ELECTIONS / STATE SENATE : Low-Key TV Forum Heats Up Afterward : Politics: Hayden and O’Neill take Rosenthal to task for missing the debate. But the real confrontation starts after the show ends.

The only way state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal was going to appear on a televised candidates forum was if his opponents conjured him up.

“Let’s imagine Hersch here,” said Assemblyman Tom Hayden, pointing at the space to his left at the taping of the only televised debate of the primary campaign.

Rosenthal, Hayden and businesswoman Catherine O’Neill are in a hot three-way race for the Democratic nomination in the 23rd state Senate District, a newly drawn Westside-Valley district. The primary winner is all but assured of election in the heavily Democratic district, in which the Republican Party has not fielded a candidate.

As expected, Rosenthal was a no-show on Wednesday. Last week, he abruptly canceled all campaign appearances in the district. Apparently, his intention is to spend most of the time until the June 2 primary election in Sacramento, where he has served for the past 18 years.

A spokeswoman for Rosenthal has said he is too busy in the capital to make the rounds of candidates forums.

The Century Cable debate was viewed as the highest visibility candidates forum in the race. It aired three times Wednesday and will be repeated 10 or more times before the election. Originally scheduled for last week, it was postponed when Rosenthal backed out at the last minute. Century Cable officials tried without success to persuade Rosenthal to reschedule.

Debate moderator Bill Rosendahl reneged on a promise to the other candidates to have an empty chair on the set, but Hayden and O’Neill made pointed references to the senator’s absence.

“He’s not even willing to come here to defend why he wants a new seat when he has one for the next two years,” O’Neill said. Rosenthal has two years left to a term he won in 1990, but the district in which he won it has been phased out by reapportionment. By running in the new district, he is trying to extend his career by two years.

Hayden portrayed Rosenthal as an instrument of special-interest groups that dominate Sacramento. “Hersch represents very much the back-room side of Sacramento,” he said.

For the most part, the forum was low-key. O’Neill and Hayden agreed on many issues, including their support of the Los Angeles police reform ballot measure, a gay rights discrimination bill and campaign finance reform.

After the taping, however, the amicability evaporated. O’Neill refused to shake hands with Hayden and complained bitterly about his campaign tactics.

“The man is a pathological liar,” O’Neill said in an interview. “Why would I shake his hand?”

O’Neill was furious at a Hayden mailer sent on Sierra Club letterhead that attacked her environmental record. The letter, written by Bob Hattoy, regional director of the environmental group, purported to represent the club’s position in the increasingly bitter Senate race.

In fact, the Sierra Club has taken no position on O’Neill’s candidacy. The club has given Hayden and Rosenthal 100% ratings in their environmental voting records in the Legislature during the past two years, and has endorsed both lawmakers in the Senate contest, and has declined to interview O’Neill for her environmental views.

O’Neill was incensed at the mailer and she accused Hattoy, a longtime associate of Hayden, of “hijacking the letterhead” of one of the nation’s most respected environmental groups.

Outside the Century Cable studio, Hayden and O’Neill sniped at each other over the mailer, with Hayden standing behind its contents and promising to resend it to 100,000 households on Hattoy’s personal stationery.

The most dramatic moment of the televised debate came when O’Neill asked Hayden how he could complain about the influence of special-interest groups while taking campaign contributions from them himself. When Hayden tried to deflect the question, O’Neill brandished a copy of a Common Cause report noting the contributions.

Hayden replied that he had accepted relatively little special-interest money, and then changed the subject.

Hayden’s question to O’Neill involved her comment published in The Times that she did not support employer-sponsored day care. O’Neill said child care is a “public responsibility” that must be faced across the board rather than left to an erratic system where only those who work for progressive employers get the benefit.

Though she refrained from mentioning it during the taping, O’Neill was clearly concerned about the Sierra Club issue, and her post-taping attack on Hayden was her second in two days. On Tuesday, she criticized the club for declining to studying her environmental record. “They wouldn’t even give me a chance,” she said.

“The Sierra Club had nothing to do with this letter,” she said of the Hattoy letter. “They didn’t prepare it. They didn’t authorize it. They didn’t send it out.”

O’Neill and a group of supporters, including representatives of several women’s groups, demanded that the club immediately disassociate itself from the Hattoy letter, which they branded “character assassination.”

In response, Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s associate executive director, apologized for the confusion surrounding the Hattoy mailer in a terse statement to O’Neill’s campaign.

“The recent letter concerning your environmental record signed by Bob Hattoy on Sierra Club letterhead represents the personal views of Mr. Hattoy and not those of the Sierra Club, which had not reviewed or authorized his letter,” Pope said.

Hattoy refused to back down, saying he has written numerous letters on behalf of candidates. “I stand by it. It didn’t misrepresent anything,” Hattoy said.

He repeated his criticism of O’Neill. “Environmentalists have to become more political. All politicians claim to be environmentalists,” Hattoy said. “George Bush says it and he’s not. She says it and she’s not.”

Despite the controversy, Hayden campaign manager Duane Peterson defended the mailer and rejected the suggestion that it was misleading. “We were offered a letter by Bob Hattoy on his letterhead and we distributed it. I don’t have a problem with it.”

The mailer attacks O’Neill for her role as a public relations officer of the International Monetary Fund. A broad array of environmental groups have sharply criticized the agency for financing industrial development in poor countries that damages the environment and has led to destruction of tropical rain forests. Hattoy said in his letter that the IMF forces poor countries to pay off debts by depleting their natural resources and eliminating social programs.

O’Neill, who worked for the IMF in Washington from 1988 to 1990, refused to discuss the substance of the mailer in any detail. “The issue is hijacking the stationery,” he said. “I’m not playing into this game. I will not dignify it by going (through it) line by line.”