NEWS ANALYSIS : Boxer, Feinstein May Face Tougher Test in November : Election: Gender-based politics worked well against Democratic opposition, but surveys show that Republican voters are more concerned with economic well-being.

While Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein basked in the euphoria Wednesday of being the first California women in four decades to be nominated to the U.S. Senate, they may face a much tougher road ahead in trying to sell their gender-based politics to general election voters, surveys by the Times Poll suggest.

Republicans, who now join the statewide mix of voters Boxer and Feinstein must appeal to in the November election, are not as enthusiastic about some of these candidates’ campaign themes as are Democrats--especially on the need to send more women to the Senate.

A statewide survey of registered voters by The Los Angeles Times Poll last month found that about six in 10 Democrats thought it was important to elect a woman to the U.S. Senate, where only two now serve in a legislative body of 100 members. But just four in 10 Republicans felt that way.

A Times exit poll Tuesday of voters showed that Republicans seemed to be less concerned than Democrats about such issues as education, the environment and health care. These are issues that traditionally have helped Democratic women candidates.

Republicans, in contrast, seemed more concerned than Democrats about taxes and the congressional bank scandal. Conservative television commentator Bruce Herschensohn, who emerged Wednesday as Boxer’s GOP opponent for the fall, clearly was regarded by Republican voters as the best candidate on taxes, the exit poll showed.

And while the bank scandal was not one of the top Democratic concerns, Republicans did seem more interested in it and Boxer probably can expect to hear more about her 143 overdrafts in the fall. Voters of both parties also were strongly interested in the candidates’ “honesty and integrity.”

“Check kiting will be pushed back into the forefront,” said political scientist Sherri Bebitch Jeffe of the Claremont Graduate School. “So will Feinstein’s ethical problems. We have a different electorate coming up.”

Jeffe’s reference was to a lawsuit against Feinstein by the State Fair Political Practices Commission alleging that her unsuccessful 1990 gubernatorial campaign misreported $8.4 million in expenses, loans and contributions. Various Times surveys, including the exit poll, found no evidence that this issue substantially hurt Feinstein in the Senate primary, despite heavy hammering on it by her unsuccessful opponent, State Controller Gray Davis.

The polarization between Republicans and Democrats on some of these issues was symbolized by responses to an exit poll question that asked whether voters agreed or disagreed with Vice President Dan Quayle’s comment that TV character Murphy Brown’s portrayal of an unwed mother sent “the wrong message about American family values.” Fifty-four percent of Republicans agreed with Quayle, but 72% of Democrats sided with Murphy Brown.

The exit poll found that Republicans were just as concerned as Democrats about abortion. But while the abortion rights positions of Feinstein and Boxer clearly helped them in the Democratic primary, the anti-abortion stance of Herschensohn appeared to benefit him among GOP voters. Herschensohn’s two opponents, Rep. Tom Campbell of Palo Alto and one-time entertainer Sony Bono, both favored abortion rights.

Tuesday’s primary voters, however, tended to be ideologues. And within the GOP, that translates to conservative and less in favor of abortion rights than the fall electorate. An October, 1990, Times survey of registered voters found that 75% of California Republicans supported a woman’s right to choose for herself whether to have an abortion. Eighty-six percent of Democrats felt that way.

“Herschensohn now faces the task of wooing back pro-choice Campbell and Bono voters while fighting it out with Boxer among pro-choice independents,” Times Poll Director John Brennan said.

The exit poll Tuesday showed that there undoubtedly will be a gender--as well as ideological--gap between the liberal Boxer and conservative Herschensohn. The Los Angeles TV commentator was nominated largely because of his support by GOP men, as well as conservatives.

“A predominantly male Republican electorate and the candidacy of Sonny Bono may have been big reasons for Tom Campbell’s narrow loss to Herschensohn,” pollster Brennan said.

Men outnumbered women within the GOP by 55% to 45%, the poll showed. Herschensohn won the election by only two percentage points, but he ran seven points better than Campbell among men. Campbell won among women by three points.

In the Democratic primary, women dominated the electorate by 54% to 46%. Boxer received more votes from women than her two male opponents did combined. The two men--Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and Rep. Mel Levine of Los Angeles--also lost to Boxer among men, but by smaller margins.

Herschensohn likewise benefited from a conservative primary electorate. Among the GOP voters, 51% identified themselves as conservatives, 41% as moderates and just 8% as liberals. And among the big conservative bloc, Herschensohn won roughly half the vote and beat Campbell by 18 points. At the same time, Bono cut into Campbell’s potential strength among moderates and liberals, winning more than one-fifth of the vote within each bloc.

Bono also appeared to hurt Campbell by competing for the congressman’s natural constituencies among younger voters and San Francisco Bay Area Republicans.

In the fall, Herschensohn and Boxer both will face the task of trying to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters. Boxer seems to have a head start because her constituency in the primary was more philosophically broad-based than Herschensohn’s. Among Boxer’s supporters, 51% were self-described liberals and 42% were moderates. Herschensohn depended more heavily on the right wing of his party, with 68% of his supporters calling themselves conservatives. Only 28% were moderates.

The conventional wisdom among many is that Boxer will be viewed as the candidate of “change” because she is a woman. As the congresswoman herself said on Wednesday, “even women on the inside look like outsiders.” But Times pollster Brennan said that Herschensohn “might be able to make more out of Boxer’s inside status” as a veteran congresswoman than could McCarthy or Levine--two longtime officer holders--because the GOP nominee never before has held office.

In the exit poll, both Boxer and Herschensohn were seen as candidates of change by their parties, and Herschensohn particularly benefited from this image.

There was no gender gap in the other Republican primary between Sen. John Seymour, the overwhelming victor, and his principal challenger, Rep. William E. Dannemeyer of Fullerton. Seymour won big by virtually the same numbers among men and women.

In the Democratic contest, final exit poll results showed that Feinstein enjoyed a gender advantage among women, but also beat Davis handily among men.

Feinstein obviously will be looking down the road to November and trying to avoid the pitfalls she encountered in 1990, when she won the gubernatorial nomination with a gender advantage and was narrowly defeated in the general election by Republican Pete Wilson. In the 1990 primary election, 60% of the Democratic voters agreed “it’s time we had a woman governor,” but 70% of Republicans disagreed, according to a Times exit poll.

“The long-awaited year of the woman definitely had some manifestations (Tuesday). We’ve been hearing about it for years and it finally happened,” noted veteran Republican political consultant Sal Russo. “Whether that carries over into the fall we can’t know yet.”

In the exit poll, The Times interviewed 4,390 Democrats and 3,001 Republicans after they had voted. The margin of error is three percentage points.