Election ’92 : Voters Reject ‘Insider’ Candidates : Legislature: A first-term Carson councilwoman beats two veteran assemblymen, and the Redondo Beach mayor wins the Republican nomination in his district by portraying himself as the most conservative.

South Bay voters delivered a strong anti-incumbent statement to Assembly candidates Tuesday night, catapulting a Carson councilwoman to victory in a Democratic primary while a hotly contested Republican campaign ended with an easy win for a relative political novice who portrayed himself as the standard bearer of the party’s conservative wing.

While many observers expected veteran Assemblymen Dave Elder or Dick Floyd to win the Democratic Party’s nomination in the 55th District race, Carson Councilwoman Juanita McDonald instead cruised to victory, winning nearly 15,000 votes, or 45% of the ballots cast, well beyond the 29% garnered by Floyd and the 27% that Elder received.

Though facing two well-known incumbents in the newly drawn 55th District, McDonald said Wednesday that she was not surprised by her victory.

“I went in knowing I would win,” she said. “And while no one can ever know the percentage, I certainly felt I would be victorious.”

So did some others.

As the only woman in the race, and the only African-American in a district where about 40% of the registered voters are black, McDonald figured to at least make a horse race of the contest to unseat two longtime state lawmakers. And if that were not enough, McDonald also was well-known in the district’s heart--Carson.

But perhaps the most significant factor in her victory was the current anti-incumbent sentiment among many voters--a sentiment that McDonald, a first-term councilwoman, played on throughout her campaign.

“We feel we did everything we could in the campaign,” Floyd’s campaign manager, Paul Kinney, said Wednesday. “But in a year that was anti-incumbent and pro-women, Juanita had both cards. And that was just too much to overcome.”

53rd Assembly District

In the new 53rd Assembly District, widely viewed as a Republican stronghold, six GOP hopefuls battled for the conservative high ground in their bid for the party’s nomination. But when the final votes were counted, the most conservative of the Republicans had the strongest hold on the district’s electorate, which stretches from Lomita to a liberal enclave in Venice.

Redondo Beach Mayor Brad Parton, one of 13 Republican candidates on a slate endorsed by a statewide coalition of Christian fundamentalists, easily outdistanced former Torrance Councilman Dan Walker. In what was expected to be a tight race, Parton won nearly 34% of the ballots cast, receiving 13,264 votes. In unofficial final results, Walker had 8,675 votes. Redondo Beach Councilwoman Barbara Doerr and Marina del Rey political consultant George Young came in third and fourth, with 6,786 and 6,278 votes, respectively.

Debra Bowen, a 36-year-old environmental lawyer, ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination and will face Parton in the November general election. Libertarian William Gaillard won his party’s bid against Sal Princiotta.

Parton said he believes that Walker’s last-minute mailers, which attacked Parton for allegedly mixing his religious and political views, may have backfired. And he said the centrist positions taken by the other candidates allowed voters to see a clear distinction between him and the other candidates.

“I think (Walker’s) hit pieces against me came across as criticizing religion rather than attacking me,” Parton said Wednesday. “Everybody ran aggressive campaigns, but I think some of the strategy misfired.”

As he waited with supporters at his campaign headquarters Tuesday night, Walker defended his use of negative mailers against Parton.

“We knew what we wanted to say and we knew what the (voters’) questions were,” Walker said. “I am very proud of the campaign and the message that we got across.”

Parton said it helped that Walker, Doerr and Young split so many votes between them. Parton said that despite his three years on the Redondo Beach council, the decades-long involvement of Walker, Doerr and Young in state and local politics might have led voters to think of them as longtime political insiders.

“There is this anti-incumbency attitude out there, and even though I’ve been on the council for three years, I don’t think people viewed me as part of the system,” Parton, 31, said.

Despite her strong showing in the 53rd District, Redondo Beach Councilwoman Doerr said she was disappointed with the campaign because of the tactics used during the race. She said Parton managed to use the religion issue to his advantage, portraying himself as the only Christian in the race.

