ELECTIONS / STATE SENATE : Renters Give Hayden Cushion in Tight Race : Politics: The assemblyman got more votes from his home city than his two opponents combined. This allowed him to overcome deficits in other parts of the 23rd District.

There was no place like home for Tom Hayden last week.

Santa Monica and its plethora of renters provided the veteran assemblyman with the cushion to absorb deficits in other parts of the 23rd Senate District and go on to what appears to be victory in a tight race.

Although officials are still counting absentee votes, Hayden (D-Santa Monica) is ahead of state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles) by 453 votes. A majority of absentee ballots have been counted, and Hayden has improved his election night margin of 277 votes and leads by 0.36%.

“The trend is obvious,” Hayden consultant Parke Skelton said. “I can’t imagine it turning around.”

The two veteran lawmakers were in a three-way race with Pacific Palisades public relations consultant Catherine O’Neill in one of the costliest--and some say nastiest--races in state history. O’Neill came in third with 26.68% of the vote. Hayden is out front with 36.83%. Rosenthal has 36.47%.

The newly sculpted district stretches from Santa Monica to the Ventura County line, taking in hillside communities on both sides of the Santa Monica Mountains, along with Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and the Fairfax area.

No Republican filed in the race, so a primary victory is tantamount to election.

Playing his renters’ rights card to the hilt in Santa Monica, Hayden raked in more than twice as many votes as Rosenthal by telling voters that rent control was being threatened.

Hayden phone canvassers, identifying themselves as calling from Santa Monicans for Renters Rights, told voters that rent control was under threat because O’Neill had taken contributions from landlords and was going to gut rent control.

(Actually, O’Neill supports rent control but favors vacancy decontrol.)

Historically, when rent control is--or is portrayed as--under attack, Santa Monica renters hotfoot it to the polls. Voters in West Hollywood, another rent control stronghold where Hayden forces rallied renters to vote, also came out for him.

When questioned outside of two Santa Monica polling places, virtually all Hayden voters said they picked him because of his staunch support of rent control.

A friendly state Legislature is important to rent control advocates because, over the years, landlord groups have tried to water down rent control through state action.

In Santa Monica, unofficial results, including those absentees counted, show Hayden with 8,385 votes, more than Rosenthal (4,072) and O’Neill (3,709) combined. West Hollywood also provided Hayden with a tidy lead of 334 votes over Rosenthal.

The Hayden forces think the margin could grow even higher; they have identified uncounted absentee votes as coming from those two cities.

An even-bigger Hayden stronghold was Malibu, where he had 924 votes to Rosenthal’s 345. Unincorporated canyon areas above Malibu were also Hayden country.

Rosenthal held sway in Los Angeles, with a 3,346-vote lead over Hayden, and he also prevailed in Beverly Hills, with a 1,417-vote lead. In a combined tally of Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Calabasas and West Hills, Rosenthal was ahead by 300 votes.

With his political future on the line, Hayden pumped more than $700,000 of his own money and that of his political campaigns into an aggressive mail attack on both opponents. By election night, Hayden’s tactics had been characterized as “slimy” and “vicious” by the Rosenthal and O’Neill camps respectively.

Rosenthal responded by raising about $500,000 from mostly special interests and in the waning days of the campaign counterattacked by comparing Hayden to President Bush, based on the notion that either would do anything to get elected.

Although the campaign’s dominant feature appeared to be the avalanche of slick attack mail, predominantly from Hayden, campaign manager Duane Peterson said it was really a “leave no stone unturned” approach that accounted for Hayden’s success.

For example, the campaign targeted voters registered as Greens, a new party known for its environmentalist focus. Mailers asked them to re-register as Democrats to help Hayden win because of his environmental record. Peterson said the Greens were mailed forms to re-register and about 700 of them did.

“You can bet we phoned them over the weekend and on election day to get them to vote,” Peterson said. “One of our secret weapons was the Green voters.”

Additionally, a targeted mailer was sent to 1,200 animal rights activists, Peterson said. And about 100 Hayden voters were driven to the polls on Election Day.

By contrast, Rosenthal did not have a significant field operation to identify his voters and get them to the polls. Rosenthal has not yet conceded defeat.

O’Neill’s campaign was boosted by phone banks of women’s organization members who urged other women to vote for her, but she did not have the money to match the saturation mail campaigns of her opponents.

There are conflicting theories about which lawmaker was most harmed by O’Neill’s candidacy. One view is that O’Neill drew San Fernando Valley votes from Rosenthal, who was portrayed as beholden to special interests in Sacramento. “It’s pretty clear that our votes were lost to Cathy O’Neill,” said Rosenthal campaign manager Lynnette Stevens. “In areas normally going to Hersch Rosenthal she peeled off some votes.” Another theory is that O’Neill drew liberal women away from Hayden, although not in Santa Monica--where renters rule.