Women Poised to Make Big Political Gains : Campaigns: Strong showing in primaries gives women candidates their best political opportunity in decades.

At the outset of her campaign for mayor of San Diego, county Supervisor Susan Golding received a quick lesson in what is at stake in a political year that has been dubbed the “Year of the Woman.”

During the race’s early weeks, Golding recalled, she and her campaign aides occasionally heard San Diegans ask rhetorically, “Do we really need another woman as mayor?”

“You’d never hear that being asked about a man,” said Golding, one of the two finalists in the November race to succeed Maureen O’Connor, San Diego’s first woman mayor. “That really put things in perspective. Yes, women have made strides in politics and government. But a statement like that shows how far we still have to go.”

Campaign ’92 could help women cover a sizable portion of that distance in San Diego politics. After an unusually strong showing in the June primary, women candidates throughout San Diego County have their best political opportunity in decades to assume a greater share of governmental decision-making authority in local, state and national offices.

Several local campaigns are all but certain to result in historic victories for women candidates. In the 49th Congressional District, either Democrat Lynn Schenk or Republican Judy Jarvis will become the first woman ever sent to Congress from San Diego--a significant chapter in local political history that has drawn volunteers and contributors to both candidates.

Two other women, Bea Herbert and Janet Gastil, face Reps. Randall (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego) and Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado) in the 51st and 52nd districts, respectively--joining with Schenk and Jarvis to compose the largest contingent of female major-party congressional nominees ever in San Diego.

Even with Golding relinquishing her seat on the county Board of Supervisors to seek the mayoralty against managed-growth advocate Peter Navarro, this fall’s elections could see two women elected to the five-member board for the first time in its 140-year history.

The 3rd District race between San Diego City Councilwoman Judy McCarty and Encinitas City Councilwoman Pam Slater guarantees that the seat being vacated by Golding will be passed on to another woman, while former county staffer Dianne Jacob narrowly outpolled Santee Mayor Jack Doyle in the 2nd District’s eight-candidate primary and now faces him in the November runoff.

Combined with a handful of female incumbents and challengers in state legislative contests, those candidacies have set the stage for a series of electoral showdowns in which gender is expected to play a pivotal role.

“We’ve heard talk about the ‘gender gap’ before, but there’s a qualitative and quantitative difference in this election,” Schenk said. “After years of working in the trenches, more women are finally moving up to the front lines.”

Explanations for why greater attention than normal is being paid to candidates’ sex begins with last year’s controversial U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas.

Alan Smith, the campaign manager of Ray Saatjian, who finished fourth behind Jarvis in the 10-candidate 49th District GOP primary, said he has concluded that what bothered many women--and men--about the Thomas hearings was not only the sexual harassment allegations lodged against him by law professor Anita Hill and some senators’ shoddy treatment of Hill, but the “sight of an all-male Judiciary Committee” weighing the charges.

“That’s the thing people want to change--they’re tired of seeing only male faces making the decisions,” Smith said.

Echoing a common sentiment, Golding agrees that the Thomas hearings “had a galvanizing effect on women in both parties,” prompting an unusually large number of women to seek office nationwide--the phenomenon behind the “Year of the Woman” label.

“Those hearings made crystal clear that the absence of women is one of government’s biggest problems,” Golding said. “Women are viewed, and rightfully so, as agents of change. I’m not sure that gender is the only thing that voters will or should look at, but for some people, it’s clearly the most important factor. I’ve even run into men who say they’re only voting for women this year.”

The growing emphasis on gender poses a special political challenge for male candidates facing female opponents--one in which words and actions must be weighed even more carefully in light of the heightened sensitivity over women’s issues and changed political climate.

Cunningham, for example, recently saw his remarks questioning whether a “witch hunt” atmosphere contributed to five Navy officials being relieved of their duties after pilots serving under them performed lewd skits at Miramar Naval Air Station interpreted by his Democratic opponent as his defense of a “boys will be boys” style of military conduct.

Late last month, Cunningham suggested that the Navy may have overreacted in disciplining the officers--two of whom were later reinstated--because of its embarrassment over the so-called Tailhook Assn. sexual harassment scandal. In that 1991 incident, more than two dozen women charged that they were groped and fondled while being pushed through a gantlet of drunken Navy and Marine Corps aviators in a Las Vegas hotel hallway.

Herbert was quick to pounce on Cunningham’s “witch hunt” comment, terming it an “attempt to use his influence to protect fellow members of the ‘boys club.’ ”

“It’s obvious that Duke Cunningham still doesn’t get it,” Herbert said. “This is the kind of degradation of women everyone else is trying to find ways to end. It’s like he’s behind the times, out of touch with reality.”

Dismissing Herbert’s charge as a “horrible distortion” of his position, Cunningham explained that the point he had hoped to make is that “there are different levels of guilt in these things, and you just don’t take everyone’s head off.”

