Candidates Now Traverse ‘Invisible’ Campaign Trail

On the 13th day before the critical California primary election, the 10 major candidates for two U.S. Senate seats were virtually invisible to voters except for the messages conveyed in their own paid television commercials.

Half of the candidates had no public campaign events of any kind Wednesday. The other five confined their appearances to generally safe meetings where there was little likelihood that they would be confronted with tough questions or potential embarrassment.

This one day in the life of California’s U.S. Senate campaigns was typical of the marathon that began with the first candidate announcements more than 15 months ago. If anything, with the election growing near, the candidates have accelerated their public activity.

“It’s an invisible campaign,” observed Bruce Cain, a political science professor at UC Berkeley. “It is a little worrisome.”

This invisibility of candidates represents a major change in recent years. It was not so long ago that candidates would stump the state nonstop during the final month of the campaign, often chartering planes for an entourage that included a press corps reporting on each day’s events.

The realities of 1992 have changed that formula. One of the key realities is that television stations throughout California have shunned the Senate campaigns in their news coverage this year.

Earthquakes, an execution, and the Los Angeles riots have blanketed television news reports during a period when voters normally are tuning in to the election. The Senate races also are being shoved aside by the presidential campaign. Even without those considerations, many local stations have scaled back political coverage.

Since candidates schedule public events primarily to get television news coverage, the result of less television is fewer public events.

Thus candidates without the money for television commercials, who undertake traditional forms of campaigning, zooming from rally to speaking engagement, have virtually no chance of attracting sufficient support to win a statewide election.

Those who do have a chance find no escape from the fund-raising yoke, another reality of 1992 that takes a candidate out of the public eye. On Wednesday, Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Stanford) found it necessary to leave the Capitol after a day of voting on bills to go to a private office to make telephone calls to California in an attempt to persuade people to give him money so he could buy more television ads.

A viable Senate campaign for the primary election alone costs as much as $5 million, primarily to finance television ads that give the candidates broad visibility in a state with 13 million registered voters.

The ads themselves commonly do little to inform. They are often deliberately vague, conveying images rather than substantive discussion. And as Cain and other political experts note, negative television ads can be effective.

“You could have noble aspirations about campaigning, but the bottom line is who wins and who loses,” Cain said. “If your margins are being eroded, you really have to fight fire with fire.”

The five candidates who did mingle with real people Wednesday attended a total of 12 events, most of them by invitation only or open exclusively to members of the organizations involved. Eight of those events were fund-raisers. Typically, all were in the Los Angeles area, where the money and the votes are located.

Not one of the 10 appeared Wednesday at anything resembling an old-fashioned political rally, where anyone could show up and, in fact, everyone was invited. Nor did a coterie of newspaper and television reporters dog the candidates from stop to stop as they once did, waiting to capture the candidate’s proposals for solving the massive, complex problems that plague California and the nation.

In fact, many of the Los Angeles area political reporters were following Vice President Dan Quayle to press him for more comment on the birth of a fictitious baby to “Murphy Brown,” the character in a television comedy series.

That was more appealing stuff than the twin-track battles for Democratic and Republican nominations in the primary election for California’s U.S. Senate seats--the first time that both have been on the same ballot.

The largest attendance of the day at a Senate campaign event was for an appearance by Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Millbrae) before the Women’s Business Council of the Century City Chamber of Commerce. More than 400 attended. About 100 seniors turned out in the Leisure World clubhouse in Seal Beach to hear conservative Republican Bruce Herschensohn.

But for political reporters covering the races, probably the most newsworthy happening of the day was the preview of state Controller Gray Davis’ first television ads, which were expected to provide a major tip-off as to the sort of 11th-hour “Hail Mary” campaign Davis might wage in an effort to win an upset victory in his Senate quest. Davis himself wasn’t there, but two reporters appeared, one from The Times and one from the Sacramento Bee.

Nelson Rising, who was the manager of former Sen. John V. Tunney’s winning campaign in 1970, recalled Wednesday: “Thirteen days out, almost to the day, we did something called a prop-stop. We went to a dozen or more cities off the beaten path, places you couldn’t go with a jet, Los Banos, those kinds of places.”

“We did old-fashioned political rallies. People talked to John and he had a chance to talk to the local media and encouraged local organizations to work,” added Rising, who now is a partner in a development firm and no longer is active in campaign work.

Professor Cain said the cost of media-driven politics and the demands of fund-raising “don’t allow any time for meeting with voters, for mass meetings.”

If candidates tried to put on rallies today, would anyone come?

“A good question,” Cain said. “That’s the point, no. What they (the candidates) are doing is a perfectly rational response to the way this state is set up.”

“We’ve got to do something about media costs. We’ve got to find a way to make candidates more accessible to groups.” But Cain said that because of the resistance to campaign reform proposals over the past two decades, “I am fundamentally pessimistic there will be any real shift in the way we do politics.”

