CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS / 50TH DISTRICT : 11 Candidates Squirm to Stand Out in a Crowded Race

In a year when a lengthy political resume could be more of a liability than an asset, the 50th Congressional District race is dominated by three San Diego Democratic fixtures hoping to escape the public’s growing antipathy toward career politicians.

The 11-candidate field in the newly drawn 50th District is led by former Rep. Jim Bates, state Sen. Wadie Deddeh and San Diego City Councilman Bob Filner, who together have served a combined half century in local, state and national offices.

Though Deddeh, Filner and Bates have formidable name-recognition and fund-raising advantages over their opponents, three other Democrats in the June 2 primary are hoping that voters, in the words of lawyer and candidate Juan Carlos Vargas, will view the three front-runners as “part of the problem, not the solution.”

Like Vargas, community organizer Greg Akili and South Bay activist Lincoln Pickard wear their non-incumbency like a badge of honor in their long-shot bids for the Democratic nomination.

Three Republicans and two minor-party candidates also are on next month’s ballot, but the 50th District’s lopsided 51%-35% Democratic voter registration edge could make victory in the Democratic primary tantamount to election in the southwestern San Diego district, which stretches from East San Diego to the Mexican border, covering most of southern San Diego, National City and Chula Vista.

With messages that vary more in style than content, Filner, Bates and Deddeh argue that they could help transform a Congress beset with a $400-billion deficit, the House check-cashing scandal and other ethical transgressions, and legislative gridlock on myriad other high-profile issues ranging from health care to economic recovery.

However, voters listening to the three candidates’ caustic descriptions of each other might reasonably wonder whether their election would enhance or worsen Congress’ image and effectiveness.

Bates, who began the race still dogged by his 1989 rebuke by the House Ethics Committee on sexual harassment charges, felt his political baggage grow heavier when it was revealed this spring that he was one of the worst offenders in the congressional check-bouncing scandal. Though Bates’ woes have been closely chronicled by the news media, Filner has gone to lengths to keep the controversies alive by reminding voters of them in his mailers.

Deddeh, however, has recently become the primary target of Filner’s attacks--reinforcing the perception, grudgingly shared by his opponents, that he may be the candidate to beat as the race enters its final three weeks.

Filner has sharply criticized Deddeh for, among other things, accepting more than $800,000 in special-interest campaign contributions over the past seven years, being delinquent in property taxes owed by land-development companies in which he invested, and accepting more than $50,000 in free trips and other gifts from large companies, foreign governments and interest groups.

“Wadie Deddeh is seen as this nice guy who’s been in office forever,” Filner said. “But he’s also a wheeler-dealer in Sacramento. That’s the side of the story we have to get out.”

Deddeh, who has served in the state Senate and Assembly for the past 25 1/2 years, stresses that “there is nothing sinister, nothing improper” in his campaign contributions or personal gifts, all of which were reported on financial disclosure statements.

Moreover, he notes that he paid the delinquent taxes when he became aware of the problem, with the exception of one property in which he is only a minority investor and “cannot pay only my share.”

Filner himself also confronts liabilities--starting with the increasingly truculent tone of his campaign.

That negative style is reminiscent, his opponents say, of Filner’s role as a leader of the council’s so-called “Gang of Five”--a bloc that dominated the council during a particularly contentious period at City Hall from 1989-91.

In addition, Filner has been accused of breaking faith with his current constituents by seeking higher office only six months into his second four-year council term.

“These guys may carve each other up so much that voters won’t want anything to do with any of them,” said Vargas, a 31-year-old National City native who is in his first race. “I think it’s just going to reinforce people’s dissatisfaction with professional politicians.”

That job description is one that Filner has tried to distance himself from throughout the campaign, even while seeking to paint Bates and Deddeh as career politicians more concerned with their own aggrandizement than their constituents’ needs. Though Filner, 49, has served 8 1/2 years on the City Council and the San Diego city school board, his public tenure is less than half of that of either Deddeh or Bates.

The largely minority, working-class district’s most pressing needs, Filner tells campaign audiences, include jobs, health care, quality education and affordable housing.

