Levine Banks on $4-Million War Chest in Senate Bid : Politics: The Westside politician faces his toughest test as he tries to raise his visibility in race to succeed Cranston.

For a candidate languishing at the bottom of the polls, Mel Levine does not act like an underdog. Well-bred, Ivy League-educated and rich, Levine exudes the confidence of a man who feels destined for political success--despite being a relative unknown.

With nearly $4 million in the bank, the congressman from Santa Monica has one of the largest war chests of any Senate hopeful in the nation. He is counting on that money to lift him out of virtual anonymity and into the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Alan Cranston.

“I know that I am not a household name,” Levine said over lunch at a Beverly Hills-adjacent restaurant near his campaign headquarters. “I am an underdog. But I think I am going to win.”

For years a fixture in Westside Los Angeles politics, Levine, 48, now faces the toughest test in a charmed career. He is seeking to move beyond his insulated power base and into a statewide arena where the political battle threatens to be bruising.

Scion of a wealthy and prominent Westside family, Levine, during nearly 16 years in office, has always relied on the support of a powerful political alliance with well-honed fund-raising skills that reach deep into Los Angeles’ Jewish Establishment and entertainment industry.

He has never lost a race--and rarely faced a substantial opponent.

Articulate, intelligent and savvy, Levine is frequently described as a persistent but practical politician, committed to issues he holds dear but mindful of political realities.

With a solidly liberal record on social and environmental matters--he fought offshore oil drilling and recently authored a bill to protect vast expanses of California’s fragile desert--Levine’s resume is also steeped in foreign affairs. He is a staunch supporter of Israel and was one of only a handful of California Democrats to vote in favor of going to war in the Persian Gulf.

Yet in a California Poll last month, Levine scored a scant 6% recognition rating, 19 points lower than his closest competitor, U.S. Rep. Barbara Boxer of Marin County, and 37 points lower than the leader, Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy.

Levine, Boxer and McCarthy are competing for the Democratic nomination for the six-year Senate seat. On the Republican side, U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell, television commentator Bruce Herschensohn and Palm Springs Mayor Sonny Bono are running for their party’s nomination.

While his better-known rivals have been making frequent public appearances, Levine is only now starting to venture out onto the campaign trail.

Levine recently joined potential supporters in Fresno for a breakfast of bacon, sausage and potatoes at the Piccadilly Inn.

Affable yet controlled, he told one gathering that his “world view,” his independence and his willingness to challenge his own party’s leadership--as evidenced by his Gulf War vote--make him the best person for the Senate.

“America is in a crossroads,” Levine said. “During a time of such magnitude, voters have a right to expect leadership from their elected public officials.”

But even in the handpicked group, Levine’s “electability” was on the mind of listeners.

“Frequently,” a Fresno lawyer told Levine, “the best and the brightest don’t win elections.” How, the lawyer asked, will you overcome your opponents’ higher name recognition? How will you distinguish yourself in a field of better-knowns?

Levine came back with what has become his campaign’s stock answer.

“It’s not early name recognition that wins elections,” Levine said. “It’s the ability to inspire the electorate between now and Election Day.”

Most of Levine’s time in the last year has been devoted to collecting money--he took in $1.1 million at a single star-studded event in Beverly Hills last May--and building a coalition of officials across the state to work on his behalf. He is expected to rely heavily on a flood of television advertising later in the campaign.

Levine’s early campaign strategy of lying low while stockpiling cash earned him the nickname of “stealth candidate”--lots of money but you cannot see him. Levine chafes at the characterization, saying it is “cute” but unfair.

In fact, such strategy has been used before by the Waxman-Berman political organization, the dominant force in Westside Los Angeles politics and named for U.S. Reps. Howard L. Berman and Henry A. Waxman. Berman’s brother Michael, his partner Carl D’Agostino, and their consulting firm, B.A.D., are running Levine’s campaign, as well as that of Controller Gray Davis, who is competing with Dianne Feinstein for the Democratic nomination for the other Senate seat.