“I think Brad exploited the religion issue just like he’s exploited other things to support his goals in the past,” Doerr said. “I think a lot of people got duped but I’m proud of how well we did considering how little money we spent.”

Senate Races

Still, veteran leadership apparently provided the keys to victory in two area Senate races.

Longtime Assemblywoman Teresa Hughes parlayed 16 years of state legislative experience and support from key Democratic legislators to win her party’s nomination for the 25th District Senate seat.

In a victory speech to jubilant supporters as they broke out bottles of champagne, Hughes said that solving the district’s problems of crime, poverty and unemployment won’t be easy. “People shouldn’t have to be afraid in their own homes. I have 800,000 people to try to help,” she said.

Hughes easily defeated Paul H. Richards, a Lynwood councilman who emphasized his grass-roots community ties in a bid for votes.

Veteran incumbent Robert Beverly survived a strong showing from Long Beach businessman John Ward to win the Republican primary in the 27th Senate District, which was shifted under reapportionment toward the Long Beach area.

On the Democratic side, Brian Finander, a small-business consultant and Jewish community leader, easily won his party’s nomination. Finander was making his first bid for public office.

Beverly’s moderate political views have long won him support from labor and some Democrats as well as Republicans and he said this continued to hold true. “I was a winner because I’ve done a responsible job in office,” said Beverly, who has served in the Legislature for 32 years. “That is the message we tried to send out to people, particularly in the new areas we’ve not represented before.”

In the 55th Assembly District race, McDonald said, her campaign also succeeded because she, unlike the incumbents, sought to vigorously pursue a broad agenda of employment and empowerment, particularly for women and minorities.

“I think I showed an agenda that . . . the other candidates” did not show, McDonald said. “They never came out with any concrete plans. They used the same old rhetoric the voters had heard before. And that, I think, is why voters came over to me.”

While Floyd was more than eager Wednesday to discuss the campaign and election, Elder was unavailable for comment and released only a brief statement thanking his supporters and saying he was eager to return to work in Sacramento. On election night, Elder was also tight-lipped, leaving it to his campaign manager to supply answers for the low returns.

“I’ve been campaigning for 20 years and I don’t think any candidate I’ve worked for has been hit by 30 pieces of negative hit mail in the last seven days,” Elder campaign manager Jerry Seedborg said.

For his part, Floyd did not share McDonald’s analysis of the election results, insisting instead that “she got the vote that anybody would have gotten running against an incumbent.”

Floyd did his best to show that he was nonplussed by Tuesday night’s events. While he waited for early returns at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in Harbor City, Floyd --backed up by the three-piece band, Dick Floyd Country All-Stars--belted out such country and Western hits as “Elvira.” Floyd dismissed Elder’s accusations of running a negative campaign.

“Negative? I just told the truth,” Floyd said. “Like Harry Truman said, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’ ”

At the same time, Floyd praised McDonald’s victory and predicted that she will serve the district well. “She will do a good job representing the district, maybe a better job than Dave or I could have done because it is a high minority district,” Floyd said. “Juanita is a terrific gal and she’ll do a terrific job.”

Floyd was upbeat about his campaign, which cost nearly $600,000, and his time in the Assembly. “I think I did a hell of a job in the time I was a legislator,” he said, saying he was most proud of his steersmanship of a Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Sacramento and authorship of the state’s new and controversial helmet law for motorcycles.

That law, which ran afoul of motorcyclists throughout the state, was one that continued to dog Floyd even in defeat Wednesday when, he said, many nasty calls were made to his district office by those who were still angry about the helmet requirement.

But in his characteristically blunt and brawling style, Floyd seemed undisturbed by the phone calls.

“Whatever they feel about it, those bastards are going to be wearing helmets for the rest of their lives,” he said.

Times staff writer Gerald Faris and correspondents Helene D. Laube and Martin Miller also contributed to this story.

FINAL RETURNS: A18-21