“I’m the only one with a record of actually producing on all of those things, not just voting for bills,” Filner said. “These other guys have been off in Sacramento and Washington not doing much except enjoying the perks of office.”

Jailed in the 1960s as one of the original “Freedom Riders” challenging racial segregation laws in Mississippi, Filner has blended a liberal stance on social issues such as jobs, housing and the environment with a consistent push for tougher anti-crime programs and increases in police staffing since being elected to the council in 1987.

As highlights of his record, Filner points to his leadership in creating “drug-free zones” near schools that result in stricter penalties for drug convictions, launching an aggressive anti-graffiti campaign, pushing for low-income housing, establishing job development programs and helping to resolve the longstanding problem of Tijuana sewage spills fouling San Diego beaches.

With the prospect of deep cuts in military spending posing a major challenge to San Diego’s economy, Filner also has led city attempts to convert defense jobs to other industries.

Bates, whose eight-year congressional career was ended--temporarily, he hopes--by Republican Randall (Duke) Cunningham’s 1990 upset victory, is attempting a political comeback built largely upon profuse apologies for his past mistakes.

Saying “sometimes you learn more by losing than you do by winning,” Bates argues that his own unpleasant experiences over the past several years have yielded valuable insights into his priority issue: congressional reform.

His proposed reform package includes term limits, abolition of special-interest political action committees, a reduction in the number of congressional committees and the size of members’ staffs, and elimination of perks.

Bates also has presented a detailed plan to balance the budget, proposing huge cuts in defense, foreign aid and farm subsidies and a 5% across-the-board administrative reduction. Fiscally conservative but a moderate to liberal on most social issues, Bates also reminds audiences that he sponsored key environmental and health legislation in Congress and played a much-publicized role in exposing military procurement excesses.

However, even Bates’ own consultant, Larry Remer, concedes that voters are likely to be less moved by those issues than by his turbulent political past, characterizing the race as “basically a referendum on Jim Bates’ character.”

In trying to quell the check-cashing controversy, Bates emphasizes that his 89 overdrafts at the House bank were far fewer than those of two other San Diego congressmen--Republicans Duncan Hunter and Bill Lowery, who had 407 and 300 overdrafts, respectively.

What he does not mention, however, is that his checks’ $170,685 total placed him among the bank’s two dozen worst offenders--a list that he has criticized as being arbitrary.

“What I hope is that people see me as someone who, because of what I’ve gone through myself, can really challenge the status quo and correct these problems,” said the 50-year-old Bates, whose 20-year public career began on the San Diego City Council and County Board of Supervisors. “I’m a battered but not beaten candidate who may be scarred but is still in there fighting for the right causes.”

The 71-year-old Deddeh, who has represented the South Bay in Sacramento since the mid-1960s, surprised many political insiders by entering the race, given that his age and pledge to serve no more than four terms would prevent him from attaining much seniority, one of the most valuable commodities in Congress.

However, Deddeh, who hopes to become the first Iraqi-American ever elected to Congress, says simply that he is “troubled by the direction of the country” and believes that he would be better positioned to try to remedy that in Washington than in Sacramento.

Economic, health care and educational issues top Deddeh’s agenda. He favors a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to annually pass balanced budgets, with a two-thirds vote permitting exceptions in times of war and extraordinary economic conditions.

Of the three top Democrats, only Deddeh is not pro-choice on the volatile issue of abortion, which he would limit to instances of rape, incest or where the mother’s health is endangered. The California Abortion Rights Action League, which has endorsed Filner, also recently named Deddeh as one of 12 “enemies of choice” whom it hopes to defeat statewide this year--making him the only Democrat on the list.

Although most attention has been focused on Bates, Deddeh and Filner, the three other Democrats--Vargas, Akili and Pickard--hope that the public’s growing political skepticism and a badly split vote will give them at least an outside chance for an upset.

Vargas, who stands daily on street corners with his supporters waving signs saying “Throw the rascals out!” at passing rush-hour motorists, believes that his Latino heritage--an asset in a district with a 41% Latino constituency--and his positive campaign will resonate with voters’ political disenchantment.