For the record, what the 10 candidates did on Wednesday:

SIX-YEAR SEAT REPUBLICANS

Bruce Herschensohn:

The conservative Los Angeles broadcast commentator was one of the most active candidates on Wednesday, addressing a political action committee meeting in the morning, holding several media interviews, speaking to senior citizens at Leisure World in Seal Beach and attending a fund-raiser in a private home in Beverly Hills. At the same time, Herschensohn carried on his long-distance dispute with Campbell over statements about the other’s records and positions in their respective television advertisements.

Tom Campbell:

The congressman from Stanford spent the day in Washington attending House sessions, as he generally has throughout the campaign, focusing his campaign on weekends, Mondays and Fridays. However, Campbell said he plans to remain in California for the final week of the campaign. Campbell planned to fly to California Thursday night and his Friday schedule included a television taping in San Francisco and a “private” lunch.

Sonny Bono:

The former Palm Springs mayor, addressing about 100 members of the California Peace Officers Assn., joked about everything from the bikini-clad college students who invade Palm Springs each Easter Week to his own diminutive size. Of a recent debate with his foes, Bono said the moderator warned him that he had just four minutes to answer each question. “It seemed like a long time to me,” he cracked. He used just 18 seconds. Wednesday night, Bono planned to attend a meeting of the Italian-American Lawyers Assn. in Los Angeles.

SIX-YEAR SEAT DEMOCRATS

Barbara Boxer:

The congresswoman from Marin County spent most of her busy day speaking to safe crowds where she generally finds support. She began early in San Francisco with an interview with a panel at the San Francisco Chronicle. She then flew to Los Angeles for a speech to about 400 members of the Women’s Business Council of the Century City Chamber of Commerce. From there, Boxer drove to a “Save Our Jobs” rally at a United Auto Workers union hall in Long Beach, followed by a dinner speech for an organization called Women in International Trade, then a small fund-raising party at a private home in the Hollywood Hills, and finally a late-night fund-raiser with young supporters at a hip dance club on the Sunset Strip.

Mel Levine:

The day of the congressman from Santa Monica was somewhat characteristic. He held private meetings with at least three potential contributors--one in a hotel dining room, the others in offices--and scheduled a late-afternoon meeting with a columnist. A spokeswoman declined to identify the contributors whom he was meeting with. No public appearances were planned. Of all the leading candidates, Levine may have had the fewest public appearances the past several months.

Leo T. McCarthy:

The lieutenant governor spent the day away from his home turf. He flew to Los Angeles early in the morning and dedicated much of his time to making telephone calls to potential contributors, endorsers and supporters. In the evening, he scheduled a fund-raising meeting with Asian-American supporters in Monterey Park. McCarthy planned to fly back to San Francisco Wednesday night, upholding a long personal custom of insisting on getting home each night. “It’s a battle to get him to overnight” away from home, an aide said.

TWO-YEAR SEAT REPUBLICANS

John Seymour:

The appointed incumbent senator spent the day in Washington; he has tried throughout the campaign to keep up with his official duties. On this day, Seymour was one of 37 Republican senators voting against a bill designed to make it easier for people to register to vote. He began the day by meeting with the San Diego Ship Repair Assn., met with the commander of the Air Force Tactical Air Command and also with the director of the National Park Service. Seymour’s other senatorial duties included appearing on the Capitol steps for photos with visiting children from a “Just Say No” anti-drug effort. Seymour will remain in California to campaign next week.

William E. Dannemeyer:

Although Dannemeyer has regularly missed House sessions to campaign in California, the congressman from Fullerton did spend Wednesday in Washington, arriving early Wednesday on an overnight red-eye flight. As a senior minority member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, an aide said, Dannemeyer wanted to speak on behalf of legislation to streamline the nuclear power plant licensing process. He planned to return to California Thursday afternoon. He participated in a candidate debate in San Diego last Sunday and will be in another one in San Francisco this weekend.

TWO-YEAR SEAT DEMOCRATS

Dianne Feinstein:

The former San Francisco mayor had no public appearances Wednesday as she prepared for a weekend television debate in San Francisco against her foes, Controller Davis and San Francisco attorney Joseph M. Alioto. With a strong lead in the polls most of the primary campaign, Feinstein generally has run a low-key race, but has made numerous public appearances nonetheless with special concentration on the fast-growing areas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Gray Davis:

The state controller attended a Little Hoover Commission meeting in downtown Los Angeles Wednesday to testify about problems in education, then gave a speech to the Century City Rotary Club at noon. Wednesday evening, he was attending a fund-raiser at the Los Angeles Athletic Club sponsored by African-American attorney Johnnie Cochran. That was followed up by a second fund-raiser in Beverly Hills at the home of a supporter named Saul Rosensweig jointly sponsored by Davis’ barber, Joe Gonzalez.

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson, Douglas P. Shuit, Dean E. Murphy and Bob Elston.