ELECTIONS / STATE ASSEMBLY : Steiner Cries ‘Vicious’ Smear; Foe Sees ‘Sleaze’ : The race focuses on which of the top two GOP contenders is the more conservative anti-tax candidate.

With one week remaining in the campaign for the vacant 67th Assembly District race, candidate William G. Steiner Tuesday returned fire at his chief rival, Mickey R. Conroy, accusing him of engaging in a “vicious effort to discredit my campaign.”

During a press conference attended by local supporters, including the mayors of Anaheim and Yorba Linda, Steiner attacked Conroy for bringing to the county last week four of the state’s most conservative assemblymen, who questioned Steiner’s no-new-taxes pledge and called him a “fraud” and “political chameleon.”

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), who led the charge, was accompanied by Assemblymen Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), Richard L. Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) and Phillip Wyman (R-Tehachapi).

“They called me a fraud, they called me a liar and they called me a hypocrite, and I just don’t stand at the side in terms of that kind of vicious effort to discredit me,” said Steiner, an Orange city councilman. “These people don’t know me. I am telling you they don’t know me.”

But Conroy, a GOP activist from Santa Ana, said his assemblymen supporters should not be considered outsiders in a race to elect a future Assembly colleague, and he denied that he is mudslinging.

“If there’s any sleaze going on . . . you compare my (campaign mailers) to Mr. Steiner’s pieces, and sleaze takes care of itself,” Conroy responded.

The latest cross-fire came in a race that has focused on who of the top two GOP contenders is the more conservative anti-tax candidate, Steiner or Conroy.

The 67th Assembly District is one of the most Republican in California. It stretches from Silverado Canyon in the east to Orange in the west and from Yorba Linda in the north to El Toro in the south.

Besides Steiner and Conroy, four other Republicans are running in Tuesday’s election: former Tustin Councilman John Kelly, Villa Park Councilman Harold H. Saldarini, Tustin businessman Bill Earl and Tustin educator Tracy Gaffey.

The lone Democrat in the race is Gregory Robert Ramsay, a health-care manager from Santa Ana.

Ferguson, among others, has said the race is more than just a contest to fill the vacancy created by John R. Lewis’ move up to the state Senate. He says it is a struggle between moderates and conservatives over control of the Assembly.

Conroy, bolstered by the conservative assemblymen, has said Steiner’s anti-tax pledge cannot be trusted.

But Steiner--flanked Tuesday by Anaheim Mayor Fred Hunter, Yorba Linda Mayor Mark Schwing and other leaders of the campaign against the Measure J jail-tax initiative--said he hopes that voters will judge him by his record of community involvement.

Steiner was co-chairman of the campaign that helped bring about the May defeat of the initiative, which called for increasing the county’s sales tax by a half-cent to pay for building a regional jail.

Investment broker Rick Violett, who also worked on the effort against Measure J, said Conroy was never visible during the campaign to defeat the initiative.

“You would think that somebody who was concerned about taxes would at least have called to say, ‘Congratulations. Is there anything I can do to help you?’ ” Violett said.

Conroy replied that he was never asked to participate in the campaign. He also accused Steiner of getting involved in that election because he was preparing for the Assembly race.

Now the anti-initiative political faction is “propping him up as their straw man,” he said.

Steiner accused Conroy of being controlled by Ferguson and said he was outraged that the campaign had “deteriorated to this level,” adding that he did not “fire the first shot” and that Conroy has been trying for two months to start a fight.

“I also think the voters are very, very unforgiving when it gets down to issues of honesty and integrity . . . and I think the thing that has been most hurtful to me is this vicious effort to discredit my record,” Steiner said. “I literally have been stunned with how personalized this has become.”