ELECTIONS 24TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Salomon Is Accused of Using Misleading Flyer

Several Republican candidates in the crowded 24th Congressional District primary contest on Wednesday accused fellow GOP contender Jim Salomon of falsely implying in a flyer that he was endorsed by former President Ronald Reagan.

The quarrel focused on flyers sent out by Salomon, a Calabasas businessman, quoting Reagan as saying, “Our nation needs you in Congress”--a comment taken from a letter Reagan wrote to Salomon during the 1990 general election campaign when he was the GOP nominee in another district.

“The fact is the President has supported me in the past,” Salomon said, “and I’m not claiming he has endorsed me in this primary.”

But Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), another candidate for the Republican nomination, said Salomon “clearly intended to mislead voters into thinking he was endorsed in this primary.” The five-term assemblyman said a Reagan endorsement would carry considerable weight in such a contest.

Nicholas T. Hariton, a Sherman Oaks lawyer also seeking the GOP nomination, said Salomon’s use of the Reagan quote was “playing it fast and loose with the facts, and that says something about his character.”

Reagan and other party leaders routinely support their party’s congressional nominees in the general election, McClintock and Hariton said, but that does not mean the nominee remains the leaders’ choice in a subsequent intraparty contest.

In an interview, Salomon refused to say whether he sent out the flyer expecting that voters would conclude he was endorsed by Reagan.

“I just took a quote from a letter the President sent me and accurately put it in my materials,” he said.

In the newly drawn 24th District, nine candidates are fighting for the party’s nomination in the June 2 primary. The winner will face eight-term Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) in November.

The district, reapportioned in January, includes the southern and western San Fernando Valley, Agoura, Calabasas, Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks and Malibu.

Other Republican candidates are Robert Colaco, a Van Nuys businessman; Sang R. Korman, a Calabasas businessman; Rob Meyer, a Los Angeles attorney; Bill Spillane of Thousand Oaks, a “full-time candidate” and former fighter pilot; Harry Wachtel, a Chatsworth attorney, and Stephen M. Weiss, a Calabasas attorney and business consultant.

Reagan’s Century City office referred a reporter’s calls to Catherine Goldberg, the former President’s press spokeswoman, who was unavailable for comment.

However, several candidates said their complaints about Salomon’s flyer, sent to about 60,000 Republican households in the district six weeks ago, was the trigger for an April 16 press release issued by Goldberg.

“It has been brought to the attention of President Reagan that some California congressional candidates are using his photograph and quotes in their campaign materials in ways that imply his endorsement,” Goldberg said in the statement.

“Reagan has not endorsed or supported any candidates in the contested primary races for congressional seats. Any implication to the contrary is inaccurate.”

Salomon said that, shortly after the flyer was mailed to all GOP households in the district, a Reagan representative “asked that we not mass-mail the brochure again,” because some might interpret it as an endorsement.

Since the district had already been blanketed with the flyers, “we didn’t plan to send them out again and had no problem with the request,” Salomon said, acknowledging that he and his staff continue to hand them out at campaign functions.

“He’s cutting a real fine line here,” Hariton said. “If they are too misleading to be mass-mailed, then I don’t see how he can justify handing out 200 of them like I saw him do.”