Participants in Levine’s first political race--for a seat in the California Assembly in 1977--recall that the young candidate came out of nowhere, announced late and then campaigned hard with mailers, television and door-to-door handshakes, stunning a better-known rival.

Levine, a small, athletic man with thick black hair and preppy clothes, has always seemed to be preparing himself for a career in politics and for higher office. The Almanac of American Politics describes 1992 as Levine’s “make-or-break year,” the juncture at which he moves on to higher statewide office or finds something else to do.

“I think it’s something he’s always wanted,” said longtime friend and jogging partner Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the Los Angeles City Council. “He’s always wanted to be in the U.S. Senate. Let’s face it, it’s an influential spot where he can influence things he cares about most in life.”

The son of prominent Republican lawyer and skilled fund-raiser Sid Levine, young Meldon Edises Levine was groomed in Hancock Park and Beverly Hills, attending public schools and frequenting baseball games played by his favorite team, the old minor league Hollywood Stars. To this day, Levine remains a devoted baseball fan.

A courtyard at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills is named for the Levine family, which donated part of the land the hospital sits on.

Levine studied at UC Berkeley, delivering the commencement speech when he graduated cum laude in 1964. He went on to earn a degree from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and a law degree from Harvard University. At Harvard, he was the commencement speaker in 1969.

Despite his elite upbringing, Levine says he enjoyed “extremely diverse” experiences as he grew up. He says he learned Spanish by speaking to the workers at his grandfather’s cooperage factory in Vernon, spent summers on the family ranch in Santa Rosa and took frequent trips down California 99 during his college days, visiting friends from Berkeley in their hometowns of Bakersfield or Fresno.

“I’ve never had difficulty relating to or communicating to people,” Levine said, “whether it’s on a baseball field or in a factory or at a ranch in Santa Rosa or as a student at Berkeley.”

Levine began his career as an attorney in Los Angeles in 1969, went to Washington to serve as legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. John V. Tunney from 1971-73, then returned home to open his own law firm, specializing in civil law and representing a handful of entertainers.

Levine points to the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements of the 1960s as formative influences in his life. He frequently quotes Martin Luther King Jr. at public appearances, and says that Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968 awakened political yearnings that he would act on later.

Though he eventually opposed the Vietnam War, Levine prepared as a university student to join the military. He attended mandatory ROTC classes at Berkeley from 1960 to 1962, and re-enrolled in 1966 at Harvard. His plan, he said, was to become an officer and seek a Pentagon position in arms control.

“I was very much against the war but I also felt that you could do more to try to fight it if you had been in the service,” he said.

Ultimately, it was a medical condition that kept Levine out of the military. Doctors discovered polyps on his vocal cords, a chronic but benign condition that persisted for years.

By the time he graduated from Harvard in 1969, he had turned against the Vietnam War. Although he participated in a handful of demonstrations, his chief anti-war activity was the Harvard commencement address, in which he argued in favor of student anti-war activism.

Though his father was an active Republican and mentor to former Republican Sen. Thomas Kuchel, his mother always sided with the Democrats, Levine said. Levine registered as a Republican in 1964, but soon drifted to the Democratic Party as he saw it champion more of the causes that interested him.

Levine was anointed by the Waxman-Berman organization after Levine and Berman became friends working in the mid-1970s to crack the Arab boycott of firms doing business with Israel. After winning that first Assembly seat in 1977, Levine spent five years in Sacramento and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982.

As a 10-year veteran of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Levine has been especially visible on international issues. He opposed aid to the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels, fought arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and proposed trade sanctions against Iraq before most Americans had heard of Saddam Hussein.

“Rebuilding America” is a theme of his campaign, and his proposals include more investment by private-public sector partnerships in technology as a way to create jobs, revision of the tax code to include incentives for such items as the construction of low-cost housing, and longer school years.

In 1973, Levine married Jan Greenberg, a law student and daughter of prominent Beverly Hills lawyer and B’nai B’rith honcho Maxwell Greenberg. Jan Levine, 41, is a public interest attorney who specializes in environmental law. The couple has three children, Adam, 10, and 8-year-old twins, Cara and Jake.

