LOCAL ELECTION ROUNDUP : Hayden Edges Narrowly Past Rosenthal : Politics: The assemblyman holds a 277-vote lead, but absentee ballots remain uncounted in the battle for the 23rd Senate District.

After a ferocious battle at the mailbox, Assemblyman Tom Hayden clung Wednesday to a 277-vote lead over state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal at the ballot box. But the outcome of one of the state’s most bitter and expensive Democratic primary fights will not be known until next week when all absentee ballots have been counted.

County election officials said it will be Monday at the earliest before there is any more-definitive word on who actually won the contest in the 23rd Senate District, which extends across the Santa Monica Mountains from the Westside to the San Fernando Valley.

After trailing in an agonizingly slow vote count Tuesday night, Hayden edged past Rosenthal in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday. When the tally of the 771 precincts was finished, Hayden had 44,803 votes or 36.80%, compared to 44,526 votes or 36.58% for Rosenthal. Pacific Palisades public relations consultant Catherine O’Neill ran third with 32,387 votes or 26.60%.

With his lead so slim and an undetermined number of absentee ballots still to be counted, Hayden was cautious about claiming victory.

Before flying to the United Nations-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday, Hayden was savoring his lead.

“I believe I will win,” he said in an interview. “I’m glad to be arriving in Brazil as the winner. I hope I come back the winner.”

The race had become a full-blown $1.3-million brawl between Hayden’s Santa Monica-based political movement and the Westside Democratic political organization headed by Reps. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles and Howard L. Berman of Panorama City.

“I was running in the year of the woman on the one hand and against the biggest political machine in California on the other,” the 52-year-old former anti-war activist said. “I’m very proud of the victory.”

But beneath Hayden’s outward optimism was deep doubt about the final verdict--Rosenthal had won the early absentee ballots by seven percentage points.

Election officials said the final results would have to await an official canvass of the ballots.

“At this time, there is no way to project how many absentee ballots that we are dealing with,” said Dona Bishop, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder’s office. Absentee ballots that were dropped off at polling places or mailed in at the deadline remain to be counted along with any other provisional ballots, she said.

At his Sherman Oaks campaign headquarters, Rosenthal, 74, was in no mood to concede defeat. From midnight to 3:30 a.m. he watched his narrow lead over Hayden slip away, and his quiet, cautious optimism gave way to concern and surprise at the results.

When all the precincts were counted, a perplexed Rosenthal turned to his wife, Pat, and said, “I don’t know what else I could have done.”

Rosenthal campaign manager Lynnette Stevens said the final outcome will not be known for some time. “We’re not going to know anything for at least a week,” she said. “We’ll have to see what the absentee count is. We’ll see how close we are and see if a recount is in order.”

For Rosenthal, who had never faced a serious election challenge during his 18 years in the Legislature, it was a tough night after a rough campaign.

As her husband’s lead evaporated, Pat Rosenthal said: “It’s a cliffhanger and a terrible one. I never thought it would be like this.”

The veteran senator said the votes for O’Neill made the difference in the contest. “The woman vote made the difference. I think they just went right down the ballot (voting for women candidates).”

Rosenthal acknowledged he had “never really had a campaign,” since he was first elected to the Assembly in 1974 and to the Senate in 1982. “This was more dramatic,” he said.

Whatever the outcome, Rosenthal will stay in Sacramento for at least two years to finish the remainder of the term for which he was elected in 1990. If he is declared the winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary and captures the four-year term against minor party candidates in November, a special election will have to be held to fill out his remaining term.

Forced by redistricting to choose between a new less-than-secure Assembly seat and the state Senate race, Hayden bet his political career in Sacramento that he could defeat both Rosenthal and O’Neill.

It proved to be a formidable challenge. By the time voters went to the polls, he had pumped more than $700,000 of his own money and that of his political campaign into the contest.

