CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS U.S. SENATE : Ueberroth’s Entry Could Redraw Battle Strategies

Just when they thought it was safe to come out campaigning, California’s candidates for the U.S. Senate have been thrown for a loop.

The announcement this week that former baseball Commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth may enter one of the Senate races has shattered the relative stability that framed the campaign thus far.

For months, the major candidates have known exactly who was running for which of two open Senate seats. They had plotted strategies against their announced opponents and had spent long hours raising millions of campaign dollars, tapping money sources that they knew their rivals would not--or could not--touch.

Some of those plans would have to be thrown to the wind with the entry of Ueberroth, who is politically untested but is remarkably well known and well regarded by voters, polls have shown, because of his role in running the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

The stability of the U.S. Senate races has been surprising considering that California’s voters face a political rarity: both seats are on the same ballot for the first time in the state’s history.

One seat is being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston; his successor will get a full six-year term. The other race will fill the remainder of the term vacated when then-Sen. Pete Wilson became governor; whoever wins would have to run again in 1994.

Ueberroth said he is considering entering the Republican primary for the six-year seat.

In many cases, candidates chose early on which race to enter based on who they would be facing.

Dianne Feinstein, emerging from a grueling--and unsuccessful--campaign for governor in 1990, hoped to avoid another messy and expensive primary. As she cast her sights over the political horizon, she saw one race--the six-year seat--getting crowded. Even former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. was a possible candidate early in 1991. But the competition for the Democratic nomination for the two-year seat looked clear.

Feinstein decided to seek the less attractive two-year seat in the hope that she could campaign unopposed.

“We were not worried about winning (in a primary) but preferred not to spend the money,” Feinstein’s campaign director, Kam Kuwata, said. “Primaries are costly and can be divisive.”

It was a miscalculation, as things turned out. Late last year, state Controller Gray Davis surprised the Feinstein camp and announced his intentions to run in the same Democratic primary.

For Davis, the choice of which race to compete in also had a lot to do with who was running. Already vying for the Democratic nomination for the six-year seat were U.S. Reps. Barbara Boxer and Mel Levine and Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy.

Levine’s campaign was being run by the firm of Michael Berman and Carl D’Agostino, the hard-hitting consultants who dominate Westside politics. Davis also planned to use the Berman-D’Agostino team, as he had in previous campaigns, so there was little doubt that he would have to avoid squaring off with Levine. Thus, Davis entered the race for the two-year seat.

Since late last year, the field had remained largely unchanged. Until Ueberroth’s bombshell.

A prominent business leader, Ueberroth on Wednesday took out the papers necessary to run for the six-year Senate seat. He had to decide by today--the filing deadline--whether he would run.

Many campaign strategists are waiting to see whether Ueberroth files the papers by the deadline. Ueberroth has hinted at running for a number of offices, without ever following through.

If he does enter the race, it would dramatically alter the campaign. Debate raged Thursday over who would be hurt the most by Ueberroth’s entry--conservative television commentator Bruce Herschensohn or the more moderate Rep. Tom Campbell. The third contender in the race is Palm Springs Mayor Sonny Bono.

Bono announced his intention to run last October and is considered something of a wild-card candidate. Like Ueberroth, Bono is well known, but the mayor is fighting for his candidacy to be taken seriously.

According to GOP insiders, some party leaders have long sought what they describe as a “compromise candidate” in that race. The concern of this group was that Campbell, perceived as a liberal in some Republican quarters, might not be able to win the June 2 primary. Herschensohn, on the other hand, might be regarded as too extreme in his beliefs to win the general election in November.

“There’s considerable national Republican interest in getting him (Ueberroth) in the race,” said one state Republican source. “It is thought that a Campbell-Seymour-Bush ticket causes conservatives to sit at home on Election Day.”

Appointed Sen. John Seymour, who is running for the two-year seat, is detested by many hard-line conservatives.

Ueberroth briefly attended the state GOP convention in Burlingame last weekend. He watched Campbell, Herschensohn and Bono participate in an acrimonious debate, then told several reporters that none of the three could defeat the Democrats.

Ueberroth is untested in any political race and some skeptics question whether he can take the rough-and-tumble of real-life politics, as well as the scrutiny of the press, during a campaign.

His potential opponents already are examining the possible avenues they can use to attack Ueberroth, including his past support for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, and business problems such as the losses incurred by an airline Ueberroth purchased in 1989.

Further, his positions on major, divisive issues--such as abortion and defense spending--are largely unknown, and he is $2 million behind Campbell, the leading fund-raiser.

Can he raise the money he needs in the 90 days before the primary?

Despite his personal wealth--which surely makes it easier to borrow money quickly--it could be difficult. Some of his potential donors among the Orange County business elite have already committed to Campbell.

Campbell’s campaign, meanwhile, sought to minimize the damage Ueberroth’s possible entry would do to their efforts.

“We haven’t had anyone say, ‘Hey, I may have to double up,’ ” said Campbell’s campaign manager, Ron Smith. “There’s been no one who’s called to say they’d have to pull out.”

Smith maintains that Ueberroth could hurt Herschensohn because they would divide Southern California support. Herschensohn’s campaign believes that the greater potential blow is to Campbell because the congressman and the former commissioner are closer to each other in political philosophies.

Ueberroth is considering the six-year seat, and not the two-year seat, in part because of resistance from the GOP Establishment to challenging a sitting senator, even if the incumbent is Seymour, whose strength as a statewide candidate has been widely questioned.

Only staunch conservatives Rep. William E. Dannemeyer and university professor Bill Allen have taken on Seymour in the Republican primary.

No one consulted by The Times believed that Ueberroth’s possible entry would send candidates diving for other races. Technically, that can still be done. If a candidate has filed for one seat, he or she can file an amended document that removes the candidate from the first race and enters him or her in another race. The candidate does not have to pay the filing fee of $2,502 a second time, a state election official said.

But such a switch would have to be made by 5 this afternoon.