ELECTIONS / 36TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Saving High-Tech Jobs Is a High-Profile Issue for All Candidates

By GEORGE HATCH

May 29, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

As residents of one of Southern California’s key centers of aerospace business, voters in the 36th Congressional District care plenty about preventing the region’s high-tech jobs from taking flight.

In fact, surveys show that jitters about the economy in general and the aerospace industry in particular rank as the premier voter concerns in the new district, which stretches from San Pedro to Venice.

That has drawn a plethora of economic plans from the candidates competing in Tuesday’s primaries. Calling for everything from a slowdown in defense cuts to construction of a fleet of oceanographic vessels, Democrats and Republicans are scrambling to answer a question that hits disturbingly close to home.

“People are nervous,” said Ted Bruinsma of Citizens Jury, a grass-roots group that has surveyed 36th District voters in an effort to stimulate debate in the race. “They’re thinking, ‘What does all this mean for my job?’ ”

Taking in the South Bay beach cities and Torrance, the 36th District is dotted with the plants of large aerospace contractors, such as Hughes and TRW, along with a vast number of local subcontractors.

With post-Cold War defense cuts forcing those firms to eliminate lucrative high-tech jobs, the most ambitious proposals concern ways to help the aerospace companies find alternatives to defense work.

Republican John Barbieri, for instance, says the federal government should build an oceanographic fleet to undertake deep-sea exploration. The effort would represent an opportunity for local aerospace firms to provide such products as navigational systems and electronic surveillance equipment, he says, asserting that the project should be a national priority.

“To help agriculture, we need to understand El Nino (a warm ocean current in the Pacific that affects weather patterns),” said Barbieri, a San Pedro consultant. “And we can look into mining the seabeds and finding new energy sources, like thermal conversion.”

Candidates point to numerous other high-tech civilian markets for defense contractors to enter. Some local aerospace firms are doing so--Hughes in electric cars and audio-visual equipment and TRW in environmental cleanup, for instance. Virtually all candidates say the federal government should encourage that trend, but differences arise over how this should be done.

Republicans, including attorney Bill Beverly, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores and former GOP official Maureen Reagan, tend to emphasize such approaches as tax breaks for investment and research, generally looking to the market to decide where new high-tech growth will occur.

Democrats, including attorney Jane Harman, registered nurse Charlene A. Richards and former California Teachers Union President Bryan W. Stevens, prefer targeting government help to such sectors as mass transit and alternative energy, areas that offer good prospects for beneficial, high-tech growth.

“The Republicans are very broad-brush,” said Democratic candidate Gregory Stock, an author and scientist. “They tend to say that government can’t pick what the winners and losers will be. I think it’s very clear what the winners will be and that government can offer them assistance.”

But there are also differences within each party. One concerns defense spending--a key issue, since defense contracts have been a key component in the 36th District’s high-tech growth.

Among the Republicans, Beverly, Flores and Reagan express support for the Bush Administration proposal to shrink the military budget by $50 billion during 1993-97. GOP candidate Bill Fahey, a former assistant U.S. attorney, opposes the reductions, saying they are too “broad-based.”

Fahey also supports increased spending on space defense projects such as Brilliant Pebbles, permanently orbiting clusters of small missiles that would destroy enemy missiles. A diminished Soviet threat, he argues, doesn’t mean the United States should lower its nuclear guard, because authoritarian leaders in the developing world could prove at least as dangerous.

Said Fahey: “We will have people with their hand on the button who are far less predictable.”

GOP candidate Wayne T. McDonald, an aerospace engineer, says the space-based defense system would be a waste of money since it is designed for the type of massive, long-range missile attack that only the Soviets could launch.

He says federal funds would be better spent to upgrade airport radar systems and launch civilian communications and meteorological satellites--projects, he argues, that would also benefit local industry.

“That keeps the money in the high-tech businesses that are working with the government now,” he said.

Another issue stirring debate between two Republican candidates concerns the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, home of the Air Force’s Space Systems Division, a procurer of military space hardware that is considered a vital stimulus to local aerospace business.

The Air Force has threatened to close the base and move the space unit out of state, due partly to a lack of affordable housing for its South Bay personnel. Virtually all candidates support efforts already underway to locate more land for the Air Force to use for additional housing.

But Barbieri and Flores are accusing each other of playing politics with the issue. In her campaign, Flores has pointed to her support for a controversial plan that allowed the Air Force to build more housing in San Pedro in the late 1980s and says she is playing an important role in the current effort to provide still more units.

Barbieri, a former president of the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, says Flores was more of a hindrance than a help to the late 1980s housing search and is a Johnny-come-lately on the issue.

“I say she’s a hypocrite,” Barbieri charges. “She spent a decade trying to get aerospace to go away, and now she makes herself out as the friend of aerospace jobs.”

Flores dismisses the charge as evidence that other candidates envy her track record. Citing her role in the Air Force housing plan of the late 1980s, she said: “I’m the only (candidate) who has done anything to provide Air Force housing. (Voters) can choose somebody who’s actually accomplished something through negotiations. That’s experience you can’t buy.”

On the Democratic side, candidates agree that the government should actively help defense contractors tap new markets, but they differ on how to do so.

Harman proposes a “federal partnership” in which the government would help aerospace companies diversify by using defense savings to invest in “priority” projects, such as mass transit and nuclear waste disposal. Companies would compete for government research, development and production money much the way aerospace firms do now, she says.

Democratic opponent Stevens says he prefers reserving such federal dollars for small, high-tech start-up companies. Approaches such as Harman’s, he says, would squander federal funds if the recipients are large aerospace contractors.

“The big existing companies are huge, wasteful bureaucracies,” Stevens said. “I believe small business is the most creative and efficient.”

Harman says her plan would not preclude small start-ups, but argues that large firms shouldn’t be excluded either. “I think the large companies have already shown a lot of efficiency and innovation. I am also mindful that these companies are some of our largest employers,” she said.

Another issue arising among Democrats is whether promoting so-called “conversion” plans is enough to retain high-paying, high-tech jobs in the region.

Democratic candidate Paul P. Kamm says both Republicans and Democrats are overplaying the potential of such plans, calling them a long shot. Meanwhile, he charges, they are downplaying more important but politically sensitive threats to the region’s industry, including excessive environmental regulation and workers’ compensation costs.

“You’d have to be an idiot not to support things like retraining, retooling and conversion,” said Kamm, a business law teacher at El Camino College. “But people don’t want to hear about controlling environmental regulations and workmen’s comp, and politicians are trained not to talk about it.”

Stock argues that steering defense contractors into new fields can improve the Southern California business climate. If the government aggressively promotes electric car construction as the Carter Administration boosted alternative energy projects, for instance, air quality will also improve, he says.

The key, he added, is to look at the economic situation as an opportunity rather than a problem.

“It’s not a tragedy that the Cold War is over and defense spending is winding down, unless nothing is done to convert these resources to the civilian sector,” Stock said.

Campaign Fund Raising, 36th Congressional District Amounts are for the reporting period Jan. 1 to May 13. Democrats

Jane Harman: $156,994

Paul P. Kamm: under $5,000

Charlene A. Richards: under $5,000

Bryan W. Stevens: under $5,000

Gregory Stock: under $5,000

Ada Unruh: under $5,000

Colin Kilpatrick O’Brien: under $5,000

Republicans

Maureen Reagan: $251,202

Joan Milke Flores: $185,134

Bill Beverly: $137,220