to be more than $1 million, with Umberg outspending Pringle in campaign funds. But several independent committees spent thousands of dollars on this race, particularly for Pringle.

Democrats attributed the outcome to several issues. Abortion-rights groups made strong appeals for Umberg, including a bipartisan organization that targeted Republican women and encouraged them to oppose Pringle, who opposes abortion rights.

“Our volunteers called every Republican and declined-to-state woman in the 72nd (District) who could be matched with a telephone number,” said Karla Bell, co-chair of Pro-Choice Orange County.

Others attributed some of Umberg’s support to the controversy surrounding Pringle’s election in 1988 in which the Republican Party placed uniformed guards at several polling places in the district. The scandal sparked a civil rights lawsuit that was settled out of court and an ongoing criminal investigation.

“I think it crystallized the Democratic Party for key groups and focused their attention on this race,” said Paul Garza, a Democratic activist. “I think there was a sense for those of us who felt cheated on that poll-guard issue that we had to put everything we had into it.”

Umberg, 35, was unavailable for comment Wednesday while he was in Sacramento at a meeting of the Assembly Democratic caucus.

His campaign manager, George Urch, said he thinks there were several key issues, but, in general, the candidate simply was a good match for a conservative Democratic district. Umberg is a former federal prosecutor and an officer in the military reserve.

“I think Tom was on the right side of the issues,” Urch said. “This is a working-class district that is more firmly planted in the middle than the far right.”