With deep pockets from his former marriage to actress Jane Fonda, Hayden was able to finance a direct mail onslaught that filled the mailboxes of Democrats from Hollywood to Malibu and across the San Fernando Valley from Studio City to the Ventura County line.

Rosenthal, a solid liberal and loyalist in the Berman-Waxman organization, responded in kind. Armed with more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from special interest groups in Sacramento and from a dozen Democratic colleagues in the state Senate, Rosenthal launched his own targeted mail drive.

After a slow start, the Rosenthal effort picked up speed in the closing weeks of the campaign, ending in a final blizzard of personalized endorsements from other elected officials allied with the Berman-Waxman organization.

O’Neill added a new dimension to the fight between two incumbent lawmakers. Seeking a political comeback 20 years after narrowly losing a state Senate race on the Westside, she sought to capture a wave of voter anger at incumbents and a surge of interest in women candidates.

She wasted little time in opening up an attack on both Hayden and Rosenthal, but her limited resources forced her to rely on far fewer mailers, cable television ads, personal appearances and newspaper coverage to reach voters in the vast district.

Concerned that she was mounting a strong surge in late campaign polls, Hayden opened up a last-minute attack on O’Neill through the mail that sought to portray her as a carpetbagger, an opponent of rent control and a backer of a luxury hotel on the beach in Santa Monica.

O’Neill was furious at the charges, calling Hayden a “vicious campaigner.”

As friends and supporters gathered to watch returns at her Pacific Palisades home, she decried Hayden’s tactics. “We feel like battered women,” O’Neill said. O’Neill said she hopes Rosenthal wins the race when all the votes are counted.

And in a parting shot at the money, the mail and the political forces that she fought unsuccessfully, O’Neill said, “It’s very clear that whoever ends up first, they paid $20 a vote to do it.”

Many voters interviewed outside polling places complained about the heavy volume of mail they received during the race.

“I discounted the propaganda,” said aerospace engineer David Hardy, 26, after voting for Rosenthal in Sherman Oaks. He said the mailers had a negative effect because they represented more money being spent to barrage him.

In Santa Monica, Mark Robbins, 38, a policy analyst for the RAND Corp., said his support for Rosenthal was mostly predicated on his “antipathy to Hayden. His campaign recently was just disgusting and incredibly negative.”

But corporate recruiter Michael Hoder, 28, of Sherman Oaks said he relied in part on the mailers in deciding to vote for Hayden. “I believe in what he does,” Hoder said, mentioning Hayden’s agenda and pro-environment stance.

Jean Farber, 71, of Sherman Oaks said Hayden’s environmentalist background was important to her, but the mailers were not. “I looked at them and threw them in the garbage,” she said. “I got so many circulars in my mail. I’m glad it’s over.”

Several other Hayden voters said they have been longtime supporters. “I’m just loyal to Tom Hayden,” said businessman Jay Sargeant, 45. “I always vote for him,” Sargeant said in West Los Angeles. He said he was active in the student movement of the 1960s with Hayden.

Senior citizens Emanuel and Dorothy Harriman of West Hollywood both praised Hayden’s support of rent control, which they said was a big issue for seniors, and his environmental record.

Voters who supported O’Neill said they did so either because she was a woman or because of their anger at incumbents.

Maggie Isaacs, a teacher who moved to the Fairfax District in August, said she knew nothing about O’Neill and didn’t care, so long as she is a woman. She cited the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and said: “I voted for women candidates all the way down the line. . . . After the Thomas thing, I’m for all the candidates who are women.”

Maureen Ladley, 32, a marketing director for a real estate development firm, said in Santa Monica that she responded to O’Neill’s message and telephone calls that highlighted her support from women’s groups. “Tom Hayden is very good on the environment and other things I believe in, but I find women’s issues more important and pressing.”

Contributing to this story were staff writer Nancy Hill-Holtzman and free-lancers G. Jeannette Avent and Ken Ellingwood.