Roberti Calls GOP Foe ‘Phantom Candidate’ Who Hides Her Views

A day after being forced into an embarrassing runoff election, state Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) lashed out Wednesday at his Republican opponent, Carol Rowen, labeling her a “phantom candidate” who is trying to hide her views from voters.

Roberti led a field of 10 candidates in a special election Tuesday to replace former Sen. Alan Robbins in the San Fernando Valley’s heavily Democratic 20th Senate District. But Roberti’s 34% of the vote fell far short of the 50%-plus-1 he needed to avoid a June 2 runoff against Rowen.

Rowen, a veteran abortion rights activist from Tarzana making her first run for public office, took 21% of the vote. She vowed Wednesday to make Roberti’s longtime opposition to abortion rights a centerpiece of her runoff campaign.

“The issue of choice was a key issue. . . . The question I was most frequently asked (by voters) was ‘What is your position on choice?’ They didn’t even want to know my political affiliation,” said Rowen, who chairs the Los Angeles chapter of California Republicans for Choice.

The race has been closely watched as the first test this year of incumbents’ political survivability at a time of unusually high voter anger at both the Legislature and Congress. A liberal, Roberti has been a Sacramento fixture since 1966. He is president pro tem of the Senate, a position that makes him one of California’s most powerful Democrats

Roberti is running for Robbins’ old seat after being forced out of his old, Hollywood-based district by reapportionment. Robbins resigned last year after agreeing to plead guilty to federal corruption charges.

Asked at a press conference Wednesday if he thought anti-incumbent sentiment affected his vote totals, Roberti said: “No question about it. There’s an anti-incumbent feeling against anybody who happens to hold office.”

Roberti, who opposes abortion for personal reasons, acknowledged that his views “lost me some votes.” But he insisted, as he has throughout the campaign, that he never pressured any legislators to vote against their personal convictions about abortion.

Roberti also conceded that questions about his residence affected Tuesday’s balloting. He was often attacked by Rowen and other candidates as being a carpetbagger in the 20th District after he rented part of a Van Nuys bungalow in February in an effort to establish residency in the new district.

Opponents claimed his real residence is a large, Tudor-style home that Roberti has owned for years in the upscale Los Feliz district. Four opponents filed a lawsuit last month in an effort to keep him off the ballot, arguing that he had not met a state requirement that candidates must reside in a district for one year before running.

The suit was rejected by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, but an appeal is pending.

Asked if he were willing to sell his Los Feliz home and buy one in the Valley if he wins the June election, Roberti reiterated Wednesday that he and his wife, June, already “live permanently in the Valley.”

However, he said, he had no immediate plans to sell his Los Feliz home because his elderly father lives there.

“My father is 88 years old,” he said. “My father cannot move. . . . No election is worth my having regrets that I uprooted him and shortened his life to any extent.”

The senator also tried to turn the residence issue against Rowen, pointing out that her home adjoins a country club and arguing that she is out of touch with more downscale residents in the district.

“I’ve seen more of the Valley . . . in this campaign than she has,” he said. “I’d like to see her at the GM plant gates, I’d like to see her at the poor churches in Pacoima, I’d like to see her at all of the parts of the Valley that aren’t Braemar Country Club.”

Rowen responded that she has lived in the house for 23 years and saw no need to explain where she resides.

Roberti also lashed out at a group composed mostly of gun owners that mailed 200,000 leaflets to Valley voters attacking him as “king of the back-room, special-interest deals in the state Senate.”

He claimed that the group, Californians Against Corruption, is a front for the National Rifle Assn., which vehemently opposed a landmark ban on military-style assault weapons that Roberti co-authored in 1989.

He further charged that the group did not file a legally required list of its officers with the state or report how much money it spent against him in the campaign, a sum he estimated at “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

CAC spokesman Manuel Fernandez said his group includes NRA members but is primarily a grass-roots organization aimed at defeating Roberti. He said he believes it has filed the necessary papers, which the secretary of state’s office confirmed.

Fernandez estimated the value of CAC’s brochures at $120,000, but said they were prepared in small batches by volunteers around the country, none spending enough individually to trigger state reporting requirements.

A spokeswoman for the state Fair Political Practices Commission said that political action committees like CAC must file campaign finance reports when they spend $1,000 or more. But she said commission lawyers could not immediately determine if that requirement applied to Fernandez’s group.

Roberti at his press conference charged that Rowen deliberately dodged a televised candidates forum last month because she was trying to hide her views from voter.

Rowen said she did not attend the forum because she was afraid Roberti’s campaign would videotape her answers and use them later in paid TV commercials intended to make her look bad by taking her responses out of context.

She said she expects that her new status as a runoff contender will attract support from abortion rights and women’s groups that have long opposed Roberti.

“He doesn’t want to discuss choice, but he can’t avoid the issue,” she said. “It’s very important in this district.”