Key Endorsements Rankle Opponents : Politics: Some of Bill Hoge’s challengers for the new Assembly seat say the support gave him a fund-raising edge.

Pasadena insurance broker Bill Hoge has never been elected to office, or even been a candidate.

Even so, several of his opponents in the crowded Republican primary for the newly created 44th Assembly District complain that he is running a distant, above-the-fray campaign typical of a longtime incumbent.

Although he is less well-known than several of his rivals, he has appeared at only two of seven candidate forums. In addition, he has a 2-1 fund-raising lead over his closest opponent, having received donations from several legislators and political action committees around the state.

“Bill Hoge is running as if he is an anointed incumbent,” said Lee Prentiss, a Los Angeles Police Department detective and a former South Pasadena city councilman who is running against Hoge.

Candidate Barbara Pieper, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Education and former La Canada Flintridge city councilwoman, said his failure to attend most of the candidate forums makes Hoge’s campaign “sort of a stealth candidacy.”

Several of his opponents say Hoge’s success at fund raising, as well as his apparent confidence, is the result of endorsements from Assemblymen Richard L. Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) and Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), each of whom formerly represented portions of the new 44th District, which arcs from San Marino to Sunland.

The endorsements by the two longtime conservative legislators surprised and rankled local Republican activists, as well as others running in the 10-candidate field that includes a school district trustee, three former city council members and veteran party activists.

The other candidates in the Republican primary are former Pasadena City Councilman Stephen Acker; Roy Begley, a writer active in local Republican organizations; Bob Bell, a Shadow Hills computer consultant; T. K. Choi, a Pasadena gas station owner; Robert L. Oltman, a Pasadena business executive; Maurine Petteruto, a Temple City resident, and Wilbert Smith, a Pasadena school board member.

The Republican nominee will face one of three Democrats and a Libertarian candidate in the November election.

Critics of Hoge’s endorsements say they had expected Mountjoy and Nolan to stay out of the June 2 primary. The two legislators have taken the candidate selection out of the hands of voters and turned it over to statewide political action committees and lobbyists, they say.

“I haven’t talked to anybody yet, among active Republicans, who isn’t disappointed” that the two legislators made an endorsement in the contest, said Bill Ukropina, a Pasadena resident and chairman of the local chapter of the California Lincoln Clubs.

“There are a lot of very good candidates who have done a lot of volunteer work, and given a lot of money to Republican causes, and by endorsing one candidate I think they are really pushing aside a lot of people,” he said.

Altadena Republican activist Elaine Klock, referring to Mountjoy and Nolan, said: “I told both of them that I didn’t feel they should become involved in the race.”

Mountjoy defended his endorsement of Hoge, saying he was obligated to recommend a successor to his former constituents.

“I don’t have a problem with any of these folks--they’re all good people,” he said, referring to the primary field. “It’s just that the type of person we need in Sacramento is someone to stop the tide of higher taxes . . . and of all of these folks, I believe that Bill Hoge will be the guy who will stand on his own two feet and not cave in to special interests.”

Nolan also championed Hoge’s conservative views: “Bill Hoge has the ability and the deep commitment to make a vital contribution to our conservative agenda.”

Hoge is anything but apologetic about the endorsements.

“I don’t mind at all being supported by incumbents who have fought the bureaucratic system in Sacramento,” said Hoge, whose campaign literature touts his anti-tax stand. “Those two legislators have been known as fighters against tax increases and government waste.”

Although never elected, Hoge has been a party activist. He is a member of the executive committees of the party’s county and state central committees and also serves on the state party’s platform and rules committees. He is a past president of the conservative California Republican Assembly and, in 1986, chaired the Southern California campaign to oust liberal state Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

“Bill Hoge has rolled up his sleeves and worked for the cause,” said Steve Frank, a Simi Valley-based consultant for conservative causes and former president of the California Republican Assembly. “He has earned those endorsements.”

But Hoge’s opponents say his party activism alone does not make him an automatic choice for Republicans, especially in a field that includes experienced officeholders.

Smith, elected in 1989 to the Pasadena Board of Education, said: “I have a problem with these two Assembly persons slapping us in the face like this and their candidate doesn’t have the courtesy to address us in campaign forums.”

Richard Temple, a Sacramento-based political consultant working for Pieper, said Hoge is either too busy raising funds to show up to candidate forums or he is unwilling to field questions.

Either way, Temple said: “I don’t think it makes him appear to be the incumbent. I think it’s a strategy to shield him from voters.”

Several opponents have charged that the endorsements probably come with strings attached.

“The rest of us are talking to the people, trying to find out what their concerns are so that we can represent them, and Nolan and Mountjoy are telling this man what his concerns are going to be,” Prentiss said.

Hoge rejected the idea that he would be beholden to his political benefactors.

“They both know me well and know I absolutely have an ability to be totally independent,” he said.