After 10 years in Washington, the Levine family moved back to California last summer. Levine said he wanted his wife and children near him during the campaign. They live in a spacious slate-blue house, complete with picket fence, a few blocks from the beach on one of Santa Monica’s most pleasant streets. Family photographs are displayed prominently throughout the home.

Sitting in the living room, as the children played a loud game of Nintendo in the kitchen, Mel and Jan Levine remembered what they both described as Mel Levine’s most difficult political moment: voting in favor of the Gulf War.

“I’ve never seen Mel feel as strongly about anything,” Jan Levine said. “I think it was the hardest vote (he) ever cast. And, also, he knew what the vote had to be.”

Mel Levine said that, given his anti-war background, he had never expected to be in a position where he would vote to commit American troops to combat. But his extensive work on Mideast policy convinced him that Saddam Hussein was an evil man who could only be stopped by force.

The decision was controversial in his home district. Even as he prepared to address Congress last year during the debate preceding the vote, anti-war activists led by disabled Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic were occupying Levine’s Los Angeles office. Levine delayed his speech on the House floor to talk by telephone to the protesters.

Kovic and the others said they felt betrayed by Levine and suggested that his support for Israel colored his thinking; something Levine denies.

Levine now points to the vote as an action that distinguishes him from rivals Boxer and McCarthy, who opposed the war, and shows his willingness to take stands that may be unpopular. He differs with what he calls the “isolationist philosophy” of many Republicans and Democrats, saying that the United States cannot abdicate its international role.

Beyond the Gulf War vote, Levine’s record and positions are similar to those of his opponents, complicating his efforts to stand out. McCarthy is known throughout California thanks to a long career in state office, and Boxer’s following grew after the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings.

Critics suggest that Levine has on occasion let his ambitions detract from his effectiveness as a legislator. He racked up the second-worst attendance record in Congress last year, a factor in his receiving a mediocre rating from the League of Conservation Voters--a blow to a pro-environment politician.

Levine staffers say the attendance record reflects the difficulties of campaigning for office 3,000 miles from Washington and maintain that the congressman never missed a vote in which his presence made a difference.

Common Cause in 1990 attacked Levine for taking money from savings-and-loan lobbyists at the height of the Lincoln Savings & Loan scandal. He has given the money back: In May of 1991, Levine wrote a check to the Department of Treasury for $43,300, returning what his staff said represented contributions received from failed S&Ls; and their executives between 1982 and Jan. 31, 1991.

Levine’s biggest challenge remains telling California voters who he is. There is precedent in the state for such come-from-behind races. Ed Zschau went from three points in the polls to win the Republican primary for Senate in 1986; the field was very crowded, however, with no one candidate leading by a wide margin.

Veteran political consultant Clinton Reilly, who is not involved in this year’s Senate race, recalls a 1982 match in which he used television ads to lift a candidate by 25 points in the polls. But the key was timing.

“Levine has to start spending money (on television spots) by mid-March, otherwise they lose the strategic advantage of having money when the other guys don’t,” Reilly said. “They can’t wait forever.”

Independent pollster Mervin D. Field said Levine risks getting lost in the shuffle in an election year that presents voters with two Senate races plus scores of congressional contests, not to mention the presidential election.

“This year, . . . any candidate will be hard-pressed to come from behind,” Field said. “The odds are long. It’s not impossible, (but) if Levine does it, it will be remarkable.”

Profile: Mel Levine

Mel Levine is seeking the Democratic nomination for a six-year term in the U.S. Senate, the California seat held by Sen. Alan Cranston, who is retiring. Born: June 7, 1943, Los Angeles. Hometown: Santa Monica. Education: UC Berkeley, Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Harvard University Law School. Career Highlights: After graduation from Harvard in 1969, practiced law in Los Angeles. Worked as a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. John V. Tunney from 1971-73, then returned to Los Angeles to open his own law firm. Served in the state Assembly from 1977-1982 and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, where he remains. He represents the 27th District. Family: Wife, Jan Greenberg Levine; children, Adam (10), Cara (8) and Jacob (8).