LOCAL ELECTIONS STATE SENATE DISTRICT 20 : Roberti Runs Hard as He Scrambles for Political Survival

There, in a cramped helicopter clattering over the muddy floodwaters of the San Fernando Valley, sat the president pro tem of the state Senate, David A. Roberti, the first victim of voter-imposed term limits.

In a campaign-style aerial inspection, the veteran Hollywood Democrat surveyed not only the damage below but also the new political territory he wants to represent in his last years in the Senate.

Roberti, the most powerful member of the Senate, has not had a tough campaign for 21 years, but he is running for political survival in the April 7 special election for the vacant 20th District seat of former Democratic Sen. Alan Robbins, who resigned his office before pleading guilty to felony corruption charges.

Even if Roberti wins election to the unexpired 2 1/2 years of Robbins’ term, he finds himself confronting forced retirement in 1994 as the first legislator turned out by the term limits ordered by voters.

“The last thing I am going to do is speculate what I’m going to do after 2 1/2 years,” Roberti, 52, said in an interview. “That’s an irrelevance. I’m running hard for this seat. It is an end in and of itself.”

Supporters of Proposition 140, the 1990 ballot initiative that clamped term limits on legislators and most statewide elected officers, may well have had veteran incumbents such as Roberti in mind when they argued for sending “new blood” to Sacramento.

However, opponents of term limits, including Republican friends of Roberti, point out that it will summarily throw out conscientious, seasoned veterans to make way for unproven rookies.

Essentially, Proposition 140 restricts members of the Assembly to three terms of two years each, and senators to two terms of four years each. For many Assembly members, the drop-dead year will be 1996, and for many senators it will be 1998.

But for Roberti, who will be finishing a partial term if he wins, the departure date will be December, 1994. His only hope for serving longer appears to be with an appeal to overturn Proposition 140 that is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Legal advisers to Roberti, who was elected in 1990 to a full term, told him that if he ran and won Robbins’ central and east San Fernando Valley seat, the abbreviated term will be counted as a full second term under Proposition 140.

Yet he had little choice. The state Supreme Court’s recent reapportionment decision virtually obliterated Roberti’s district. He decided to run for the Valley seat and rented a cottage in Van Nuys.

So here is Roberti, a shy liberal who bucked the Ronald Reagan landslide in 1966 to narrowly win his first election to the Assembly, campaigning hard in the Valley. Except for his promotion to the Senate in a 1971 special election, Roberti has crushed his challengers in six other legislative contests.

The floodwaters of the Sepulveda Basin were still dealing destruction last month when the Senate Public Safety Management Committee hastily arranged a hearing in Van Nuys to learn firsthand of emergency relief efforts. Roberti sat in on the testimony. Then, it was off to the helicopter.

These days and nights, he rushes from one campaign appearance to another--a local fair board of directors, chambers of commerce, senior citizens and telephone appeals to voters for support. “I’m energetic, hard working, compassionate, concerned and I do a good job,” he tells voters.

As leader of the Senate, he can suggest to voters in a largely blue collar district hit hard by plant closures and the recession that he can get things done in Sacramento that his nine opponents can only dream of accomplishing. “I’m the leader and that probably gives me a chance to do more in two and a half years. I have a duty to take advantage of that,” he said.

At first, the special election appeared to be a slam dunk for Roberti. He had a campaign treasury overflowing with $600,000; Democrats outnumbered Republicans 56-33%; he has represented parts of the district, and Republicans had all but written it off.

But suddenly, a GOP contender with impressive credentials emerged: Carol Rowen, a Tarzana pension consultant who has fund-raising ability and is chairwoman of California Republicans for Choice. Although he has never used his position to block abortion rights legislation, Roberti, a Roman Catholic, is an opponent of abortion as a matter of conscience.

For years, the mere mention of facing an abortion rights opponent has rattled Roberti and his supporters. To offset abortion as an issue, Roberti and his handlers cite his sponsorship of major legislation affecting women, including sexual harassment and pay equity bills and enactment of a landmark child-care law benefiting working mothers of latchkey children.

“David’s scared, real scared of Rowen,” said a Senate Republican friend of Roberti. “You watch. He’s going to pull out all the stops.”

But Roberti’s campaign manager, Cathy Keig, lists abortion as a “single, solitary issue. This is not a single-issue campaign. There are other issues in this district--transportation, the recession. David Roberti is so solid in human rights stuff.”

Senate GOP Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno, who has worked closely with Roberti in the consensus-oriented Senate, said the district was never one to be targeted by Republicans for spending great sums to win and still is not.

But Maddy said GOP campaign contributors will watch to see if a long-predicted anti-incumbent sentiment surfaces next month in the Roberti race. He said if Roberti is forced by Rowen or by the other eight candidates into a June 2 runoff, Republicans will be more willing to invest in her candidacy.