ELECTIONS / 20TH STATE SENATE DISTRICT : Roberti Hunts for Votes Door to Door on Unfamiliar Turf

Joined by eight other Democratic senators from around California, state Senate leader David A. Roberti campaigned door to door in the San Fernando Valley on Saturday, chatting up voters, dodging hostile dogs and sweating inside a pin-stripe suit in his last hurrah as a senator.

Roberti, his fellow senators and about 150 volunteers fanned out in a daylong hunt for votes as Roberti, whose Hollywood-based district was erased by reapportionment, campaigned on unfamiliar turf in the central-north Valley for a different Senate seat.

Roberti faces nine opponents--including the first Green Party candidate on a California ballot--in Tuesday’s special election to replace Alan Robbins in the 20th Senate District. Robbins resigned last year after agreeing to plead guilty to federal racketeering and tax-evasion charges.

Meanwhile, other candidates also sweated through a muggy Saturday four days before an election in which voter turnout could be as low as 10%.

Dolores White, a Republican candidate from Reseda, said she spent part of the day precinct-walking and talking with voters on one of her campaign’s three phone banks.

“We’re running them 12 hours a day,” she said, adding that she had to hurry off for a fund-raising meeting.

Roberti has acknowledged that he is unlikely to get the 50%-plus-one majority needed to win Tuesday’s election outright and probably will be forced into a June 2 runoff. But most political observers expect him to win the runoff handily.

A liberal who has championed such causes as gun control and equal pay for women, the diminutive, rumpled-looking Roberti has been a Sacramento fixture since 1966. As president pro tem of the Senate, he is one of California’s most powerful Democrats.

But even if he wins Robbins’ old seat, he must leave the Senate in 1994--the first victim of voter-approved Proposition 140, which limits the number of terms state lawmakers may serve.

In a symbolic show of his Senate power, Roberti appeared at a Van Nuys rally flanked by the eight other senators, including several he appointed to powerful committee chairmanships. Roberti has repeatedly stressed in his campaign that he can “get things done” for Valley residents if they elect him.

Sen. Barry Keene (D-Benicia), the Senate Democratic floor leader, praised Roberti as a man who has spent “all of his life fighting for ordinary people, especially the powerless and dispossessed . . . and improving the lives of working people.”

After the rally, Roberti and his small army of volunteers--many of them union members--began delivering his campaign literature door-to-door. The large-scale campaign contrasted with past years when Roberti coasted to reelection in his Hollywood-area district.

But Roberti, canvassing in a middle-class Anglo neighborhood in Van Nuys accompanied by Los Angeles school board member Roberta Weintraub, found that few voters were home late on a weekend morning.

Their dogs, however, definitely were home.

“Dogs--the bane of precinct-walking,” Weintraub said with a sigh, as a pooch in one house barked incessantly at Roberti.

Among residents who answered their doors, Roberti got mixed reviews.

“You don’t have to worry about us,” said Lillian Bruder, a retired beautician, assuring Roberti he had her vote and her husband’s.

“He seems like a sweet, nice guy, and down to earth,” she told a reporter.

A young man with long hair said he had seen a cable TV commercial in which the owner of a local gun shop urges voters to oust Roberti, who co-authored a landmark 1989 ban on military-style assault weapons.

“That’s an endorsement to me,” said the man, as Roberti grinned.

Other residents, however, were not so approving.

“I wouldn’t vote for Roberti,” an elderly man cutting roses in his yard told a Roberti aide, as Roberti hurried to greet the man. “He’s got too much against him.”

The man then asked Roberti, “You’ve been in there a long time, huh?”

When Roberti replied that he can only serve another two years under Proposition 140, the man said with a smile: “That’s rough on you politicians. You’re going to be cutting roses, too.”

“That’s OK,” Roberti said with a genial laugh. “I’ve got plenty of roses.”

At a neighborhood garage sale, a woman jokingly tried to persuade Roberti to buy a portable toilet.

“You have no time on your campaign!” she said.

Roberti, grinning back, bought a glass cookie jar instead.

* CANDIDATE Q&As;: B4