POLITICAL NOTEBOOK : Seeing a Weak Field, He May Draft Himself

Rating His Rivals: The Republican field in the proposed 41st Congressional District is so weak, says Diamond Bar Mayor Jay Kim, that he may run himself.

“I don’t see anybody I can support,” Kim said. “I’m pretty angry right now.”

Kim dismisses the apparent front-runner, former state Assemblyman Charles Bader of Pomona, as a professional politician, part of a Sacramento crowd that has “ruined the state.”

He said another announced candidate, Jim Lacy, an attorney who has spent the last 10 years working for Republican administrations in Washington, has no roots in the district.

And the third declared candidate, 31-year-old John Eastman, is still in graduate school.

“It’s kind of discouraging, the people who are running,” Kim said, adding that he would prefer someone with deep ties to the area and strong experience in business, a description that happens to fit himself.

Kim, 52, who immigrated from Korea 31 years ago, owns an engineering company. He said he has ordered a political survey to help him assess his chances of winning.

Incidentally, Bader, who has business experience as owner of a condominium management company, notes that he already has the endorsement of three of Kim’s colleagues on the Diamond Bar City Council.

As to Kim’s disparaging remarks, Lacy says he is a native Californian with ties to the district.

Eastman, a former spokesman for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, said he is completing a dissertation on political theory for a doctorate at Claremont Graduate School.

Mr. Lacy Goes to Yorba Linda: Lacy, a former national chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, is running as a fresh face, politically. But opponents are branding him as an opportunist, a Washington bureaucrat who moved to Yorba Linda after the reapportionment maps came out.

Lacy, who announced his candidacy this week at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace in the Orange County city, concedes that there is at least a grain of truth in that. He quit his job as a lawyer in the Department of Commerce to run for Congress. But, he said, he was born in California (he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area), and has always considered himself a Californian.

The 41st Congressional District, as drawn in maps pending before the state Supreme Court, takes in parts of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties. The district includes Diamond Bar, Rowland Heights and most of Pomona in the San Gabriel Valley, and extends south to Anaheim. Lacy said he went to law school and lived in Anaheim in the 1970s, although he is not sure whether that part of Anaheim is in the new district.

Bader said Lacy is a Washington insider with little connection to the district.

Lacy said the fact that he has been away from the area working in Washington should be viewed by voters as a plus because he has learned how things work in the capital.

“You can’t get Washington experience without going to Washington,” he said.

Lacy has picked up endorsements from Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach) and Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach).

Cop Against Cop: Former South Pasadena Mayor Lee Prentiss, a detective supervisor with the Los Angeles Police Department, could be running as a Republican for the Assembly this fall against former Pasadena Police Chief Bruce Philpott, a Democrat.

It would make an interesting race: Philpott, the progressive police chief who called on Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates to quit after the Rodney G. King beating, and Prentiss, the conservative cop.

Prentiss officially declared his candidacy this week, and Philpott is considering the race. Both would have to win their party nominations in the June primary before they could meet in November.

Philpott would have the easier path. The only other prominent Democrat to express interest, South Pasadena Councilwoman Evelyn Fierro, said she has decided to run for reelection.

Prentiss will face a tough Republican primary battle. There are five other announced GOP candidates for the Pasadena-area Assembly seat: Pasadena school board member Wilbert L. Smith, attorney Stephen Acker, insurance agent Bill Hoge, former La Canada Flintridge Mayor Barbara Pieper and Republican volunteer Roy Begley.

Battle for Backers: A drive to line up endorsements has dominated the opening days of the campaign by would-be successors to Assemblywoman Sally Tanner (D-Baldwin Park), who announced last week that she will not seek reelection.

La Puente City Councilman Edward Chavez, an aide to Tanner, has picked up the support of his boss and state Sen. Charles M. Calderon (D-Whittier).

Hilda Solis, a member of the Rio Hondo College board, has garnered endorsements from Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina and Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-Pico Rivera).

Both candidates have also gathered endorsements from members of local city councils and school boards.

Chavez, 28, a former teacher who has worked as an aide to Tanner since June, and Solis, 34, an El Monte resident who directs a state-funded educational program, are the first Democrats to enter the race. Solis announced her candidacy after Tanner decided against seeking reelection, but Solis said she was prepared to run against Tanner and had already obtained Molina’s support.

Tanner said the prospect of a primary challenge did not influence her decision against seeking an eighth term. Tanner said 14 years in the Assembly and 10 years as an administrative assistant to an assemblyman were enough.

“It’s been a lot of years,” she said.

She added that people told her she would experience regret after making her decision, but she is looking forward to a retirement spent painting, fishing and reading.

“People said I would be blue,” she said Tuesday. “I’m not.”

The reapportioned 57th Assembly District is solidly Democratic. But Hacienda Heights environmentalist Wil Baca, who made a strong showing in another Assembly race in 1990, said he is considering a run for the Republican nomination.

The Republican registration is under 34% and raising money could be difficult, Baca said, but the seat could be won by a Republican with his kind of credentials.

Baca, a Latino, is in a district where the voter registration is 40% Latino, and his leadership on environmental issues should help in a district where Tanner made her reputation for work on the environment.

Reaching Out: During the 1988 Monterey Park City Council race, a UCLA exit poll showed that winning candidate Judy Chu received 90% of the Chinese vote.

But at a reception Friday to announce her reelection campaign, the 38-year-old councilwoman apparently wasn’t taking that support for granted.

“I’ve been doing a lot of outreach to the Chinese media,” she said as about 100 well-wishers and campaign volunteers milled around her house. “I’m repeating my positions over and over to them. I’m talking to them more.”

Chu, who is American-born and does not speak Chinese, has accused the Chinese-language press of distorting her views on a hiring program for bilingual 911 dispatchers, a proposal to print election ballots in other languages and other issues affecting Monterey Park’s immigrant community.

On Jan. 14, Chu invited Chinese-language reporters to lunch at NBC Seafood Restaurant, where she announced her candidacy through an interpreter. The gesture paid off; Abel Pa, owner of a Chinese radio station that has criticized Chu, announced that he was supporting her. Pa acknowledged later that “there was a misunderstanding between her and us. Before we were against her, now I think she is a good councilwoman.”

Compiled by Mike Ward and Irene Chang