CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS 51st DISTRICT : 2 Incumbents Face Off, but Run as Anti-Congress : Campaign: District realignment pits freshman Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham against six-term Rep. Bill Lowery.

Two incumbents are running for California’s 51st Congressional District, but Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, a first-term Republican from Chula Vista, would like nothing better than for voters to think of him as a Washington outsider attacking a six-term congressman.

His opponent, Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), whose political career dates back to the 1970s, is running on his record--a mixture of accomplishment, seniority and ability to deliver the legislative goods to the folks back home--plus a new-found enthusiasm to reform the battered House of Representatives.

Their contrasting campaign strategies illustrate how the two feuding House members must cope with this election year’s greatest peril--incumbency.

With disrespect for Congress reaching new depths, neither member wants to accept the status quo on scandal-splattered Capitol Hill. Interviews with staff and campaign specialists show that both candidates will be “running against Congress”--but from different positions.

As the veteran, Lowery will try to persuade voters that his command of the system can be used to fix it.

As the freshman, Cunningham will point to Lowery’s long membership “in the club” as the cause of the problem in the first place.

This intra-delegation contest in the June 2 Republican primary, which neither congressman anticipated last fall, has taken on the nasty tone of a bitter divorce. Staff members in the two offices hope that frayed friendships can be restored after the June primary. But the stakes are high: one set of staffers will see their employer bounced off the November ballot, taking their jobs with him.

Once collegial members of the county’s all-Republican delegation, the two camps now attack each other with nonchalance.

“Bill Lowery is a symbol of what’s wrong with Washington,” said B. J. (Tex) Burkett, the Cunningham campaign manager who also ran his 1990 upset of former Rep. Jim Bates.

“He ignored constituents and spent time with the power brokers. He is the sort of member that the voters want out of Congress. Duke Cunningham wants to reform the place and make it work again.”

Mark Strand, Lowery’s chief of staff in Washington and a key member of his reelection team, responds:

“Duke Cunningham is not the solution to Congress’s problems. Here is a guy who is all form and no substance, who can get into trouble when he’s not scripted. What is needed is the ability to get things done. Bill has demonstrated that. Has he made some mistakes? Yes, but we’re not trying to hide it. What we want to emphasize are the things he’s done--and can do--for the district.”

For all the verbal broadsides, neither camp finds much to argue about on ideological grounds. Both members are fiscal conservatives, although Cunningham points to Lowery’s vote to approve the 1990 budget agreement, with its tax increase, as a sign of a too-accommodating attitude with Democrats.

That vote “was a tough call,” according to Strand, “but Bill wouldn’t vote to repeal it today. Bill’s more supply-side, and Cunningham more austerity-minded.”

The two Republicans have taken different stances on gun control and federal support of the arts, but the campaign will not be dominated by issues, said Frank Collins, Cunningham’s chief of staff in Washington.

“It’s 50% ideology and 50% character,” Collins said.

When Collins says character , he means the political baggage Lowery has accumulated in his more than 11 years in Washington.

Lowery has been stung in recent weeks by reports of his 300 overdrafts at the House Bank. But other targets also lurk in Lowery’s past.

Chief among them is Lowery’s link to the savings-and-loan crisis. The citizens lobby Common Cause named him the No. 1 recipient in the House of S&L; contributions during the 1980s.

Cunningham will also hit Lowery on the congressional pay raise and accepting trips from special interests.

But it is the “insider” label that Cunningham is most eager to pin on his delegation colleague.

The overdrafts at the House bank, the S&L; contributions and the trips form a “pattern,” Burkett said, that shows Lowery has been “caught up in the system.”

(Cunningham has admitted to one overdraft, a $15,000 down payment on a new car that was deposited too quickly by a Pennsylvania auto dealer.)

The Cunningham campaign has been attacking Lowery in radio ads for several weeks and is preparing direct-mail and TV campaigns, Burkett said.

Lowery will use the same media but has chosen the opposite tack. He recently surprised aides by forswearing all negative campaigning, focusing instead on his legislative record and a yet-to-be released congressional reform package.

Details of Lowery’s plan are still being completed, but Strand said it will be a comprehensive call for “reform of the institution, the budget process and campaign financing.”

Given Cunningham’s newcomer status in Washington, the Lowery camp will be limited to relatively harmless swipes at him.

In the 1990 campaign, Cunningham, a decorated Vietnam fighter pilot, was criticized for not having registered to vote until 1988. Lowery aides continue to jab away at this point and characterize the first-term congressman as ineffective and inexperienced--pointing to a parliamentary gaffe made on the House floor as an example.

Collins acknowledges the improperly timed call for an amendment to a bill for aid to Jordan and says that Cunningham “didn’t get the best advice from aides on that one.”

As to the suggestion that Cunningham’s extemporaneous remarks can get him into trouble, Collins replied, “(His) Navy career had an insulating quality that makes him more open and less contemplative.”

“He’s admitted that not registering to vote was a mistake,” Collins said, “but he was angry at the way Washington was conducting the (Vietnam) war.”

Cunningham’s decision to run in the more conservative 51st District, instead of staying put in the new Democrat-leaning 50th, whose territory he now generally represents, also gives rise to the charge of abandoning his constituents.

“He promised the voters of the 44th (his current district) that he would stay there,” Strand said. “His roots are wherever he wants to run. He’ll say anything, do anything, move anywhere for political reasons.”

Cunningham says he has strong family ties in the 51st and owns a home there.

Lowery now represents voters in both the new 49th and 51st districts, but chose the 51st because of its more comfortable margin of registered Republicans. In 1990, he ran poorly in the coastal communities now in the 49th, attracting only 49% of the vote district-wide.

In this white-knuckle election year, the veteran Lowery clearly runs the greater risk of anti-incumbent backlash. George Gorton, a Lowery friend and political consultant, has advised him to hit the issue head-on.

“We’re going to sell his record, talk about things he’s done for the district. You can’t be concerned about who you are, you can’t hide the fact he’s a six-term congressman on the Appropriations Committee,” Gorton said. “This insider issue would be more worrisome if he weren’t running against another congressman.”

Burkett isn’t worried.

“With Duke, what you see is what you get,” he said. “He’s not aloof, he’s empathetic with people. If he misspeaks or makes a mistake, he comes clean. There’s no subterfuge.”

Strand characterized polling results from the 51st District as “encouraging,” showing Lowery “modestly ahead.”

Cunningham’s early polls show him with a comfortable lead, “and that was before the checks,” Burkett said.

Arthur Finklestein, a New York-based polling consultant for Cunningham, said his analysis of the data showed that district voters are focusing on personality, not issues.

“They liked Cunningham, they trusted him. Lowery had high negatives. They saw him as an S&L; guy.”

“There’s no question that this is (Lowery’s) toughest election battle since his first (in 1980),” Strand said. “You just hope that the anti-incumbency feeling is not a reflex, that voters will consider ‘value for vote.’ But we expect this to be a very close race.”

Burkett, who credits Lowery as a “shrewd” foe, offered a different point of view.

“It’s not going to be real close.”