CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : SENATE / SIX-YEAR SEAT : Democrats’ Debate Heats Up the Airwaves

U.S. Senate candidate Mel Levine used a radio debate Monday to escalate his post-riot law-and-order pitch, but his opponents, Rep. Barbara Boxer and Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, accused the Santa Monica congressman of simplistic demagoguery.

Levine tried to call into question his opponents’ commitment to the need for public safety, but they quickly rebuffed him. Both Boxer and McCarthy accused Levine of oversimplifying the issue in an effort to seize on the fears of the moment.

“I think that there’s no disagreement here,” Boxer told Levine in the hourlong debate on public radio station KCRW-FM. “People who are violent need to pay the price.”

At the same time, she said, there are festering problems of neglect that must be confronted.

“I think to demagogue on that issue is really beneath the challenges that we face,” she said. “I would hope we wouldn’t demagogue that issue.”

Levine, in a television ad and in comments to reporters, is delivering a post-riot message that emphasizes law enforcement and the need for more police above all else. He says the riots were nothing more than anarchy fomented by a lawless few. Boxer and McCarthy, like most Democrats, agree that lawbreakers must be punished but point to long-term problems in the inner cities that have contributed to an atmosphere of hopelessness and despair.

Boxer, Levine and McCarthy are in a tight race for the Democratic nomination to the six-year seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Alan Cranston.

Most of the debate was dedicated to the themes familiar to this campaign.

Boxer, a five-term congresswoman from Marin County, portrayed herself as a fighter who can shake up Washington and work as an advocate for abortion rights and family issues. Saying he represented true independence, Levine, another 10-year veteran of the Congress, cast his candidacy as one that will “redefine” the Democratic Party. And McCarthy, with 30 years in public office in San Francisco and Sacramento, pushed his program of tax incentives and jobs programs that would benefit the middle class.

It was in the concluding minutes of the radio broadcast that sparks began to fly.

The candidates were given time to ask questions of each other, and Levine chose to use his time to challenge each of his opponents on their response to the riots. He asked them whether they believed the riots were caused by lawbreakers or by underlying social problems.

Both Boxer and McCarthy answered that the riots were more complex than a simple sound bite, and they accused him of trying to portray himself as a candidate tough on crime when in fact they all agree on the need to punish rioters who broke the law.

McCarthy responded that the riots represented two phenomena: real anger and outrage, and then those who took advantage of the chaos to loot and burn. To focus on lawbreakers to the exclusion of the larger, underlying problems, he said, is a serious mistake.

“It is one thing to say looters should be punished,” McCarthy said. “But if that’s the complete statement, then I think that’s wholly inadequate for someone who wants to be a United States senator. You still have gaping problems out there that need to be addressed.”

At that point, Levine interrupted: “So do I understand your answer correctly, that it’s the underlying problems that caused the lawbreaking?”

“Don’t try to rework what I’m saying, Mel,” McCarthy shot back.

“I’m asking you for a simple yes-or-no answer,” Levine insisted. “Was it the underlying problems that caused the lawbreaking?”

“The problem,” McCarthy sternly told his opponent, “is that . . . you want this nice, neat little yes-and-no answer in your 30-second spot, so that you can touch the chords of fear out there.”

All of the candidates, McCarthy continued, are firm on punishing lawbreakers. But elected officials must look at public safety, education and unemployment as parts of the same problem, he said.

Again, Levine interjected: “Leo, what I’m just looking for is leadership and experience . . . a straight answer.”

McCarthy’s voice began to rise. “You were in the Congress for 10 years. You represented part of this area. Where were you in addressing any of the basic concerns of the area during all of those years?”

As the debate moderator interceded, Boxer joined in, snapping at Levine: “You’ve got to stop the demagoguery!”

Later, speaking to reporters, Boxer said Levine was trying to make an issue where there isn’t one. McCarthy said Levine was “skirting right on the edge” of demagoguery. Levine, defending his record as one long interested in civil rights and other inner-city issues, criticized his opponents for failing to “call anarchy anarchy when it’s anarchy.”