“Bea is a nice lady, and in politics, you do anything you can to draw attention,” Cunningham said. “But she’s dead wrong on this one, because no one feels more strongly than I do that the guys responsible should be punished.”

As Herbert’s attempt to put him on the defensive demonstrates, the changed political realities in the post-Thomas period have created “an extra layer of scrutiny” for candidates’ positions on issues such as sexual harassment, Cunningham conceded.

“But I don’t intend to start doing things differently now,” he added. “Sometimes people worry too much about choosing their words too carefully, and not enough about doing what’s right.”

Similarly, Hunter said that running against a woman will not significantly alter his strategy in what could be his toughest reelection campaign in his six-term career.

“People who try to run a gender-based campaign misunderstand the American voter,” Hunter said. “That can come off as a little condescending. Besides, gender doesn’t enter into issues such as the economy or national security. They’re important to everyone.”

Even so, Hunter has sought to preempt some of the central themes that Gastil, like other women candidates, has emphasized--trying, for example, to transform the growing sentiment for political change from a question of gender to one of philosophy. In addition, Hunter explained that his wife will take a “very active and visible role” in his campaign.

“Voters do want change, but just changing their representatives’ sex isn’t going to give them what they want,” Hunter said. “The change that has to occur is ending the liberal Democrats’ control of Congress. This is a conservative district, and since my opponent is quite liberal, her views are not embraced by the district.”

Although his district has a comfortable 49%-36% Republican edge among registered voters, Hunter’s major involvement in the House check-cashing scandal--over a 39-month period, he wrote 407 overdrafts totaling $129,225--has created the first dark clouds on a political horizon that has been largely sunny since his 1980 upset of nine-term Democratic Rep. Lionel Van Deerlin.

Gastil’s own recent poll, in fact, showed her in a virtual dead heat with Hunter, who has consistently been reelected by landslide 2-to-1 margins over the past decade.

Although Hunter questions the poll’s results, two of its findings--that nearly half of his constituents believe that it is “time for a change,” and that Gastil’s support is twice as high as her name-recognition--loom as worrisome obstacles in an election year in which a large number of congressmen already have been ousted by frustrated voters.

Eschewing attempts to label her as “a single-issue woman candidate,” Gastil nevertheless acknowledges that gender gives her a significant card to play this fall.

“Duncan Hunter embodies many of the things that’s wrong with Congress,” said Gastil, a former La Mesa-Spring Valley school board member. “In trying to present a contrast, being a woman certainly doesn’t hurt. For probably the first time in history, it’s probably an advantage to be a woman in politics this year.”

“For decades, women had to be better just to get up to the starting line,” Schenk added. “But this year, the presumptions of confidence and effectiveness shifted to women.”

In the 49th District, those hoping that the “Year of the Woman” will prove to be more than a slogan can already safely declare one major victory, given that only an upset of unfathomable proportions by one of two minor-party male candidates could prevent the election of either Schenk or Jarvis.

While a two-woman contest would seem to largely neutralize the impact of gender, both major candidates argue that the political dynamics attributable to that factor will continue to be felt.

“It’s going to be not so much ‘Year of the Woman’ as it will be about the kind of woman people want in elective office,” Jarvis said.

Trying to frame that issue in terms most favorable to her, Jarvis, a nurse, argues that voters in the northwestern San Diego district confront a choice between “a citizen who’s an outsider and a lawyer-bureaucrat.”

Not surprisingly, Schenk, a San Diego Unified Port commissioner, hopes that voters will draw a different message from her career as a lawyer and a member of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s cabinet.

“I want voters to notice the difference on our resumes,” Schenk said. “I’ve been deeply involved in the community going back 20 years, getting things done inside and outside government. My opponent has never really served this community in any capacity. People see women as the ones who will bring about change, but they’re not willing to pull just anyone off the street simply because she’s a woman.”

Republicans’ 45%-39% registration advantage, combined with GOP voters’ historically higher turnout than Democrats, normally would give Jarvis a slight edge in November. However, those assets are offset this year by Schenk’s considerable name-recognition and fund-raising advantages.

With the race seen as perhaps the most competitive congressional contest in San Diego, campaign dollars, volunteers and other resources have been pouring into both major candidates.

Schenk, for example, has drawn crucial support from EMILY’s List, a group that funnels financial aid to female candidates whom it carefully screens for electability. EMILY is an acronym for Early Money is Like Yeast--”It makes the dough rise.”

Following her upset victory in the primary, in which she was heavily outspent by most of her better-known male opponents, Jarvis similarly received fund-raising assurances from both local and national GOP leaders.

“People realize that a little piece of history is going to be made in this race,” Schenk concluded. “And a lot of them want to be part of it.”