Lewis Easily Wins Vacant Senate Seat : Election: Conservative assemblyman swamps two opponents in 35th District. GOP already looking for candidate to take his place.

Assemblyman John R. Lewis, one of Orange County’s most conservative and controversial political figures, won an easy victory Tuesday in a special election to replace John Seymour in the 35th Senate District.

Lewis (R-Orange) had been expected to win California’s most heavily Republican Senate district ever since he defeated seven other GOP candidates--including two colleagues from the Assembly--in a primary last March.

With nearly all precincts reporting, Lewis, 38, was ahead by a commanding margin of almost 3 to 1 over Democrat Francis X. Hoffman and Libertarian Eric Sprik. Hoffman, 42, is an attorney and a trustee on the Orange County Board of Education who lives in Garden Grove. Sprik, 38, of Costa Mesa owns a dry cleaning business.

“I’m excited, I feel real good,” Lewis said at a victory party in Orange shortly after the polls closed. “I wouldn’t say I expected this, but I was always hopeful; I was always one of the front-runners.”

Lewis said he hoped that he could be sworn into his new office as early as Thursday. And he said his new constituents can look at his performance in the Assembly to learn about their new senator.

“I’m going to give the same kind of conservative representation to the voters of the 35th (Senate District) as I did in the 67th” Assembly District, he said. “I campaigned on free enterprise, property rights and less government . . . and I think the voters of my new district are in sync with that.”

Despite his significant advantage, Lewis and the county Republican Party made a strong effort to generate votes in the final days of the campaign. A letter sent to GOP voters last week, signed by the state and county Republican chairmen, said: “On May 14, we are asking all Republicans to work as if their lives depended on it. It does.”

Lewis also joined dozens of Republican volunteers over the weekend in walking door-to-door throughout the Senate district and calling voters on the phone. All this work was despite a 57% to 32% voter registration advantage that Republicans enjoy in the district over Democrats.

“Most people would look at these numbers and say this is overkill, but a candidate who practices overkill usually wins,” said Carlos Rodriguez, Lewis’ campaign manager. “John Lewis doesn’t take anything for granted.”

The 35th Senate District seat was vacated in January when newly elected Gov. Pete Wilson appointed Seymour to fill his U.S. Senate seat. The district includes almost all of Anaheim, Orange, Costa Mesa and Fountain Valley, as well as parts of Irvine, Westminster, Tustin and Huntington Beach.

Republican leaders statewide have been so confident that Lewis would win Tuesday’s election that they have already been eyeing the race to fill his seat in the 67th Assembly District. But instead of uniting them behind a candidate, the possibility of another open Assembly seat has touched off a heated confrontation in California’s political back rooms.

Former Assemblyman Curt Pringle, who lost his Garden Grove seat last November to Democrat Tom Umberg, collected 21 endorsements from Sacramento legislators for his possible candidacy. But sources said the governor recently joined the fray to side against the conservative Pringle and in favor of moderate Republican William G. Steiner, a councilman from Orange.