“I think I offer the kind of change people are looking for this year,” said Vargas, who once studied to be a Jesuit priest, received a law degree from Harvard and worked among the underprivileged in New York and El Salvador.

Though Vargas has an impressive resume and a wide-ranging platform extending from a middle-class tax cut to conversion of military to civilian jobs, he concedes that it has been difficult to “crack the top tier” of Deddeh, Bates and Filner. However, when Bates “took a couple of big swings at me” at a recent forum, Vargas interpreted the verbal attacks as progress.

“My wife was crushed, but I said, ‘No, this is not bad--it’s good,’ ” Vargas said.

Akili, the 43-year-old founder of the African-American Organizing Union, describes his campaign as “an extension of what I’ve been doing as an organizer” of various liberal causes over the past two decades.

“For a long time, I’ve been on the outside, but now I’m trying to get in the mainstream . . . to open up a flood that improves, includes and betters all our conditions,” said Akili, who has called for defense cuts to fund greater domestic spending and for a single-payer national health care program.

He also favors expanding early education programs such as Head Start, reducing class sizes and extending the school year, and has proposed creation of an “urban Peace Corps” to rebuild and improve communities.

A compelling public speaker, Akili has been frustrated by his audiences’ tendency to praise his style and ideas, but then back one of the front-runners as a more viable candidate.

“In American society, a black man with a loud voice and dynamic ideas is not always the most electable candidate,” Akili said. “But, if I’m elected, you’ll get more than a friend in Congress--you’ll get a brother, no matter who you are.”

In an extraordinary moment early in his campaign, Akili held a news conference to admit that, as a 19-year-old, he served 11 months in prison on a marijuana possession conviction, and later twice physically assaulted women with whom he had relationships, resulting in restraining orders being issued against him.

He made the revelation, Akili explained, to halt opponents’ “whispering campaigns” about the incidents.

Pickard, who finished a distant third in Filner’s 1991 council reelection landslide, acknowledges that his likelihood of doing much better this year is slim.

But Pickard, 50, argues that his emphasis on term limits and other congressional reforms could produce a strong protest vote “showing how sick people are of the status quo.”

If the hopes of the three Democratic underdogs hinge on the possibility of a voters’ revolt against established politicians, the three Republican candidates realize that that is only the first of many political breaks that they will need to overcome the district’s partisan slant.

Language school program director Luis Acle, city housing inspector Lou Monge and U.S.-Mexico Foundation founder Tony Valencia are competing for the GOP nomination, hoping that their Latino background and themes of political reform and economic development generate a large crossover vote in November.

“No hill is too small or too high,” the 57-year-old Valencia said of the long odds facing the Republicans. “I hope voters recognize that personalities and ideas, not party affiliation, is what will better their lives.”

Monge, an unsuccessful school board candidate in the 1980s, has called for relaxing environmental guidelines and workplace laws “that are driving businesses out of the state.” He also favors a trial run with an educational voucher system, in which students could use government funds based on a per capita allocation to select their own schools.

“The district and the country need a lot of changes, and that starts with representation,” the 52-year-old Monge said. “We need to try some different ideas and some new faces, because what we’re doing now isn’t working.”

Valencia, who founded the U.S.-Mexico Foundation in 1971 to promote trans-border commerce, help minority youths develop careers and assist small and minority businesses, argues that his hands-on experience would assist him in pushing for economic “policies that encourage savings, risk-taking and long-term planning.” He also supports the proposed North American free trade agreement, which he contends would “create more jobs than it takes away.”

Acle, who finished second in a 1988 GOP primary in a district overlapping much of the new 50th District, believes that his lingering, though modest, name-recognition from that race gives him a slight edge this year.

Running on the theme “Building a Better Future,” Acle, 49, has called for improvements in health and child care, education, job development and anti-crime programs, but generally has been long on generalities and short on specifics in detailing his proposals and their funding.

Two minor-party candidates--Libertarian Barbara Hutchinson and Peace and Freedom Party member Roger Batchelder, who describes himself as a “peon” on his candidacy statement--also are on the ballot, unopposed in their respective primaries.