Roberti Revels in Hard-Fought Victory Over Rowen

Grinning with relief, state Senate Leader David A. Roberti sat in his new San Fernando Valley office Wednesday and reflected on how he dodged the Last Hurrah by spending $1.5 million and fielding an army of campaign workers to beat back a strong challenge from a Republican woman.

The veteran liberal Democrat, one of California’s most powerful politicians, barely survived a bitter clash with novice candidate Carol Rowen, whom he outspent almost 9 to 1. Roberti won 42.4% of the vote to Rowen’s 38.7%

Roberti’s narrow special-election win in the Valley’s 20th Senate District allows him to keep his Senate career alive even though his current, Hollywood-based district was erased by reapportionment earlier this year. He said he found the experience to be rejuvenating.

“I even walked precincts. I haven’t done that in a long time,” he said as he sat at his new desk in the Van Nuys State Building.

“I recommend it to anyone who holds public office. . . . It’s a democratizing experience,” he said.

Rowen’s gender was “an enormous advantage,” he said, in a year when there was a “mega-trend” in favor of women candidates in the wake of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings.

“It was the Year of the Woman, second to none. I think that’s great. I’m just glad it didn’t happen here,” he said.

The Valley seat was open because its previous occupant, Alan Robbins, resigned last year and pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. The 20th District covers Van Nuys and other south-central parts of the Valley.

Roberti won the right to serve the remaining two years of Robbins’ term. But under voter-approved term limits, he must leave the Senate in 1994, ending what by then will be a 28-year career in the Legislature.

Roberti political aides conceded Wednesday that they were deeply worried during the campaign that Roberti’s lengthy incumbency, anti-abortion views and newcomer status in the district would combine to sink him in the race with Rowen.

“If she had run a halfway decent campaign, she would have beat us,” said one adviser. “We were lucky.”

Rowen, 57, tried to turn the election into a referendum on abortion, emphasizing her support for legalized abortion and warning that Roberti would push for abortion restrictions in California if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the landmark Roe vs. Wade ruling. A devout Catholic, Roberti opposes abortion on religious grounds.

Rowen also tried to capitalize on widespread voter antipathy toward incumbents and the Legislature, painting him as a political boss and an apple-polisher for special interests that have contributed millions of dollars to his campaigns.

But Roberti said that despite the anti-incumbent sentiment, 20th District voters seemed to want a legislator with experience.

He attributed his victory in part to more than 330 volunteer workers who turned out to help him on Election Day.

Roberti said he does not have any other lawmaker in mind to succeed him as Senate president pro tem in 1994 and is instead concentrating on the upcoming state budget negotiations with Gov. Pete Wilson.

He also said he plans to begin looking for a house to buy in the Valley, but that he will not sell his Tudor-style home in pricey Los Feliz as long as his 88-year-old father lives there.

Asked what he will do when he leaves the Senate, Roberti, 53, noted that he is a lawyer and “that’s probably what I’d do.”

Sacramento sources said Roberti’s tenure as president pro tem, a post he has held a record 11 1/3 years, seems secure for the time being, even though he appeared weakened by his narrow win over Rowen.

Rowen blamed her loss partly on a lack of strong support from the Republican Party.

Although Gov. Wilson and members of the Senate GOP Caucus endorsed her, she said the party contributed no money or volunteer workers to her cause.

“I didn’t fit the profile they wanted. I’m a pro-choice woman and I didn’t fit the pattern of the Senate club. They protected their own,” she said.

Roberti ran up his biggest vote margins in poorer, racially mixed neighborhoods in the northeast corner of the district. In six Pacoima precincts, he outpolled Rowen by 635 to 61.

By contrast, Rowen outdistanced him in some affluent, primarily Anglo neighborhoods south of the Ventura Freeway. In her own precinct, covering Tarzana’s Braemar Country Club, Rowen got 127 votes to Roberti’s 88. In the precinct surrounding Encino Reservoir, Rowen also won.

In Van Nuys, the heart of the district, the two candidates appeared to run neck and neck in a number of neighborhoods.

Times staff writer Carl Ingram contributed to this story