ELECTIONS : Tucker Being Pressed to Skip Race for State Senate : Politics: Assemblywoman Teresa P. Hughes is also aiming at the proposed 25th Senate District seat. And she has some powerful backers.

Inglewood Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. says fellow Democrats are dropping by his office these days to have a little talk.

The talks, it turns out, are aimed at persuading the 37-year-old legislator to drop his plans to run for state Senate.

“Everyone says, ‘Gee, why don’t you stay in your Assembly seat?’ ” Tucker said this week.

Tucker wants to compete this year for the proposed 25th Senate District, which will include Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lennox and part of Torrance if the state Supreme Court approves its boundaries at the end of this month.

But so do two other black Democrats: Assemblywoman Teresa P. Hughes of Los Angeles and Lynwood City Councilman Paul Richards. Tucker says an array of Democratic power brokers who have lined up behind Hughes are privately urging him to back off to avert a divisive fight for votes in the black community.

The pressure amounts to a political dilemma for the second-term Inglewood legislator, who admits that this is the first time his career plans have conflicted with the wishes of his Democratic colleagues.

But with legislative term limits clouding the political future of state lawmakers, Tucker says he might have to place career considerations first.

“In the past, you could wait in office for (higher offices) to open up, but now you have to take your shot when the opportunity presents itself,” he said. “If I was a betting man, I’d put money on me running.”

Drawing Tucker to the proposed 25th Senate District is the fact that the territory is solidly Democratic, heavily black and ripe for the picking. The Senate incumbent best-positioned to win it, Bill Greene (D-Los Angeles), is retiring because of poor health.

The open seat has attracted not only Tucker, Hughes and Richards, but also state Sen. Ralph C. Dills (D-Gardena), who is white. Dills wants to run in the new district because his current district will probably be carved up as part of reapportionment, the once-a-decade redrawing of legislative boundaries being handled this year by the state Supreme Court.

The tentative filing deadline to run in the June 2 primary is Feb. 18, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder’s office.

Tucker says numerous Democrats have contacted him to try to prevent a showdown with Hughes, a 16-year Assembly member. Among them, he says, are members of the Legislature’s black caucus and the West Los Angeles political organization of Democratic U.S. Reps. Howard L. Berman and Henry A. Waxman.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) has not explicitly recommended that Tucker drop out, Tucker says, but has hinted at it by saying he supports Hughes and hopes a divisive primary will be avoided.

“(Tucker and Hughes) are two high-quality people that would go head-to-head for that seat,” Berman said this week. “The downside is that after it’s over, one of them would be out of public office.”

Hughes says Tucker’s presence in the race would “confuse the black community about who can best represent them,” possibly splitting the black vote. “It’s conceivable that someone not black could come in and win,” she said.

The pressure puts Tucker in a tough position because, in many cases, it is coming from close allies. Brown, for instance, played a big part in helping Tucker win his Assembly seat in a special election in 1989 after his father, former Assemblyman Curtis Tucker, died in office.

But thus far, Tucker is insisting that he cannot ignore the new political realities created by legislative term limits. Under the limits, he can serve only two more two-year terms in the Assembly, meaning that he would be out of office in 1996.

By then, he reasons, there will probably be no open Senate seat he can compete for. If he runs for Senate this year and wins, he would not face a term limit on his new post until 1998.

And Tucker argues that the proposed 25th District would be better served with him as its senator because he already represents about a third of it. Hughes, he points out, represents none of the area and does not live in it.

“People deserve a senator who is at least from their community,” Tucker said. “I haven’t heard any compelling arguments yet about why I shouldn’t run.”